Siah (group)

Siah (Hebrew: שי"ח‎‎, an acronym for Smol Israeli Hadash, (Hebrew: שמאל ישראלי חדש‎‎, "Israeli New Left")) was an Israeli left-wing group active between 1968 and 1973. Reuven Kaminer describes them as "the major force of the student left in the 1968-73 period."[1] As their name suggests, the group's language, organization, and tactics were influenced to some extent by the global New Left.[2][3][4]

Siah was a combination of two groups in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that had been created independently. The Tel Aviv group was initially created by Mapam supporters at Tel Aviv University who chose to break away from the party in protest against its decision to ally itself with Mapai. These were soon joined by former members of Maki. The Jerusalem group was made up of Hebrew University students with less political experience, some of them recent immigrants who had come to Israel to fight in the Six Day War.[5] The Tel Aviv members saw themselves as Zionists, while "the Jerusalemites considered themselves a-Zionists or even anti-Zionists."[6] Siah's leading activists included Ran Cohen, Dani Peter, Yossi Amitai, Benyamin Cohen, and Zvika Deutch.[6][7]

Siah broke apart in 1973 over the issue of reentering electoral politics, which most of the Tel Aviv group supported and most of the Jerusalem group opposed. The former faction, which called itself the "Blue-Red Movement" (blue for Zionism, red for socialism), became part of Moked.[6][8][9]

Notes

  1. ↑ Kaminer, Reuven (1996). The politics of protest: the Israeli peace movement and the Palestinian Intifada. Sussex Academic Press. p. xix.
  2. ↑ Rabinovich, I.; Reinharz, J. (2008). Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present. Brandeis University Press. p. 229. ISBN 9780874519624. Retrieved 2014-10-14.
  3. ↑ Weissbrod, Lilly (2002). Israeli identity: in search of a successor to the pioneer, Tsabar and settler. Routledge. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-7146-5376-1.
  4. ↑ Kaminer 13
  5. ↑ Sprinzak, Ehud (1999). Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. Simon & Schuster. pp. 124–125.
  6. 1 2 3 Kaminer, Reuven. "SIAH – Smol Israeli Hadash (Israeli New Left)". Israeli Left Archive.
  7. ↑ Sprinzak 125
  8. ↑ Peretz, Merhav (1980). The Israeli left: history, problems, documents. A.S. Barnes. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-498-02184-8.
  9. ↑ Staar, Richard Felix (1974). Yearbook on international communist affairs. Hoover Institution. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-8179-1401-1.

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