Jabotinsky Providing his Testimony to the Peel Commission

Found here:

On the testimony, February 11, 1937.

The photograph is also at the Jabotinsky Archives.

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Jabotinsky on the Ethics and Morality of Zionism

 Zionism and Ethics

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Di Tribune, Stockholm, May 10, 1916

There is an opinion that the Jewish people have no “moral right” to claim control of Eretz Israel. The claim that it is immoral is that since the Jewish population of Eretz Israel is only 100,000, while the Arab population is 600,000, this would mean the demanding that a minority rule over the majority. Jews have no right to risk and harm themselves by insisting on such unfair demands. The only right we have is “free repatriation and settlement activity”, but nothing more…

…If power is in the hands of a government hostile to the very idea of Jewish settlement, then such a government will be able to nullify any paragraph without any effort. And for this there will be no need to prohibit repatriation and settlement activity directly, which would simply contradict the terms of the paragraph. There are thousands of other means for this purpose. Thus, for example, without mentioning the Jews, one can establish laws on the right to own property, or on the acceptance of citizenship, or municipal and political laws for repatriates, and so on. In this way, it is possible to bring about a situation where settlement activity itself (one way or another) will run up against an iron barrier. In the end, with the help of all sorts of "proclamations" and "administrative procedures", one can do with this or that paragraph whatever one pleases.

Therefore, the paragraph concerning free repatriation does not give any guarantees. It follows that we must abandon the idea of guarantees and get used to another idea, the essence of which is that the fate of settlement in Eretz Israel depends on the good will of this or that government. Or we must go straight to the point and demand real and genuine guarantees. The most reliable guarantee is this: to grant us power in the form of a "charter" or in any other form.

This is precisely what the Basel Program demands. But the people who signed it twenty years ago suddenly came to their senses and decided that it was immoral. And now they are trying to find a way to accumulate capital and preserve their innocence at the same time. One of them wrote to me not long ago: “I would propose an agreement that would be both fair and even democratic: we should not demand a ‘charter’ for ourselves, but simply autonomy for Eretz Israel. The parliament should be elected by the entire population, both Jewish and Arab. The right to vote should be granted to everyone who can read and write, regardless of nationality or sex.

The masthead of Di Tribune 

Under this system we would get approximately the following figures: the Jewish population of Eretz Israel is only 100,000 people, but all adult men and women can read and write; thus, the Jewish population with the right to vote would be approximately 40,000 people. The number of Arabs reaches 600,000 people, but almost the entire female population does not meet the stated condition, that is, half of the population immediately drops out; and even among the male population, especially in the villages, the art of writing and reading is not very widespread. And if we continue and go along this path, then it will be possible to introduce a system of educational qualifications.

This system exists in England and Belgium. It is based on the fact that people with, say, a secondary education have the right to two votes, people with a higher education - to three votes. If such a system is introduced, then we Jews will have an absolute majority in the first parliament. The first parliament should be elected in 10 years, and during this time we will be able to properly strengthen our position in quantitative terms. How do you like this plan?"

I do not know how to answer such a question. This may indeed be a wise plan, but it has a weak point, namely, that at its core lies the idea that such an idealistically just matter as handing over Eretz Israel to the persecuted Jewish people so that they can establish their national home there, such a deeply ethical moral matter appears so immoral and unjust that it must be covered up with all sorts of fabrications.

It is also characteristic and noteworthy that only the Jews come with such claims to “ethics”...It seems that only the Jews are required to be super-ethical. Moreover, our moralists themselves do not at all want local Arabs to be in power in Eretz Israel. They want the country to be governed by some power that is sympathetic to the Jewish settlement and its activities. Some believe that such a power could be Turkey, others prefer England. But both sides think that it would be extremely "fair" if the English or the Turks were in power in Eretz Israel, although their numbers reach approximately thirty thousand. Such a situation, as you see, would be fair. But when the Jews demand the right to rule in Eretz Israel, there is no justice in this, since there are only one hundred thousand of them.

…No one demands that a "charter" be issued to those one hundred thousand Jews who have succeeded in getting into Eretz Israel, despite the barbed wire entanglements which the Turkish regime places before them. Eretz Israel must be handed over to the whole Jewish people. And this people numbers eleven or twelve million people, that is, in fact, twenty times more than the six hundred thousand Arabs who live in Eretz Israel today. In the course of four years the Jewish people can send over six hundred thousand new repatriates across the ocean. And if we take into account the entire stock of its “emigration”, that is, the entire mass that can be considered potential repatriates without fear of making a mistake, then we get a population equal to eight or even nine million people.

We demand Eretz Israel in the name of these masses, and not in the name of the "Yishuv" that exists today. And our aspiration is not to obtain a "charter" only for those who have settled already in the country, but for the entire Jewish people. This people, by virtue of its perfection, will manage the settlement in the holy land, will plant culture on it, will attract investors to it; the handful of current residents of Eretz Israel - both Jews and Arabs - are an insignificant minority in comparison with this people.

Sometimes the Jews make a funny impression, despite the fact that their faces express honesty and sentimentality. They love to sigh over the bitter fate of their opponents, and sometimes even their enemies. I know dozens of Jews who, even now, after all that has happened, feel sorry for the poor Poles because the Lord God put them in an awkward position and brought upon them such a misfortune as the Jewish question. Thank God, our relations with the Arabs are better than our relations with the Poles. And so we sigh over their fate much more often and with greater rapture. Unhappy people, we say they are, because Eretz Israel is, in fact, part of the Arab territory, because they have lived on this land for many, many years, and suddenly we have arrived and want to become masters there. I look at the moral side of the current situation with somewhat different eyes.

The tribes that speak Arabic inhabit Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mesopotamia. In a territory whose area (excluding the Arabian Peninsula) is as large as the area of all of Europe (excluding Russia), and is quite sufficient to feed a billion people, there lives only one national group - thirty-five million people. On the other hand, there is the Jewish people, a people persecuted, deprived of a homeland, who have no place of their own in the whole world. They strive for Eretz Israel because they have no other home and because everything that has brought glory to Eretz Israel in world history, all the splendor that was and is in it, all the superhuman functions that the country has performed, all this is the fruit of the spiritual development of the people of Israel. Compared with the entire vast territory inhabited by the Arab peoples, Eretz Israel constitutes only a hundredth part.

I do not know whether it is possible to speak of ethics in our time when such questions are discussed. But if it is possible, let me ask, what is ethics, in essence? Is it based on the fact that one should have much, another little? Is it based on the fact that the land, which is the basis of life, is concentrated in large quantities in the hands of one people, who are not even able to cultivate it, while another people, exiled and wandering like a dog in foreign lands, looks with great envy from behind a fence at the tempting desert? Where did this kind of ethics come from? And how can it be called ethics at all?

If they came with sword in hand to take Eretz Yisrael, we would be right before God and man, just as a beggar is right who takes from a rich man. The ethics concerning land relations between nations is, in essence, the same ethics accepted among the people of whom it is said in the Bible: from time to time there is a great harvest, and then he who has no land demands his share from he who has land in abundance. Instead of two million square kilometers, the Arabs will populate a territory of one million eight hundred thousand square kilometers. And thanks to this, a Jewish state will exist on earth, and one of the most pressing problems of history will come closer to its solution.

