Betar youth Movement
The Betar Youth Movement was active in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe for many years and included a wide range of activities from weekly meetings for chanichim to seminars and camps around the country and in South Africa. ZJC is grateful to Dina Hatchuel z”l for providing the images and references illustrating the youth movement in the early 1970s. Thanks too to Paul Bernstein in sending a number of photos and captions for images on this page. Readers are invited to send in their own photos and material to the editor be added to this section.
The image below is the front cover of a Salisbury Betar Magazine from 1971 – probably when the movement was its peak in terms of membership and activities.
Betar is Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Chapters sprang up across Europe, even during World War II. After the war and during the settlement of what became Israel, Betar was traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Jewish pioneers. It was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist paramilitary group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many right-wing movements and youth groups arising at that time that adopted special salutes and uniforms.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, an admirer of Jabotinsky.
Click on this gallery of images to open and then use the browser to enlarge.
Click on these links to view the PDF files from the 1971 Betar Magazine
For additional photos click on the galleries above and to the right
