Hillel Halkin brings to life in a short
and very readable biography, the story of Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the
founder of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky was far from the prototypical
Zionist of the early 20th Century. Being born in the cosmopolitan
port city of Odessa, he was far from the shtetls of Poland and Russia. He was
far from religious and didn’t really like living in the Palestine of the 1920s.
Nevertheless he was extraordinarily
clear-eyed about the future of Zionism. Jabotinsky understood:
· * The real need for
Jewish Legion to assist in the British invasion of Ottoman Palestine thereby
establishing the first organized Jewish fighting force in nearly 2000 years.
· * The local Arab
population would not be passive to a surge in Jewish immigration. He leads in
the formation of the Haganah out of the remnants of the Jewish Legion. The
Haganah was the forerunner of today’s Israel Defense Forces.
· * The Nazi
nightmare would wipe out European Jewry and urged the Jewish community to pack
up and leave. He supplied chartered steamers to illegally transport Jews to
Palestine.
· *The Israeli
economy organized along the socialist lines of Labor Zionism would not be
viable and urged more market oriented policies.
Halkin discusses in great detail
Jabotinsky’s long time and very acrid rivalry with David Ben Gurion. They
fought each other for control of the Zionist Organization in the 1930s. To put
it mildly they did not like each other and Ben Gurion prevented Jabotinsky’s
reburial in Israel until after he stepped down as prime minister in 1964.
A failing of the book is that Halkin
expends too many words on Jabotinsky the journalist and the writer and not
enough on his leading his Revisionist Zionist group and his founding of Betar,
its youth group. Menachem Begin was so inspired by Jabotinsky that he joined
and became a leader of Betar. Nevertheless I would recommend “Jabotinsky” for
those readers who want to go beyond the standard Labor Zionist version of the
founding of the State of Israel. A great companion piece would be Daniel
Gordis’, “Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel’s Soul.”
For the Amazon URL see:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RESMO3223GCQU
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