Revisionist Zionism

Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism

After World War I, Jabotinsky was elected to the first legislative assembly in the Yishuv, and in 1921 he was elected to the Executive Council of the Zionist Organization (known as the World Zionist Organization after 1960). He quit the latter group in 1923, thanks mainly to differences of opinion with its chairman, Chaim Weizmann. In 1925, Jabotinsky formed the Hatzohar, the Union of Revisionist Zionists, in the World Zionist Congress to advocate his views, which included increased cooperation with Britain on transforming the entire Mandate for Palestine territory, including Palestine itself and Transjordan, on opposite sides of the Jordan River, into a sovereign Jewish state, loyal to the British Empire. To this end, Jabotinsky advocated for mass Jewish immigration from Europe and the creation of a second Jewish Legion to guard a nascent Jewish state at inception. Jabotinsky wished to convince Britain that a Jewish state would be in the best interest of the British Empire, perhaps even an autonomous extension of it in the Middle East.

When, in 1935, the Zionist Organization failed to accept Jabotinsky's program, he and his followers seceded to form the New Zionist Organization. The NZO rejoined the ZO in 1946. The Zionist Organization was roughly composed of General Zionists, who were in the majority, followers of Jabotinsky, who came in a close second, and Labour Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion, who comprised a minority yet had much influence where it mattered, in the Yishuv.

Despite its strong representation in the Zionist Organization, Revisionist Zionism had a small presence in the Yishuv, in contrast to Labour Zionism, which was dominant among kibbutzim and workers, and hence the settlement enterprise. General Zionism was dominant among the middle class, which later aligned itself with the Revisionists. In the Jewish Diaspora, Revisionism was most established in Poland, where its base of operations was organized in various political parties and Zionist Youth groups, such as Betar. By the late 1930s, Revisionist Zionism was divided into three distinct ideological streams: the "Centrists", the Irgun, and the "Messianists".

Jabotinsky later argued for establishing a base in the Yishuv and developed a vision to guide the Revisionist movement and the new Jewish society on economic and social policy centered around the ideal of the Jewish middle class in Europe. Jabotinsky believed that basing the movement on a philosophy contrasting with the socialist-oriented Labour Zionists would attract the support of the General Zionists.

In line with this thinking, the Revisionists transplanted into the Yishuv a youth movement, Betar. They also set up a paramilitary group, Irgun, a labour union, the National Labor Federation in Eretz-Israel, and health services. The latter were intended to counteract the increasing hegemony of Labour Zionism over community services via the Histadrut and address the Histadrut's refusal to make its services available to Revisionist Party members.

Irgun Tsvai Leumi

The paramilitary organization of the Revisionist movement was called the National Military Organization, or the Irgun. The Irgun (short for Irgun Tsvai Leumi, Hebrew for "National Military Organization" ארגון צבאי לאומי) had its roots initially in the Betar youth movement in Poland, which Jabotinsky founded. By the 1940s, they had transplanted many of its members from Europe and the United States to Palestine.

The Revisionists split from the Haganah in 1931 because they opposed its domination by the Histadrut. They formed the "Haganah-B" which was commanded by a Revisionist Zionist, Abraham Tehomi. "Haganah B" was founded by Avraham Tehomi in 1931. Tehomi led "Haganah-B" until December 1936 when he agreed to give the leadership position to Jabotinsky. The group did not became completely Revisionist until April 1937 when Tehomi and about a quarter of the 3,000 men in "Haganah-B" returned to the Haganah due to their support for the Mizrachi, General Zionists, and Jewish State Party. "Haganah B" was transformed into the Irgun after Tehomi split from the group to join the Haganah. Jabotinsky initially adopted the Haganah's doctrine of self-restraint because he wanted a legal legion that was formally affiliated with the military and he thought that an illegal counterinsurgency would make that impossible. However, once "Haganah B" became the Irgun, the organization became an independent underground organization.

The Irgun carried out a number of attacks against the British and Arabs. In September 1937, the Irgun killed 13 Arabs which was said to be in retaliation for the deaths of three Jews. The summer of 1938 was the high point of the Irgun's campaign. On 6 July 1938, the Irgun set off a bomb in a milk can in the Arab market in Haifa which killed 21 and injured 52. On 15 July 1938, an electric mine in David Street in Jerusalem killed 10 and injured 30. On 25 July 1938, the Irgun set off another bomb in the Arab market in Haifa which killed 35 and wounded 70. On 26 August 1938, the Irgun set off a bomb in the market in Jaffa which killed 24 and injured 35.

In response to the White Paper in 1939, the Irgun bombed British facilities. The British responded by arresting Irgun commander David Raziel in May. In addition, on 31 August 1939, the rest of the Irgun high command was apprehended while discussing Jabotinsky's plan to invade Palestine.

