out only eight months later. But it was typical that Allon had already charted this aggressive course in January, winning the support of his fellow members for the policy.67
Allon’s third important step at Ginossar was to set it on the road of affiliation with the KM movement. Ginossar, as stated, was established by youngsters trained at farms identified with Hever Ha-Kevutzot, the association of small kevutzot, such as Deganyah, which identified with the Mapai Party’s right wing.68 Yet members also had close ties with the secretariat of the HNHO youth movement, which pulled in the direction of the KM, Mapai’s left wing. The question of affiliation with a specific kibbutz stream had already surfaced in the early days at Migdal. The kevutzah clearly had to absorb new members, and members were to be had only from a kibbutz movement. The tension between the desire and need to enlarge and the fear that the newcomers would predominate over the founders—as had happened at several collective farms—led to internal struggles. The choice on the table was between the two streams of the Mapai.69 Israel Levy pushed for joining Hever Ha-Kevutzot lest HNHO trainees to Ginossar tip the balance in favor of KM. Most members were not yet ready for affiliation. They decided to keep their ties to the HNHO and through it to supplement their manpower on an as needed basis rather than attach themselves to any kibbutz stream at this stage.70 The kibbutz “neutralism” of the HNHO kevutzah at Migdal conformed to Katznelson’s banner of “uniting all the kibbutz movement” and was one of the reasons for the close relations between the veteran Labor leader and Ginossar’s young.
The KM movement apparently hoped that Ginossar would ultimately hitch up with it, though for the moment, it refrained from taking any action. Its great advantage over Hever Ha-Kevutzot lay in its large reserves of manpower. In the interim, it was not afraid to cast its bread upon the waters; it allowed German-Jewish youth groups trained at Tel Yosef—one of its kibbutzim—to join Ginossar.
The question of movement affiliation was discussed at length at Ginossar on the Jewish New Year of 1940. The advocates of association with KM were headed by Absalom Zoref, who supplied both ideological and practical reasons. To keep alive the collective idea—he argued—it was necessary to band together with other kibbutzim who lived by the same lights. Affiliation also offered agricultural training and support, manpower supplements, loans, and assistance with education and culture.71 In the ensuing show of hands, a large majority voted for affiliation; a small majority voted for affiliation with the KM. Since it had been agreed that a two-thirds majority was warranted to make a decision, the matter was deferred.
Allon had played a marginal role in the affiliation controversy until then. His friends thought that he did not really understand the language used by graduates of pioneering youth movements, that the fine differences between the various kibbutz movements eluded—and likely did not interest—him. Yet it was plain to him that the kevutzah was at a crossroads, in a transition from its days of genesis, with all of the hardships, uniqueness, and loneliness, to a spurt of growth. At this juncture, it was vital to obtain the patronage of a large kibbutz movement that could guide, advise, extend financial backing, and wield political clout in the institutions of the Histadrut.
Toward the end of 1940, Allon pressed Ginossar to come to a decision. The small kevutzah’s important members, led by Israel Levy, were in Acre prison as, in fact, were most of the founders still clinging to nonaffiliation. But the staunchest advocate of affiliation, founding member Absalom Zoref, was also neutralized and in the hospital. Allon took the bull by the horns and did what these members could not bring themselves to do: he made a decision.72 He, too, had a “red line” he would not cross; he would not countenance a split in the kevutzah. Nevertheless, he was more decisive than his friends in the old guard. He brought the matter to a vote without allowing further debate, tabling a motion to this effect at the kibbutz assembly of 30 November 1940: he said that because the members who were either in prison or in the Labor Legion in Sodom were unable to take part in the discussion, it was only fair that the members at Ginossar forgo influencing the outcome with further discussion.73 It sounded like the pinnacle of justice, but the fact was that the process of discussion had been exhausted and it was time to settle the issue. Of those present at the assembly, 80 percent voted to join the KM movement. The die was cast, and with a large enough majority to preclude resentment. This was no random majority foisting its will on a large minority. Ginossar was ripe for a decision, but it needed the resolute Allon to act as midwife.
As Ginossar’s official, de facto leader at the time, it was Allon who submitted the affiliation request to the Kibbutz Me’uhad Council (KMC) convening at Kibbutz Givat Ha-Sheloshah (17–19 January 1941). This was his first public appearance of any kind and it took place at a forum—the kibbutz council convention—that made it almost a tribal initiation, an outsider’s test of worthiness.
Allon chose to push through kibbutz affiliation at one of the most critical moments in the history of the Jewish Yishuv. On the war front, France had fallen and Britain stood alone fighting for its life, the same Britain that the Jews considered their ally, in whose army they wished to serve—and which treated them coolly. In December 1940, a few days before the convention of the KMC, the air was heavy with the drama of the Patria: the ship that was to convey to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean illegal immigrants—Jewish refugees who had made it to Palestine from Central Europe—was blown up. More than 250 immigrants were killed in the Haganah action that had been aimed at staying the deportation. The shock reverberated through a Yishuv divided between the action’s supporters and its opponents. A few days later, Jewish refugees from another ship, the Atlantic, were expelled to Mauritius amid a demonstration of British ruthlessness and Yishuv helplessness. The other power with whom the Left longed to identify, the Soviet Union, had also proved a disappointment: the alliance between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939) was a stubborn blot despite all attempts made to explain it. Nor did Russia’s attack of Finland (December 1939) improve the image of socialism’s motherland. The KMC convention was overshadowed by a sense of the Yishuv’s isolation in Palestine and Jewish isolation around the world.
Most of the KMC convention was devoted to a report from members of He-Halutz, Poland’s Zionist pioneering organization that educated its members along the lines of the KM. The group had fled from the area of German conquest early on in the war and built up a fair pioneering movement in Lithuania. After some time, the Soviets allowed some of the pioneers “stuck” in Vilna to leave for Palestine and they finally arrived in the country after an adventuresome journey. The newcomers reported on the efforts to guard Jewish national identity against the assimilation onslaught by the Communist regime, on the strivings of pioneers to reach Palestine, and on manifestations of anti-Semitism in the land of the Soviets.74
For Allon, the deliberations were an eye-opener, a whole other world: “Those people showed me many new things about He-Halutz [members] that I didn’t know,” he later reported to the Ginossar assembly, adding somewhat patronizingly, “their fluent Hebrew is especially remarkable.”75 He learned “that of all the countries from which Eretz Israel absorbed pioneers, Poland took the most important place,”76 an admission indicating just how unfettered he was by knowledge of the KM’s social roots. Jewish experience beyond the boundaries of the Yishuv filtered down to him for the first time. True, he had been confronted with the question of immigrant Jews earlier: in March 1940 Ginossar had discussed absorbing a German youth group that was at Kibbutz Afikim, and he had defended the equality between immigrant and local youth against contrary opinions.77 But his stance on that occasion can be explained by his relationship with Ruth, herself a German Jew. At the KMC, the native son had to reflect on problems completely beyond his ken, from the trials of the Jewish people to ideological questions, such as the attitude toward the Soviet Union.
Though a stranger to the KM crucible, his impressions touched the heart of the matter: “At these deliberations I saw the element of mutual help between people who had reached safe shores and comrades living in the Diaspora. How sincere and caring the concern for them, as if it were one big family.” And he
