Killing of Moshe Barsky

Moshe Dayan, a well-known Israeli politician and notable public figure who was named after Barsky, pointed to his death as a reason to move forward with establishing a Jewish state.

[9] According to the memoir of a fellow kibbutznik, "It wasn't until late that night that we found him, lying with a stick and a pair of shoes on his head: this was a sign of vengeance, it meant that in the fighting he had killed or wounded someone.

"[10][11] Barsky's father, a Zionist in Kyiv (then in Tsarist Russia), wrote a letter to the kibbutz in which he urged, "that your spirit will not flag and that you will not retreat, God forbid!"

"[12] The letter was the focus of a 1914 speech by Chaim Weizmann, urging European Zionists – shaken by the murder – not to abandon hope of building a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

[15] Literary scholar Rachel Havrelock understands the memorialization of Barsky in the years shortly after his death as part of a Zionist narrative "in which peril lurks to the unknown east, and the Jordan serves as a line between danger and safety", and his death – he was understood as having killed one of his attackers – of "the image of the Jew in Bedouin eyes as soft and easily killed.