(Author: John Simon, Vol. 64, #3, Chanukah 2009)
After the Biblical hero Samson had been defeated and blinded by the Philistines, he lived in captivity in the humblest quarter of Gaza, and despite repeated requests by his comrades from Judaea, he constantly refused to return. One day, he was visited by one of his close followers and admirers, Hermesh, who on receiving the same refusal then asked whether he had a message for his people. This was Samson’s message:
Tell them two things in my name – two words. The first word is ‘iron’. They must get iron. They must give everything they have for iron – their silver and wheat, oil and wine and flocks, even their wives and daughters. All for iron! There is nothing in the world more valuable then iron … The second word is: “A king”. Say to all the tribes: “A king!” A man will give them the signal and of a sudden thousand will lift up their hands…. Say it from Zorah to Hebron and Shechem and further even to Endor and Laish: “A king”.
The above is a quote from Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s novel Samson the Nazirite (1926). As I hope to demonstrate, Jabotinsky was putting into the mouth of his hero his own passionate belief – the belief in strength, discipline and authority. There were indeed not wanting amongst his opponents those who argued that these beliefs closely approximated, where they did not indeed amount, to a form of fascism. I will illustrate this argument and some of the grounds that were advanced in its support. At the very least, I think that the record shows that Jabotinsky and his followers carried militarism to an advanced degree. Together, we will explore whether he was indeed, as he has been described, “the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism”.
Jabotinsky was born in Odessa on 5 October 1880, the third child and second son of Yevgenni (Yona) and Khava Jabotinsky. He was named Vladimir, Hebrew name Ze’ev. Throughout his life, the two names were used interchangeably and often together.
Odessa had a vibrant and creative Jewish environment. It was one of the main centres of the Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah), and many powerful and creative personages, including Jabotinsky and Achad Ha’am, derived their origins and education there. It was also in a region where antisemitic activities arose with increasing frequency and virulence in the latter part of the 19th Century; perhaps because of that it, became a centre of Jewish defence action.
The family knew poverty and early struggles as a result of Yevgenni’s early death in 1886. Like every Jewish boy, Jabotinsky studied Hebrew before his Barmitzvah, but according to his own autobiography he “had no inner contact with Judaism” and “never breathed the atmosphere of Jewish cultural tradition.” It is noteworthy that he became fluent in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, French and German, but strangely was never at home with the Hebrew alphabet and often wrote Hebrew or Yiddish in Latin characters.
In April 1898, he went to Berne in Switzerland, where he made contact with the Russian colony. However, he was not happy there because he felt intellectually unstimulated. He moved to Rome, where he attended university and for the first time put his hand to journalism. Here, as a student and as a journalist, he was happy. It is interesting to note that he wrote under the pen name Altalena – a name that, as we now know, would figure largely in the story of his political heirs. It seems that he was so happy and fulfilled during his stay in Rome that he was able to set aside both his Jewish and Russian identities and become completely Italianized. He wrote much in Italian and even ventured into poetry. Whilst at university, he was exposed to, but immediately rejected, Marxism, and although he toyed briefly with the ideas of Socialism, this too he later totally rejected.
In July 1901, Jabotinsky became liable for military service and so left Italy and returned to Odessa. It seems, however, that his Italian experience remained a deep and lasting influence on his spiritual development.
Resumed life in journalism, he joined the staff of the journal Odesskiya Novosti. His journalism was fairly wide ranging but he became noted particularly for his feuilletons. These were light, essay-type articles dealing largely with matters of literature, theatre, art and local affairs rather than politics. This type of journalism was much admired by the Russian intelligentsia. When he did venture certain political observations, which must have been of a fairly forward-looking nature, he ran into trouble, given the oppressive Czarist regime of the time. On one occasion, he was confined to prison for seven weeks while his writings were assessed for possible anti-Czarist material. He was released after investigation, but was stimulated and excited by the experience and particularly by having met in prison members of the revolutionary underground, many of whose type he had not previously encountered.