It is quite clear that the Arabs living in Eretz Israel have every right to demand that they not be expelled from there. That is a different matter. That is beyond any discussion and no one is going to expel them from there. There is plenty of space in Eretz Israel. The population density in Eretz Israel today is approximately twenty souls per square kilometer. In neighboring Lebanon, there are seventy souls per square kilometer; in Germany - one hundred and twenty; in Italy - one hundred and twenty-four; in Belgium - two hundred and fifty-seven; and in some densely populated areas of Egypt - three hundred and sixty-two. This is not the place to engage in puzzles and calculate how many people can live in one square kilometer in Eretz Israel in acceptable conditions.

But if we take Lebanon as an example, where the natural conditions are much worse than those in Eretz Israel, then, even then, if we calculate, we will find that in Eretz Israel there is room for at least another fifty inhabitants per square kilometer. It follows that we do not lay claim to the twenty occupied places, but to the fifty free ones, or to those deserted and abandoned places which, if only they fall into our hands, we can, with our labors, applying all our abilities, transform into an economically developed region and bring the population density in Eretz Israel closer to the level of civilized European countries. And in this way the question of the legitimate interests of the population of Eretz Israel now living will be resolved.

If there is a need to provide guarantees for the existence of their religion, language, property, personal rights, and the like, guarantees against possible tyranny or persecution on our part, then we are ready to provide them, regardless of whether the protection of their rights is handed over to a special international commission or to the consuls of the great powers. But no ethics can recognize either that they have a right of veto against Jewish settlement, or that a handful of half-savage people have the right to hold in their hands a territory that can feed millions, turn it into a desert, and close its gates.

I am not one of those people who believe that in the current situation it is naive and even unnecessary to express one's opinion in politics about the moral side of the issue. It is clear that the powers that be do not take the moral side into account, but the Jewish people cannot and should not give up their demands. We stand our ground and demand that the world hand over the land of our future into our hands, in the name of our entire history and in the name of all our suffering. In the name of that endless guilt that weighs down the conscience of the world. And it is strange to hear that there are people who do not understand this. But it is even stranger that the people who have doubts about the ethics of the "Basel program" are almost all Jews.

I myself had occasion during the war to talk about Zionism with political figures in England, France, Italy, Greece - and I have never heard such statements from anyone. People who are constantly in contact with government circles in England on questions of Zionism, and they have never encountered such excuses. The healthy political mind of a healthy people decides simply and clearly: it is impossible to imagine a settlement without real power. If the very fact of settlement is "ethical", then the power is ethical. If in relation to such countries as England, France, Italy, which in addition to colonies have enough of their own land, if it is ethical for them to settle colonies, then it is even more ethical in relation to a people deprived of any land at all. And only from the Jews are cries of protest heard. From this we can conclude that in this matter we are not talking about moral rights at all, but about fear of the idea itself.

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A 1921 Interview With Jabotinsky

Here is Sophie Irene Loeb's interview with Ze'ev Jabotinsky published in The Evening News on, November, 17, 1921. Jabotinsky was in America as a member of a Keren HaYesod delegation with other senior Zionist leaders.

Credit

Mrs. Loeb nee Simon was born in Rivne, Russia (now Ukraine) in 1876. Coming to the United States at the age of six, she later moved from McKeesport, Pennsylvania to New York. She was the president of the Board of Child Welfare of New York and in 1921 established the first child welfare building. In 1924, she became president of the Child Welfare Committee of America. In 1926, she succeeded in having the  Widows' Pension Law legislated by Congress.

She led campaigns that resulted in the New York State Widows' Pension Law, penny lunches in public schools, the motion picture law of New York, making building sanitary and fireproof and additional movements for public betterment. As the first woman called to be a mediator in a New York strike, she brought about the settlement of the strike in the taxicab industry in 1917.

In 1927, she was invited to work with the social service section of the League of Nations in Geneva to frame an international code for the care of dependent and afflicted children. She traveled to Palestine in 1925 and wrote “The New Jerusalem”. The profits from her "Palestine Awake” were dedicated to the United Palestine Appeal. She died in 1929.

Her interview was one of a series with leading Zionist officials at the time.

In preparing for the interview, she "looked up his history [and] wanted to stop work, run up to the woods and write the novel of the day. For the facts connected with the doings of this young man would stir the imagination of a Guy de Maupassant or provoke the pen of a Poe.

-          -     -     -     -

Q. I heard it said that Zionism cannot be reconciled with the principle of self-determination, because Arabs and not Jews are today the majority in Palestine. What is your answer to this contention?

A. I t depends upon what you call self-determination. Some people think that this principle simply means taking a snapshot of the world as it is constituted and populated today, and then acting as though everything "were good and just. For instance, you take a statistical snapshot of Armenia and you state that the Armenians are a minority in their own country, because the Kurds and the Turks, have been successfully massacring them for hundreds of years; therefore self-determination for Armenia should mean the reestablishing a Turkish or Kurdish state, in which the Armenians would be left to the tender mercies of the majority. I think that this conception of self-determination is wrong.

Self-determination means a reconstruction, a readjustment of the world.  A homeless people can certainly claim no majority anywhere in the world in the present moment, just because it is a homeless people, and the world has got to be so reconstructed as to give every homeless people a territory where it could try and reconstitute Its majority. This is exactly what we demand for the Jews in Palestine.

Q. And what about the Arabs?

A. The question has two sides. First of all, the Arabs in Palestine itself. The number is just over 500,000. There is neither need nor intention to disturb or displace even one of them. The country, if properly developed, can feed 4,000,000 or even 6,000,000, and we undertake to cram these millions in without squeezing anybody out. I believe that when the Jews gain a majority in Palestine, the position of the Arabs there will be politically the same as the position of the Scotch in Great Britain. It will be absolute equality of rights and duties, and, in addition it will probably be what we term in Eastern Europe “cultural autonomy"—the right to run their own schools in their own language, to use that language for all official purposes, and of course to be absolute masters of all their religious institutions and holy places. Besides, we're going to make of them citizens of a rich country, whereas to-day they are citizens of a poor one. So much for the Arab in Palestine.

Now, the other side of the question is the national interest of the Arab race as a whole. Allow me to remind you of a few figures. All the Arabic-speaking populations of Asia and Africa total less than 40,000,000, but they occupy a territory almost as big as the whole of Europe, stretching from Morocco to the Persian Gulf.

Palestine is only 1-170th part of this immense territory. Its transformation into a Jewish national home will leave the Arab race as rich in national territory as it is to-d ay — indeed, one of the richest races of the world, as far as land  is concerned. They will be able to develop their national being In Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz, the Yemine — I really think It is quite sufficient to satisfy the most ambitious nationalism. There is hardly any race In Europe, however victorious, which has not sacrificed a small fraction of its territory for the needs of the world's adjustment.

