Israel Shochat

Shochat was born in 1886 in Liskova, in the Grodno province of the territory described in biographical sources as Byelorussia or Belorussia. He came from a family of Jewish landowners and received a traditional Jewish education before going to Warsaw to study commerce.[2][3] He joined Po‘alei Zion in his youth, connecting his early political activity to the Labor Zionist movement.[3]

The Kishinev pogroms of 1903 helped spur calls among Shochat and other Jews in Russia for uprising and self-defense. He helped organize Jewish self-defense in Grodno, was active in Po‘alei Zion, and faced persecution by the authorities.[1] His later advocacy also drew on the experience of Po‘alei Zion members who had organized self-defense against pogroms in Russia, a precedent credited with strengthening Jewish self-esteem.[4]

Shochat chose settlement in Eretz Israel over his parents’ urging that he study agronomy in Germany. He immigrated in 1904 with his brother Eliezer, after which he worked as an agricultural laborer in Petah Tikva and at the Rishon LeZion winery. He also helped establish Po‘alei Zion in the country.[1][2] Poor health eventually led him to leave manual labor for desk work.[2]

In 1908 he married Mania Wilbushewitch, also known as Manya Shochat, who shared many of his ideas about Jewish settlement. She became a member of Hashomer and, like other founders’ wives in the organization, held full and equal membership rights, including the right to vote.[2][5]

Shochat’s early organizing joined two Labor Zionist aims: Jewish labor and Jewish responsibility for defending settlements. He argued that the work of “conquering labor” should be matched by “conquering the guarding,” because Jewish settlements employed Arab guards while he believed Jewish residents should protect themselves rather than entrust that responsibility to others.[1] In his view, self-guarding was not simply a security service: it could help establish an independent Jewish defense force and encourage workers and farmers to take responsibility for their communities.[1]

In 1906 Shochat organized a first group of Jewish guards in Zikhron Yaakov.[2] In September 1907, he addressed a gathering of ten young men in Jaffa, where the participants drafted a program for a secret society of Jewish watchmen named Bar-Giora.[4] A secret founding meeting also took place on the night of Simchat Torah in 1907, in Yitzhak Ben-Zvi’s room in Jaffa. Shochat, Israel Giladi, and Alexander Zaid led the group, and Shochat was chosen as its commander.[1] Members pledged to work as guards where needed, speak Hebrew, and live collectively when possible—commitments associated with their Labor Zionist outlook.[4]

Bar-Giora’s work took the group to the cooperative agricultural farm at Sejera in the Galilee. Its members joined the farm and took over guarding after demonstrating that the hired Circassian guard had been negligent.[1] In one incident, the young guards took a mule from beneath the hired guard and returned it the next morning; the farm director was persuaded to employ them.[4] These episodes became examples of the organization’s effort to win guarding contracts by demonstrating its capacity rather than relying only on political argument.

Shochat also sought a durable way to finance Jewish guarding. From Sejera he sent a secret letter to Menachem Ussishkin, head of the Odessa Committee of Hibbat Zion, proposing special shares to finance loans that guards could use to purchase weapons, ammunition, and horses. The guards would repay the loans from their wages, with interest. The letter, dated 24 June 1908, did not lead to implementation; it is unclear whether Shochat had Bar-Giora in mind or whether Hashomer was already being planned. Initial financing instead came through an arrangement with Sejera farm director Eliahu Krauze. Shochat’s letter expressed the principle in a concise phrase: “At the very least, brothers will guard brothers.”[1]

In 1909, as security conditions in Galilee settlements worsened and demand for guards grew, Bar-Giora’s members established Hashomer as a more openly operating framework for armed Jewish guarding. Its founding assembly took place at Kfar Tavor on the seventh day of Passover.[1] Sources describe the relationship in slightly different terms: some present Hashomer as the expansion or successor of Bar-Giora, while another calls it originally known as Bar-Giora.[1][6] Shochat led Hashomer from its inception until its dissolution as a separate organization in 1920 and was elected chair of its committee.[2][3]