Jabotinsky was nevertheless undergoing a further extension of his interests at this time, which would identify and define him for the rest of his life. As noted, Odessa was then was rife with violent antisemitic activities. His interest was aroused; he began to consider to what extent the nascent Zionist movement could provide a long term answer to this; but in the short term, he was obsessed with the need to encourage Jews to take up attitudes of self defence in answer to Russian attacks. He helped to initiate a Jewish self defence group in Odessa of a type that soon spread throughout Russia, particularly in the wake of the Kishinev pogrom later in 1903. Insofar as it promoted Jewish self-defence, Jabotinsky was becoming closer and closer to his people. He became known for his writing and resistance activities; he was sent as a delegate to the sixth Zionist Congress and met several of the early Zionist leaders.
By this time, there had already emerged a sort of semi-official group in opposition to Herzl. It included Weizmann (with whom Jabotinsky’s earliest contacts were unfriendly). He had no contact with Herzl at all, other than to hear the great man, as Chairman of the Congress, declare in his address: “Ihre zeit ist um!” At this time, the so-called Uganda project – the notion that in view of the political obstacles to establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine, the possibility of doing so in British-held Uganda – was occupying a fair amount of attention. Although Herzl did not then or later positively favour the scheme, he was anxious at this time to establish a commission to investigate the proposals and report back; but by and large, the Congress was totally opposed, and 177 delegates, including Jabotinsky, left the hall in protest.
Despite these somewhat unfavourable beginnings, Jabotinsky was much influenced by Herzl and became irrevocably committed to Zionism. He attended the 7th Congress in 1905 and played a more prominent part; his speech advancing the theory and practice of politics as power made a certain impact and can be seen as a sign of things to come. From this time on until the outbreak of war, he was the foremost Zionist lecturer and journalist in Russia.
In 1907, he married Ania (Johanna) Galperin and they had an only child, a son Eri. Eri followed notably in his father’s footsteps. He headed the Betar movement in Palestine and initiated its aeronautic section, being himself a trained glider pilot. He was very active in organizing ‘illegal’ immigration from Europe on a mass scale. He was several times arrested by the British authorities and learned of his father’s death in 1940 whilst imprisoned in a detention camp. It was Eri Jabotinsky who, in 1948, was instrumental in the dispatch from France to Israel of the so-called illegal arms ship that bore his father’s journalistic pen name – Altalena. He was a distinguished mathematician and became Professor of Mathematics at the Haifa Technion.
In 1909, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) sent Jabotinsky on a journalistic assignment to Turkey, where he served as editor of four publications in different languages. The experience was of great value to him, more particularly because, as will be discussed, of the ideas he developed concerning Turkey at the beginning of World War One. His appointment was terminated when he fell into controversy with David Wolfssohn, then President of the WZO.
Jabotinsky left Odessa for a short period in 1912 to pursue wider political ambitions in St. Petersburg. He tried hard, but without success, to be elected to the Duma. Thereafter, all his political interests and ambitions were channelled through the Zionist movement, either in office or in opposition.
At the beginning of World War One, Jabotinsky had a roving assignment as a journalist in Western Europe representing the liberal Moscow daily Russkiya Vedomosti. When Turkey declared war on the allied powers, he was convinced that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire was imminent and that the Zionist movement should abandon its neutral stand between the warring nations in order to achieve its aims in Palestine at the end of the war. Together with Joseph Trumpeldor, he conceived the idea of raising a Jewish legion to join the allies in the liberation of Palestine.
There were conflicting views in the Jewish world, and particularly the Zionist movement, as to how Jews could and should be involved in the war. Palestine was then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, who supported Germany. Should Zionists then make common cause with them in the hope that they would be sympathetic towards Zionist aspirations in Palestine, or should they rather throw their weight behind the allies in the hope of a favourable outcome that would end Turkish rule in Palestine? A further factor was that there were many Jews fighting in the German and Austrian armies, and the prospect of Jew fighting Jew was distasteful to many. David ben Gurion and Isaac Ben Zvi were in the forefront of those who wished to attach Jewish units to the Turkish army, but they were rebuffed and the Turks deported many Jews from Palestine. Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor worked hard to establish a Jewish legion to fight for their allied powers, and not surprisingly most of the deportees agreed with them. The result was the formation of the famous Zion Mule Corps, which did good service in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign led by Trumpeldor but with a non-Jewish and most supportive overall Commander, Colonel J.H.M. Patterson.