Q. Do you expect America to help you?

A. I expect American Jewry to shoulder, financially, the main burden of reconstruction. But if you ask me what we expect from America as a whole — indeed from Christian America — I must make a little preface. This is my first visit to this republic, but somehow l cannot think of myself as a complete stranger to American conceptions.

As a child, I was practically brought up (so was the whole of my generation in South Russia) on Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte and the American tales of Capt. Mayne Reid and numberless other authors, perhaps forgotten by you, but not by me. My favorite author, after Dante, has always been Edgar Allan Poe; my favorite heroes, after Garibaldi, are Washington and Lincoln —and — you will forgive my impartiality — Grant and Lee. I won’t bore you with mentioning more names of statesmen and writers and others (up to your wonderful Griffith), with whom I and many of my fellow-Jews live in almost daily communion.

All this may account for the fact that whenever a great beau jeste or a bold call comes from America, be it Woodrow Wilton's fourteen points or Mr. Harding's disarmament scheme, I feel never surprised. To me it comes natural. It is just what I and my like expect from America as we know it. This is my reply to your question: What we expect from America.

Zionism is a great idea, akin to those ideas which inspired Washington and Lincoln: its prospects and vistas far back and far ahead as vast in the spiritual plane as your prairie is in the physical; a nation accustomed to great horizons cannot fall to grasp the value of our ideal. We expect America to understand our struggle, and when the time comes, to throw her mighty word in our favor.

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'White Privileged' Jews and Jabotinsky

I found that a 2008 thesis entitled 'Quasi-barbarians' and 'wandering Jews': The Balfour Declaration in light of world events presented by (and later incoporated in her book) Maryanne Agnes Rhett that she writes of Ze'ev Jabotinsky as becoming "the vehicle of [Max] Nordau‘s activist approach". He began

advocating the masculinization of Judaism and the militarization of the people via the creation of a Jewish legion. Jabotinsky recognized that in order to carry out the process of militarization, a new ideology to help reinforce muscular Judaism was necessary. For this model Jabotinsky turned to legend and lore of Biblical Israel and closely allied it with modern philosophical and ideological trends.

She then goes further postulating that Muscular Judaism is an Extension of Muscular Christianity:

Parallels that exist between what Max Nordau sought for the Jewish community and what European Christians were seeking are significant for our study. The policy of Anglicization‘ and the prevention of societal degeneration were driven by the same impulses that inspired the creation of the New Jew. While Anglicization was closely associated with an Anglican Christian viewpoint, it nevertheless shaped the identity construction of all Jews, Catholics, and other Christian denominations, especially those of the upper class. Among the Anglo-Jewish elite, identity construction manifested itself not only in sending their sons to the same schools as their Christian counterparts, but in establishing parallel Jewish organizations, like the Anglicized Boy Scouts, for immigrant Jewish boys and girls.

Just as muscular Christianity was a means for inculcating the Christian youth of Britain into a militarized physical identity; British Judaism underwent a revitalization of its own militaristic past with the development of paramilitary organizations like scouting groups. The Jewish Lads‘ Brigade, the most prominent example of these groups, was founded in Great Britain in 1895.

Later on, p. 153, she adds about 

Jabotinsky‘s campaign for a militarized Jewish body

and at p. 232 she suggests, based on "Historian Yakov M. Rabkin" who

argues that one reason De Hahn became disillusioned with political Zionism was because of its aggressive nature,‘ in particular the proto-fascism Vladimir Jabotinsky and his followers seemed to advocate. Rabkin contends that ―his [De Hahn‘s] acquaintance with Jabotinsky and other leaders of the future Israeli right wing, which was fascinated by the growing fascist movements of Europe, alerted De Haan to the threat that Zionism‘s violent side represented. (Footnote: Yacov M. Rabkin, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2006, 130)

DeHa an arrived in Palestine in January 1919 and Jabotinsky left Palestine in July 1920. What other "future right-wing Israeli leaders" did he know? How well did he know Jabotinsky?

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When Jabotinsky Wrote An Article Entitled "Zionist Fascists"

The term "fascism" has been applied to Ze'ev Jabotinsky unrelentingly since 1921 and his involvement in the Petliura Affair.

The Zionist Left, Ben-Gurion and especially HaShomer HaTzair, were quite accusing during the 1930s.

Some antagonistic sources are here and here. More neutral ones are here and here. He wasn't a fascist, by the way. Chaim Weitzmann met Mussolini four times but Jabotinsky declined as Mussolini's policies were intolerable for Jabotinsky, even if to advance Zionist aims. He did, though, exploit contacts among pro-fascist Italian Revisionists in 1934 to found the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia. He criticized Abba Achimeir, a member of his Revisionist movement who was enamored of fascism in the late 1920s and early 1930s until Hitler's anti-semitism became blatant.

However, in fact, an article did appear penned by him which carried the title "Zionist Fascists". It was published, in a shortened edited version in English translation under the title "Zionist Fascists" in the organ The Zionist, Volume 1, Issue Number 6, dated June 1926. The original Russian-language piece appeared in November 1925 in Rassviet.

Jabotinsky wrote it after his first appearance at a Zionist Congress, the 14th Congress of 1925  held in Vienna, Austria, a short few months after founding the Revisionist Union of Zionists.  Jabotinsky demanded a more activist policy for the Zionist movement and opposed the inclusion of non-Zionists within the Jewish Agency. His speech, in Hebrew, was reported in Davar (p. 2). The ruling leadership attempted to quash his independent, oppositionist stand.

I found the original Russian (1) and translated it, comparing to a Hebrew translation found in הרוויזיוניזם הציוני בהתגבשותו that appeared in 1985.

It shows that, at least in 1925, for Jabotinsky, as well as for his presumed audience, the term "facism", basically meant an overbearing, dominant leadership that was fairly intolerant of criticism and wasn't enthralled with democracy. Moreover, the article argued for a much more democratic Zionist movement that what he faced at that time.

Judge for yourselves:

Fascists of Zionism.

V. Jabotinsky, Rassviet, No. 51, Paris, November 11, 1925

I.

There is no other name for the trend that now dominates official Zionism. 

It has no program nor any theoretical ideology either. There is only a cult of "leaders", and the bearers of the official banner themselves admit this. I saw it in Kovno, in Frankfurt am Main, in Brno, in Chernivtsi [Tshernowitz] and all over. In discussion meetings or just in interviews, after letting them criticize our heresy (high duties lead to higher living costs, England will not agree to agrarian reform, and the legion is militarism, etc. [that is, the Revisionist program]), I always asked them the same question: 

"Okay; let's assume that Revisionism is no good. But what do you propose — you, the majority of the 14th Congress? How will you provide markets for the sale of Palestinian goods? How are you going to get agricultural colonization off the ground, at prices of almost 20 pounds per dunam? And how will you ensure the protection of hundreds of scattered Jewish settlements with a garrison of 1,500 people? Please show me the program." 

This question always and everywhere acted in a magical fashion: half of the opponents became vague, the other half began to stutter or fall into abstract eloquence (in Brussels, one local talent answered my question with a speech about the theory of knowledge in connection with [Henri-Louise] Bergson’s system. Really.), and in the end a frank confession: “We don’t have a program in this sense, and it’s not our business. We have leaders, we trust them; they know what needs to be done and they will do it as soon as the opportunity arises.”

