The Chizbatron and the Transformation of the Palmach’s Pioneering Ethos, 1948-1950
Keywords:
Dissociation, Israeli middle class, Distribution of resources, Palmach, Chizbatron, Bourgeoisie, Socialism, Individualism, PioneeringAbstract
In my article ‘The Dialectic between the Pioneering Ethos and Socialist Ideology in the Israeli Labor Movement’ [Iyunnim 20 (2010)] I argued that in contrast to the socialist ideology the pioneering ethos encouraged dissociation from society at large and assumed that the ideals of the Labor Movement could only be established outside of it. In the absence of sovereignty in the pre-state period, the pioneering ethos helped achieve numerous national goals, after 1948 however, it was transformed into the ethos of the emerging Israeli middle class and was used to justify its distributive privileges.
The Palmach, a combination youth movement-combat unit, was the most striking expression of the pioneering ethos. The article uses the lyrics of the Chizbatron songs, the Palmach’s entertainment band, to examine the shift from the pioneering ethos of brotherhood and Zionist-Socialist sacrifice to an individualistic bourgeois ethos.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 IYUNIM: Multidisciplinary Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise indicated, all articles published in IYUNIM: Multidisciplinary Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Under the terms of this license, users may read, download, copy, distribute, reproduce, and adapt the published material for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author(s), the journal, and the original source, and that any changes made are clearly indicated.
Copyright is held by Iyunim: Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society.
Third-party materials included in an article are not covered by this license unless otherwise indicated. If your intended use is not permitted by applicable law or exceeds the permissions granted by the license, you must obtain permission directly from the copyright holder(s).
