Hashomer

Hashomer (Heb., “The Guard”) was a Jewish defense organization that existed in Palestine from 1909 to 1920. Hashomer provided an organized defense for Jewish settlements and communities, replacing the local non-Jewish watchmen previously hired by Jewish settlers. Its members shared a vision of creating Cossack-style communal agricultural farms of well-trained fighters all over Palestine. The organization is considered a predecessor to the israel Defense Forces. Its members (shomrim) were Zionist socialists, mostly from the Russian Empire. Hashomer was led by Israel Shoḥat, who had organized a Jewish self-defense unit in Grodno (now in Belarus) after the Kishinev pogrom in 1903. Most of the Hashomer leadership came to Palestine in the Second Aliyah, including Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Tsvi Becker, Alexander Zaid, Manya Shoḥat, Mendel Portugali, Israel Giladi, Yeḥezkel Henkin, and Yeḥezkel Nisanov. In 1920, with the organization of the Haganah, Hashomer dissolved, and some of its members joined the Palestine mounted police while others organized in an extreme left-wing underground paramilitary (“the Secret Kibbutz”) that existed well into the late 1920s.