Page 26 - Issue 25

aliyah (a member of Habonim is a person of
conviction and action). Those who did not sign
were not allowed to serve as madrichim of the
senior age groups as we believed in the principle
of self example.

In 1963 Garin Etgar was declared and in the 4 year
period between 1965 and 1968 over 200
chaverim made aliyah through the ulpan on Tzora
and via other channels. Of course the Six Day war
and the resulting euphoria was an additional
contributing factor when over 40 of the
movements’ senior leadership dropped everything
overnight in order to fly to Israel as volunteers.

Aliyah to Israel at that time was seen as promising
a true Jewish identity and the challenge of building
a new society based on our own values and
beliefs. This was an ideological Zionist aliyah but
there were other factors involved as we had to
face the reality of Apartheid in South Africa.

The decade of the Sixties opened with the
Sharpeville riots and the movement leadership and
the shlichim were convinced that this was the
opening shot in the inevitable bloody upheaval and
civil war which was soon to erupt and in which the
Jews once again would be caught in the middle.
There was a real and palpable fear of becoming
involved on the one hand, a fear of remaining in
the country and being caught up in what was to
come on the other and this dove-tailed very nicely
with our Zionism and our plans for aliyah.