Kibbutz leader confirms movement’s role in establishing and maintaining Israeli apartheid

For many years, the kibbutz society in Israel represented the ‘liberal Israel’ people would use to highlight the ‘beautiful Israel’, and many would tell of their experience as volunteers in one of the kibbutzim or another – this includes Bernie Sanders. Of course, kibbutzim were much else than that – they have been central tools in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from the beginning. Hundreds of these kibbutzes, including Kibbutz Givat Haim Ichud, where I was born and raised, were established upon the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages to prevent the return of the Palestinian refugees and create new “facts on the ground.”

For many years, this liberal, leftist image served to mask the systemic destruction the kibbutzim were part of. But now, the masks are falling. In a long interview in Haaretz, the secretary general of the Kibbutz movement, Nir Meir, who has been heading it for nine years, says it’s time to drop that leftist pretense. “The right[wing] is correct”:

“The settlers aren’t wrong. The right is correct: That is the way to seize and hold land, and their claim that, any place we Israelis leave, the Arabs will come in our place, is correct. The right is also correct in its path: It’s by settlement and only by settlement that sovereignty can be imposed. The debate is whether sovereignty should be imposed. The settlements claim that they are the successors to Kibbutz Hanita [on the Lebanon border], because, just as in the Tower and Stockade days [a method of establishing new settlements during the period of the British Mandate], you [need to] conquer hill after hill without consideration for the law and you create facts on the ground. They [the settlers] learned from us how to settle and seize land. The argument with them is not about the way or the method, but about the intention and the goal.”

This is actually very honest. The differences between the West Bank settlers and kibbutzim are cosmetic.

Meir tells how he cooperated with the far right, Religious Zionism Minister of National Missions Orit Strock:

“I cooperated with Orit and with the right also in promoting Jewish settlement in the heart of the Galilee [referring to a law that enables communities of thousands of families to operate admissions committees to filter would-be new residents]. That ran against the politically correct approach that led to a situation in which in the heart of the Galilee, instead of 50 percent Jews and 50 percent Arabs, there would be 85 percent Arabs and only 15 percent Jews. I am very instrumental [in approach], I promote values that I believe in, with everyone who is ready to cooperate. Political correctness is post-Zionist, and I am a Zionist.”

So, Meir tells openly of how the “admissions committees” law, which was expanded last year, is meant to facilitate the apartheid demography. He’s in one mind with the extreme right on this. He’s also “good friends” with the leaders of the West Bank settler movement:

“Pinchas Wallerstein [former head of the Yesha Council of Settlements in the West Bank] is a good friend of mine, and he played an important part in rehabilitating the communities opposite Gaza after Operation Protective Edge [2014]. He is not sectarian, and I esteem him very much.”

Meir doesn’t consider himself a left-winger. “I term myself a person who understands where he is living.”

Peace with the Palestinians?

“There will be no peace with the Palestinians. My opinion changed long before October 7. It’s not the disengagement [2005 Gaza pullout], that failed, it’s Oslo. I don’t tell myself stories.”

Meir opines that kibbutzim have now been turning more clearly right. And I think he’s right about that. The interviewer Meirav Moran asks him: “The kibbutzim across from Gaza were always marked as left-wing on the Israeli political map. Do you reflect their views?”

Meir responds:

“The attitude toward the conflict and its solution is bound to change across the board. Many of the kibbutzniks who experienced October 7 can’t bear to hear Arabic and want to see Gaza erased. They are the new ‘victims of peace.’ Very few of the kibbutzniks whose homes mark the border think today that the people living on the other side are good people. They cannot overcome rationally the emotional experience. The trauma is stronger than their worldview.”

I have indeed heard some of these kibbutzniks and their clearly genocidal advocacy. Meir says it’s many. And these kibbutzniks are connected to the kibbutz society in general. They’re going from leftist to genocidal.

But Meir thinks it’s ok to move right, he’s actually happy to lead that move: “I am happy to go down in history as the person who abrogated the historic alliance between the kibbutz movement and the classic left-wing parties.”

Meir is clear about the historical role of the kibbutz, he says that the “first mission” of kibbutzim was “to conquer the land . . . It’s not by chance that in every place where there was a desire to take over a part of the Land of Israel, kibbutzim were established.”

And he’s clear about wanting to continue this type of mission, he even regards current kibbutzim as “civilian outposts.” “Today, too, the kibbutz is the most effective way to maintain a hundred civilian outposts along the border fence,” he tells Haaretz.

This may be a jaw-dropper for those who believed that kibbutzim in Israel were a manifestation of leftist, socialist equality and harmony, but this has never been the case. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and the kibbutz movement is once again mobilizing itself to serve a central role in the Nakba, this time the Nakba of 2023-4. This is not a sudden change of character – the genocidal aspect has been there all along, but it was hiding under a mask. It is about time that the rest of the world also give up its romantic and false hope that the “other Israel” will one day rise from the ashes. There is no other Israel.

Thanks to Ofer Neiman