Political Movement - Zionism - Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a right wing
tendency within the Zionist movement. The ideology was developed by
Ze'ev Jabotinsky who advocated a "revision" of the "practical Zionism"
of David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, which was focused on independent
settlement of Eretz Yisrael. Revisionist Zionism was instead centered on
a vision of "political Zionism", which Jabotinsky regarded as following
the legacy of Theodore Herzl, Zionism's founder.
In its early years, and under Jabotinsky's leadership, Revisionist
Zionism was focused on gaining British aid for settlement. Later,
Revisionist groups independent of Jabotinsky's leadership, conducted
campaigns of violence against the British authorities in Mandate of
Palestine to drive them out and establish a Jewish state.
Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism
After World War One, Jabotinsky was elected to the first legislative
assembly in the Yishuv, and in 1921 he was elected to the Executive
Council of the World Zionist Organization. He quit the latter group in
1923, however, due to differences of opinion with its chairman, Chaim
Weizmann, and established the Revisionist Party. In 1925, Jabotinsky
formed the Revisionist Zionist Alliance, in the World Zionist Congress
to advocate his views, which included increased cooperation with Britain
on transforming the entire British Mandate of Palestine on both 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. A staunch anglophile, 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 (later known as the World
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 comprised of
General Zionists, who were in the majority, followers of Jabotinisky,
who came in a close second, and Labour Zionists, led by David Ben
Gurion, who compromised 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 a need to establish a base in the Yishuv,
and developed a vision to guide the Revisionist movement and the new
Jewish society on the 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 Labor Zionists would attract the support of the General
Zionists.
In line with this thinking, the Revisionists transplanted into the
Yishuv their own youth movement, Betar. They also set up a paramilitary
group, Irgun, a labor union, the National Labour Federation, and their
own health services. The latter were intended to counteract the
increasing hegemony of Labour Zionism over community services via the
Histadrut and address the refusal of the Histadrut to make its services
available to Revisionist Party members.
Irgun: Origin and Activities
The Irgun was derived from the Betar youth movement, which had by the
1940s transplanted many of its members from Europe and America to the
Yishuv. The movement, now acting autonomously from the HaZohar
leadership in Poland, decided to organize locally, as its small
membership was increasingly overshadowed by Labour Zionists, who were
predominantly focused on settling the land. While Jabotinsky continued
to lobby the British Empire, the Irgun, under the leadership of people
such as David Raziel and later Menachem Begin, fought politically
against the Labour Zionists and militarily against the British for the
establishment of a Jewish state, independent of any orders from
Jabotinsky.
Lehi: Origin and Activities
The national-messianic movement, called Lehi and nicknamed the "Stern
Gang" by the British, was led by Avraham "Yair" Stern. Lehi was founded
by Stern in 1940 as an offshoot from Irgun, and was initially named
Irgun Zvai Leumi be-Yisrael (National Military Organization in Israel or
NMO). The group openly described itself as terrorist. Following Stern's
controversial death in 1942, and the arrest of many of its members, the
group went into eclipse until it was reformed as "Lehi" under a
triumvirate of Israel Eldad, Natan Yellin-Mor, and Yitzhak Shamir.
Shamir became the Prime Minister of Israel forty years later. Lehi was
guided by spiritual and philosophical leaders Abba Achimeir and Uri Zvi
Greenberg.
NMO and to a lesser extent Lehi, were was influenced by the romantic
nationalism of Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian fascism,
and the ideas of Nietzsche. Its goal was to establish a corporatist and
religious society. The movement's activities were independent of any
Diaspora leadership.
While the Irgun stopped its activities against the British during World
War Two, Lehi continued guerilla warfare against the British
authorities. It considered the British rule of Mandatory Palestine to be
an illegal occupation, and concentrated its attacks mainly against
British targets (unlike the other underground movements, which were also
involved in fighting against Arab paramilitary groups).
In 1940 and 1941, NMO proposed intervening in the Second World War on
the side of Nazi Germany[1] to attain their help in expelling Britain
from Mandate Palestine and to offer their assistance in "evacuating" the
Jews of Europe arguing that "common interests could exist between the
establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German
concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they
are embodied by the NMO." Late in 1940, the NMO representative Naftali
Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met the German official Werner
Otto von Hentig and delivered a letter from NMO offering to "actively
take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for German support for
"the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and
totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich". Von Hentig
forwarded the letter to the German embassy in Ankara, but there is no
record of any official response. Lehi tried to establish contact with
the Germans again in December 1941, also apparently without success.
Lehi prisoners captured by the British generally refused to present a
defence when brought to trial in British courts. They would only read
out statements in which they declared that the court, representing an
occupying force, had no jurisdiction over them. For the same reason,
Lehi prisoners refused to plea for amnesty, even when it was clear that
this would have them spared from the death penalty. In one case two Lehi
men killed themselves in prison to deprive the British of the ability to
hang them.
Tensions between the Irgun and Lehi simmered until the two groups forged
an alliance during the Israeli War of Independence.
Revisionist Zionism: Ideology
Ideologically, Revisionism advocated the creation of a Jewish state on
both sides of the Jordan River, i.e. a state which would include all or
part of the modern state of Jordan. All three streams, Centrists who
advocated a British style liberal democracy, and the streams who would
become Irgun and Lehi, supported Jewish settlement on both sides of the
river (and so did some parts of Labour Zionism, such as Ben Gurion's
Mapai party), but in many cases, differed on how this would be achieved.
