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Matzpen (compass in Hebrew) is the name of an anti-capitalist and anti-zionist organisation, founded in Israel in 1962 and still active in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Its official name was the Israeli Socialist Organisation, but it became better known as Matzpen after its monthly publication.

The organisation was founded by former members of the Communist Party of Israel who opposed that party's support for the Soviet Union's conservative international policies. They offered a more radical analysis of and opposition to Zionism. Matzpen drew together Jewish and Arab activists with various backgrounds in left-wing organisations and affiliations. It published a magazine of same name in Hebrew and Arabic. The organisation grew in the period after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Its aim was to create a broad front of people opposed to the occupation and in favour of a de-Zionized Israel, which will form part of a socialist federation of the entire Middle East. It established links with new left organisations in Europe and other parts of the world, and also with progressive Palestinian organisations such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, supporters of Matzpen abroad published Israca (Israeli Revolutionary Action Committee Abroad). The magazine include many articles published in Matzpen. Much of Matzpen was censored and that material was republished in Israca. Moshé Machover, Eli Lobel, Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr were all part of the editorial board. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, supporters of the organisation formed another journal in the UK, Khamsin, in which they published their analyses of current events.

In 1970 the organisation started going through a process of ideological and organisational fragmentation, with some members leaving to form new groups, such as Avantgarde (with a Trotskyist orientation) and the Revolutionary Communist Alliance (with a Maoist orientation). Another major split took place in 1972, in which both factions kept the name Matzpen for their respective journals. Most of the original leadership remained in what became known as Matzpen Tel Aviv, while others became known as Matzpen Jerusalem (and later changed the name to Revolutionary Communist League, section of the Fourth International). Machover, Orr and Hanegbi remained with the Tel Aviv based faction, while the Jerusalem-based faction was led by Arieh Bober and Michel Warschawski (Mikado).

With the rise of new, vibrant and less ideologicaly rigid protest movements in the 1980s, in opposition to the continued occupation and to the war in Lebanon (Committee for Solidarity with Birzeit University, committees against torture and house demolitions, Yesh Gvul, and so on), the different factions of Matzpen lost much of their raison d'etre. They had ceased to have a distinct organisational existence by the late 1980s, though their former members continued to participate as individuals in activities against the occupation and for workers and human rights.

A documentary about the group, entitled "Matzpen", was made by Eran Torbiner in 2003.

External links

• Matzpen.org Huge historical Matzpen archive with images and Arabic, English and Hebrew language texts.
• Matzpen text archive in the libcom.org library
• Matzpen documentary by Eran Torbiner

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