Subject: JUICE Pioneers 9 - Ze'ev Jabotinsky Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 02:51:05 +0000 To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: JUICE Administration <juice@wzo.org.il> To: pioneers@wzo.org.il Subject: JUICE Pioneers 9 ============================================================== World Zionist Organization Jewish University in CyberspacE juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il http://www.wzo.org.il ============================================================== Course: Pioneers of Israel Lecture: 9/12 Lecturer: Doron Geller Ze'ev Jabotinsky Ze'ev Jabotinsky became the most outstanding spokesman and leader that the Revisionist Right-wing movement ever had in the pre-state era. He dominated the right far more than Ben-Gurion ever dominated the Left. He openly advocated a policy of strength and militarization of Jewish youth in an effort to fundamentally overhaul and reshape what he and many other Zionists perceived as Jewish character traits of weakness, meekness and passivity as developed in the diaspora. Like Ben-Gurion and the Labor Zionists, Jabotinsky wished to fundamentally remake the modern Jew. But while the Labor Zionists saw the creation of a Jewish worker as a revolutionary step in modern Jewish history, Jabotinsky regarded that as relatively unimportant. After an initial flirtation with socialism in his youth, Jabotinsky abandoned his belief in the necessity of class wars and social revolution in the process of nation-building. He was convinced of the rapid and inevitable decline of the agricultural worker in the technological age, and thus saw little use in the re-introduction of a romantic but soon-to-be-outmoded concept of living. The Jews were weak, in great peril, and they must do something about it or else a tragedy of gigantic proportions awaited them, as he wrote at the beginning of the century. Not the spade, not the hoe - the sword must be mastered in order to enable the Jew to re-enter the family of nations on an equal footing. Jabotinsky dedicated the greater part of his adult life to the establishment of a Jewish army and a Jewish state so that Jews could indeed live in pride and in normalcy in a land of their own. Vladimir Jabotinsky was born in the multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan city of Odessa in the Russian Pale in 1880. Although he learned Hebrew, he had little background in Jewish culture or tradition, unlike leading Labor Zionists such as Berl Katznelson or David Ben-Gurion. In his lack of a genuine Jewish education he was far more akin to Theodor Herzl and Joseph Trumpeldor - to both of whom he displays some similarity in thought and character. In his teens he was already becoming known as a brilliant linguist and essayist, and by his eighteenth year he had already left the Russian Pale to study law in Switzerland and later in Italy. In Italy he was impressed by socialist doctrines, which he later discarded after seeing their implementation in Russia. The growth of Italian nationalism, however, affected him deeply. He dabbled in Zionism until 1903, when the Kishinev massacres in Russia made him a convinced Zionist, as they did so many others. He did not emigrate to Palestine and take up pioneering work, however. It might be interesting to conjecture why. Firstly, he was no Labor Zionist. Thus the ideology that inspired 25,000-30,000 Jewish youth to abandon Eastern Europe and take up the hoe following the massacres did not motivate him as it did A.D. Gordon, Berl Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion and many other labor figures we have studied. The Second Aliyah was an aliyah of workers, and he was not one of them. He had already, by 1903, achieved a reputation as a brilliant journalist and essayist, and it may have been his unwillingness to abandon a bourgeois, intellectual lifestyle which kept him in Europe. It certainly was not due to lack of courage. He had been one of the initiators of (the largely ineffective, but psychologically important) Jewish self-defense efforts in Russia following the first pogroms. From 1903 until the outbreak of World War I he was among the most impressive Zionist journalists and lecturers in Eastern Europe. But his audience had to have been quite different than those the Palestinian settlers were lecturing to in their European tours. While he expressed himself beautifully, with artistic, theatrical, and often brilliant imagery, his message was considerably less utopian than that of the Labor Zionists. Others were affected by socialist and communist revolutionary movements. Jabotinsky was affected by unadulterated nationalism and the necessity - particularly in the case of the Jews - for strength and power. In an essay written in 1910 entitled "Man is a Wolf to Man" Jabotinsky lays out his philosophy quite clearly. "It was a wise philosopher who said `man is a wolf to man.'; worse than the wolf is man to man, and this will not change for many days to come. We will not change this through political reforms, nor through culture and even bitter experience will not change it. Stupid is the person who believes in his neighbor, good and loving as the neighbor may be; stupid is the person who relies on justice. Justice exists only for