A History of Zionism (69 page)

While praising the virtues of the middle class, Jabotinsky asserted that the class struggle had no
raison d’être
in Zionism. The Left countered by calling him a Jewish fascist. This did not unduly bother Jabotinsky, who enjoyed a fight. Nor was he greatly worried when Ben Gurion called him Vladimir Hitler. Labels such as ‘fascism’ and ‘Hitler’ did not at that time have all the sinister connotations of later years. But in 1934, after the foundation of the Revisionist Labour Union, the conflict seemed to get out of hand. There were too many acts of violence for anyone’s comfort. In October, on the initiative of Pinhas Rutenberg, founder and director of the Palestine Electric Corp., Jabotinsky met Ben Gurion in London. Despite the wide divergences in their political views, the two men had a certain admiration for each other. They came to understand and even to 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 he was deeply moved by these warm words, that perhaps it was his fault that he had long forgotten this kind of language.
†
An agreement was worked out and initialled providing for a
modus vivendi
between the sixty thousand members of the Histadrut and the seven thousand belonging to the Revisionist Union. Acts of violence as well as libels and insults were to be banned. The revisionists were to suspend their boycott of the national funds and the Betar was again to obtain immigration certificates through the Jewish Agency. Even more ambitiously, the understanding provided for the return of the revisionists to the Zionist organisation at a later stage, and their representation on the executive.

But though the two leaders had found a common language, their movements did not. There was strong resistance from the revisionists, especially, as expected, from the Palestinians and the Betar. At a meeting in Cracow in February 1935 the revisionists announced that they would insist on the right of independent political action whatever the Zionist Organisation decided. The Histadrut membership rejected the agreement in a referendum by a small majority in March 1935. The Zionist executive decided the same month on yet another step bound to antagonise the revisionists. Internal discipline was to be strengthened: the yearly payment of the shekel and the acceptance of the Basle Programme would no longer suffice. Every Zionist would have to accept as binding the decisions of the leading bodies of the Zionist movement.

After the failure of the talks between Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion, complete secession was a foregone conclusion, and it came almost as an anticlimax when in April 1935 the revisionist executive decided to form an independent world organisation. Among the leadership there was still some opposition, but in a plebiscite held in June of that year 167,000 revisionists voted in favour and only 3,000 against. Jabotinsky faced this decision with an untroubled conscience. For him the old Herzlian Zionist organisation was dead, and the Socialist-dominated Jewish Agency would have in future to negotiate with him and his movement as equals. The foundation congress of the New Zionist Organisation took place in September 1935; 713,000 voters in thirty-two countries dispatched delegates, more than had participated in the elections to the Zionist congress. True, there was no way of checking these figures, and Jabotinsky, moreover, had made it rather easy for his supporters to collect signatures; it was not even necessary to pay a nominal membership fee, such as the shekel, a short declaration of sympathy being sufficient. But even if the official figures were inflated - Jabotinsky originally aimed at a million - there could be no doubt that there was impressive support for him, especially in Poland and other east European countries, and not just among simple unsophisticated people willing to give their blessing to anyone promising them salvation; it was especially marked among the young generation and the intelligentsia.
*
For as the world situation deteriorated, there was growing impatience among all sections of the Jewish communities, and if Weizmann’s backstage diplomacy had not worked, Jabotinsky ought to be given a chance.

Jabotinsky’s foreign policy

Thus in 1935, at long last, Jabotinsky had his own New Zionist Organisation of which he was the undisputed leader. Headquarters were established in London. Jabotinsky travelled on behalf of his movement to many countries, addressed enthusiastic audiences, gave newspaper interviews, established contact with the mandates commission of the League of Nations. There were meetings with presidents, ministers, and members of parliament, and in some capitals, notably in eastern Europe, the revisionist movement encountered much goodwill, for reasons presently to be discussed. But it was not at all clear where these activities were leading. For years Jabotinsky had complained that his hands were tied. Now he had full freedom of action, and his movement was even gaining international recognition. While he had been the leader of the opposition it had been Jabotinsky’s privilege to criticise the official Zionist leadership for its lack of ideas and success. Now, criticism was no longer enough. He was expected to provide a real alternative, to succeed where the official Zionist movement had failed. It was the hour of
hic Rhodus, hic salta
- the test of leadership.

