Arlosoroff

Chaim Arlosoroff (1899-1933), socialist Zionist leader and theorist, was born in Russia and educated in Germany. He was one of the leaders of the Labour Zionist Party, Mapai and, following his emigration to Palestine in the 1920s, he became the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine – the 'Foreign Minister' of the Jewish state-in-the-making.His reputation grew rapidly and his many articles and speeches were soon treated as blueprints for the socialist ideals of a Jewish state. He was bitterly opposed to the Revisionist principles of Jabotinsky and his movement. At the age of thirty-four, Arlosoroff was assassinated while walking with his wife along the beach in Tel Aviv. His murder marked a turning point in modern Zionist history, polarizing attitudes between left and right-wing Zionists in Palestine and the Diaspora, and creating an ideological rift parallel only to the impact of the Dreyfus Affair on French Politics. After his death, Arlosoroff became a symbol of the socialist Zionist movement. He was an intellectual of the first order and an original social thinker. He had a number of books to his name in such fields as socialist and anarchist thought, economic history, Jewish social studies, financial theory and social analysis. His writings and ideas set the scene for the final struggle towards and independent Jewish state in Palestine and time has proved him to be extraordinarily prophetic.