Ze'ev Jabotinsky
Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky MBE (Hebrew: זאב ז'בוטינסקי, Russian: Зеэв (Владимир Евгеньевич) Жаботинский, also known as Ze'ev Zhabotinski, 18 October, 1880 – 4 August, 1940) was a Zionist leader, author, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I.
Early life
Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire, he was raised in a Jewish middle-class home and educated in Russian schools. While he took Hebrew lessons as a child in advance of his bar mitzvah, Jabotinsky described his upbringing as divorced from Jewish tradition.
Education
Jabotinsky's talents as a journalist became apparent even before he finished high school. His first writings were published in Odessa newspapers when he was 16. Upon graduation he was sent to Bern, Switzerland and later to Italy as a reporter for the Russian press. He wrote under the pseudonym "Altalena" (the Italian word for 'swing'; see also Altalena Affair). While abroad, he also studied law at University of Rome, but it was only upon his return to Russia that he qualified as an attorney. His dispatches from Italy earned him recognition as one of the brightest young Russian-language journalists: he later edited newspapers in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
Active Zionist
After the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist movement, where he quickly earned a reputation as a talented speaker and leader of the intellectually oriented youth. Jabotinsky, during the threat of pogroms that year, formed the Jewish Self-Defense Organization made up of young armed Jewish men to protect Jews across Russia from anti-Semitic riots. Tremendous controversy about Jabotinsky broke out within the Russian Jews. During that time, he concentrated on learning modern Hebrew as a spoken language. He also changed his name from the Russian Vladimir to the Hebrew Ze'ev ("wolf"). During the ensuing pogroms, he organized self-defense units in the various Jewish communities throughout Russia and struggled for the civil rights of the Jewish population as a whole. Jabotinsky was elected as a delegate to the Sixth Zionist Congress, the last for Theodore Herzl. In 1909, Jabotinsky attracted much attention with slashing attacks on leading members of the Russian Jewish community for participating in the ceremonies surrounding the centennial of the birth of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. In Jabotinsky's opinion, the anti-Semitic views of Gogol made it disgrace for Russian Jews to participate in the centennial celebrations, and indicated a fundamental lack of Jewish self-respect.
World War One
During World War I, he conceived of the idea of establishing a Jewish Legion to fight alongside the British against the Ottomans who then controlled Palestine. Together with Joseph Trumpeldor, he created the Zion Mule Corps, which consisted of several hundred Jewish men, mainly Russians, who had been exiled from Palestine by the Turks and had settled in Egypt. The unit served with distinction in the Battle of Gallipoli. When the Zion Mule Corps was disbanded, Jabotinsky traveled to London, where he continued in his efforts to establish Jewish units to fight in Palestine as part of the British Army. Only in 1917, however, did the government agree to establish three Jewish units. Jabotinsky himself fought against the Turks in the Jordan Valley in 1918 and was decorated for bravery. One of his main regrets was that the Jewish soldiers could not participate in even more battle engagements because the British tended to restrain them by keeping the Zion Mule Corps in the background.
Role in Nebi Musa riots
After Zeev Jabotinsky was discharged from the British army as an "indiscreet political speaker," he led an effort in Palestine to openly train Jewish volunteers in self-defense. The request to the British authorities to allow arming of the defenders was declined; however, about 600 Jews were secretly armed with small arms.
After the 1920 Palestine riots, and at the demand of the Arab leadership, the British searched the offices and apartments of the Zionist leadership, including Weizmann's and Jabotinsky's homes, for arms. At Jabotinsky's house they found 3 rifles, 2 pistols, and 250 rounds of ammunition. Nineteen men were arrested, including Jabotinsky.