Jabotinsky wanted to gain the help of Britain, while Lehi and the Irgun
wanted to conquer both sides independently of the British. The Irgun
stream of Revisionism opposed power-sharing with Arabs. Jabotinsky's
statements were ambiguous on the topic of "transfer." 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. Most
Zionist groups favored, tacitly, at least a partial transfer of the Arab
population out of Mandatory Palestine in order to ensure a Jewish
majority.
National-messianism vs. Jewish nationalism
Up to 1933, a number of leaders from the national-messianic wing of
Revisionism were inspired by the fascist movement of Benito Mussolini.
These leaders, such as Abba Achimeir were attracted to fascism for its
staunch anti-communism and its focus on rebuilding the glory of the
past, which national-messianists such as Uri Zvi Greenberg felt had much
connection to their view of what the Revisionist movement should be.
Abba Achimeir's ideology was based in Oswald Spengler's monumental study
on the decline of the West, but his Zionist orientation caused him to
adapt its ultimate conclusions. Achimeir's basic assumption was that
liberal bourgeois European culture was degenerate, and deeply eroded
from within by an excess of liberalism and individualism. Socialism and
communism were portrayed as "overcivilized" ideologies. Fascism on the
other hand, like Zionism, was a return to the roots of the national
culture and the historical past. According to Achimeir, Italian Fascism
was not anti-Semitic, whereas communist ideology and praxis were
intrinsically anti-Semitic: in his view, Communism was anti-Zionism,
Fascism was not.
He also developed a favorable attitude toward fascist praxis and its
psycho-politics, such as the principle of the all powerful leader, the
use of propaganda to to generate a spirit of heroism and duty to the
homeland, and the cultivation of youthful vitality (as manifested in the
fascist youth movements). Achimeir joined the Revisionist movement in
1930, but before joining he wrote a regular column entitled "From the
Notebook of a Fascist" in the unaffiliated but pro-Revisionist magazine
Doar Hayom. He crafted his pro-fascistic views in these columns, and
also wrote an article in 1928 titled "On the Arrival of Our Duce" to
celebrate Jabotinsky's visit to Palestine, and propose a new direction
for the Revisionist movement, more in line with Achimeir's views. (Segev,
Tom, The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust pg 23.)
When Achimeir was on trial in 1932 for having disrupted a public lecture
at Hebrew University, his lawyer, Zvi Eliahu Cohen, argued "Were it not
for Hitler's anti-Semitism, we would not oppose his ideology. Hitler
saved Germany.' This was not an unconsidered outburst". An editiorial in
the Revisionist newspaper Hazit Haam praised Cohen's "brilliant speech."
It continued, that "Social Democrats of all stripes believe that
Hitler's movement is an empty shell (but) we believe that there is both
a shell and a kernel. The anti-Semitic shell is to be discarded, but not
the anti-Marxist kernel. The Revisionists would fight the Nazis only to
the extent that they were anti-Semites."(Segev, Tom, The Seventh
Million: Israelis and the Holocaust pg 23).
In 1933, when Hitler came to power the newspaper, whose editors were
Revisionist Party members, praised Nazism as a German national
liberation movement and said that Hitler had saved Germany from
Communism. Jabotinsky responded by threatening to have the newspaper's
editors expelled if they repeated such "kow-towing" to Hitler. (Schechtman,
Fighter and Prophet, p.216.)
The national messianist wing (which inspired Lehi) differed from the
ideological vision of Jabotinsky to the extent that on August 9, 1932,
Jabotinsky wrote to tell Abba Achimeir that his romantic ideas and the
zeal of his followers were considered excessive. Ha-Zohar, he wrote, was
a democratic political movement of a patrician rather than populist or
Romantic kind. As a consequence, he argued, the behavior of Achimeir and
his friends threatened Jabotinsky's own movement. He also argued that if
Achimeir's views were indeed similar to those which he expressed in his
articles and letters, there was no room for the two of them in the same
political camp.
Irgun to Likud
The Irgun largely followed the Centrists' ideals but with a much more
irredentisticly inclined, hawkish outlook toward Britain's involvement
in the Mandate, and an ardently nationalist vision pertaining to 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 by absorbing the centrist General
Zionists. In 1977 the new Likud Party, a right wing coalition dominated
by the Revisionist Herut/Gahal, came to power and has been an important
force in Israeli politics ever since. In the decades since first taking
power, particularly in the last decade, Likud has undergone a number of
splits to its right, including the 1998 departure of Benny Begin, son of
Herut founder Menachem Begin. Although the party platform has been
consistent with Revisionist ideology, most supporters believe that Prime
Ministers from the party have consistenly deviated from what many see is
their mandate.
The National Union and other parties to Likud's right now claim that
they are the true representatives of Revisionist Zionism, and that Likud
has abandoned its ideology.
While the initial core group of Likud leaders such as Israeli Prime
Ministers Begin and Yitzhak Shamir came from Likud's Herut faction,
later leaders, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon have come
from or moved to the "pragmatic" Revisionist wing.
Criticism
On December 4, 1948, the New York Times published a letter to the editor
signed by over two dozen prominent Jews condemning Menachem Begin and
his Herut party on the occasion of Begin's visit to New York City.
Comparing Revisionist Zionism to "Nazi and fascist parties", the letter,
signed by individuals including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and
Sidney Hook began:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the
emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party”
(Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization,
methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist
parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former
Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in
Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United
States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American
support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement
political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States.
Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome
his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout
the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and
perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he
represents. (source: NY Times, December 4, 1948).
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism
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