The Efforts to Revive Hashomer

The Hashomer organization, established in April 1909 and officially disbanded in May 1920, had undertaken to guard Jewish settlements throughout Palestine. The former members of Hashomer were not easily reconciled to exclusion from the inner circle where decisions were made concerning the defence of Jews in Palestine and made repeated efforts from 1920 to 1938 to reclaim what they perceived as their destiny as individuals and pioneers within the labour movement: to lead security operations on the Yishuv. This article examines various aspects of those efforts, revealing the pattern of the actions taken over the years by the members of Hashomer. The central argument is that the efforts to resuscitate Hashomer had a common denominator: every practical programme the Hashomer veterans promoted remained an alternative channel of military activity, with implications for the use of force and relations with the Arabs that the labour movement chose not to implement.