A committee of inquiry placed responsibility for the riots on the Zionist Commission, for provoking the Arabs. Jabotinsky was given a 15-year prison term for possessing weapons. The court blamed "Bolshevism," claiming that it "flowed in Zionism's inner heart" and ironically identified fiercely anti-Socialist Jabotinsky with the Socialist-aligned Poalei Zion ("Zionist Workers") party, which it called "a definite Bolshevist institution."[1]
Founder of the Revisionist movement
After the war, Jabotinsky was elected to the first legislative assembly in Palestine, and in 1921, he was elected to the executive council of the World Zionist Organization. He quit the latter group in 1923, however, due to differences of opinion between him and its chairman, Chaim Weizmann, and established the new revisionist party called Alliance of Revisionists-Zionists and its youth movement, Betar (a Hebrew acronym for the "League of Joseph Trumpeldor"). His new party demanded that the Zionist movement recognize as its objective the establishment of a Jewish state along both banks of the Jordan River. His main goal was to establish a modern Jewish state with the aid of the British Empire. His philosophy contrasted with the socialist oriented Labor Zionists, in that it focused economic and social policy on the ideal of the Jewish Middle class in Europe. An Anglophile, his ideal for a Jewish state was a modern liberal democracy based on the British model. His support base was mostly located in Poland, and his activities focused on attaining British support to help in the development of the Yishuv. Another area of major support for Jabotinsky was Latvia, when his fiery speeches in Russian made a star to the largely Russian-speaking Latvian Jewish community.
Exiled by the British
In 1929, Jabotinsky left Palestine to attend the Sixteenth Zionist Congress. The British authorities did not allow him to return. The movement he established was not a monolithic entity, but contained three separate factions, of which Jabotinsky was the most moderate.
Jabotinsky favored cooperation with the British, while more irredentistically-minded individuals like David Raziel, Abba Ahimeir, and Uri Zvi Greenberg focused on independent action in Mandate Palestine, fighting politically against Labor, the British Authorities, and retaliating against Arab attacks.
David Raziel was commander of the Irgun, while Abba Ahimeir and Uri Zvi Greenberg acted as visionaries for Lehi. (It is the Irgun wing of the Revisionist Party that years later formed Herut and then Likud by absorbing the centrist General Zionist Party. One of Raziel's greatest disciples was Menachem Begin, Raziel's successor as leader of the Irgun and Betar faction and later prime minister of Israel).
During the 1930s, Jabotinsky was highly concerned with the situation of the Jewish community in Poland. In 1936, Jabotinsky prepared the so-called “evacuation plan”, which called for the evacuation of the entire Jewish population of Poland to Palestine. In 1936, Jabotinsky toured Eastern Europe, meeting with the Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck; the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy, and Prime Minister Gheorghe Tătărescu of Romania to discuss the "evacuation plan". The "evacuation plan" gained the approval of all three governments. The “evacuation plan” caused much controversy within Polish Jewry with some applauding it while others felt that the plan played into the hands of Polish anti-Semites. In particular, the fact that the “evacuation plan” had the approval of the Polish government was taken by many Polish Jews as indicating Jabotinsky had gained the endorsement of what they considered to be the wrong people. In addition, controversy was created by the fact that the "evacuation" of the entire Jewish communities in Poland, Hungary and Romania was to take place over a ten-year period with no element of choice for Jews over whatever they wanted to go to Palestine or not. However, the controversy over the "evacuation plan" was rendered moot when the British government vetoed it. Two years later, in 1938, Jabotinsky stated in a speech that Polish Jews “…were living on the edge of the volcano” and warned that a wave of bloody super-pogroms would be happening in Poland sometime in the near future. Jabotinsky went to warn Jews in Europe that they should immigrate to the Palestine Mandate as soon as possible.
Jabotinsky was a complex personality, combining cynic and idealist. He assumed that there was no way for the Jews to regain any part of Palestine without a war with the Arabs, yet at the same time he assumed that the Jewish state would contain Arab citizens. In 1934 he wrote a draft constitution for the Jewish state to be and said:
Arabs will participate on an equal footing throughout all sectors of the country’s public life….In every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa. Source
He died in New York, on August 4, 1940, from a heartstroke while visiting an armed Jewish self-defense camp run by Betar facilities. A request by B'nai Brith that he be buried in Israel was refused by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who wrote in a letter dated May 7, 1958 to Judge Joseph Lamm of the Tel Aviv District Court, vice-president of B'Nai Brith in Israel, that: "Israel does not need dead Jews, but living Jews, and I see no blessing in multiplying graves in Israel."[2]
In 1964, Levi Eshkol permitted the reburial of Jabotinsky and his wife in Jerusalem at Mount Herzl Cemetery.