those whose fists and stubbornness makes it possible for them to realize it. When I am criticized for my insistence on apartness, on not believing in anyone and on other matters which are difficult for delicate persons to accept, I sometimes want to answer: I am guilty. Do not believe anyone, be always on your guard, carry your stick always with you - this is the only way of surviving in this wolfish battle of all against all." It seems a grim message. But seeing the devastation of Jewish communities in Russia in 1903-1904, it is perhaps not so surprising. In fact, I am frequently surprised by the pioneers' ultimate insistence on labor rather than defense; as we have seen with Ha-Shomer, self-defense was actually slow to catch on in Palestine despite the unquestionable dedication of the early pioneers to labor. Jabotinsky did not view labor as a necessity for normalizing the Jewish people, as the Zionist lovers of Tolstoy who settled in Palestine did. Strength and power would normalize the Jewish people, and for that one needed a Jewish army and a Jewish state. Once World War I broke out Jabotinsky devoted all of his efforts to establishing a Jewish legion under the auspices of the British Army. From the beginning he was convinced the Allies would win and the Ottoman Empire would disintegrate - unlike Ben-Gurion, who until 1915 and perhaps after that sided with the Ottomans and thought they would win. Jabotinsky's plan was not popular among the Jews. The Zionist movement had adopted a stance of neutrality, not wishing to endanger Jewish communities on either side of the war. Thus, in Chaim Weizmann's words, "Jabotinsky was almost alone, discouraged, and derided everywhere.' One of his greatest allies was Jospeh Trumpeldor, the hero of Tel Hai we learned about three weeks ago. Due to their efforts, the Zion Mule Corps and then the Jewish Legion were established in 1915 and 1917, respectively. While the Zion Mule Corps participated in the horrendous fighting at Gallipoli 1915, the Legion did little. But Jabotinsky was pleased anyway. He wanted a Jewish force to remain in Palestine after the war, being of the opinion that however "many agricultural settlements were established, they would be defenceless in the absence of Jewish military units." Neither he nor Trumpeldor could keep it together, however. Not only did the British not want to see a legal, permanent Jewish force in Palestine upon the establishment of the Military Administration in Palestine beginning in 1917. The mostly Labor Zionist settlers who joined were not militarists by nature, and were eager to get out and return to their settlements once the war was over. They preferred a more loosely-controlled non-standing army of trainees, who could be called when the need arose. But they did not want to live the lives of genuine soldiers. Thus the labor attitude as represented by Berl Katznelson and David Ben-Gurion versus Jabotinsky's attitude towards the fateful stand at Tel Hai in 1920 is of great interest. We know part of the story already. Katznelson, the leading exponent of the Jewish settlers remaining up North, insisted that "a place once settled must not be abandoned." He added that "'There is no question here of a piece of land or a little Jewish property, but the question of Eretz Israel. Departure and retreat would be decisive proof of our weakness and worthlessness." This was despite the odds - thousands of armed and roving bedouin versus 40 Jewish men and women. Jabotinsky, despite a penchant for displays of defiance and military strength, exhibited a more practical view. He said that even several hundred more men "would not suffice for defense or prevent the destruction of the settlements." He added that if "what was expected in Northern Galilee was a `demonstration' - of Jewish determination not to withdraw - it should be realized that demonstrations and martyrdom had lost much of their weight in a world that had just emerged from the horrors of the world war." In late February, 1920, he said that even 500 men would not be enough to defend these settlements. Strange words indeed from the man who represented maximalist tendencies in terms of land. As much as he emphasized strength, ceremony, and the militarization of Jewish youth, he was aware of the limitations of Jewish power - as Ben-Gurion generally was - and knew not to use it when no benefit could be accrued from it. To make a pointless stand, he would argue, was worse than making no stand at all. In the end, Jabotinsky was "depicted.as having been insensitive to the national ethic of not abandoning a settlement." These settlements were indeed abandoned, as Jabotinsky said they would be. Only six months later, when safety had improved, the Jewish settlers did return there peacefully, and eventually the area was taken under British control. But the same could have been done without the loss of life. In Jabotinsky's opinion neither the French nor the British took the Tel-Hai incident nearly as seriously as the Jews. The French were losing hundreds of men in the Arab raids themselves. In fact, the success of the Arabs at Tel Hai only emboldened them to violently and brutally attack the Jews in Jerusalem and Jaffa about a month later. But Tel-Hai became a national