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Matzpen (compass in Hebrew) is the name of an Israeli anti-capitalist and anti-zionist organization, founded in 1962 and active until the 1980s in Israel/Palestine. Outside Israel, it was often referred to as the Israeli Socialist Organisation.

The organisation was founded by former members of the Communist Party of Israel who opposed that party's support for the Soviet Union's conservaive international policies. They offered a more radical analysis of and opposition to Zionism. Matzpen drew together Jewish and Arab activists with anarchist, Communist, Maoist and Trotskyist backgrounds. 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. 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 1960s, 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 Israc. Moshe Machover, Eli Lobel, Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr were all part of the editorial board.

In 1970 the organisation started going through a process of 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).

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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