Legacy
Modern Revisionist Zionism
- See: Revisionist Zionism
Zeev Jabotinsky's legacy is carried on today by Israel's Herut party (merged with other right wing parties to form Likud in 1988), Herut – The National Movement (a breakaway from Likud), Magshimey Herut (young adult activist movement) and Betar (youth movement). Jabotinsky's legacy in the United States is carried on by various groups including the Americans for a Safe Israel, and the Jewish Defense Organization.
Camp Jabotinsky
Today in Upstate New York the militant Jewish Defense Organization runs a training camp named after him called Camp Jabotinsky, where young Jews learn gun training, security and how to protect Jews from attack.
Jabotinsky Medal
In Jabotinsky's honor, the Jabotinsky Medal is awarded by the State of Israel for distinguished service or accomplishments. The Jewish Defense Organization also gives a Jabotinsky Award to those it deems stood up and fought the enemies of Jews.
Works
Books
- By Jabotinsky
- Turkey and the War. London, T.F. Unwin, Ltd. [1917]
- Sampson the Nazarite. London: M. Secker, [1930]
- The War and The Jew. New York, The Dial Press [c1942]
- The Story of the Jewish Legion. New York, B. Ackerman, incorporated [c1945]
- The Battle for Jerusalem. Vladimir Jabotinsky, John Henry Patterson, Josiah Wedgwood, Pierre Van Paassen explains why a Jewish army is indispensable for the survival of a Jewish nation and preservation of world civilization. American Friends of a Jewish Palestine, New York, The Friends, [1941]
- A Pocker Edition of Several Stories Mostly Reactionary. Tel-Aviv: Reproduced by Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, [1984]. Reprint. Originally published: Paris, [1925]
- The Five. A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of-the-Century Odessa
Vladimir Jabotinsky; Michael R. Katz (Translator); Michael Stanislawski (Introduction), [2005] ISBN 978-0-8014-8903-7
- About Jabotinsky
- Lone Wolf: a Biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. by Shmuel Katz; New York: Barricade Books, [c1996]
- The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story. by Joseph B Schechtman; New York , T. Yoseloff [c. 1956-1961]
- Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925-1948. by Yaacov Shavit. London, England; Totawa, N.J.:F. Cass, [1988]
- Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. , Lenni Brenner, Lawrence Hill & Co; Rev Ed edition [c1983]
Articles and poems
- "The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)", 1923
- "The Ethics of the Iron Wall", 1923
- Zionism and the Land of Israel
- Tisha B'Av, 1937
- Instead of Excessive Apology, 1911
- The Ideology of Betar
- The Oath Of Betar
- The Song of Betar
- A selection of Jabotinsky's writings: The World of Jabotinsky
Jabotinsky translated Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to Hebrew and Russian.
Notes
References
- Lone Wolf: a Biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. by Shmuel Katz; New York: Barricade Books, [c1996] (Katz was a disciple of Jabotinsky. This book, which is still in print, provides an excellent overview of Jabotinsky's life and legacy.)
- The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story. by Joseph B Schechtman; New York, T. Yoseloff [c. 1956-1961]
- Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925-1948. by Yaacov Shavit. London, England; Totawa, N.J.:F. Cass, [1988]
Further reading
- The Jabotinsky Institute
- Zionist Leaders: Ze'ev Jabotinsky official website from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Law honoring Zionist forefather passed by Ilan Marciano published in Yediot Aharonot March 23 2005.
- The Legend of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, by Gad Nahshon, Jewish Post. 2004
- Jabotinsky's biography at Betar UK
- A biography of Jabotinsky on the website of the Jewish Defense Organization
Quotes
- "Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. ... We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. ... We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody's examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to." (From Instead of Excessive Apology, 1911)
- "Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you." (From "Tisha B'av 1937")