A History of Zionism (71 page)

Authors: Walter Laqueur

Tags: #History, #Israel, #Jewish Studies, #Social History, #20th Century, #Sociology & Anthropology: Professional, #c 1700 to c 1800, #Middle East, #Nationalism, #Sociology, #Jewish, #Palestine, #History of specific racial & ethnic groups, #Political Science, #Social Science, #c 1800 to c 1900, #Zionism, #Political Ideologies, #Social & cultural history

BOOK: A History of Zionism

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Facing a similar situation, there is little doubt that Jabotinsky would not have reacted in a different way. In this he would have found it as difficult as Herzl, had the dilemma arisen, to persuade his contemporaries. For most of them Zionism was not so much a logical conclusion as an emotional necessity. Like Herzl, Jabotinsky sensed that the masses of east European Jewry, downtrodden and persecuted, needed a message to sustain their faith. Hence his insistence on national symbols and heraldry. He must have thought of Garibaldi when in August 1939 according to one source he played with the idea of an illegal landing in Palestine. This, he imagined, may well turn out to be the signal for an armed revolt in the course of which Government House in Jerusalem would be seized. He anticipated that the revolt would be quickly suppressed, but the provisional government of the Jewish state proclaimed during its shortlived existence would continue to function in exile.

It has been the custom among his admirers and friends to compare Jabotinsky with Garibaldi.
†
His Zionism was influenced by what he knew about the
risorgimento
, a movement for national liberation which, while democratic and popular in character, did not reject armed force since it knew that it would not attain its aim by gradual, peaceful change. Garibaldi had various imitators, not all of them wholly admirable - it would have been interesting to know what Jabotinsky made of D’Annunzio and his exploits. But Jabotinsky’s romanticism was by no means all pervasive; his policies, however mistaken, usually had a rational kernel, though he often erred in his appraisal of situations and men. It is not at all clear in retrospect why he had to leave the Zionist Organisation if he believed that in the last resort diplomatic, not military action would be decisive. The fight against labour Zionism into which he was drawn appears with the benefit of hindsight unnecessary, even self-defeating. Was it inevitable that anti-Socialism should become part of his ideological platform? As a young man he was far more sympathetic towards Socialism than, for instance, Weizmann, who referred to it in the most contemptuous terms, with all the disdain of a young intellectual influenced by Nietzsche.

It is difficult to explain this break in his views without reference to his Russian background, in which he was rooted to a much greater extent than Weizmann, and to the impact of the revolution of 1917. Jabotinsky and his friends regarded the Soviet revolution as a great disaster and the source of most of the evils in the subsequent history of mankind, in particular with regard to the fate of the Jewish people. It was not just that they had been personally affected, for Jabotinsky, for one, had few earthly possessions, and leaving Russia in 1914 he may not have intended to return there anyway. But as a result of the revolution Russian Jewry had been severed from the main body of world Jewry and had ceased to play a part in the Zionist movement. Above all, Russian Bolshevism triggered off counter-movements all over Europe. To put it in the simplest terms: without Bolshevism there would have been no Hitler – and without Hitler no Second World War and no holocaust. The Russian cataclysm and the opposition to Bolshevism explain Jabotinsky’s rejection of Socialism. Any form of Socialism if radically pursued would lead to a dictatorship and thus to results similar to those witnessed in Russia.

Sections of the revisionist movement were strongly influenced by the advent of authoritarian movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The fact that Jews were often victims of fascism did not necessarily make them immune to fascist influences. Revisionism believed in strength – in a sinful world only the strong were likely to get what was due to them. This manifested itself in the ideology of Betar, particularly the cult of militarism with all its antics - the parades, the stress on uniforms, banners, insignia. To a certain extent all political movements of the 1920s and 1930s were influenced by the
Zeitgeist.
This all too often led to moral relativism, to deriding democracy, to aggression and brutality, and belief in an omnipotent, omniscient leader. In the leader of the revisionist movement the similarities to fascism were more apparent than real. The basic tenet of fascism was the negation of liberalism, whereas Jabotinsky to the end of his life remained a confirmed liberal, or, to be precise, a liberal anarchist. One of his followers once told him to his face that the movement would never be in good shape so long as it was headed ‘by an anarchist from Odessa’.
*
Jabotinsky had no use for the idea of the totalitarian state, dictatorship, suppression of political enemies, and though he was not free of vanity he did not believe in the leadership principle. True, he was at one and the same time head of Zohar and Betar, and, in theory at any rate, the supreme commander of Irgun. But he was expressing his genuine belief when he wrote about himself that ‘I am just the opposite [of a fascist]: an instinctive hater of all kinds of
Polizei Staat
, utterly sceptical of the value of discipline and power and punishment, etc. down to a planned economy.’ Far-fetched as the comparison may seem, he resembled the New Left, inasmuch as he was a liberal who had lost patience partly because he was innately an impatient man, partly because he sensed that the Jewish people faced a great catastrophe (though he too underrated its magnitude) and that no time was to be lost.