I am not discussing today the question of who these “leaders” are, what their human and political value is, and whether they have already twenty times, or at least once in their lives, presented the government with a demand for agrarian reform [the claim was that the local Ottoman land system inherited by Mandate Palestine as inefficient, destructive, and in need of reform such as the land tenure system]. We are not talking about these “leaders,” but about the psychology of the majority. It has now been completely and utterly reduced to the cult of individuals, and it manifests and proclaims it with all the grace of unprincipled and carefree cynicism. Programs, directions, beliefs are all worthless. The whole point is that A, B and C are at the head of the movement. They will do everything that is necessary and possible and if they don’t do something, it means it’s either not necessary or it's impossible.

This was once a case in a Balkan kingdom of parties, even directly named after the surnames of their 'tzaddiks': Rallists for G. Rally, Theotokists for G. Theotokis. What the difference between the programs was unknown and unimportant. Perhaps an even more vivid analogy can be found if you decide to take a walk through the annals of medieval Islam. The textbook says that Caliph Omar ordered the burning of the library of Alexandria, because if these scrolls say the same as in the Quran, then they are superfluous. And if they say something that did not occur to Mohammed, then they are harmful. Mohammed knew the whole truth and set it all out in the Quran, but the rest is unnecessary.

This is the psychology that was revealed at the 14th Congress, which now dominates the thinking amongst Zionist officials. To discuss it seriously is somehow awkward: it is outside the bounds of culture. Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss it, if only to disassociate ourselves from it.

II.

The cult of personality is now in great fashion everywhere. The Italian example has partly had an influence in this respect, which will probably continue to poison the atmosphere until it ends in inevitable shame. As for us, in Zionism, the English psychology and terminology, which many of us hurried to adopt, played a role in the same direction. As we know, the idiotic notion of "leader" is also of English origin. You hear phrases now like "it is the person, not the program, that counts."

Of course, this is not news in Jewish life. The old ghetto did not seem to know any other principle of orientation. The direction of the flock was determined unquestioningly by authority. There were two types of authority: of the "scholar" and of the "plutocrat" or gvir. The scholar knew the Talmud well, the gvir skillfully conducted his business.The congregation therefore believed that they could get all sorts of information about the governor and about the typhoid epidemic. When the "leader" changed his views, the flock also changed them. All this was not dangerous at that time, since there was no objective possibility at all to fight either the epidemic or the governor. Unfortunately, we have transferred the skills of the ghetto to Zionism — and not only in this one respect.

No one argues against the fact that personality can sometimes play a major role in history. If there had been no Napoleon or Garibaldi, not even Marx or even the Besht, Europe or, in particular, Jewry, would now be nothing like what they have actually become. There are, of course, "leaders" of parties. But personalities of this caliber do not arise on demand.They cannot be turned into a permanent institution; there is no such principle as "let there be a leader". And it is impossible to build a durable political system on this principle.

Moreover, no one anywhere is building a political system on this principle, with the exception of fascism and the three backwaters mentioned above: the Balkan kingdom, the old ghetto, and, unfortunately, the Zionist organization in its current composition. The English piously preserve the notion of "leader" simply out of habit, bowing to tradition, but in reality, when seriously needed, they have as little regard for this tradition as for all others. In elections to the lower house, they argue not about who is the best "leader"- Lloyd George, Macdonald, or Baldwin - but about which party has the most suitable program. It happens that the Conservatives win, although no one denies that Lloyd George has a real talent for leadership, and Baldwin is merely a middle-sized gentleman. And in France, parties win or fall quite regardless of whether the best "leader" is [Raymond] Poincaré or [Paul] Penlévé. It is the same - with one temporary exception - in every civilized country: the political struggle can proceed only along the lines of programs, without any reference to the personal genius of the representatives and secretaries.

Again, no one ever raises the question - except in the Middle Ages and in the provinces - that "if the opposition’s demands were reasonable, wouldn’t the current prime minister himself understand their rationality? After all, he’s so smart!" Civilized peoples have become accustomed to the idea that although Gladstone is smart and Disraeli is smart, and both "understand", yet they understand differently, and that is why they belong to different parties, and nothing can be done about it. Gladstone will not accept tariff reform, Disraeli does not believe in Home Rule. 

Therefore, the role of the opposition is not at all reduced to the fact that, without trying to convince a single convinced opponent, a mechanical majority removes the ruling party and takes its place. To do this, the opposition appeals to a non-partisan judge, i.e., to the mass of voters. And the duty of this mass in the elections is not to establish who is more talented, educated, tactful or effective - Disraeli or Gladstone - but to find out whether tariff reform is necessary or not, whether Home Rule is useful or harmful. The fair struggle of parties is anonymous by nature. This is the only way the masses in cultural societies understand their political duty. The Quran is a good book, Mohammed is a great prophet, but it does not follow from this that there is no truth outside the Quran and Mohammed.

III.

To take a different point of view means to get bogged down in a swamp of absurdities, and worse, in a quagmire of social disorder. If at the head of the Zionist movement there must necessarily be “personalities” possessing such and such personal qualities - and if these individuals must be preserved at all costs, regardless of their program - and if therefore the Congress, following the example of the 14th, must adapt its decisions not to its own moods, but to the leaders - then why do we have a struggle of opinions, why elections, why debates at the congress - and the congress itself? The entire Zionist community then turns into an unnecessary absurdity. A person or group who has a new thought must then simply present it to the "leaders". If the “leaders” reject it outright, then this is the end of the matter: there is no point in continuing to fight, there is no point in recruiting supporters, there is no point in speaking at the congress - after all, this is not in the Quran, which means the book will be burned, for Mohammed must remain a prophet under all conditions.

It becomes even more absurd when, in the end, new “leaders” will have to be chosen—which is inevitable in a long-lasting enterprise. We will choose them, then, again based on personal qualities: oratorical talent, knowledge of languages, manners, acquaintance with feudal rulers and local governors, those with “personal magnetism”, etc. If at the same time the city turns out to have voters have different favorites, it will be interesting to listen to this paperwork. How to measure, with objective persuasiveness, qualities completely immeasurable? In English, you can still arrange an exam. But where are the scales for such an essential detail as, say, "personal charm" as applied to the average type of the English Minister of the Colonies? I think it's superfluous to apologize for the lightness of my tone but strictly speaking, this whole "ideology" deserves nothing but mockery.

That is why I called the notion of a "leader" an idiotic notion. I repeat: the English themselves do not take it seriously but we believe in it with the fervor of a provincial who has entered a restaurant in the capital for the first time and bowed to the gilded doorman. In England, each party elects a representative and, according to the old custom, awards him the title him "leader". However, in reality, he is simply the chairman of the Central Committee. He maintains his post as long as he obeys the instructions of the party congress, and in case of disagreement, it is not the congress that abandons its views, but the chairman simply leaves. With us it is the other way around. One can't help but remember the saying: if you put him in a position to pray to God, he will bruise his forehead.