After the evacuation from Gallipoli, Jabotinsky worked very hard in London to establish a fully-fledged Jewish legion to fight with the British army. He encountered many setbacks and much opposition, particularly from anti-Zionist elements in British Jewry who were most concerned about the so-called ‘dual loyalty’ issue and who lambasted Jabotinsky for his “legionist’ propaganda”. On 23 August 1917, the London Gazette announced the formation under Colonel Patterson of a Jewish Legion. Its official name was the 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, the anti-Zionist Jews having succeeded to the extent of preventing the adoption of a Jewish name, Jewish character and Jewish emblems. Notwithstanding, Lieutenant Jabotinsky was very proud when he marched through the Jewish quarter of London on 2 February 1918 at the head of the Legion which he had worked so hard to establish. By this time, about half of it comprised Jews born or naturalized in Britain while the balance was made up of former Zion Mule Corps members and Jews from Russia and other European countries. Space and time do not permit a full description of the Legion’s activities in Egypt and the Jordan Valley, but they did well and were commended by the army Commander. However, attempts to keep the Legion in being and expanded into a brigade after the war for Jewish defence purposes would prove unsuccessful.
What we see here is the commencement of the military aspect of Jabotinsky’s career. The seeds were undoubtedly sown in the Jewish self-defense activities of the Odessa period, but it was the opportunity of the First World War that brought Jabotinsky to what may have been the flowering of military ambition. He was certainly a changed man thereafter – whether for the better or the worse is still an open question debated in the Jewish world, albeit with ever reducing frequency, alas, as his memory fades and other issues prevail.
After the war, Jabotinsky insisted on the need to maintain the Jewish Legion in Palestine as a guarantee against the outbreak of Arab hostility. Arab disaffection was encouraged by the generally anti-Zionist policy of the British military administration. Other Zionist leaders, however, took a lighter view of the situation and did not oppose the demobilization of the Jewish Legion. Jabotinsky’s response was to organize units of Haganah in Jerusalem in 1920 and openly leading it to confront the Arab masses during the Passover riots of that year. This led to his arrest by the British authorities, together with other members of Haganah, and a sentence of fifteen years hard labour by a military court. Following upon the huge outbreak of protest amongst Jews and Gentiles worldwide, the newly appointed first High Commissioner for Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel, in an attempt to be even handed, granted amnesty to Jews and Arabs who had been imprisoned in connection with the Jerusalem riots. Because he was incensed at the Jews having been treated the same way as the Arabs, Jabotinsky refused to accept the amnesty; but in the result, his conviction was set aside on appeal.
On his release, Jabotinsky experienced what was perhaps his first exposure to something like hero worship. Back in London, he joined first the Board of Directors of Keren Hayesod and thereafter the Zionist Executive. By the time of the 12th Zionist Congress in 1921, he was almost part of ‘the establishment’, and he defended Weizmann and his colleagues against opposition from the Brandeis Group. Having being re-elected to the Zionist Executive, he shared with Weizmann the responsibility of acquiescing in Churchill’s 1922 White Paper on Palestine, which excluded trans-Jordan from the purview of the Balfour Declaration. Weizmann was to speak very positively of Jabotinsky’s role in this matter.
After the 12th Congress, however, Jabotinsky became involved in two controversies in the Zionist movement. The Zionist socialists opposed Jabotinsky’s contacts with Petlyura’s Ukrainian government in exile, which was preparing military action against the Bolshevik-held Ukraine. It was argued that this would endanger Zionists and Soviet Russia. An interesting local note is that Petlyura became a focus of fierce Jewish feeling and was eventually assassinated by a young Jew called Shalom Schwartzbard.1
A further source of conflict was that Jabotinsky became impatient with Weizmann’s contacts with Britain, whom Jabotinsky still viewed as an unsympathetic occupying imperialist power. In January 1923, he resigned from the executive and left the official Zionist organization, in protest at “the superfine docility of its leadership”. He resolved to form a new political organization, thus commencing a new and important chapter in the story of Zionism.
