Abba Ahimeir

Abba Achimeir

Abba Achime'ir ( Hebrew אֲבָּ"א אֲחִימֵאִיר Abba Achīme'īr , in languages ​​without the sound ch (IPA χ) : also Ahime'ir; born November 2, 1897 in Dolgi ; died June 6, 1962 in Tel Aviv ) was a Russian-born Jewish historian, journalist, and political activist. As one of the pioneers of revisionist Zionism , he founded the revisionist maximalist party wing of the ZRM and the secret organization Brit ha-Birionim .

biography

Abba Sha'ul Geisinovich (later Abba Achimeir) was born in Dolgi, a village near Babrujsk in the Russian Empire (now Belarus ). From 1912 to 1914 he attended the Herzliya High School in Tel Aviv . During the summer vacation with the family in Belarus, the First World War broke out, so he had to continue his studies in Russia.

In 1917 he took part in the Russian Zionist conference in Petrograd and received an agricultural training in Joseph Trumpeldor's HeChalutz movement in Batumi , Caucasus , to work as a pioneer in Israel .

In 1920 he left Russia and took the name Achimeir (Hebrew "Brother Me'irs") in memory of his brother Meir, who died fighting against Polish attackers during the pogrom period.

Achimeir studied philosophy at the University of Liège and the University of Vienna . He completed his doctorate here in 1924 on Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes , only to emigrate to Palestine shortly afterwards.

After his arrival he became active in the organizations of the workers' movement of the Zionists Achdut ha-Avoda and ha-Poʿel ha-Zaʿir . For four years he worked as a librarian for the Culture Committee of the General Union of Workers in Sichron Jaʿaqov and as a teacher in Nahalal and Kibbutz Geva . He also published in Ha-'Aretz and Davar, where he began to look critically at the political situation in Palestine and Zionism, as well as the labor movement to which he himself belonged.

Political activism

Achimeir with Uri Zvi Grinberg and Yehoschua Yevin

In 1928 Achimeir, Yehoschua Yevin and the famous poet Uri Zvi Greenberg became so disappointed with the passivity of the Zionist labor movement that they founded the revisionist workers bloc as part of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's revisionist party. Achimeir and his group, however, were perceived by their leaders as a left implant. The old guard found the political maximalism and nationalism of this group unpleasant.

In 1930 Achimeir and his friends founded the underground movement Brit ha-Birionim after the name of a Jewish underground movement directed against Rome during the first Jewish war .

Brit ha-Birionim was the first Jewish organization that the British Mandate authorities called a "foreign regime" and called the Mandate over Palestine "an occupation". The group began a series of protests against British rule, the first of which was on October 9, 1930 against British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Administration, Drummond Shiels , who was visiting Tel Aviv. This protest was the first sign of a rebellion by the Jewish community in Palestine against the British and at the same time the occasion for Achimeir's first arrest.

In 1933 Brit ha-Birionim turned against Nazi Germany. In May, Achimeir led a campaign to remove the swastika flag from the flagpoles of the German consulates in Jerusalem and Jaffa . Brit ha-Birionim also organized a boycott of German goods. Brit ha-Birionim also became a sharp critic of the Haʿavara deal and its chief negotiator, Chaim Arlosoroff .

When Arlosoroff was shot on the beach in Tel Aviv two days after his return from Germany in 1933, Achimeir and two friends were arrested on charges of inciting murder. Achimeir was acquitted of the charges before the trial began, but remained in prison and began a four-day hunger strike. He was convicted of founding an illegal secret organization and was held in Jerusalem's Central Prison until August 1935. His imprisonment led to the end of Brit ha-Birionim.

Arrested in 1933, Achimeir is the handcuffed person

After his release, Achimeir married Sonia Astrachan and devoted himself to literature and science. His articles in ha-Yarden in 1937 led to his re-arrest and a three-month prison term in Akkon Prison with members of the Irgun Zva'i Le'ummi and other prominent activists of the revisionist faction.

After the founding of the state, Achimeir became co-editor of the Cherut daily newspaper in Tel Aviv. He was also co-editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica , in which he was under the initials A. AH. authored a large number of important articles, mostly on subjects of history and Russian literature.