The Irgun was commanded by Jabotinsky until his death in 1940. Menachem Begin commanded the Irgun from 1943 until the organization was dissolved in June 1948. In 1939, the Irgun called off their campaign against the British mandatory authorities for the duration of World War Two as the British fought against the Axis powers with the other Allied powers.

Acting often in conflict (but at times, also in coordination) with rival clandestine militias such as the Haganah and the Lehi (or Stern Group), the Irgun's efforts would feature prominently in the armed struggles against British and Arab forces alike in the 1930s and 1940s, and ultimately become decisive in the closing events of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Lehi

Lehi, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, and known pejoratively as the Stern Gang, was formed in 1940 by Avraham Stern as a small, radical splinter group from the Irgun. While the Irgun and the Revisionist party agreed to a ceasefire with Great Britain to support the Allied fight against Nazi Germany, Lehi viewed the British as the primary enemy and sought anti-British alliances, including with the Axis powers. The group employed terrorism and political assassinations to try to expel the British from Palestine. Following the 1948 dissolution of the group, many former Lehi members and leaders, including future Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, reintegrated into mainstream Revisionist successor parties like Herut.

Ideology

Ideology of pre-state Revisionist Zionism

The Revisionist Zionist movement did not have a clearly defined ideology which was more of a feature of Zionists on the left. Initially, the stance of the movement was to reject the policies of the contemporary Zionist leadership under Chaim Weizmann. The lack of a coherent ideology was something the movement took pride in since it removed them from the brand of traditional party politics and did not emphasize identification with religion or social class. However, despite the lack of a clear ideology, one clear belief of the original Revisionist leadership was the need to create a Jewish majority in Palestine despite the protests of the indigenous Arab population in the land. Jabotinsky would not accept the partition of Palestine into two states. He wanted a Jewish state that expanded over all of the Land of Israel, including the Emirate of Transjordan which had been established on the eastern part of the mandate of Palestine by the British. The two central points of the Revisionist program were that Trans-Jordan belonged to the Zionists and that the British must reconstitute the Jewish Legion as a permanent part of the military force in Palestine. The British had dissolved the Jewish Legion and separated Trans-Jordan from the territory given to the Jewish state under the Balfour Declaration after World War I.

Ideologically, Revisionism advocated the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, that is, a state which would include all of present-day Israel, as well as the West Bank, Gaza and either all or part of the modern state of Jordan. Nevertheless, the terms of the Mandate allowed the mandatory authority, Britain, to restrict Jewish settlement in parts of the mandate territory. In 1922, before the Mandate officially came into effect in 1923, Transjordan was excluded from the terms regarding Jewish settlement. In the Churchill White Paper of 1922, the British Government had made clear that the intent expressed by the Balfour Declaration was that a Jewish National Home should be created 'in' Palestine, not that the whole of Palestine would become a Jewish National Home. All three Revisionist streams, including Centrists who advocated a British-style liberal democracy, and the two more militant streams, which would become Irgun and Lehi, supported Jewish settlement on both sides of the Jordan River; in most cases, they differed only on how this should be achieved. (Some supporters within Labor Zionism, such as Mapai's Ben-Gurion, also accepted this interpretation for the Jewish homeland.) Jabotinsky wanted to gain the help of Britain in this endeavour, while Lehi and the Irgun, following Jabotinsky's death, wanted to conquer both sides of the river independently of the British. The Irgun stream of Revisionism opposed power-sharing with Arabs. In 1937, Jabotinsky rejected the conclusion of the Peel Commission, which proposed a partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs; it was however accepted by the Labor Zionists. On the topic of "transfer" (expulsion of the Arabs), Jabotinsky's statements were ambiguous. In some writings he supported the notion, but only as an act of self-defense, in others he argued that Arabs should be included in the liberal democratic society that he was advocating, and in others still, he completely disregarded the potency of Arab resistance to Jewish settlement, and stated that settlement should continue, and the Arabs be ignored.

Jabotinsky believed Arab opposition to Zionism was inevitable and that any efforts at reconciliation with Arabs would be unsuccessful. He believed that voluntary consent from the Arabs to turn Palestine into a country with a Jewish majority was not possible. Since Jabotinsky anticipated that the Arabs would resist against Jewish settlement in Palestine, he believed that superior military force was the only way to make them accept a Jewish state. Because of this, Jabotinsky advocated for an "iron wall" to assist the Zionist movement, meaning that he wanted a military force independent of the Arab population that the Arabs would not be able to resist successfully. This military force would protect Jewish immigration to Palestine and would allow the goals of Zionism to be achieved. This was one of the more radical and militant perspectives among Zionist thinkers.

