Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, Kibbutz Founder, Dies at 99

By DENNIS HEVESI

Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, a pioneer of the Israeli kibbutz movement, a contentious colleague of the nation's leaders and the leader of its labor federation in the early 1970's, died on May 19. He was 99.

Often describing himself as a radical Socialist, Mr. Ben-Aharon took controversial positions that rattled even his allies among the left-leaning founders of the nation he helped create. He said that the country had room "for the Arab masses" and that Jerusalem must be shared with Muslims and Christians. He said that Israelis had become too concerned with becoming rich and that the nation was being built on the backs of Arab workers. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in a position presaging current government policy, he called for unilateral withdrawal from some occupied territories.

Born Yitzhak Nussboim on July 17, 1906, in Bukovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now part of Romania, Mr. Ben-Aharon joined several Zionist organizations as a teenager, then walked or rode a donkey overland to Palestine in 1928. There he helped found Kibbutz Givat Haim, a Jewish farm commune between Tel Aviv and Haifa, where he remained the rest of his life.

From 1932 to 1938 he was secretary of the Tel Aviv Workers' Council and for two years was secretary of Mapai, a forerunner of Israel's Labor Party.

In 1940, Mr. Ben-Aharon volunteered for the Jewish Brigade, part of the British Army, rising to the rank of major. While fighting in Greece in 1941, he was captured by the Germans and spent the next four years in a prisoner of war camp.

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...to offset the ravages of capitalism.
Who will be the Yitzhak Ben-Aharon for the 21st century?
Step forward please!