symbol, even for Jabotinsky, who had argued for its defense. Trumpeldor's heroic bearing was too in keeping with Jabotinsky's world outlook not too be thrilled by the connotations of Jewish renewal. In the end, Jabotinsky was taken by Trumpeldor's words, "It's nothing, it's good to die for our country." Jabotinsky's own message was similar. The surprising thing is that Labor leaders - so anti-militaristic in nature, prizing labor above all - were so inspired by Trumpeldor as well. It seems that while Jabotinsky was always aware a conflict would ensue with the Arabs and wished to militarize Jewish youth in order to prepare for it, Labor leaders had sensed the same thing and also wished for Jewish heroes in the modern age, but it was too much against their socialist, humanist, and non-militaristic outlook to openly prize the more martial aspects of life for their own sake. Trumpeldor was a uniting force for Labor leaders because he was a settler and a worker - and then a defender of his land - while for Jabotinsky and the right he exemplified the new courageous Jew they emphasized first and foremost. Jabotinsky greatly admired the pioneering youth in the socialist settlements all over Palestine. He saw them as youth of the finest quality and caliber. The problem was, in his eyes, that they emphasized socialism far too much - even at the expense of nationalism. He believed that an entrepreneurial, solid middle class could build the nation equally as well as the pioneers. He did not denigrate the pioneers; he merely viewed them as being mistaken in seeing a socialist revolution as being the main issue, when he saw nationalism alone as the issue that should dominate the thoughts and actions of every Jew in Palestine. While settling the land was all well and good, in his eyes, these settlements wouldn't survive in an independent state without a strong army to protect and defend them (as well as deter the aggressive intentions of those who opposed Zionist goals). And thus Jabotinsky prized the open and overt re-institutionalization of martial qualities in the Jewish people - qualities necessary for the conquest and defense of their country. He emphasized parades, marching, order, discipline, pride in strength, and the willingness to sacrifice. The Labor movement emphasized settling the land in agricultural communes, social justice, human brotherhood, and like the Revisionists, the need for sacrifice. However, the Revisionists had no illusions about Arab opposition to Zionist aims. It seems clear that many in the labor movement did harbor illusions about Arab acceptance of Zionist settlement, or at least ignored the problem and concentrated first and foremost on building new Jewish settlements. (Characteristic of some in the socialist camp is this revealing comment, when asked about the Arab problem; "In every country there's a Jewish problem. So here there's an Arab problem. Ein ma la'asot - what can you do?) Jabotinsky faced the Arab problem head-on. He "regarded Arab opposition to Zionism and Jewish settlement as natural and inevitable." He often gave expression to this. "But since the Jews in Europe were facing a catastrophe, whereas the situation of the Arabs was secure in the Middle East, he believed the moral case of the Jews to be infinitely stronger." Meanwhile, Arab opposition would not go away, and he did not shirk it, or try to convince the world or the Arabs themselves (as Ben-Gurion and the Labor Movement did) that the Arabs would appreciate the Zionist movement once they realized the social and material gains Jewish settlement would bring them. He understood that a people's attachment to its land is deeper than a quest for material gains - although the quest for material gains would continue even when one felt one's land was threatened. Thus Jabotinsky argued for the erection of an "iron wall" in front of Arab opposition to Zionist goals. Unrestricted immigration would change the demographic balance in favor of the Jews, and an army would protect the Jewish state and make no concessions or compromises; the Jews needed a land, and that was the end of the matter in his view. Few characteristics of Far Right Revisionism are traceable to Jabotinsky. He was always a liberal in his views - he just believed the Jews had to be strong in order to assert themselves in a world which so obviously respected strength, and despised weakness. Time and again, he argued, that without power to protect them, relying on justice, promises, goodwill, or mercy - the Jews had gotten the short end of the stick. This was no longer going to happen. The Jews didn't have to create a model state - they merely had to possess a state, and make sure it was strong. Based on centuries of Jewish passivity and weakness vis-a vis gentiles, that was quite enough of a challenge at the present moment, in his view, without having to revamp society as a whole and become "a light unto the nations." Ariel Sharon, in the moving conclusion to his autobiography Warrior, expresses a very similar view. Security for the Jewish people in Israel has to come first, Sharon writes. After that, we can worry about all the rest.. But this view did not inure Jabotinsky to the rights and essential humanity of others. He never, for example, advocated the