These were the years of the royal commission and the partition plan. Jabotinsky was called to give evidence before the commission in February 1937 and he delivered a forceful statement of his policy. The position of east European Jewry, he said, was a disaster of historic magnitude. Millions, many millions of Jews had to be saved. They wanted a state because this was the normal condition for a people. Even the smallest and the humblest nations, who did not claim any merit, any role in humanity’s development, had states of their own. Yet when Zionism asked for the same on behalf of the most unfortunate of all peoples, it was said that it was claiming too much. The Arabs, it was said, would become a minority in the Jewish state. But why should this be regarded as a hardship? The Arabs already had several national states:

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 in someone else’s state … it is quite understandable that the Arabs of Palestine would also prefer Palestine to be the Arab state No. 4, No. 5, or No. 6. … But when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claim of starvation.
*

Jabotinsky said that he believed in Britain, as he had done twenty years earlier. But if Britain could not live up to its obligations under the mandate, ‘we will sit down together and think what can be done’. He claimed that the Jewish Agency represented neither the whole nor even the majority of Zionist Jewry, but he refrained from discussing internal Zionist differences until asked to do so by members of the commission. It was a powerful performance, but the case he made did not differ greatly from the views expressed by other Zionist leaders. He accused Weizmann of willingness to sacrifice ‘nine-tenths of the Jewish national territory’. The majority resolution of the twentieth Zionist congress was in his eyes a ‘betrayal’, though it did no more than empower the executive to enter into negotiations with the British government to ascertain the precise terms for the proposed establishment of a Jewish state. Jabotinsky was confident that the partition scheme would come to naught, and its final abandonment by the British government in November 1937 justified his prediction. But little was gained in political terms by the revisionist campaign against partition. They were not alone in their opposition. Many members of other Zionist parties, including the extreme Left (though for very different reasons) had also been against it and denounced it no less vigorously. But the rejection of the scheme solved nothing. The impasse with regard to the future of Palestine was not broken, while the situation of east European Jewry further deteriorated as Nazi power continued to expand.

Several years earlier, Jabotinsky had called for a ‘change of orientation’ and for a time he seems to have played with the idea of establishing closer links with other countries. But his main aim was, as he wrote in a letter, ‘to make England apprehensive about Jewish allegiances’.
*
There is no evidence that he intended to offer the mandate to Mussolini in 1932 or that Mussolini would have shown any interest. Later, Italy became more actively engaged in Mediterranean politics and there was not the slightest hope that any advances on the part of revisionist circles would have succeeded; in fact Jabotinsky advised strongly against contacts with Rome, as suggested in 1937 by some of his followers. The year before, the New Zionist Organisation had outlined a scheme for the settlement of one and a half million Jews in Palestine over a period often years.
†
This plan resembled Max Nordau’s old project (of 1918-19) for the settlement of six hundred thousand Jews in the shortest possible time. The revisionist plan underwent several modifications. After the outbreak of the Second World War Jabotinsky reformulated it as follows: the whole exodus was to take about ten years; the first million settlers were to be transferred within the first year or less; all planning was to be done during the war, so that work could start on the morrow of the peace conference.
‡

The reasoning in support of his scheme was briefly this: antisemitism in eastern Europe was endemic and incurable. Quite apart from the ‘antisemitism of men’, there was the ‘antisemitism of things’; objective realities in central and eastern Europe were inherently and organically hostile to a scattered minority. The policy of governments could affect this trend, i.e. increase the hardship to a certain extent, but basically the ghettoes of east-central Europe were doomed: ‘No government, no régime, no angel or devil could have transformed it into anything even remotely approaching a normal homeland.’
*
He first advanced the idea of the evacuation scheme in 1935. It attracted some attention the following summer, after several newspaper articles and press conferences, and stirred up a major storm among the Jewish public. To some it gave fresh hope. In November 1936 a few hundred Polish Jews, without passports, visas or money, began to march on foot from Warsaw to Palestine. Their sole equipment for this pilgrimage was a commander-in-chief, uniforms, flags, and the rallying cry ‘Israel Awake’. The march ended a few miles outside Warsaw.