Jabotinsky believed that it was necessary for people to own private property in order to have liberty which was part of his anti-materialist, anti-communist world view. Despite this belief, he still promised that the bourgeois regime that he wanted to take power in the Jewish state would eliminate poverty. The economic crises of the Yishuv in 1926 and 1927 caused Revisionists to shift their support to urban development and private capital investment.

Five figures in particular contributed to the formation of Jabotinsky's ideology: English historian Henry Thomas Buckle, Italian philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce, social reformer Josef Popper-Lynkeus, philosopher Antonio Labriola, and Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. In particular, Jabotinsky sympathized with the ideas of Giuseppe Garibaldi because of Garibaldi's emphasis on European nationalism. Garibaldi believed that it was necessary for the rich and poor of a country to unite through love of their homeland. The strong emphasis on nationalism translated into Jabotinsky's own ideas about establishing a Jewish homeland.

Jabotinsky's position towards Fascism

Jabotinsky was unsympathetic towards fascism in his early years. However, he became increasingly aligned with fascism during the 1930s, agreeing with the outlawing of strikes and militarism that fascism entailed. Leftist propaganda described Jabotinsky as a fascist during the 1930s and he was seen as a fascist by many other Zionists. Jabotinsky supported the outlawing of strikes because he was fervently anti-socialist and saw socialism as incompatible with Zionism. He was sympathetic to the ideology of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini during the 1930s. This changed when Mussolini aligned himself with Adolf Hitler, at which point Jabotinsky ceased to associate with Mussolini. However, Jabotinsky retained his belief that the goals of Zionism could only be achieved by taking over Palestine through a military effort. Jabotinsky organized the Jewish Legion which was a force of 5,000 soldiers that contributed to the British conquest of Palestine during World War I. In addition, Jabotinsky organized the Haganah in 1920 which became a central part of the Israeli army in the future. Jabotinsky ruled out the possibility of establishing a police state, whether it was under communist or fascist leadership due to his belief in the necessity of having a regime under which the individual could thrive. However, he still viewed fascism as a pragmatic option and believed that democracy had not worked well in any country except for England. Jabotinsky said that there were three common factors between fascism and Revisionist Zionism which were the denial of a class struggle, "compulsory arbitration" of labor disputes, and prioritizing national interests over the interests of a specific social or economic class. The organization of the Revisionist movement under Jabotinsky was flawed since Jabotinsky's control of the movement was akin to European far-right groups in the 1930s.

From the Irgun to the Likud

The Irgun largely followed the Centrists' ideals but it followed them with a much more hawkish outlook towards Britain's involvement in the Mandate, and it had an ardently nationalist vision of society and government. After the establishment of the State of Israel, it was the Irgun wing of the Revisionist Party that formed Herut, which in turn eventually formed the Gahal party when Herut and the Liberal parties formed a united list called Gush Herut Liberalim (or the Herut-Liberal Bloc). In 1973 the new Likud Party was formed by a group of parties which were dominated by the Revisionist Herut/Gahal. After the 1977 Knesset elections it became the dominant party in a governing coalition, and up to the present day it has remained an important force in Israeli politics. In the 2006 elections, Likud lost many of its seats to the Kadima party which had formed the previous year when Ariel Sharon and others split to the left from Likud. The Likud bounced back in Israel's 2009 Knesset elections, garnering 27 seats, though still outnumbered by Kadima's 28. In spite of the fact that these right-of-center parties favored a Likud-led coalition, a coalition in which the members of the Likud party comprised the majority; the Likud was chosen to form the coalition. The party re-emerged as the strongest party in the Knesset in the 2013 elections and today it leads the government. In the years since the 1977 election, particularly in the last decade, Likud has undergone a number of splits to the right, including the 1998 departure of Benny Begin, the son of Herut's founder Menachem Begin (he rejoined Likud in 2008).

While the initial core group of Likud's leaders such as Israeli Prime Ministers Begin and Yitzhak Shamir came from Likud's Herut faction, later leaders, such as Benjamin Netanyahu (whose father was Jabotinsky's secretary) and Ariel Sharon, have come from or moved to the "pragmatic" Revisionist wing.

The Revisionist idea of establishing a Jewish homeland over all of the Land of Israel played a role in shaping the ideas of members of Likud. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, two former Israeli prime ministers and members of Likud, were both inspired by Jabotinsky's ideas. Menachem Begin opposed relinquishing the West Bank after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. In addition, he opposed UN Resolution 242 because it would mean relinquishing Israeli control over part of the Land of Israel. Begin believed that the historic right of Jews to the Land of Israel came before the Palestinian claim to the land. Shamir would not compromise on the issue of the borders of the Land of Israel and opposed the Camp David Accords. Another member of Likud and prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, accepted the Oslo Accords, which was a diversion from the Revisionist idea of establishing a Jewish homeland over all of the Land of Israel.