transfer of Arabs or their dissolution within a Jewish state. "Revisionism recognized that there would be a substantial Arab minority even after the Jews became the majority. Jabotinsky wrote in his programme that in the Jewish state there would be `absolute equality' between Jews and Arabs, that if one part of the country were destitute the whole country would suffer." He also strenuously opposed the tendency within his own movement to the use of indiscriminate revenge in response to Arab terror. In the mid 1920's Jabotinsky set up the Betar youth movement. As we have seen in a previous lecture, it was an acronym for Brit Trumpeldor as well as the name of the last Jewish stronghold during the Bar Kokhba Revolt against the Romans from 132-135 C.E. It had followers in Palestine, but its main followers were in Eastern Europe, where Revisionism and Jabotinsky's popularity grew by leaps and bounds in the 1930's. Menachem Begin, later prime Minister of Israel, was one of the original and most influential leaders of Betar in the Eastern European diaspora. "Like other Zionist youth movements, it prepared its members for life in Eretz Israel, maintained training farms, and put great emphasis on the study of Hebrew. The difference was in Betar's "insistence on para-military education, with uniforms, solemn processions, military organization, discipline, and training in the use of light arms." It was quite militaristic. But this was not a problem for Jabotinsky. He saw the militarization of all kinds of youth movements across Europe - and hardly one of them was sympathetic to the Jews, to say the least. "He wanted to give fresh hope to a generation which was near despair, and he believed that this could be done only by invoking myths - blood and iron and the kingdom of Israel (malkhut Israel)." His desire to instill in the minds of young Jews a heroic image is evident in his novel Samson. Everyone is familiar with the Biblical hero of Samson. I remember reading this novel in graduate school. At the time the Jabotinsky's Samson seemed so un-Jewish in character. The Samson of the novel seems more akin to a Nordic mythological hero, even more than a Greek Hercules. Jabotinsky's Samson is a brawny, massive creature, full of the love of life, the love of women, and unafraid to mingle among his non-Jewish neighbors. In fact he learned a lot from them. Samson was practically a hero among the Philistines - but in the end Samson's loyalty lay with his own people, the Jews. Samson urges them to get iron and choose a king, who would "impose his discipline and make an effective fighting force out of an unruly mob." They must also learn to laugh, express a joie-de-vivre lacking in the often morose conditions of Jewish life in the diaspora. If one equates Jabotinsky with Samson, one might get the impression that Jabotinsky harbored certain autocratic, even fascist tendencies - which he was accused of often enough. But this does not seem to be the case. He had enough followers who wished to call him "Il Duce" or even the fuehrer, before Hitler's real intentions towards the Jews were known. He rejected all of these calls with vehement disgust, however, and demanded that his followers refrain from praising Hitler (this was only necessary until 1933), which he said was due to sheer ignorance. But the fact that his followers could identify with such fascist tendencies led to disgust, outrage, and even violence between his followers and those of labor. In the mid 1930's after the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff, things got so bad that Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky arranged for a number of meetings in London. As Walter Laquer writes, despite "the wide divergences in their political views, the two men had a certain admiration for each other. They came to understand and even like each other as the result of these meetings Ben Gurion addressed Jabotinsky in a letter as `friend', and Jabotinsky in his reply said that perhaps it was his fault that he had long forgotten this kind of language." Ben Gurion in fact admired Jabotinsky for his "un-Jewish" - in a galut sense - bearing and behavior. Ben Gurion said of his antagonist of many years; "There was in him complete internal spiritual freedom; he had nothing in him of the "galut" Jew and he was never embarrassed in the presence of a gentile." There were plans for a reconciliation between the two movements, but their underlings foiled it, and in 1935 Jabotinsky founded an independent, New Zionist Organization, in which he was able to freely and openly express his views to foreign leaders and governments far more than he was able to prior to its establishment. Jabotinsky's arguments for the necessity for a Jewish state in Palestine were notably just - in my view at least - at a time when the Zionist project was coming under serious attack by the Arabs, who found sympathizers among the international community. In his arguing for a re-division of land, he sounds like a socialist or communist when speaking about the redistribution of wealth; "Self-determination means a revision - a revision of the divisions of the globe between the nations, in such a manner that those who have too much should give up a part to those who have too little