This is all about absurdities; but there are also ugly outrages. The mere fact that young people growing up in our country are indoctrinated with the rule: not to reason, not to move their brains, but to go where the god-inspired ones tell them to go - this alone is a public disgrace. The disgrace is the boom around individual names, the very injection of the term "leaders", which creates the impression that our movement is alive not with thousands of ordinary bearers of enthusiasm, not with the sweat of pioneers old and new, not with the blood spilled in Gallipoli, in the Jordan Valley and in Tel Hai, not with the pennies of ordinary people and the moral hard labor of those who collect these pennies, going from house to house - but is alive only thanks to the incidental talent of two or three individuals. 

But even worse ugliness will result if the opposition accepts all this clerical whistling as a dogma and also admits that "it's not about programs, but about personalities”. For then what can be done by those who, as honestly and sincerely as their admirers, believe neither in their divine inspiration, nor in their special talent, nor in the intellectual subtlety of their "leaders"? Instead of arguing about the benefits of agrarian reform, they will have to engage in blaspheming Mr. A. or Mr. V., while praising Mr. S., their own candidate. All this belongs in a bazaar, not in a decent movement.

In our time, in the European cultural scene, there is only one country where something similar is observed. Fascism, too, has no clear program - no such provisions and demands which would not be a rehash of what every other patriotic and bourgeois party has said a hundred times. That is why the program there is replaced by faith in a "leader." The latter concept is so alien to the Italian tradition that there was not even a suitable word for it in the everyday dictionary: we had to take the Latin "dux" and re-Italianize it into "duce". Henceforth, the truth is what the "leader" says, that is, what is not in the Quran is to be burned. But in Italy, at least, behind all this, there is a fighting temperament, youth, national pride. In our case, it is all used to justify the schutz judentum [lit.: Jews protected by the Crown who acted as go-betweens], or the abandonment of national ideology for the sake of attracting moneybags. And in Italy this blindness will end badly. In ours, it will be even worse, and sooner.

It is true that we do not have a physical club with which to subdue the opposition but we have surrogates of no less squalid and impure character. The most popular of these is simple slander. Those who deny the "leaders" are thereby declared to be opponents of the Keren-Hayesod [the funnding arm of the World Zionist Orgnaization]. Worse, they are said to advise Jews not to go to Palestine. They need to be "boycotted."

When a person from the opposition comes to Chișinău [formerly Kishinev], and he is greeted in the streets by a crowd of ten thousand people, the local Zionist Committee considers it its duty to announce somewhere in the Events section of the local newspaper that the committee in this meeting 'will not be participating'. (It is obvious that in a few years, if the executive will pass into other hands, and if Mr. Sokolov, then an opposition figure, will come to Chișinău to state his views, it then will be necessary to 'boycott' him). 

But there are worse subsitutes for truncheons. In one city, the pro-Revisionist secretary of the Zionist committee is removed from office. In another, the teacher at the Jewish gymnasium is offered an ultimatum: either to leave school or to abandon the role of chairman of the [new] activist group. Lackeyism and boorishness always go hand in hand. It is obviously impossible to defend an unprincipled position by pure means.

  

IV

But an assault on an unprincipled position can and should be carried out by pure means, i.e., principles, namely: 

1. The struggle within Zionism is to be conducted only on the basis of programs. Proper names cannot play any role in this. An honest program is essentially anonymous. 

2. Congress votes not for an Executive or against an Executive, but for this or that program. Only after this do they see whose name is signed under the winning program. No matter whose name it is - Wolfgang von Goethe or Ivan Bezrodny - its bearer is entrusted with drawing up the executive agenda. We will achieve this. And, judging by the ideological collapse that I now saw in the ranks of Zionist fascism from Riga to Bucharest, soon.

___________________

(1) Here's the first paragraph, as an example:

Фашисты сионизма. В. Жаботинский

Никакого другого имени для направления, господствующего теперь в официальном сионизме, не придумаешь. Программы у него нет, теоретической идеологии тоже; есть только культ «вождей», и носители официального знамени сами в этом сознаются. Я это видел в Ковне, во Франкфурте-на-Майне, в Брюнне, в Черновцах и повсюду. В дискуссионных собраниях или просто в собеседованиях, дав им покритиковать нашу ересь (высокие пошлины ведут к вздорожанию жизни, на аграрную реформу не согласится Англия, а легион есть милитаризм, и т. п.), я всегда задавал им один и тот же вопрос: «Хорошо; допустим, что ревизионизм никуда не годится. Но что же вы предлагаете — вы, большинство 14-го конгресса? Как вы-то обеспечите рынки для сбыта палестинских товаров? Как вы-то сдвинете с мертвой точки земледельческую колонизацию, при ценах чуть ли не по 20 фунтов за дунам? И как вы-то обеспечите защиту сотни с чем-то разбросанных еврейских поселков при гарнизоне в 1500 человек? Будьте любезны, предъявите программу». Вопрос этот всегда и всюду действовал магически: половина оппонентов стушевывалась, вторая половина начинала заикаться или впадать в отвлеченное красноречие (в Брюсселе один местный талант ответил на мой вопрос речью о теории познания в связи с системой Бергсона: факт), и в конце концов раздавалось откровенное признание: «Программы в этом смысле у нас нет, и не наше это дело. У нас есть вожди, мы им доверяем; они знают, что нужно сделать, и они это сделают, как только явится возможность».

^ 

Hebrew in Latin Characters

Ze'ev Jabotinsky enthusisasts know that one of his ideas was to have Hebrew appear in Latin characters. Joseph Nedava termed it the Latinization of the Hebrew script. He wrote a book, called Taryag Millim, to raise interest. In 1931, JTA reported:

The substitution of Latin characters in the Hebrew language, too, has been urged, notably, by Mr. Ittamar Ben Avi, the son of Eliezer Ben Jahuda, the Hebrew lexicographer, and Mr. Vladimir Jabotinsky. He was sure, Mr. Jabotinsky has written, that the movement would have a great influence on the development of Hebrew by enabling many people who could not read the present Hebrew script to read Hebrew books and papers. Efforts in this direction, he said, have also been made by Dr. Bodenheimer in Cologne and by the Hebrew poet, Dr. Jacob Cohen.

Here is an example, in Jabotinsky's handwriting from 1928, notes he wrote in Hebrew Latin characters:

What I didn't know is that a periodical appeared in Tel Aviv, named Deror that attempted to put this into actual practice. A page:

It wasn't a success and the initiative never gained traction. ^

On Jabotinsky's Views on Arabs

From here, Shlomo Avineri:

"In connection with the central position of national existence in Jabotinsky’s theoretical concept, his approach to the position of Zionism in the Arab question is especially interesting. And we repeat, we are not interested in tactical positions, but in the question of principle, and here Jabotinsky inevitably faces a very difficult problem.

