The romanticism of “what if?” Attempts to challenge the “historic leaderships” of the kibbutz movements

Abstract

This article examines how the “historic leaderships” of the various kibbutz movements succeeded in neutralizing those who proposed an alternative agenda to the one they dictated. The study focuses on the attempt to unite the various kibbutz movements in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War and subsequently compares this aborted attempt with the activities of two other groups that, in earlier periods, had presented the potential for alternative leadership: the leaders of the Jewish ghetto uprisings in World War II and the “Palmah generation” of the Israeli War of Independence. This comparison sheds light both on the weakness of the opposing groups and on the power of the incumbent leadership to thwart such challenges.