Zionism by David Engel

Author:David Engel [Engel, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781317865490
Google: 7W_aAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13T01:18:33+00:00

Not all Zionists agreed with their approach, however. Beginning with the Fourth Aliyah powerful voices within the ZO challenged the privileged position the Organization had afforded the halutsim. The most influential challenger was Vladimir Jabotinsky, who disputed both that a socialist proletariat constituted the national home’s essential bedrock and that subordinating political to socio-economic goals would make Zionism more palatable to Palestine’s Arabs. Jabotinsky held that the Zionist Organization existed for a single purpose – to enhance the physical safety of Jews threatened by the hostility of non-Jews among whom they lived. Reminding his fellow Zionists of Herzl’s dictum that such hostility was inexorable wherever Jews were a minority unable to exercise political power on their own behalf, he declared that only when Jews became a majority in Palestine and took over the reins of government would the Zionist movement have accomplished its true mission. Moreover, he insisted, that mission made it imperative that the ZO actively encourage all Jews – capitalists, labourers and shopkeepers alike – who wanted to come to Palestine, no matter what they might contribute to the economic restructuring of the Jewish people or to augmenting the country’s ‘absorptive capacity’. To his mind, the economic burden of accommodating Jews fleeing hardship in Europe fell first of all upon the mandatory government; that is how he understood the mandate’s requirement that Britain ‘facilitate Jewish immigration’. If Britain refused to assume that burden, he reasoned, Zionists needed to protest. Accordingly he called upon the ZO officially to reject the Samuel–Churchill interpretation of the mandate, including the separation of Transjordan, and to insist that Britain establish a ‘colonizatory regime’ – one that would place the full resources of His Majesty’s Government at the ZO’s disposal for the purpose of creating a Jewish majority and state in Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1880–1940

Though he held an official position in the ZO only briefly, Jabotinsky’s influence upon Zionist history was profound. The most vocal opponent of Weizmann and Ben Gurion, he formulated an alternative conception of Zionism that obtained renewed prominence when his ideological progeny gained power in Israel.

Born in Odessa to a Russified family, Jabotinsky first achieved renown as a journalist. In 1903 he was co-opted into an Odessa Zionist group eager to enlist his oratorical and essayistic talents. Those talents soon made him a rising star in Russian Zionist circles. In 1906 he helped formulate the so-called Helsingfors Programme of Russian Zionism, which pledged Zionists to concern themselves not only with building Palestine but with securing individual and collective rights for Jews in a reformed Russian Empire.

Jabotinsky gained prominence on the world Zionist stage during the First World War, when he led negotiations with Britain over the Jewish legion. Like Ben Gurion, his great rival, he entered Palestine as a legionnaire, but when he tried to reorganize Jewish self-defence units during the 1920 Jerusalem riots, he was arrested and sentenced to prison. The verdict was soon reversed, and Jabotinsky emerged a Zionist hero. He was

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