Anarchism in Israel

Anarchism in Israel has appeared less as a durable national organization than as a set of intellectual influences, communal experiments, and small activist networks. A Jewish reference account says anarchist writers influenced radical thought but had much less effect on the Jewish labor movement than socialism, and that organized anarchism in Jewish life had largely faded after the Second World War.[5]

Later accounts nevertheless identify recurring themes of cooperative organization, collective leadership, anti-authoritarian politics, and direct action. The surviving record is uneven and concentrated on a limited number of individuals and groups, so it supports a history of related currents rather than a continuous national movement.[6][4]

Anarchist ideas intersected with Jewish socialist and communal thought before the establishment of Israel, although the available material does not support a comprehensive history of the current. A study of Mandate Palestine describes Ha-Shomer Ha-Zair as passing through a communitarian-anarchist phase. At the federation of its kibbutzim’s founding congress in 1927, its platform called for “a bi-nationalist socialist society in Palestine and its environs”; during the 1930s, the movement shifted toward orthodox Marxism and greater involvement in national politics and binationalist advocacy.[3]

Descriptions of anarchist influence on the kibbutz movement require care. An item describing a study of the movement says that kibbutzim established during the second through fourth Jewish immigration waves, from 1904 to 1932, were shaped in part by ideas associated with Peter Kropotkin, Gustav Landauer, and Martin Buber. The same description says anarchist principles receded from the late 1930s as statist currents gained influence, but did not disappear entirely. This account presents influence on some communal experiments, not proof that kibbutzim generally were anarchist institutions.[6]

A 1952 visit by the anarchist Augustín Souchy offers a close-up of cooperative life. He traveled to study moshavim and kibbutzim in comparison with agricultural communes he had encountered during the Spanish Civil War. After returning to Mexico, he wrote about Israeli collective institutions in an essay titled El nuevo Israel, whose second edition appeared in Buenos Aires in 1958.[7]

Souchy’s account recorded discussions over the ideals and direction of the settlements. At Kvutzat Yavne, a young Swiss immigrant defended Marx’s economic theory, while kibbutz secretary Eliyahu Buchaster favored the ideas of Jewish social anarchist Gustav Landauer. The account links Buchaster’s preference to Landauer’s advocacy of communal agricultural settlements and presents him as a possible intellectual forefather of the kibbutz movement; it does not establish that the kibbutzim themselves were anarchist.[7][8]

The same account describes questions about whether cooperative ideals would endure. At Kvutzat Yavne, factory manager Baruch Kahane recalled that the founding generation saw itself as heir to the Essenes and their collective property, while expressing concern that newer immigrants lacked the founders’ idealism. At Givat HaShlosha, disagreement between Mapai and Mapam supporters over Stalin and the Soviet Union contributed to a split, after which Mapai supporters established Einat.[7]

Souchy also visited Kiryat Avoda, a cooperative neighborhood in central Holon. Its secretary said residents used a cooperative store instead of private shops, and Souchy wondered briefly whether the anarchist ideal of communes providing for people without exploitation had been realized there. The secretary’s wife pointed out a practical limit: many residents worked and shopped in Tel Aviv. The episode illustrates cooperative aspirations and their boundaries, rather than the abolition of private commerce.[7]

The sources also document individual anarchists who came to Israel. Abba Gordin (1887–1964), a theorist and revolutionary activist who wrote in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and English, moved to Israel in 1957 and died in Tel Aviv in 1964. Before moving, he co-edited the Yiddish-language anarchist journal Freie Arbeiter Stimme and edited Yidishe Shriftn from 1941 to 1946; the archival record provides little detail about his activity in Israel.[9] More broadly, a reference account says anarchist writers influenced Jewish radical thought, though socialism had a substantially greater impact on the Jewish labor movement, and that anarchism had virtually ceased to exist as an organized force in Jewish life after the Second World War.[5]

The available accounts associate anarchism in Israel with more than one form of political practice: cooperative institutions, anti-authoritarian ideas, and direct action. They do not establish a unified program shared across the historical communal movements and later activist groups. The distinction matters particularly for kibbutzim, where individual members could draw on anarchist thinkers even as the institutions themselves pursued varied political and economic models.[7][3]