Hashomer members took on guarding in colonies across the Yishuv. The organization’s work expanded from the Lower Galilee into Samaria, Judea, and the coastal plain; settlements included Yavne’el, Beit Gan, Menachemia, Sarona, Mizpah, Kinneret, Rishon LeZion, Ben Shemen, and Beer Ya’akov.[4] Shochat and Giladi stated that the organization sought both to defend Jewish settlement and to awaken the understanding that farmers and workers “alone can and must defend themselves and their property.”[1]

The organization remained deliberately selective and comparatively small. After two years, its original group of eight had grown to twenty-six, reflecting strict admission standards.[4] By 1914 Hashomer had about forty members, in addition to fifty to sixty candidates and temporary auxiliaries, and could deploy about three hundred men at harvest time. Candidates underwent a year of trial, and those accepted took a ceremonial oath after a two-thirds majority vote at the annual general meeting.[7] Hashomer never exceeded one hundred members, although its members viewed it as the nucleus of a future Jewish army.[6]

Hashomer was deliberately small, and members sometimes wore Arab or Circassian clothing while guarding settlements and defending them from attack.[8][7] Its limited size did not prevent its model from influencing later defense organization: by 1920 a larger defense body was needed, and the Haganah was formed.[8][6] Hashomer ceased to exist as a separate body on 15 June 1920, when Aḥdut ha-Avodah accepted responsibility for reorganizing defense; its members remained in contact and continued contributing to the Yishuv’s defense and constructive work.[7]

Alongside guarding, Shochat promoted Jewish labor and experimented with proposals for a disciplined communal workforce. In 1910 he attempted to establish a “Labor Legion” intended to bring Jewish labor into settlements through communal life and discipline. The effort did not take shape because of a shortage of members, opposition from Jewish labor parties to its methods, and insufficient enthusiasm.[2][3] Shochat’s interest in ideas associated with Communist Russia informed the proposal, but it remained unrealized.[2]

At the end of 1912, Shochat went to Constantinople with David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to study law.[3] During World War I he helped initiate a proposal for a Jewish militia to assist in maintaining order in the country. Turkish authorities rejected the proposal, arrested Shochat and his wife, and deported them to Brusa in Anatolia; another account describes his proposal as a Jewish brigade to help the Turks defend the country and says the authorities were suspicious of it.[2][3] Shochat remained abroad for the rest of the war. He attended a Po‘alei Zion conference in Stockholm in 1917 before later returning to Eretz Israel.[2][3]

After the war Shochat joined Aḥdut ha-Avodah with his Hashomer comrades and took part in labor organizations and the Haganah. He was among the founders of the Haganah, Gedud ha-Avodah, and the Histadrut.[3] Differences with Aḥdut ha-Avodah leaders over the Haganah’s organizational structure led him to resign from its command.[3]

Shochat continued pursuing defense work after leaving Haganah command. A closed underground operating within Gedud ha-Avodah established an arms depot at Kefar Giladi and sent members to Europe for military training.[3] Efforts to keep the Shomrim movement active also included sending people to Europe for pilot training and others to Haifa and Caesarea to learn about maritime activity. Members prepared secret weapons caches, known as “sliks,” at Kfar Giladi during the British Mandate.[9] Shochat’s attempts to establish additional defense societies received little support.[2]

In 1925 Shochat traveled to Moscow for secret negotiations with senior Soviet officials about possible cooperation between his defense group and the Soviet secret service. The negotiations were fruitless.[3] He sought Soviet support against the British, whom he regarded as the Jews’ primary enemy, but the project came to nothing.[2] These efforts contributed to political controversy in the Yishuv establishment. Shochat and colleagues were called before an internal Histadrut body to answer for separatist political and defense activity; after Gedud ha-Avodah disintegrated, he was removed from central public activity and lost positions of authority in Yishuv organizations.[2][3]

