Synopsis
The love story between Mahmoud Yunes and the Kibbutz started as early as 1949. Yunes, born in 1931 in the Arab village Arara, spent his youth in Kibbutz Sha'ar Ha'amkim. He was a member of a group of Arab young men and women who lived, studies and worked in the Kibbutz.
It was an unusual initiative of Hashomer Hatzair ('The Young Watchman'), a Zionist youth movement founded in Eastern Europe at the eve of the First World War. Hashomer Hatzair's idealist members were at the forefront of the socialist settlement movement in Palestine and then in the young state of Israel. Arab youth was invited to join Hashomer Hatzair under its famous banner of 'Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Nations' at the peak of the Zionist settlement thrust; during the same time period, the movement was busy building a dozen Kibbutzim on the confiscated lands of the Arab villages ruined in the 1948 war.
The story of the 'Arab Pioneer Youth', as the Arabs who joined Hashomer Hatzair were called, is a fascinating chapter in the troubled relationship between the Jewish majority created by the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 and the Arabs who stayed in Israel as its citizens after the Jewish War of Independence.
The young Arabs were expected to adapt the values of Hashomer Hatzair- Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Nations- and to live a communal secular life, stressing gender equality. Living in Kibbutzim, they were trained in agriculture and other professions and expected to use their 'ideological education' to develop their own villages. In its peak, at the end of the fifties, the movement had 1,800 members, mostly men. They lived, worked and studied in Kibbutzim, and took part in work camps, trips and marches.
After the war, most of the land privately owned by Arabs in historic Palestine was confiscated, and military rule was imposed on the rural population. The crushed Arab minority was struggling to survive, having lost its ability to live off the land, the freedom to move and the chance to get an education. Just then, Hashomer Hatzair, under the political auspice of Mapam party, offered young Arabs a chance to live- as long as they fit into the ideals of Kibbutz life style and adapt the Zionist ethos of settling the 'barren land' of Israel.
Wearing the famed blue shirts tied with the white string, under Israel's flag, singing Ha'tikva (the national anthem), and answering to Hebrew names - hundreds of Arab youth managed to escape the military rule's restrictions. They were able to eat, study, work and get some pocket money in their new homes, the Kibbuzim- more than half of which were established on confiscated Arab land.
How long did this ambitious initiative last? What happened when the Arabs tried to take the ideal of self-realization through settlement to its natural conclusion and become Kibbutz members, or start a Kibbutz themselves? Did they manage to forget their national disaster and suppress their desire for independence? What happened when they fell in love with Jewish girls?
Where are they today? Did they retain the innocence of their youth despite many disappointments? Did their children follow in their path? And what about the Jews that headed the 'Arab Pioneer Youth'- looking back, how do they view this historical experiment? Now, that Hashomer Hatzair is celebrating its 95th anniversary, do they still see no contradiction between the three eminent pillars- Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Nations? And could their vision really and truly include the Arabs of the land?
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