Gustav Landauer appears in the sources as a point of connection between Jewish anarchist thought and communal settlement. He was a Jewish German anarchist who supported communist anarchism and anarcho-pacifism. He represented Berlin anarchists at the 1893 International Socialist Workers’ Congress in Zurich, where he advocated “anarchist socialism,” and later championed the cooperative Befreiung in Berlin.[8]

Religious interpretation also enters the record. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook included Jewish anarchists among the secular movements he understood through a mystical and messianic account of Jewish history. In a review discussing Kook’s thought, Allan Nadler reports that Kook associated anarchism’s spiritual root with devekut, or cleaving to God, while viewing secular movements as provisional and anticipating their followers’ return to religious tradition.[10]

Contemporary groups have expressed different understandings of anarchist identity. A 2016 profile described Unity, based in Tel Aviv and Haifa, as an anarcho-communist group favoring the abolition of government and Israel’s borders in favor of a non-national society. It reported that Unity had about 30 members, published online material in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, rejected a two-state solution, and focused on raising awareness rather than overthrowing either Israeli or Palestinian governments.[11]

The same profile characterized the Israeli anarchist scene as very small. It cited earlier estimates of around 300 people, while its author considered the number possibly higher after seeing at least 100 people at a Unity rally in Haifa. The article quoted political philosophy professor Yossi Shain attributing the movement’s marginality partly to the state’s strong control over the means of violence and capacity to handle popular unrest. Military conscription was another point of conflict: the profile reported that a 19-year-old who refused enlistment had spent 90 days in prison.[11]

Anarchists Against the Wall, also called “Anarchists Against the Fence” or “Anarchists Against Fences” in some reports, became the most prominent contemporary group covered by the available sources. A Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies report says demonstrations by the group began in early 2004 and describes several dozen activists opposing the security barrier or its route, including sections that deviated from the Green Line. It characterizes the group as a consistent and vociferous protest presence and says members actively engaged Israeli soldiers and Border Police.[12]

A 2016 report called the organization Israel’s oldest and best-known anarchist group, but described it as a loose network without a broader anarchist platform; it said not all members were anarchists. Members joined Palestinian-led demonstrations in villages in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — often on Fridays, opposing the barrier. One organizer explained the absence of a manifesto by saying that immediate action mattered more than writing one.[11]

The group’s public activity extended beyond village demonstrations. In 2006, 20 activists blocked a Tel Aviv intersection with barbed wire taken from a security-fence construction site and attached warning signs. Spokesperson Yonatan Pollak said the action was intended to confront city residents with restrictions on Palestinian movement and land seizure, as he described them. The report said the group included Israeli, Palestinian, and foreign youths and attended weekly demonstrations near Bil’in.[2]

A 2009 panel discussion at New York University about the university’s relationship with Tel Aviv University included a member of Anarchists Against the Wall.[1] A separate report on a conference about humanitarianism in the occupied territories described Kobi Snitz presenting on the group. It said Snitz called its members self-defined anarchists, while noting that they often presented themselves to media as “Israeli activists”; the presentation addressed demonstrations and work against construction of the barrier.[13]

Some activists described a broader agenda than protest against the barrier alone. In an activist-authored opinion article, the writer included interfaith dialogue, accompaniment of olive harvests, joint ecological projects, publishing, and education among the campaign’s activities. The author framed the aim as ending the occupation through Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and described direct action as a way to expose the state’s response; these are the author’s own political argument and characterization.[14]

The group’s name and the scope of its activity should not be treated as proof of a single fixed membership or platform. The sources variously describe it as a group, loose organization, and activist network. A 2020 news report said it had been founded in 2003, while the Jerusalem Institute account identifies a member who was shot in December 2003 but says demonstrations began in early 2004; the reports do not resolve the exact founding chronology.[15][12]

