Ber Borochov
Ber Dov Berochov (1881-1917) was a Marxist Zionist and one of the founders of the Labour Zionist movement. He was born in the town of Zolotonshi in the Ukraine. As an adult he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party but was expelled for his Zionist beliefs. Subsequently, he helped form the Poale Zion party and devoted his life to promoting the party in Russia, Europe and America.Borochov argued that the Jews of Europe were structured according to an inverted class pyramid where few Jews occupied the productive layers of society as farmers or workers and that for the Jews to become a proper nation it was necessary for them to move to their own country in which they would take an agrarian and proletarian role. Borochov's ideas were influential in the founding of the kibbutz movement and convincing Jewish youth from Europe and the Americas to move to Palestine and work the land.
The Poale Zion movement ultimately split into left and right factions which have evolved into the modern Israeli Labour Party and Meretz.