Jabotinsky was accused of playing into the hands of the antisemites, of aiming at a bargain with the Polish government to help them get rid of their ‘surplus Jews’,
†
He was charged with jeopardising the civic status of the Jews in eastern Europe, whitewashing antisemitic governments, without at the same time offering any real practical solution. For even if he were somehow miraculously to succeed in transplanting one million Jews from Poland, there would still be nearly three million left in Poland (allowing for natural increase over the ten years), compared with three and a half million in 1936, thus leaving the Jewish problem substantially unaffected. But Jabotinsky was not impressed by the charges levelled against him. Herzl, too, had been an advocate of evacuation and had been ridiculed for it. He compared the situation of the Jews to that of a village at the foot of a volcano menaced by an eruption. The lava was there, it was rapidly coming nearer, something had to be done immediately. It was not intended that the Jews should be forcibly expelled, they would leave of their own free will. To the editors of a Jewish newspaper in Warsaw which had published his articles for many years but now attacked his scheme editorially, he said in a farewell message: ‘I regret that you do not see the dark clouds that are gathering over the heads of the Jews in Europe.’
‡

Jabotinsky set energetically to work to promote his scheme. He was received by the prime minister of Poland, Slawoy-Skladkowsky, by Colonel Beck, the foreign minister, by Marshal Rydz-Smigly, Poland’s strong man. They all promised their support. King Carol of Rumania received him, so did Benes, the president of Czechoslovakia, Smetona, the president of Lithuania, Munters, the foreign minister of Latvia. He talked to de Valera, the Irish president, and to Francis Biddle, the American ambassador. All assured him of their goodwill, but unfortunately none of them had any influence as far as the future of Palestine was concerned. Despite all setbacks, Jabotinsky believed that the strategy of indirect approach would ultimately succeed. Elemental floods would soon break over the heads of all east European Jewry, so terribly powerful that even the German catastrophe would be eclipsed. As a result, a Jewish majority in Palestine would emerge overnight. The march of events was so ordained by God himself that it would end in a Jewish state ‘independently of what we Jews do or do not do’.
*
Right up to September 1939, he was certain that there would be no war: the crisis would subside, the Italians would again make friends with Britain, and in five years there would be a Jewish state. When war did break out, Jabotinsky resumed his attempts to set up a Jewish army, but the scheme was doomed from the outset. East European Jewry, the one potential reservoir of manpower, was under Nazi occupation and, as he wrote, there was little to expect from the ghettoes of Mayfair and the Faubourg St Honoré.

Jabotinsky’s last years were a period of tragic futility and defeat. The situation of European Jewry was steadily worsening, and he could do no more about it than any other Jewish leader. He had made great promises and it now appeared that he, too, had no effective alternative. There were desultory moves designed to bring about a reconciliation with the Zionist movement. Meetings took place with Weizmann, Berl Katznelson and Golomb, but nothing substantial came of them. Within the revisionist movement there were ominous signs of disintegration; as it failed to make progress internal dissension spread in its ranks. In January 1938 leading officers of Betar turned against the members of their own executive, claiming that these still believed in a pro-British orientation. At the revisionist congress in Prague in March 1938 there was a sharp conflict between the Palestinian delegation and those from abroad. Schechtman, who had been involved in negotiations with the Zionist movement, was not re-elected. Irgun, originally little more than a branch of revisionism, became increasingly independent in its actions and policy. Some of its leaders no longer felt bound by directives from the party leaders or even from Jabotinsky personally. Jabotinsky, for tactical reasons, had always stressed the independence of Irgun in talks with outsiders. As far as specific military actions were concerned he did not even want to be consulted; ‘Don’t ask father’ (
Man fregt nit den Taten
), he once told Begin, when the future leader of Irgun wanted to receive instructions. The Irgun leaders began to take such advice literally: father was not to be bothered. By the late 1930s revisionism as a political movement had spent most of its force and lost much of its importance. Irgun, on the other hand, became a factor of some significance in the Palestinian Jewish community.