During a lecture tour in the Baltic States in 1923, Jabotinsky was greatly encouraged by the support he received from large and enthusiastic audiences, who knew him from his already well-known public persona and also from his journalism as editor of the weekly journal Razsvet.2 The movement became known as Revisionism because, said Jabotinsky, it would work to revise existing Zionist policies.
It is necessary at this point to make some reference to the various strands of thought which occupied the earliest Zionist leaders from Herzl onwards. Herzl saw Zionism as essentially a political movement; his aim was to achieve a Jewish State, secured by public law and recognized as a political entity by the nations of the world many of them who would have to cooperate to a greater or lesser degree in achieving it. There was another strand of thought which viewed the problem as essentially a practical challenge to the Jews. It was necessary, so the argument ran, for Jewish idealists to settle in the land, to build it up by their own efforts, to establish settlements, plant trees and do all that was necessary to use the poetic phrase which was and remains of practical application, to “make the desert bloom”.
This inter-play between the arguments of ‘political Zionism’ and the arguments of ‘practical Zionism’ was an important part of the dynamics of the first three decades of the 20th Century. Weizmann, using vocabulary drawn from his work in chemistry, coined the phrase ‘synthetic Zionism’, implying not something impure but a combination between the two strands of thought. The antagonism – no lesser word can be used and sometimes it was very bitter indeed – between the Revisionists who argued for political Zionism and others, principally the Zionist socialists, who argued for practical Zionism, would inform the whole movement up, to and indeed in some respects beyond, the establishment of the State.
Jabotinsky’s view was neatly set out when he wrote “ninety percent of Zionism may consist of tangible settlement work and only ten percent of politics; but those ten percent are the precondition of success.” From the beginning, Revisionism was a maximalist political movement which would come to serve as the principal opposition to Weizmann and the WZO and elected Jewish leadership generally. The organization proclaimed that the required ‘revision’ of Zionist policies consisted principally of: a return to Herzl’s concept of the Jewish State; the restoration of the Jewish Legion; and a wide political offensive for the achievement of a radical change in British policy which should have as it’s avowed aim the facilitating of a Jewish majority in Palestine (including trans-Jordan) by means of rapid mass immigration. This, of course, represented a much wider concept than postulated in the Balfour Declaration and cut right across Churchill’s initiative in establishing the kingdom of trans-Jordan.
Later, the party’s demands were extended to include an entire reform of the land system, local industries and fiscal system in Palestine and the fostering of mass immigration and settlement. Revisionism opposed the establishment of little self contained settlements on a small scale in favour wide and general economic and social methods, hoping to bring (on both sides of the Jordan) “the largest number of Jews within the shortest period of time”. Essentially, this was a movement for private initiative and capital, which involved the proposed outlawing of strikes and lock-outs and which thus brought it into conflict with Zionist socialism. It also argued that constructive Anglo-Jewish co-operation could be brought about only through determined political pressure on the British government on an international scale.
A sign of the growth of the movement is that there were four delegates to the 14th Zionist Congress in 1925 and 52 to the 17th Congress in 1931. The movement was first named The Union of Zionist Revisionists (the Hebrew acronym Ha’Zohar) and later changed to the New Zionist Organization. Generally, however, the term Revisionism was used in reference to it. Jabotinsky was elected President at the Founding Convention in Paris in 1925. Its headquarters remained in Paris until 1936, where Jabotinsky himself lived except for a brief period in 1928/29 when he lived in Jerusalem as Director of the Judaea Insurance Company and Editor of the daily Da’ar ha-Yom.
The story of Jabotinsky’s life from now onwards is largely a story of the Revisionist movement. Bitter were the feuds between the various factions, and fascism was a term frequently used of the Revisionists by their opponents. Issue after issue arose. In 1929, for example, Jabotinsky vehemently opposed the action of the Jewish Agency in allocating 50% of its controlling body to non-Zionists. For this and other reasons, he sought, through the Revisionist movement, to take independent political action, which led to accusations of in-discipline.
Issues heightening tensions between revisionism and its opponents were never lacking. For example, in 1933 the Mayor of Tel Aviv, Chaim Arlosoroff, was murdered in very mysterious circumstances on the Tel Aviv beachfront. Suspicion fell on two young Revisionists, whom it was thought had committed this crime for political motives (Arlosoroff was a socialist). At the end of the trial, the young men were acquitted, but the bitterness aroused by the case never really disappeared.