or nothing at all, in order that all of them should have a place in which to practice their self-determination. Confiscation of a strip of territory from a nation possessed of great stretches of territory for the purpose of providing a home for a wandering people - that is an act of justice. And if that nation with so much territory does not agree (and that would only be natural) then it must be coerced." For him, it was a matter of existential need, and he was always willing, even more than Ben-Gurion, to prioritize Jewish existential need versus Arab claims. Perhaps Jabotinsky's finest moment came in a speech before the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 deciding whether to partition Palestine. In it, he argued the case for a Jewish state, in which the Arabs would become a minority. "It is not a hardship on any race, any nation, possessing so many National States now and so many more National States in the future. One fraction, one branch of that race, and not a big one, will have to live in someone else's state: well, that is the case with all the mightiest nations of the world. I could hardly mention one of the big nations, having their states, mighty and powerful, who had not one branch living in someone else's state. That is only normal and there is no "hardship" attached to that So when we hear the Arab claim confronted with the Jewish claim; I fully understand that any minority would prefer to be a majority, it is quite understandable that the Arabs of Palestine would also prefer Palestine to be the Arab state No. 4, No.5, or number 6 - that I quite understand; (There are presently 22 Arab countries - D.G.) but when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation." This powerful presentation of the Jewish case is manifestly similar to Ben-Gurion's own petition before the royal Commission, and thus Jabotinsky's formulations regarding the need for a Jewish state sound quite close to Labor Zionist formulations regarding the need for a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel. But he differed over means to achieve that state. We saw in our lecture how Ben-Gurion for years publicly espoused the idea that the Zionist movement desired cooperation with the Arabs and hoped the Arabs would feel the same. Jabotinsky never believed that the Arabs would voluntarily agree to the fulfillment of Zionist goals. Moreover, he knew that the Arabs would not be "fobbed off by Socialist rhetoric or economic aggrandizement." In the late 1930's his followers set up the Irgun, and in 1940 Lehi - both groups which we will be learning about shortly. Jabotinsky himself died in 1940, a year after the outbreak of World War II. Jabotinsky was often vilified during his lifetime as a fascist, an autocrat, or a demagogue. He was none of these things. He was a liberal to the end of his life, he never advocated the transfer of Arabs or the indiscriminate use of terror against Arab civilians, even in response to Arab provocations. He was a brilliant man as well, perhaps even more than the leading labor Zionists, who did not lack for sharp minds. But his inheritors - in the form of Menachem Begin's Herut party (later Likud) did not gain power in Israel for 29 years after the establishment of the state. The labor Zionist structure which was in place long before the state came into being remained in force long after Jabotinsky's passing. It was perhaps an irony that Menachem Begin, as a similarly vilified Right Wing leader, was the first Israeli leader seriously approached by an Arab nation with the intention of making peace, and Begin's right-wing Likud government was the first to conclude a peace treaty with that nation - Egypt. Jabotinsky's emphasis on militarism was despised by labor leaders for years. But in the end they were forced to adopt a more militaristic position in order to survive in the middle East. Moreover, the labor emphasis on manual and especially agricultural labor - unfortunately or not - has for the most part gone by the wayside in modern Israel. The middle class - capitalistic, entrepreneurial - has taken the place of the laborer in the Israeli psyche. Not only is this an economic necessity, but it is a vindication of Jabotinsky's thought. Jabotinsky's message wasn't particularly romantic. But he gave great hope to those who no longer believed in a restrained, measured Jewish response to Jewish suffering at the hands of gentiles. Although his message was never accepted by many members of the yishuv, his emphasis on achieving Jewish strength did bear fruit. Even today, he is regarded by many Israelis as an inspiration and a hero. He remains a symbol that Jews will no longer let others taunt them or harm them, that the Jew of today, living in his own land and proud and willing to defend it, is a far cry from what the tormentors of the past would ever have expected. Bibliography 1). Shlomo Avineri - The Making of Modern Zionism 2). Encyclopedia Judaica 3). Shmuel Katz - Lone Wolf 4). Walter Laquer - A History of Zionism 5). Ya'acov Shimoni - The Zionist Ideology Next week we will be learning about the Haganah, the underground Jewish defense force affiliated with the labor movement during the pre-state era. The following week we will be learning about the Irgun.