On the one hand, one might believe that a person like Jabotinsky, who saw in nationalism, in national characteristics, in the national desire to separate from others and in national pride, the focus of state and historical development, would be attentive to the aspirations of Arab-Palestinian nationalism. One who did not shy away from Ukrainian nationalism with its anti-Semitic manifestations, as we saw above, who was intellectually interested in Serbs, Croats and Albanians with their national rights, who believed that Estonian choirs testify to the strength of the national feeling seething in the Estonian people , - from such a person one could expect that, having come to analyze the Middle Eastern reality, he would try to find a place for Arab nationalism - in Palestine and in neighboring countries - in the overall picture of his worldview.

But that did not happen. Anyone who wants to find in Jabotinsky an attempt to resolve this issue will be disappointed. The fundamental decision here was not easy for any of the Zionist thinkers, but perhaps it could have been expected from such a thinker as Jabotinsky, in whose philosophy nationalism, as a universal phenomenon, occupied such a central place. However, Arab nationalism is discussed infrequently and in passing in his writings, and anyone who detects a considerable amount of disdain for the Arabs in this limited material would be right.

True, Jabotinsky, with his moral conviction, stood for the fact that in the future Jewish state, where the Arabs would be a minority, they would receive full civil rights as individuals. But a continuous thread runs through all of Jabotinsky’s literary and political activities: he does not seem to notice the Arabs as a serious political, social or cultural factor.

Once again, this seems to be driven not by tactical considerations or an attempt to evade a question that may be difficult to answer, but by something deeper: at the heart of this position is Jabotinsky's concept of the superiority of European culture; therefore, he views Zionism as an expression of this cultural power of Europe. In his writings, he resolutely rejects the idealization of the East or the Arab world, and in the article “Fashion for Arabesques” (1927) he argues with those participants in the Zionist movement who strive to see in the return to Zion also a return of the Jewish people to their origins - to the East. The Jewish people, Jabotinsky argues, are a European people, their culture took root in Europe, European culture itself is based on elements to which the people of Israel contributed from the best of their heritage, and there, in the West, and not in the East, the place of Israel as a people . According to Jabotinsky, this also applies to the Sephardi community: “Our origins from Asia, of course, are not proof. All of Central Europe is filled with races that also came from Asia - and much later than us.

All Ashkenazi Jews and perhaps half of the Sephardic Jews have lived in Europe for almost two thousand years. Enough time to take root spiritually.

Even more important is the other side of the issue: we not only lived in Europe for many centuries, we not only learned from Europe: we, the Jews, are one of those peoples who created European culture, and one of the most important among them...

The spiritual atmosphere in Europe is ours, we have the same right to it as the Germans, English, Italians and French: the “copyright” right. And in Eretz Israel this creativity of ours will continue... Nordau said it well: we are going to Palestine to push the moral limits of Europe to the Euphrates River" [5] .

In the same year (1927), Jabotinsky wrote a long article entitled “Merchants of the Spirit,” in which he tries to prove that the Arab medieval culture was, in essence, not Arab, and not even Muslim, and that most of the famous names in the field of thought in the Arab world of the Middle Ages belongs to the Syrians, Jews, Persians, etc. - and not to the Arabs themselves. It is clear that the main question here is not the historical correctness of such a definition, which itself is historical and conditioned by time; It is interesting that the same thinker who, when discussing Ukrainian nationalism, carefully emphasizes the element of difference between Ukrainians and Great Russians, does the opposite when discussing Arab culture [6] .

The same question finds artistic expression in the story “Zhidenok”, which appeared in a collection in Russian published by Zhabotinsky in 1930.

Jabotinsky himself is aware that the story can be called “obviously chauvinistic.” The main story is a detailed story about a Jewish teenager in one of the settlements of Eretz Israel, proving how much better he knows Arab culture and the geography of the Middle East than all the students of the village Arab school, which is known as “an amazing school: six classes, geographical maps and teacher from students of Cairo Al-Azgar University.” The story may be trivial, but the lesson that Jabotinsky wants to draw from it is clear, especially since the Jewish teenager in the story sums up the goals of this education in a very simple form: “The students must learn two branches of knowledge: to speak Hebrew and to beat face."

Jabotinsky gives this assessment not only to the Arabs, but also to Islam in general. In the article “Islam” (1924), Jabotinsky points out a number of cases in which a handful of European soldiers managed to defeat vastly superior Arab or Muslim forces. The Italian victory over the Senu Sith in 1911 in Tripoli, the victory of the French expeditionary force over Faisal in Damascus in 1920 - all this serves as decisive proof for Jabotinsky of the significant superiority of the West.

“I am not writing this to humiliate or ridicule the Arabs; I have no doubt about their military valor... In our time, war is a scientific and financial matter; backward peoples cannot do it.”

This backwardness is not only a matter of time, according to Jabotinsky, as far as the Muslim world is concerned. “Its real power in the future will be even less than before,” he says, objecting in particular to those who believed that Britain was forced to reckon with the Arab and Muslim factor in its Middle East policy. The Muslim world does not represent—and will not represent—a political force, as Jabotinsky says in the same article: “220 million people or even more profess Islam; but “Islam” as an integral factor in international relations does not exist... in the same way it is possible now, as it was possible a hundred years ago, to bring a conflict with any Muslim people to any end, without risking any complications of a pan-Islamic nature... As a political fist … Islam does not exist.”

If this concept defines Jabotinsky's position in assessing Arab nationalism, then it is clear that his conclusions regarding the demands of the “Palestinian” Arabs are unambiguous. Testifying before the British Royal Commission on Palestine (Peel Commission) in 1937, Jabotinsky demands the establishment of a Jewish state throughout the land of Israel in accordance with the basic principles of the revisionist movement and continues: “We unanimously affirm that the economic situation of the Arabs in the country is in the period of Jewish settlement, and thanks to Jewish settlement, is the envy of neighboring Arab countries to such an extent that Arabs from these countries show a clear tendency to migrate to Palestine. And I have already shown you that, in our opinion, there is no need to oust the Arabs. On the contrary, we mean that Palestine on both sides of the Jordan will accommodate both the Arabs and their descendants and many millions of Jews. I do not deny that in the course of this process the Arabs will inevitably become a minority in Palestine. However, I deny that this will cause them suffering. This is not a misery for any race or nation if it already has so many nation-states and many more nation-states will be added to them in the future. One part, one branch of this race, and by no means the most significant, will join the state belonging to others in order to live in it... This is a completely normal thing, and there is no “suffering” in it.”

Note that Jabotinsky does not argue that, compared with the Jewish claims to Eretz Israel, the Arab claims are less valid or that, compared with the possibility of the Jews remaining in the minority, the situation in which part of the Arab nation will be a minority in the Jewish state will be a lesser disaster and will entail less hardship.

For him, turning the Arabs in Palestine into a minority will not cause them any trouble at all. Personal rights, of course, will be granted to them - but on a national level they have no claims. Here the right is not opposed to the right and 13* 387 claims - claims, as Weizmann and his like-minded people saw it. From Jabotinsky’s point of view, everything that was once said about Jews in the Diaspora can also be said about Arabs in Palestine: the Arabs of this country as individuals have everything, but as a collective nothing."

^

Arguing in the London Times over Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall"

On November 2 my response letter was published in the London Times:

The letter to which I replied is here:

Ze'ev Jabotinsky's article, The Iron Wall, translated into English, is here.