The difference in attitudes and beliefs between the ‘capitalist’ Revisionists and the organized Jewish labour movements became unbearably bitter and led to the Revisionists withdrawing from the Histadrut in 1934. By the following year, allegations of indiscipline and counter allegations of lack of commitment had become so unendurable that the Zionist Executive endeavoured to introduce into the Constitution as clause designed to discipline and control all member bodies. The Revisionists promptly seceded from the WZO and the New Zionist Organization took form under Jabotinsky’s Presidency. The NZO proclaimed its objectives as:
….the redemption of the Jewish people and its land, the revival of its State and language, and the implanting of the sacred treasures of Jewish tradition in Jewish life. These objectives to be attained by the creation of a Jewish majority in Palestine on both sides of the Jordan; the up building of a Jewish State on the basis of civil liberty and social justice in the spirit of Jewish tradition, the return to Zion of all who seek Zion, and the liquidation of the Jewish dispersion. This aim transcends the interests of individuals, groups or classes.
The NZO ceaselessly attacked Weizmann and the Zionist establishment for what it perceived as “Fabian tactics” and generally insufficient energy and enterprise. Jabotinsky was justly criticized for his mean-spirited criticism of many of Weizmann’s statesman like attitudes; for example he called the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University, which was by any standards an epochal event in modern Jewish history, “a tawdry performance – throwing dust in the eyes of the public”.
It is convenient at this point to discuss a project which engaged Jabotinsky’s emotions most fully, that is to say the Betar Youth Movement. It derived its name as an acronym of B’rit Yosef Trumpeldor, after the above-mentioned military companion of Jabotinsky. Trumpeldor was a legendary hero, who was decorated and commissioned in the Russian army and thereafter devoted his life to the defence of the Holy Land. He died in battle in 1920 during the defence of the settlement of Tel Hai.
Only three years later after the death of Trumpeldor, Betar was founded in Riga. Its members in the first instance devoted themselves mainly to preparing for immigration to Palestine, whether legal or illegal as far as the British mandatory rules were concerned. They combined in their ideology the so-called ‘legionism’ of Jabotinsky and the pioneering and defence theories of Trumpeldor. The first immigrants of Betar in the latter 1920s joined the Histadrut and the Haganah, but the constant and ongoing confrontation between the Revisionists and the Zionist socialists in the World Zionist Organisation would eventually lead Betar to split from both bodies and go their own way both in the field of labour relations and defence. Betar became an important part of the Revisionist movement and subsequently the New Zionist Organisation and, later, with its military arm, the Irgun Zvi Leumi. They held their first World Conference in 1931, elected Jabotinsky as Rosh Betar and adopted the slogan: “I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State with a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan”. This slogan now belongs to a distant memory in terms of Zionism and later Israeli realities. It was common in Revisionist ideology to illustrate in map form this ideal of an Israel extending far to the East of the Jordan. Today’s battles deal with the West side of the Jordan only.
Following on, and as a result of, the Arab riots of 1936, the Betar movement spread throughout Palestine and to the Diaspora. From some 22 300 members in 1931, it had grown to nearly 90 000 by 1938.
Weizmann called Jabotinsky ‘the boy wonder’. His journalism and literary work, he said, had attracted the attention of such great literary figures as Maxim Gorki and Leo Tolstoy. He was a gifted orator, but always provocative in tone. Weizmann gives a vivid pen picture of the young man he knew, which must be carefully measured against other opinions more extravagantly laudatory on the one hand, and critical on the other:
We came to know him as rather ugly, immensely attractive, well spoken, warm hearted, generous, always ready to help a comrade in distress; all of these qualities were, however, overlaid by a certain touch of the rather theatrically chivalresque, a certain queer and irrelevant knightliness which was not at all Jewish.
In contrasting Jabotinsky with Achad Ha’am, Weizmann viewed the former as “utterly un-Jewish in manner, approach and deportment”, whereas Achad Ha’am was mild, persuasive and willing to compromise and settle for what he could get. Jabotinsky was at all times demanding and intransigent.
