The Young Guard

Hashomer Hatzair (, , The Young Guard) is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and it was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 Mandatory Palestine (see Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party). Hashomer Hatzair, along with HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed of Israel, is a member of the International Falcon Movement – Socialist Educational International. Early formation Hashomer Hatzair came into being as a result of the merger of two groups, Hashomer ("The Guard") a Zionist scouting group, and Ze'irei Zion ("The Youth of Zion") which was an ideological circle that studied Zionism, socialism and Jewish history. Hashomer Hatzair is the oldest Zionist youth movement still in existence. Initially Marxist-Zionist, the movement was influenced by the ideas of Ber Borochov and Gustav Wyneken as well as Baden-Powell and the German Wandervogel movement. Hashomer Hatzair believed that the liberation of Jewish youth could be accomplished by aliyah (immigration; literally "ascent") to Palestine and living in kibbutzim. After the First World War the movement spread to Jewish communities throughout the world as a scouting movement.