A History of Zionism (64 page)

†
Among leading members of Hapoel Hatzair who subsequently attained prominence in the Zionist movement and the state of Israel were Yosef Sprinzak, speaker of the Knesset; Levi Eshkol, prime minister after Ben Gurion; and Eliezer Kaplan.

*
Y. Yaner, quoted in Even Shoshan,
loc. cit.
vol. 2, p. 13.

*
Salman Shazar was born in 1889 and Levi Eshkol, one of the youngest members of the second aliya, who arrived only shortly before the First World War, in 1895.

†
According to a study by Y. Yorni about the social structure of the second aliya, about 70 per cent of its members hailed from small towns. 42 per cent did not know Hebrew when they first arrived in Palestine (in D. Darpi (ed.),
Hazionut
, Tel Aviv, 1970, p. 210
et seq.
)

*
They counted relatively few women, even though the full equality of the sexes was axiomatic among them.

†
Golda Meir was for a short time after her arrival in Palestine a member of Merhavia.

*
See, for instance, S. Shazar’s obituary in
Or Ishim
, vol. 2, Jerusalem, 1963, pp. 130-1.

*
According to Gorni, the second aliya was not
per se
an elite. But the author also notes that of the twenty members of the Mapai executive committee in 1930, sixteen had come to Palestine before 1914.

*
Chaim Arlosoroff, in
Pirke Hapoel Hatzair
, vol. 2, Tel Aviv, 1938, p. 162.

†
For a Socialist appraisal of the fourth aliya, see M. Braslavski;
Tnuat hapoalim ha’eretz israelit
, Tel Aviv, 1956, vol. 2, p. 16
et seq.

*
See his articles ‘Basta’ and ‘Vrag Rabotchikh’, in
Rassvet
, 28 June and 2 August 1925.

*
W. Preuss, op. cit., p. 78. Even Shoshan,
loc. cit.
, vol. 2, p. 256
et seq.

†
D. Ben Gurion,
Mema’amad le’am
, Tel Aviv, 1933,
passim.

*
On the struggle between revisionism and labour Zionism, see D. Den Gurion,
Tnuat hapoalim veharevisionismus
, Tel Aviv, 1933; Ch. Ben Meir,
Harevisionism, ssakana le’am
, Tel Aviv, 1938; Eliezer Liebenstein,
Wo steht der Revisionismus
?, Berlin, 1934.

*
The first kibbutz to exceed this milestone was Yagur, with 1,007 inhabitants in 1941, but it was soon overtaken by Givat Brenner.

*
Viteles,
A History of the Co-operative Movement in Israel
, vol. 2, p. 50.

*
Described in detail in Dan Pines,
Hehalutz bekur hamahpecha
, Tel Aviv, 1938.

*
See Even Shoshan,
loc. cit.
, vol. 2, p. 143
et seq.
; vol. 3, p. 21
et seq.
for the activities of the Hehalutz.

*
Cf. P. Perchav,
Toldot tnuat hapoalim be’eretz Israel
, Merhavia, 1967, p. 63
et seq.

7
IN BLOOD AND FIRE:
JABOTINSKY AND
REVISIONISM

Between the two world wars the existence of the Zionist movement was imperilled by bitter internal strife. Whatever its other qualities, the movement had never distinguished itself by a high degree of unity within its ranks. Even while the going was good there had been a great deal of dissension, and at a time of crisis Zionism, weakened by conflict, was torn in different directions. At the time of the Balfour Declaration and for some years thereafter a state of euphoria had prevailed. Few were the Zionists who did not believe that the messianic age was at hand, that within the near future a Jewish commonwealth would emerge in Palestine in which hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Jews would find their home.
Altneuland
, the idyllic modern society which Herzl had envisaged, seemed around the corner. Only a handful of far-sighted leaders knew that the real uphill struggle was about to begin. As for the rest, it took them a number of years to realise that progress would be agonisingly slow.

The British administration in Palestine was by no means totally sympathetic towards Zionism, and the Arabs were actively hostile. The Balfour Declaration was gradually whittled down. Immigrants were relatively few, and agricultural settlement and industrialisation expanded only slowly, the Zionist organisation having no reserves to finance large scale enterprises - the 200,000 Jews of Berlin gave more money for social welfare in their community than the whole Jewish people gave for building Palestine. The charter of which Herzl had dreamed had at last been won, but the future of the whole venture seemed almost as uncertain as before. There was stagnation and in some respects decline, while all over Europe ominous signs were appearing that the position of the Jewish communities was becoming ever more precarious. Anti-semitism was more virulent and more widespread than before the First World War, and the political storm clouds gathered darkly as the economic crisis of the 1930s struck one country after another.