Weizmann is informative and instructive about the tremendous difficulties which Jabotinsky experienced, and partly overcame, in struggling for the establishment of the Jewish Legion. It is noteworthy that the disputes in the Zionist movement which led to Weizmann’s loss of the WZO Presidency in July 1931 turned very largely on the political work/practical work controversies which marked much of Jabotinsky’s ethos. Weizmann argued that “in a movement like ours, the centre of gravity is not an exaggerated political programme but work – colonization, education, immigration and the maintenance of decent relations with the mandatory power”. This was, of course, the antithesis of Jabotinsky’s stress on the importance of political work.3
After the vote against Weizmann, Jabotinsky generously sent him a note of condolence saying, “I am proud of my friends”. Perhaps he thought that this was magnanimity in victory – he really thought that he would become President in succession to Weizmann, and was bitterly disappointed when the choice fell on Nahum Sokolow.
Jabotinsky’s first visit to South Africa, when he visited Johannesburg, Cape Town and other centres, was in 1929. He was present at the First Conference of the SA Revisionist Party in May 1930, was warmly welcomed by the SA Zionist Federation and received enthusiastic applause at every meeting he addressed. Although separate party lists were established for organizational purposes, party support was always lukewarm in SA Zionism. In surveying this entry of the enfant terrible of the Zionist movement onto the local scene, Marcia Gitlin, SA Zionism’s first historian, comments, “there was in Jabotinsky’s oratory criticism of the Zionist leadership, there was denunciation, there was bitterness and pugnacity. Removed from the stimulus of his presence, Jews asked themselves what it was specifically he was urging them to do”. Jabotinsky stated that he wanted to disturb “the blessed state of harmony” that prevailed in SA Jewry. He wanted “parties, and a fight, and one side to win”.
Whether in the sphere of religion or Zionism or communal organization, the confrontational, pugnacious and uncompromising stance of Jabotinsky was not the South African Jewish way. When he came on his third visit in 1937, he was bitterly attacked and denied platforms by the official Zionist Organisation, to the extent that Rabbi M. C. Weiler felt impelled to write to the SA Jewish Times to protest against the treatment he received.
But this is not to say that if Jabotinsky’s way was not the South African way, it was necessarily the wrong way. Several prominent South African Jews were enthusiastic revisionists, including Chief Rabbi L I Rabinowitz, Joseph Daleski, Jededia Blumenthal and, most notably, Harry Hurwitz, later editor of the Jewish Herald and Begin’s biographer, and a pallbearer at Jabotinsky’s interment on Mount Herzl.
To sum up, what constituted Jabotinsky’s makeup, how were his personal characteristics communicated and what were his achievements?
Jabotinsky, who is to this very day called by Betarim “Rosh Betar forever”, instilled into the movement an ideal described by the Hebrew word Hadar (variously translated as beauty, respect, self-esteem, politeness, discipline and faithfulness). This brings us to face the point of view often advanced by his opponents in the Zionist movement, namely that Jabotinsky’s beliefs and activities, and particularly those of his beloved Betarim, came close, if they did not amount, to fascism.
Every generation has its own favourite swear word with which to berate or belittle one’s political opponents. Within living memory, we have had ‘commie bastard’, ‘capitalist pig’, ‘fascist swine’, ‘lily livered liberal’, ‘bleeding heart democrat’ and, most recently and most long lasting, ‘obscene racist’. We have seen how much emphasis was placed by Jabotinsky on militarism. There are many photographs of him in military uniform. Betarim were and still are serious about their smart turn out and appearance, a reflection of Hadar. There is a particular photograph which, I have to say, I find distasteful and un-Jewish. It depicts Jabotinsky lying dead, covered by the Zionist flag but with his head showing, and guarded by two Betarim in full uniform with Sam Browne belts etc.