A Globes article describes a secret group it calls “Hakibbutz,” centered at Kfar Giladi, as pro-Soviet and pro-Communist, and interprets it as a possible armed left-wing effort to take control of the Jewish Yishuv. The article itself acknowledges that little evidence survives because of the group’s secrecy, so these politically charged descriptions are best understood as that article’s characterization rather than settled consensus.[10] It reports that Shochat and others met Soviet representatives in Europe before being invited to Moscow in 1926, where they met Soviet military intelligence, proposed a Soviet declaration supporting a Communist Jewish state in Palestine, and requested military assistance. The same account says the Soviet representatives suggested first seeking influence in the Jewish labor movement and establishing an “Arab democratic party.”[10] The account further reports that the group’s Kfar Giladi base held a substantial arms cache for the period, that its weapons were transferred to the Haganah in 1929, and that the organization ceased to exist around that year after an ideological split; some members reportedly returned to the Soviet Union.[10]

During the 1930s Shochat was active in the Ha-Po‘el sports organization and in the establishment of the country’s first flying clubs. He continued to work as a lawyer and defended Haganah prisoners.[3] After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the sources differ in how they describe his police role: one says he served as legal adviser to the minister of police, while another identifies him as director of the Police Department.[2][3] His memoirs appeared in Koveẓ ha-Shomer in 1937 and Sefer ha-Shomer in 1957.[3]

Shochat’s most enduring contribution was his role in organizing Jewish self-defense around the idea that settlement residents should guard themselves. Bar-Giora provided a secret, close-knit form of organization; Hashomer developed that work into an openly operating framework that took guarding responsibilities in settlements across the Yishuv.[1][6] The transition from a small clandestine group to a broader organization reflected both the growing demand for guards and the aim of making self-defense a responsibility shared by farmers and workers.[1][4]

The principle extended beyond protecting property to changing how settlers understood their capacity to act. Shochat and Giladi said Hashomer should help people recognize that they themselves could and should defend their communities and property.[1] The organization’s stated ideal—“At the very least, brothers will guard brothers”—summarized the link Shochat drew between Jewish labor, settlement, and defense.[1]

Hashomer was numerically limited, never exceeding one hundred members, yet its members regarded it as a nucleus of a future Jewish army.[6] It was formally dissolved as a separate organization in 1920 when Aḥdut ha-Avodah took responsibility for reorganizing defense, while former members continued to contribute to the Yishuv’s defense and constructive efforts.[7] The Haganah became the larger defense organization that followed Hashomer’s era.[8][6]

Shochat’s legacy also includes his efforts beyond guarding: labor organizing, participation in the Histadrut and Haganah, and attempts to establish a Labor Legion and later defense societies.[2][3] The Labor Legion did not attract enough support to take shape, and his later defense initiatives likewise had limited backing, but these projects illustrate his continued interest in linking collective labor, discipline, and organized defense.[2][3] His memoirs, published in 1937 and 1957, added his own written account to the record of Hashomer and its members.[3]

Accounts differ over which organization should be called the first Jewish self-defense organization in Palestine. The Center for Israel Education calls Hashomer, established in 1909, the first; the Central Zionist Archives describes Bar-Giora as a secret guarding organization founded in 1907.[1][8] The difference appears to turn on whether the category includes Bar-Giora’s earlier clandestine organization or refers to Hashomer’s later, more openly operating framework.[1][8]

Shochat’s Soviet contacts and the secret organization associated in one account with Kfar Giladi are also described in politically charged terms. The available Globes account acknowledges that little evidence survives, and its interpretation of the group as a possible armed effort to seize control of the Yishuv should not be treated as a settled description.[10] The sources also differ over the precise nature of Shochat’s post-1948 police position, describing him respectively as legal adviser to the minister of police and as director of the Police Department.[2][3]