In these circumstances, dissatisfaction with official Zionist policy was bound to spread. The executive was accused of weakness and lack of initiative, and Weizmann personally was made responsible for the setbacks. He was charged with indecision, leaning excessively towards the British, opting for a new ‘miniature Zionism’, betraying the legacy of Herzl and Nordau. Poland, where the situation of the Jews was most critical, was the main breeding ground of this mood, but the demand for a more activist policy quickly spread and found vociferous supporters in other parts of the world. This opposition movement had a leader of genius; it was in fact dominated by Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky to such an extent that it is impossible to write its history without constant reference to the personality of the man who shaped its destinies for two decades.

Jabotinsky, the
Wunderkind
of Russian Zionism, was already well known and widely admired in his early twenties as an accomplished essayist and brilliant speaker, probably the best in a movement which did not lack first-rate orators. Born in Odessa in 1880 into a middle class family which became impoverished with the death of the father, young Jabotinsky grew up in the lively atmosphere of his home town - a strong cultural centre, its inhabitants a mixture of peoples and religions, cosmopolitan, colourful, open to new trends and ideas. In his early days he had shown little interest in Judaism, nor did he join, as did so many of his contemporaries, the revolutionary movement.
*
Russian literature was his great love. He wrote poetry in that language and at the age of sixteen began to publish essays in the local newspapers. His first contribution was on a subject which remained topical for many years to come - a criticism of the use of grading marks in school. He studied first in Switzerland and for a longer period in Italy, which became his second spiritual home. There he devoured the writings of the leaders of the
risorgimento.
More recent authors such as Croce also profoundly influenced him, and he began to write poetry in Italian. His interest in Jewish affairs was only slowly awakened. The pogroms of 1904–5 were for him, as for many others of his generation, a rude awakening. Jabotinsky took an active part in the organisation of Jewish self-defence, translated Bialik’s poem about the Kishinev massacre into Russian, and, at the age of twenty-two, went as a delegate to the sixth Zionist congress where (as he later wrote) Herzl made a colossal impression on him. Having embraced the new creed, no one was more enthusiastic in spreading the gospel. Within a few years he became a professional Zionist, a travelling agitator, very much in demand as a speaker all over Russia. According to Gorky, Kuprin and other leading writers of the day, this total absorption with Jewish affairs and Zionism was a great loss to Russian literature. Suddenly Jabotinsky had become aware not just of the fact that Jews had been depicted in a most unfavourable light in the works of his beloved Russian writers; he sensed that the position of a Jew who had ambitions to be a Russian writer was highly problematical.
*
There was something unnatural and undignified, he wrote, when Jews took a leading part in the celebration of the centenary of a writer like Gogol, whose stories were replete with antisemitic remarks.

Jabotinsky had become an enthusiastic Zionist but in his political orientation he was by no means more radical than his contemporaries. True, he opposed the Uganda project, but later on admitted that the issues were less clearcut than he had thought at the time. He helped to convene the Helsingfors meeting in November 1906 which adopted a resolution in favour of equal rights for Jews and all other nationalities of the Russian empire. This may sound innocent enough but it was in fact a major new departure from the Zionist point of view. Why should Jabotinsky have bothered to insist on full equality for the Jews if he was convinced, with Pinsker and Herzl, that antisemitism was endemic in Europe and that east European Jewry was doomed? He did not believe that a national revival was possible outside Palestine, but he was no longer determined to boycott Zionist work in the diaspora
(Gegenwartsarbeit)
altogether. Jabotinsky’s work in Constantinople, where he assisted Jacobson, who represented the Zionist executive in the Turkish capital, was cut short because of a quarrel concerning a book, about the ultimate aims of Zionism, by Jacobus Kann, the Dutch Zionist leader, which it was feared would gravely compromise the position of Zionism in the Ottoman empire. Jabotinsky curiously enough opted for caution rather than ‘maximalism’.

In 1914 he was at a loose end. ‘What would I have done if the world had not broken out in flames?’ Jabotinsky wrote in his autobiography, in a rare attack of self-pity. ‘I had wasted my youth and early middle age. Perhaps I would have gone to Eretz Israel, perhaps I would have escaped to Rome, perhaps I would have founded a political party.’ Such fits of depression never lasted long, for he was almost incurably optimistic. The war uprooted Jabotinsky, his family and friends. It brought about the ruin of Russian Jewry, but it also provided the historical chance for the Zionist movement to realise its aim, and it catapulted Jabotinsky into its front ranks. The stormy petrel of 1914 emerged at the end of the war as an outstanding leader and statesman.

The idea of a Jewish legion, which from now on held a central place in Jabotinsky’s thinking, was born when as a war correspondent in Egypt in late 1914 he heard that hundreds of young Jews had been deported by the Turkish authorities. He helped to found the Mule Corps, consisting of Jewish soldiers, which later on saw action at Gallipoli. But he envisaged a far more ambitious enterprise; it took several years of effort and suffered a great many setbacks before the establishment of a Jewish regiment (the Judaeans) was officially announced in London in August 1917. The legion reached Palestine the following March and played a certain, militarily not very significant, part during the last phase of the war.