Jabotinsky, however much one may dislike some of his ideas and actions, was not a fascist, and since a fascist movement headed by a non-fascist is clearly an impossibility, the revisionist movement, for this reason if for no other, cannot be defined as fascist in character. Within the movement there were however sections, some of them influential, which were less deeply imbued than Jabotinsky with the old-fashioned principles of liberalism, or even actively opposed to them. Among them fascist ideas had made considerable headway and, but for the rise of Hitler and Nazism, would no doubt have become even more pronounced. The revisionist evacuation scheme in the 1930s was totally unrealistic and was attacked at the time as a blatant and irresponsible example of demagogy. Yet what seemed preposterous at the time appeared in a different perspective ten years later. No stone should have been left unturned in the effort to save European Jewry. No one is now likely to accuse Jabotinsky of overdramatising the issue. To that extent his policy should be judged less harshly by the historian than it was by many of his contemporaries. It was not farsightedness which made him press these demands so strongly. On similar reasoning he should not have opposed partition in 1937, for an independent Jewish state, however small, would have been able to save at least tens of thousands of Jews who eventually perished. But he was right in sensing instinctively that in the specific historical situation facing his people moderation was no virtue, that every possible remedy, however desperate, had to be tried to save as many of them as possible.

It is not easy to pass final judgment on Jabotinsky and revisionism, with their many inherent contradictory elements. No other Zionist leader provoked such strong emotions. No one had such fanatical followers and such bitter enemies. The main impact of revisionism was not that of a political doctrine, for as an ideology it was weak and inconsistent. But it gave perfect expression to a mood widespread among many Zionists, especially among the younger generation. Perhaps because it was less sophisticated, it recognised certain basic facts earlier and more clearly than other Zionist parties: that without a majority, there would be no Jewish state, and that in view of Arab opposition to Jewish immigration and settlement even on a relatively small scale, there was no political solution but a Jewish state. The other Zionist leaders and parties preferred not to talk about these issues, which they considered premature: ‘Let us cross these bridges when we come to them’ was their attitude during the 1920s and 1930s.

Jabotinsky was almost the only one willing to face the problem squarely. He had the vision of a Jewish state, but when he died the goal seemed as distant as ever. But for the murder of millions of Jews and a unique international constellation after the end of the war, the Jewish state would not have come into existence. He was over-optimistic with regard to Arab acceptance of the Jewish presence. The ‘iron wall’ has existed for a long time but the Arabs have yet to become reconciled. The logic of events to which Jabotinsky referred from time to time led to the Jewish state, but in circumstances very different from those he had envisaged. After the state came into being, the movement which he had founded and inspired petered out, or, to be precise, underwent substantial change. Like Trotsky, who died in the same year, Jabotinsky left no clear message to be readily applied in the world of the 1970s. A quarter of a century after his death Jabotinsky’s coffin was reinterred in Jerusalem, where he received a state funeral. With Herzl, Weizmann, and the leaders of labour Zionism, he was one of the architects of the movement which led to the establishment of the state which was his lodestar for so many years. What Schiller said of Wallenstein applies
a fortiori
to Jabotinsky:
Von der Parteien Hass and Gunst verworren schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte
(His place in history, entangled in partisan approval and hatred, fluctuates to and fro).

*
See, for instance, his essays ‘Hayehudim ve hasafrut harussit’, 1908, and ‘Haletifa harussit’, 1909, in Z. Zabotinsky,
Ktavim Niucharim
, Tel Aviv, 1936, vol. 1.

*
The two main sources for Jabotinsky’s early years are his
Autobiography
(in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1947, and J. Jchechtman’s two-volume biography,
Rebel and Statesman
, New York, 1956, and
Fighter and Prophet
, New York, 1961.

*
See V. Vabotinsky,
The Story of the Jewish Legion
, New York, 1945; J.J.J. Patterson,
With the Judaeans in the Palestine Campaign
, New York, 1922; J. Jrumpeldor,
Tagebücher und Briefe
, Berlin, 1925; E. Eolomb,
Chevion Oz
(2 vols.), Tel Aviv, 1953.