Anarchist-linked activism also appeared in broader solidarity networks. A 2012 International Crisis Group report traces the roots of a Jerusalem movement that began weekly protests against evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah in 2009 to groups active during the second intifada, including Anarchists Against the Wall, Ta’ayush, and the Bilin Campaign. Protest leaders formed the nonprofit Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah in 2010, while the movement retained some anarchist tendencies and used collective leadership without a formal leader or spokesperson.[4]

At its height in 2010, the Sheikh Jarrah protests drew more than 1,000 activists each week, according to the report. The network also sought to broaden its work, protesting evictions in Taybeh and Beit Shean and supporting popular committees in Silwan, Issawiya, and Al-Tur. It officially ended in autumn 2011; the report says organizers gave as their stated reason that the protests had delayed the takeover of more homes in Sheikh Jarrah.[4]

The report also records limits and disagreements within this solidarity work. Palestinian attendance at Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations was usually fewer than a dozen, and some Palestinians objected to joint Israeli-Palestinian action or preferred to build an independent grassroots movement. These details qualify any simple description of the protests as a unified or equally shared campaign.[4]

In Tel Aviv, Salon Mazal served as a shared cultural and organizing space. A 2005 report described it as a bookshop, library, vegan bar, and activist meeting place, with a free Linux-based computer area and thousands of books, about half in English. Roughly 30 local activists worked there; volunteers ran the kitchen, sold books, and organized workshops. The report associated visitors and volunteers with Anarchists Against the Wall, Indymedia, and Green Action.[16]

The same article profiled activist Uri Ayalon, who identified with Anarchists Against the Wall and opposed both Israeli and Palestinian statehood in favor of borderless communities not defined by nationality, religion, or race. It described his civil disobedience and direct action against the barrier, refusal of army service, and workshops and lectures at Salon Mazal. The article connected his turn toward activism to the 2003 death of American activist Rachel Corrie.[16]

The significance of anarchism in Israel has lain more in methods and networks than in numerical strength. Historical accounts identify anarchist influence within parts of communal settlement, while also stressing that socialism and later statist currents were stronger and that organized anarchism declined sharply after the Second World War.[5][6]

Later groups connected direct action with looser forms of organization. The Sheikh Jarrah solidarity movement, for example, retained collective leadership and roots in Anarchists Against the Wall and other activist groups, while its reach and Palestinian participation remained limited.[4] The word “anarchist” also acquired a broader polemical use: in 2023, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir applied it to demonstrators against the judicial overhaul and to protesters who blocked roads; people interviewed by ynet rejected or objected to the label.[17] This usage should not be confused with membership in an anarchist organization.

The barrier and the demonstrations against it have been described in sharply different terms. The Jerusalem Institute report says some demonstrations by Anarchists Against the Wall ended in violence and recounts that member Gil Na’amati was shot and seriously wounded by Israeli forces on December 26, 2003. It says the incident reverberated widely and apparently intensified Palestinian protests in the Bidu–Beit Sourik area and elsewhere along the Elkana–Jerusalem route.[12]

Reports of particular confrontations record competing accounts. During a 2005 demonstration near Bil’in, protesters said security forces fired without reason; the IDF said demonstrators threw stones and a protester hurled a Molotov cocktail. The report recorded six protesters, an IDF soldier, and a Border Guard policeman injured.[18] In a 2009 account of demonstrations in Ni’lin and Bil’in, the IDF said demonstrators threw stones and described its response as crowd-dispersal measures, while Palestinian sources and Pollak disputed details of a protester’s injury and the danger the army said it faced.[19]

In 2020, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett ordered security forces to prepare restraining or exclusion orders against activists associated with the group. The report said Bennett accused activists of initiating violent provocations in villages including Bil’in, Na’alin, and Nabi Saleh, while Joint List lawmaker Ofer Cassif called the characterization false and urged continuation of what he described as a nonviolent struggle. An unnamed activist said Israelis played a marginal role in demonstrations and were not organizing or leading them. These were competing claims by political figures and activists, not a settled general account of the group’s conduct.[15]

A 2024 report said Jonathan Pollak was charged with incitement to violence over a 2020 newspaper column and a 2021 speech. Prosecutors alleged that his words could lead to violence; Pollak described the case as political persecution. The report describes charges and opposing claims, not a conviction.[20]