In his struggle for the formation of a Jewish legion Jabotinsky was ‘almost alone, discouraged and derided everywhere’, to quote Weizmann, one of the few who followed his activities with some sympathy. That Jabotinsky faced opposition from non-Zionists goes without saying. Both the liberal assimilationist establishment and the left-wing pacifists were bitterly hostile.
*
But there was strong resistance among Jabotinsky’s colleagues too. After all, Zionists were fighting in this war on both sides, and there was a real danger that the Turks would react severely. Was it worth while to endanger the very existence of the small Jewish community in Palestine for a project of doubtful military or political value? While Weizmann was certain that the Allies would win the war, many Russian Zionist leaders were much less sure; nor, as far as Russia, the bulwark of antisemitism, was concerned, did they think the perpetuation of tsarist rule, the likely outcome of an allied victory, desirable.

For Jabotinsky the establishment of a legion was more than a tactical move. He was not a born militarist; as a young man he had in fact written a pacifist play. True, he had a strong romantic, even adventurist streak, and he found a certain personal satisfaction in army life despite its disappointments and hardships. Perhaps he saw himself, a Jewish Garibaldi, liberating Palestine at the head of a Jewish army. But above all there were two basic considerations which made him so fanatically persistent in his struggle for the legion: he was absolutely convinced that a Jewish army, however small, was a historical necessity. However many agricultural settlements were established, they would be defenceless in the absence of Jewish military units. The legion came into being, despite much opposition. In later years Jabotinsky grossly exaggerated its political significance during the war. It was simply not true (as he argued) that half the credit for the Balfour Declaration should go to the legion.
*
Jabotinsky became a great believer in the value of military training and discipline, which he thought were of special importance for a people which for so many centuries had been unable to defend itself. Henceforth these ideals played a central part in Jabotinsky’s thought. Of ‘militarism’ he wrote: ‘We ought not to be deterred by a Latin word’. The early Zionists, after all, were not put off by the nationalist label. There were two kinds of militarism - the one aggressive, out for territorial conquest; the other the natural defence effort of a people which had no homeland and was faced by the threat of extinction: ‘If this is militarism, we ought to be proud of it.’
†

The legion in which Jabotinsky served as a lieutenant was demobilised soon after the end of the war, much to his chagrin. He had hoped that it would be the nucleus of a Jewish army - under British command, if necessary. Jabotinsky was made political officer of the Zionist commission which during the interval between the armistice and the beginning of the mandate acted as a liaison officer with the British military authorities. From the beginning he was apprehensive about the hostility of the local administration and criticised Weizmann for being too pliant in his dealings with the British government. Not a single day should be lost, he felt, in creating
faits accomplis.
He referred specifically to immediate large-scale immigration and a Jewish armed force but found little sympathy among the other Zionist leaders. Weizmann said that he had not the courage to come to the Jewish people and submit a large-scale programme when he knew beforehand that it was not practical: ‘Zionism cannot be the answer to a catastrophe.’ Ussishkin, not exactly an Anglophile, and much closer to Jabotinsky politically, commented that the country could not be built up in a hurry, as in the exodus from Egypt, but by slow immigration, as after the Babylonian exile.
*

At the time of the first Arab attacks in Jerusalem in April 1920, Jabotinsky was head of the Hagana in that city. As his
aide de camp
he had chosen Jeremiah Halpern, the son of Michael Halpern, who thirty years earlier had been the first proponent of a Jewish legion. After the riots subsided Jabotinsky was arrested and a few days later sentenced to fifteen years penal servitude. It was a scandalous trial, for Jabotinsky and his men had been acting in self-defence precisely because the British authorities had been unable to maintain public order and to safeguard the lives of the Jews in the city. Shortly after his arrival in Palestine, Herbert Samuel, the first high commissioner, granted an amnesty to Jabotinsky and the other Jewish prisoners sentenced at the same trial. Jabotinsky had been in prison for a few months only, and as a political prisoner had enjoyed preferential treatment. Upon his release he was given a hero’s welcome, but he was full of bitterness, and most reluctant to be released under an amnesty which also gave freedom to Arabs who had taken part in the attacks on Jews. Later he took legal action and succeeded in having the sentence quashed by the commander-in-chief in Egypt. More strongly than ever before he felt the need for an army for the purposes of self-defence. Nor should it be clandestine; without it colonisation was just not practical.

On this issue he parted ways with the Labour Zionists, who otherwise endorsed much of his criticism regarding Weizmann’s policy. Jabotinsky rejected the argument that a Jewish armed force would provoke the Arabs. On the contrary, he claimed, two thousand regular soldiers under British command would be less of a provocation than ten thousand illegally organised Jewish soldiers. Ben Gurion, Golomb, and the other Socialist leaders were not averse in principle to the idea of a legion, but they put two questions to which Jabotinsky had no convincing answers: how could they be sure that a Jewish legion would afford protection to the yishuv if it was not under Jewish command? And since, even if all went well, it would be some time before the legion was ready, who would protect the community during the interim period?