Avi Shlaim wrote:

Toward the end of the article Jabotinsky went to some length to dispel any impression his analysis might have given that he despaired of the prospect of reaching an agreement with the Arabs of Palestine:

I do not mean to assert that no agreement whatever is possible with the Arabs of the Land of Israel. But a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rabble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they have given up all hope of getting rid of alien settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogans "No, never" lose their influence, and only then will their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against pushing them out, and equality of civil and national rights.

The article concluded with a profession of faith that peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine would be possible, but only as a result of the construction of an impregnable wall:

It is my hope and belief that we will then offer them guarantees that will satisfy them and that both peoples will live in peace as good neighbors. But the sole way to such an agreement is through the iron wall, that is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to achieve a settlement in the future is total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement in the present.

Moderate Zionists criticized the article, especially on the grounds that it was written from an immoral standpoint. Jabotinsky therefore wrote a second article, entitled "The Morality of the Iron Wall," in which he turned the tables on his critics. From the point of view of morality, he held, there were two possibilities: either Zionism was a positive phenomenon, or it was negative. This question required an answer before one became a Zionist. And all of them had indeed concluded that Zionism was a positive force, a moral movement with justice on its side. Now, "if the cause is just, justice must triumph, without regard to the assent or dissent of anyone else."

^

Jabotinsky, Zionism and ... Mormonism

From "Missouri Zion, Missouri Intifada: Mormonism, Zionism and the Palestine Conflict" by Graham St. John Stott, published in Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Edinburgh University Press, Volume 6, Number 1, May 2007:

^

An Appreciation of Jabotinsky

 From this appreciation of Ze'ev Jabotinsky of Vladimir Frenkel:

"Jabotinsky:

“We have nothing to apologize for. We are a people, like all peoples; we have no pretensions to be better. As one of the first conditions for equality, we demand that we recognize the right to have our scoundrels, just like other peoples have them.

This is from the article "Instead of Apology", written back in 1911. It is clear that there is not a word about the future Jewish state. Of course, Jabotinsky does not “dream” about his own criminals - he simply recognizes the possibility of their presence in his people, as in any other people, and does not consider that this is a tragedy, that it is necessary to justify himself to someone because of this. In fact, the article was devoted to the "Beilis case" and the "blood libel", but its problems are much broader, and therefore it is interesting and relevant for us now.

Jabotinsky raises the question: why, in fact, do we Jews behave so strangely? He writes:

“For several years now, Jews in Russia have been sitting tightly in the dock. It's not their fault. But here's what is undeniably their fault: they behave like defendants. We make excuses all the time. […] Tell me, friends, aren't you tired of this rigmarole yet? […] Who are we to justify ourselves before them, who are they to interrogate us? What is the point in all this comedy of the trial of an entire people, where the verdict is known in advance? With what joy should we willingly participate in this comedy, consecrate the vile procedure of mockery with our defensive speeches? Our defense is useless and hopeless, the enemies will not believe, the indifferent will not listen. Apologies have outlived their time.

It is useful to re-read Jabotinsky. It's like it's written now. Helpful and sad. For the same reason. And it’s not so much that the world has not changed in relation to the Jews: they are still judging a whole nation, now a whole state, they are no longer judging in a figurative sense, but for real - shamelessness has gone so far . But that's not the point. This was to be expected. The fact is that the Jews themselves have not changed. Jabotinsky wrote that instead of excuses, at least contempt is necessary. Otherwise, disaster cannot be avoided.

“Our habit of constantly and diligently reporting to all sorts of rabble has already brought us great harm and will bring even more.”

Now the Jews have a state. But the habit remained. I would still formulate this habit differently: an irrepressible and stupid desire to appear before the whole world as “good” and the fear of being branded as “bad”. It has become commonplace to say that Israel does almost no explanatory work in the world media, that we lost the information war without even starting it. Which, in general, is true. Less indisputable is the assertion that it is precisely this, i.e. ignorance, and explains the hostile attitude towards Israel in European countries. But let's not be naive.

An adult is quite capable of distinguishing terror from defense, bandits from soldiers and even more so from civilians, rioters from demonstrators. If he can't , then he doesn't want to. So is it worth it to "explain" something?

The trouble is that when the Jews nevertheless begin to explain something, they still, as in the days of Jabotinsky, not so much explain as justify themselves: no, we are not Nazis, no, we do not have Auschwitz. What the hell! When a person speaks vile things against Israel, he does it not from “ignorance”, but from the fact that he wants to say an abomination, i.e. from hate. “They don’t like us not because all sorts of accusations have been leveled at us: they are accusing us because they don’t like us,” this idea clearly formulated by Jabotinsky should become the standard of our attitude towards everyone who likes to loosen their tongues, whether they are public figures, foreign ministers or conscienceless Nobel laureates.

Do not make excuses where you need to use power: in the time of Jabotinsky we did not yet have such an opportunity. What kind of power? Well, at least personally ban these gentlemen from entering Israel until the end of their lives. It won't make them any better, but at least others will hold their tongues. But no, we cannot do that, we are humanists, i.e., as Jabotinsky wrote, we curry favor with all sorts of rabble.

Here is Jabotinsky's first lesson: the woeful realization that the Jewish people lack an elementary sense of their own dignity. Of course, one can understand that the irresistible desire to appear "good" in front of the whole world was established among the Jews in the Diaspora, during the centuries when Jews everywhere and everywhere were in the minority, hated and often persecuted. It's like that. But the sad thing is that the same psychology has been preserved in their recreated country, and not even among the repatriates, but among the native Israelis.

Here the leader of some Islamic country (yes, already Islamic, although not so long ago - secular), with which Israel has diplomatic relations, does nothing but insult Israel. But what about Israel? But nothing - although any other country would at least recall its ambassador "for consultations."

So sometimes you think that if it is easier to take a girl out of a village than a village out of a girl, then it is just as easier to take a Jew out of the galut than the galut psychology - even from his descendants on their own land. Perhaps this psychology - pleasing to everyone - protected the Jews in the Diaspora, at least sometimes, but in its own state it is mortally dangerous. It seems that Jabotinsky foresaw this. And it is precisely for this that he deserved the dislike of his contemporaries, his people.

But really, why was Jabotinsky so hated by people who were by no means stupid or evil? Why does another name of his evoke an unreasonably nervous reaction even now? If we talk about his views - he was an undoubted liberal of the European persuasion, a supporter of all conceivable rights and freedoms, even, perhaps, a left-wing liberal. He even shared other delusions of his time, say, socialist ones, but at that time it was impossible for a person of the “progressive” camp to have a negative attitude towards socialist ideas. After all, one had to be a professional economist, like Boris Brutskus, in order to see even then the destructiveness of the ideas of socialism precisely for the economy."

"...“The political naivete of a Jew is fabulous and incredible,” Jabotinsky wrote, “ he does not understand the simple rule that you can never “go forward” to someone who does not want to go towards you.” I suspect that the word "naivety" was used here by Jabotinsky out of intellectual courtesy, it would be better to say - stupidity.

