Today in Labor History June 19, 1931: Akiva (Aki) Orr was born. He was an Israeli libertarian socialist and anti-zionist activist. Born in Berlin, his family fled to Mandatory Palestine when the Nazis started to rise to power. As an activist in Israel, he struggled for a one-state solution and for radical Direct Democracy. As a young man, he served in the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist organization that later evolved into the modern Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He later joined the navy and fought in the war of independence. After that, he worked as a merchant seaman and participated in the 1951 Seaman’s Strike, during which time he was severely beaten by the police. That same year, he joined the Communist Party. However, in 1962, he quit the Party in protest of its blind loyalty to the Soviet Union. He then cofounded the Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen), which was antiauthoritarian and fought for a socialism run by workers councils, rather than by a political party. They also criticized Zionism as a settler-colonial project. In 1964, he moved to London, where he co-founded and was on the editorial board of ISRACA (Israeli Revolutionary Action Committee Abroad), an anti-Zionist publication. In London, he was friends with many notable leftists, including C.L.R. James and Cornelius Castoriadis.
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