In the Nahal Settlement in Africa: Zionism and Pioneering in the Jungle

• In Event: Israel in the Third World: Zionist Expertise and Development Aid to Africa in the 1960s

Abstract

This paper explores one of Israel’s most ambitious aid projects in 1960s Africa: the attempt to create African versions of the Nahal corps - a unique IDF program (acronym for “no’ar halutzi lohem”, fighting pioneering youth) which, until recently, combined military service with agricultural training and settlement pioneering. Examining how Israelis shaped and interpreted the Africans’ “mimicry” of Zionist pioneering offers a unique insight into the Israeli nation-building project.

The founding of the Nahal in 1948 reflected a national endeavor to preserve the ethos of “Hagshama” (that is, the “fulfillment” of Zionist ideals) which defined the culture of the Yishuv. According to this ethos, it was only by living in cooperative agricultural settlements (kibbutzim or moshavim) that one could reach the highest zenith of the Zionist mission. There was, however, a growing discrepancy between this vision and the actual reality in 1950s Israel, where the vast majority of settlers in the frontier were not Nahal soldiers but rather newly-arrived immigrants, many of whom were forced to settle there (in moshavim and development towns). The tension between ethos and reality makes the Nahal corps a powerful emblem of the desires and contradictions that made up the emerging Israeli identity.

Based on the Israeli pioneering model, the various African Nahal programs heightened these contradictions, as the paper will show by examining the work of the military, technical, and agricultural advisors sent to guide the Africans. Seeking to assess and define the achievements of the African Nahal units, Israeli officials adamantly refused to accept realities which had become part and parcel of the Nahal experience in Israel (for example, that most of the Nahal soldiers leave their kibbutz as soon as they complete their mandatory military service; or that the Nahal harnesses national resources to promote the interests of a small political elite). At the same time, the advisors’ work in Africa—which was initially perceived as a an extension, a continuation, of their pioneering work in Israel— gradually lost its idyllic aura as it became increasingly clear that it replicates some colonial elements, associated with the lives of white settlers in the continent.

author

• Eitan Bar-Yosef, Ben-Gurion University