If one studies Jabotinsky’s public utterances, not at one time or on one occasion but over a period of many years, one is struck by the vigour of his imagery and the pitch of his tone. Thus, on 22 October 1919 we find him writing, “internationally, we will announce that those Jews who do not remove the rust of the exile from themselves and refuse to shave their beards and side locks will be second class citizens. They will not be given the right to vote”. On the subject of policy towards the Arabs, he wrote in 1923, “the native population, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, and it made no difference whether the colonists behaved decently or not. It is therefore utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs and the Zionists must be ready to use physical force to secure their base and protect it with the iron wall” (we remember the advice of Samson). The “Iron Wall” became a metaphor, particularly in the controversies between the modern Israeli historians (one of whom, Avi Shlaim, called his book The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World). A final example, written in 1937, reads: “eliminate the Diaspora or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you”.
Are these the words of a would-be fascist leader or merely the inflamed rhetoric of a politician? At the very least, they gave his opponents opportunities to smear him with that brush, particular in the so-called megaphone war which was waged bitterly between Mapai and Herut, the forerunner of Likud. Much was made of the fact that Betar was granted training facilities in fascist Italy. Mussolini is reported to have said: “for Zionism to succeed you need to have a Jewish state with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands this is your fascist, Jabotinsky”. Weizmann said that the more extreme revisionists “displayed Hitlerism all over in its worst possible form”. Ben Gurion famously sneered at “Vladimir Hitler”. The temperature was not eased when Betarim deliberately sought to disrupt the memorial service for Yitzchak Rabin and publicly recited prayers for his assassin.
One could, of course, balance these comments by his political opponents by a host of adulatory and admiring observations from other quarters. To his followers, he was and will always be an iconic figure of towering stature cruelly treated by lesser men. Begin said, “above all, Ze’ev Jabotinsky was the bearer of the vision of the state in our generation. After Herzl, there was none but him to carry on high the vision of redemption – even in the face of renegades”. To Colonel Patterson, the non-Jewish leader of the Jewish Legion, he was “Jewry’s Churchill”. To this day, Likud leaders like to be called “Jabotinsky’s Princes”. And many are happy to accept and proclaim that he was “the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism”.
Jabotinsky died in New York on 3 August 1940, shortly after his last public appearance which, fittingly, was the inspection of a Betar parade. In his will he directed, “when I die, bury me where I die and do not take my remains to Eretz Israel except at the command of the Hebrew Government of a free Eretz Israel”. Many people consider it a permanent stain on the memory of David Ben Gurion that, despite repeated calls from many different quarters, it was left to the third Prime Minister of Israel, Levi Eshkol, to give these commands. On 9 July 1964, the remains of Jabotinsky and Johanna were laid to rest of Mount Herzl under a basalt rock tombstone. For many, even in this generation, the spirit of Zion rested upon Herzl, Bialik and Jabotinsky. For better or worse, he was a great man.
John Simon is a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and a long-serving member of its Editorial Board.
NOTES
- For Shwartzbard, see previous Jewish Affairs articles by Veronica Belling (Vol. 64, No. 1, Pesach 2009) and Michael Schmidt (Vol. 59, No. 4, Chanukah 2004).
- Published in Berlin between 1921 and 1933 and in Paris between 1933 and 1934.
- Weizmann’s point of view is so well set out in his book Trial and Error that it is worth quoting a relevant passage in full: “It was the conflict between those who believed that Palestine can be built up only the hard way, by meticulous attention to every object, who believed that in this slow and difficult struggle with the marshes and rocks of Palestine lies the great challenge to the creative forces of the Jewish people, its redemption from the abnormalities of exile, and those who yielded to those very abnormalities, seeking to live by a sort of continuous miracle, snatching at occasions as they presented themselves, and believed that these accidental smiles of fortune constitute a real way of life. I felt that all these political formulae, even if granted to us by the powers that were, would be no use to us, might possibly even be harmful as long as they were not the product of hard work put into the soil of Palestine. Nahala, Deganiah, the University, the Rutenberg electrical works, the Dead Sea Concession, meant much more to me politically than all the promises of great governments or great political parties. It was not lack of respect for governments and parties, nor an understanding of the value of political pronouncements. But to me a pronouncement is real only if it is matched by performance in Palestine. The pronouncement depends on others, the performance is entirely our own …… in the fundamental difference between the two views of Zionism [i.e. the essentially political and essentially practical approach] impatience and lack of faith were constantly pulling the movement towards the abyss”.
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