Matzpen

It was late afternoon on May 1, 1969, when the feverish atmosphere in the heart of Tel Aviv exploded. From the northern end of the grand Dizengoff Boulevard, demonstrators from the Communist Party—the Old Left—marched up. Coming from Jaffa in the south of Tel Aviv, the members of the Israeli Socialist Organization, which had seceded from the Communist Party seven years earlier, approached. By that time, the whole country knew them by the name of their periodical: Matzpen. ² When the groups faced each other on Dizengoff Boulevard, not only the antagonism of Old and New Left divided them. Even more relevant was the deep split that had emerged in the wake of the Six-Day War less than two years earlier, as a consequence of which Israel had incorporated East Jerusalem and occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. The Arab threats of annihilation preceding that war had nourished existential worries and the fear of a “new Holocaust” to such an extent that even the Israeli Communist Party—Maki—had joined in the collective appraisal that a war of self-defense was necessary. ³ During their demonstration that afternoon of May 1, Maki had thus expressed their thanks to the Israeli military forces. An unprecedented unity across all parties prevailed in the country.