This is another lesson of Jabotinsky: to see things as they are, without indulging in illusions. It would seem simple, but it is, nevertheless, the most difficult. Whatever Jabotinsky wrote about, he struggled with the Jewish ability to create illusions that drove him to despair and never give them up, even at the cost of national and personal self-humiliation. Illusions that they will love us: we just need to better explain that we are good. Illusions that someone will protect our interests while we protect others, etc.

It seems to me that Jabotinsky suspected that there is some kind of hidden vice in the Jewish people, which simply will not allow this people to revive their country and their state. 

^

When Siegfried Sassoon was in Palestine at the Same Time as Jabotinsky

Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) was a scion to the wealthy India Jewish merchant family on his father's side with his mother being Anglican, of the Thornycroft farmers whose progeny had turned to becoming sculptors, painters and engineers. He grew up in rural Kent yet his father abandoned the family before Siegfried was five. His education was at Cambridge although he did not formally finish. He played sports, wrote poetry and developed into a homosexual.

He enthusiastically enlisted in the army when war was delcared but his war peorty became predominately critical with biting satire. While convalescing from a wound received at the Arras batle, he came in close contact with a pacifist circle and a protest of his was read out in Parliament in late July 1917 and published in The Times the following day.

And then, he returned to service and

In November 1917, Sassoon was passed fit for service. He was sent to Ireland where he served until February 1918 and was then transferred to Palestine as part of General Allenby’s army. He hated it there and described Jerusalem as ‘not a very holy-looking place’ and referred to the natives as ‘Hebrews’. His vague Jewish connections through his father meant nothing to him. After three months in Palestine, Sassoon returned to the Western Front. 

Sassoon arrived in Palestine on 12 March 1918, some 3 months after Jerusalem had surrendered to Allenby. Sassoon’s unit, the 25th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was stationed north of Ramalleh, near the Jerusalem–Nablus road; by the time Sassoon reached Palestine the unit was engaged in holding the recently-secured line.

According to Siegfried Sassoon and Palestine, these lines:

On the rock-strewn hills I heard

The anger of guns that shook

Echoes along the glen.

In my heart was the song of a bird,

And the sorrowless tale of the brook,

And scorn for the deeds of men.

were written in Palestine, where he was posted for a little over a month in the spring of 1918. 

The details:

On a warm and pleasant morning in March 1918, Sassoon arrived in Gaza on a cattle truck. He had traveled all night with 12 other officers (of the 25th Royal Welch Fusiliers) from base camp in Kantara, Egypt, and was relieved to escape the ragtime tunes and tiresome ribaldry of the mess. From Gaza, whose “fine hills” reminded him of Scotland, he proceeded through almond orchards and olive trees to Ludd, the railhead where soldiers and war supplies arrived and departed. Ludd’s proper name was al-Ludd, an Arabic name because it was then a Palestinian town full of Arabs...

...From al-Ludd, Sassoon and company continued to their final destination — a hilltop village with “dusky, narrow” streets eight miles northwest of Jerusalem. Captured from “Johnny Turk” barely two months earlier and turned into the division headquarters, it was called Ramallah. There was no sound of artillery here, noted Sassoon, and the silent landscape, “hoary in the twilight,” seemed infused with a sad, lonesome air. Few knew then that the document birthing its violent future had already been written....

Jabotinsky, with his 38th Royal Fusieliers were stationed just north at Abuein. 

Sassoon was perhaps the most widely read soldier-poet in England, famous for poems that attacked the country’s incompetent, rum-flushed generals and described in pitiless detail the plight of millions of soldiers stuck in the “plastering slime” of rat-infested trenches. He was even more notorious for bravely protesting the prolongation of the war in a statement that was read out in the House of Commons on July 30, 1917, and published in The Times...

The 31-year-old Sassoon thus arrived in Palestine flushed with celebrity and notoriety. Palestine, he knew, was a “warm-climate sideshow,” and he smarted at the thought of being shunted to guard duty. By the time he arrived, the three Gaza wars had been fought and Jerusalem stormed and won from the Turks by the famous General Edmund Allenby, who, out of respect, dismounted and entered the holy city on foot. Since the action now was mostly defensive — safeguarding the Suez Canal and the oil deposits of the Persian Gulf — Sassoon spent most of his time mending roads littered with the stinking corpses of camels and trampled to “liquid mud” by ambulances and long lines of gray donkeys loaded with army blankets. It was dull, plodding work. He consoled himself by reading War and Peace, but his heavy cold and the incessant rain only worsened his mood. What he did not foresee was how deeply he would fall in love with the natural beauty of Palestine, and how loath he would be to return to the soul-deadening trenches of France when the “ghastly news” arrived that the Germans had broken through Arras.

Slowly, the landscape revealed itself to him, “and what had seemed a cruel, desolate, unhappy region, was now full of a shy and lovely austerity.” Sassoon’s diary — which has just been published online for the first time by the Cambridge University Library — ripples with mentions of wildflowers and croaking frogs, “rocks older than Jerusalem,” and young green wheat against the reddish, stony slopes. He watched the gurgling brown wadis of Ramallah and the fig trees turn into a “green mist.” He wandered the hills bird-watching, counted over 50 different species, and was thrilled when a bulbul gave him “a charming fantasia on the flute.” One day he saw a gazelle trot quietly away and envied it: “a free creature.” An Arab gardener introduced him to “ascadinias” (loquat), and he tramped through “a tangle of huge golden daisies — knee-deep and solid gold, as if Midas had been walking there.” On one serene ramble outside Ramallah he wrote, “I escaped from the war completely for four hours.”

The “anger of guns” he refers to in the sonnet quoted above, which he titled “In Palestine,” was more distant soundtrack than immediate menace. Fashioned after Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” its first stanza tells of thyme-scented hills and rills going their way. It may not be one of his best poems, but it fuses his prewar melodic pastoral style with his bitter contempt of war. Before the war, Sassoon had been, in his own description, “a brainless fox-hunter,” who played cricket and self-published his mediocre poetry. It was the horrors of the Somme that gouged the treacle from his verse and honed him into a fine poet. Though he faced no direct fighting in Palestine, everywhere around him was the grim business of war. “C’est la guerre — in an Old Testament environment,” he noted drily.

...In Sassoon’s scorching parable, Adam stands in for the cynical old politicians who watch their young kill one another. Described as “a brown old vulture in the rain,” Adam ponders over the character of his two sons. He admires Cain, who is “Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire,” and despises Abel, “soft and fair — / A lover with disaster in his face.” Adam even justifies Cain’s murdering his own brother because even murder is more tolerable than weakness: “Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace?” In the end, murder only begets murder, and the vulture finds both his “lovely sons were dead.” What makes this poem a moral grenade is its self-awareness. Sassoon knew that there were bits of Cain and Abel tussling inside him. At the start of the war, he had been a soldier filled with bloodlust, and made quite a reputation for himself for his revenge killings of Germans. But he had also sickened of the slaughter and campaigned for it to stop. In Sassoon’s case, Abel finally won, but the current war, with its far more ancient and complex metabolism, is inevitably stamped with the mark of Cain.

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