Achimeir died of a sudden heart attack on the evening of June 6, 1962 at the age of 65. His sons Jaʿaqov and Josef both also became journalists.

ideology

Abba Achimeir 1950

Achimeir viewed Zionism as a secular, i.e. not genuinely religiously founded, phenomenon that was concerned with territorial issues. He was the first to speak of a "revolutionary Zionism," and the first to call for an uprising against the mandate. His worldview always placed the current situation in the context of Jewish history, especially that of the Second Temple. He saw himself and his friends in the role of freedom fighters against imperialism, the British administration as the modern incarnation of ancient Rome and the official Zionist leadership as collaborators.

Achimeir's views had a profound influence on the ideology of the underground Irgun and LeCh "I movements , which later launched an urban guerrilla war against the British.

Achimeir called himself a fascist during the late 1920s and early 1930s, he also wrote an eight-part series of articles in the Doʿar ha-Yom newspaper in 1928 entitled "From a Fascist's Notebook." Few of his contemporaries took this seriously. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who without exception emphasized that there was no place for fascism in the revisionist movement, rejected Achimeir's statements as rhetoric that maximalists only play a role to attract attention and are not serious in their statements.

On October 7, 1932, Jabotinsky wrote in the newspaper Chasit haʿAm :

“Such men, even in the maximalist and activist factions, number no more than two or three, and even with those two or three - pardon my frankness - it is mere phraseology, not a worldview. Even Mr. Ahimeir gives me the impression of a man who will show flexibility for the sake of educational goals ... to this end he has borrowed some currently fashionable (and quite unnecessary) phrases, in which this daring idea clothes itself in several foreign cities. ”

“There are only two or three of these people, even in the groups of maximalists and activists, and even with these two or three - excuse my frankness - it's pure phraseology, not a worldview. Even Mr. Achimeir gives me the impression of a man who shows adaptability for the sake of his educational goals ... for this purpose he has borrowed a few currently fashionable (and completely superfluous) phrases into which his daring show in different cities of foreign clothes. "

Achimeir's fascist image of the 1920s was taken up by Christopher Hitchens in the 1998 article "The Iron Wall" to support the thesis that the ideology behind Benzion Netanyahu's Zionism, a student of Achimeir, was fascist, which is why the ideas of his son, the prime minister, were fascist Benjamin Netanyahu , are also influenced by fascism.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post on April 16, 2010, Achimeir's son Jossi defended his father against accusations of fascism.

“Hitchens is a known anti-Israel writer who takes my father's writing completely out of context. Fascism in 1928 can't be viewed in the context of the 1930s. Of course he would not be a fascist in view of how it developed. "

“Hitchens is a well-known anti-Israeli writer who takes my father's writings completely out of context. The fascism of 1928 cannot be seen in the context of the 1930s. Of course he would not be a fascist in view of the development of fascism. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stein Ugelvik Larsen: Fascism Outside of Europe. Columbia University Press, New York 2001. ISBN 0-88033-988-8 , p. 364.
2. ^ Eran Kaplan: The Jewish Radical Right. University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. p. 15.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Aba Achimeir: The man who turned the tide. On the website of the Bejt Abba Museum in Israel ( beitaba.com ).
4. ^ ^{A b c d} Colin Shindler: The Triumph of Military Zionism. Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right. IB Tauris, London / New York 2006, ISBN 1-84511-030-7 , pp. 154-174.
5. ^ The Assassination of Hayim Arlosoroff. In the Jewish Virtual Library.
6. ^ Zev Golan: Free Jerusalem. Heroes, Heroines and Rogues Who Created the State of Israel. Devora, Israel 2003, pp. 49-53, 66-77.
7. ↑ Terrorism Experts ( Memento of December 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ Jacob Shavit: The New Hebrew Nation: A Study in Israeli Heresy and Fantasy . Psychology Press, 1987, ISBN 0-7146-3302-X , pp. 15 ( books.google.com ).
9. ↑ Abba Achimeir Save Israel
10. ↑ ^{a b} Christopher Hitchens: The iron wall ( Memento of August 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). Salon, April 13, 1998.
11. ↑ Gloria Deutsch: Streetwise: My Father, Abba In: The Jerusalem Post April 16, 2010 ( jpost.com ).

Web links

Commons : Abba Ahimeir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Abba Ahimeir "Save Israel" - website with English translation of articles by anti-British underground fighters