ABSTRACT
The members of the Israeli Socialist Organization were among the few who had veered from that unity and directed their attention to the outside instead—focusing especially on the situation of the Palestinians. Matzpen agitated for an unconditional withdrawal from all conquered territories immediately after the June War. Matzpen—the Hebrew word for "compass"—would have an outsized impact on Israeli society during the period after the Six-Day War. When in spring 1962—a few months before the founding of Matzpen—the war in Algeria ended after eight horrific years, its repercussions affected Israel and the Palestine question. The young Israelis of Matzpen owed their vision of an Israel free of conflict largely to their socialist outlook and internationalist conviction, a belief in a better future that should be the basis for political changes in the present. Matzpen, in fact, moved in the opposite direction as the group entered a period of relative political realism.
