A History of Zionism (65 page)

Jabotinsky joined the Zionist executive together with two political friends, Richard Lichtheim and Joseph Cowen, in March 1921. For almost two years he took a leading part in its activities - as political adviser, fund raiser and all-purpose Zionist propagandist. He spent several months in the United States, where he quarrelled with the local Zionist leaders (Brandeis and Mack), whose ‘minimalism’ was utterly opposed to his way of looking at things. Whereas they believed that the political phase of Zionism was more or less over, he was firmly convinced that the real struggle was just about to begin. Jabotinsky was greatly worried by events in Palestine, especially the open hostility to Zionism displayed in the Haycraft report of 1921, which put the responsibility for the Jaffa riots in May 1921 largely on the Jews. He wrote to the Zionist executive in November 1922 that the ‘wobbling attitude’ of the British government was the logical consequence of Herbert Samuel’s policy ‘and our own meekness in dealing with his administration’. ‘Our own meekness’ - this was the
leitmotif
of all his speeches and articles in the years to come.
*
He was most unhappy about the Churchill White Paper, which provided a restrictive interpretation of the Balfour Declaration. It was a lost battle, but, as he said at a subsequent Zionist congress, he could not desert his colleagues in a desperate emergency: ‘I felt it my moral duty to share with my colleagues the shame of defeat.’
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His position on the executive was compromised by his talks with Slavinsky, a minister in Petliura’s Ukranian exile government. Jabotinsky suggested the establishment of a Jewish gendarmerie within the framework of the Petliura régime to protect Ukrainian Jewry against pogroms. Slavinsky was a Ukrainian liberal intellectual with a fairly good record, but under Petliura’s rule thousands of Jews had been murdered. The fact that Jabotinsky was willing to negotiate even indirectly with the man responsible for these massacres provoked a storm of indignation in the Jewish world. (Petliura was killed by a Jewish student in Paris a few years later.) Paraphrasing his old hero Mazzini, Jabotinsky said in his defence that he would ally himself with the devil on behalf of Palestine and the Jews. Whatever the desirability and efficacity of such alliances, in this particular case it was totally unnecessary. The ‘pact’ was not only a disastrous tactical move, it was of no practical importance, since the invasion of the Soviet Ukraine which had been planned from Poland never came off and the Ukrainian government-in-exile collapsed shortly after. The incident harmed Jabotinsky politically, giving him the reputation of an extreme reactionary and a collaborator with pogromists. This was unjust, but Jabotinsky had only himself to blame. His political judgment had been at fault, and he had engaged in political activity for activity’s sake - a pattern that was to repeat itself in the years to come.

Jabotinsky resigned from the executive in January 1923 in protest against what he regarded as Weizmann’s fatal policy of renunciation and compromise. ‘Weizmann believes that mine is the way of a stubborn fantast’, he told a friend after a conversation with Weizmann, ‘while I feel that his line is the line of renunciation, of subconscious Marannism.’ His own approach was a difficult, stormy one, but it was to lead to a Jewish state.
*
He believed that Britain and Zionism had common interests in the eastern Mediterranean and that no British government would dissociate itself from the Balfour Declaration. Hence he saw no danger in asking awkward questions in London and pressing the British to fulfil their obligations under the mandate. If, however, as some of his colleagues claimed, the community of interests was questionable, if the mandate had no solid foundation of interest, and the pledge might be broken at any time, if it had all been a misunderstanding - what, then, was the use of keeping up appearances for another few months? Jabotinsky maintained that, all other considerations apart, the continuation of an anti-Zionist policy in Palestine was ruining the movement financially. Who would be willing to contribute to a cause which could not show that it was making progress? The policy of the Palestine administration was effectively blocking any advance.

Jabotinsky’s resignation from the executive was accepted without regrets. His colleagues had been irritated by his inclination to dramatise political issues, his frequent speeches and declarations in which he criticised their policies. They agreed with him that the British government and,
a fortiori
, the mandatory authorities, were not fulfilling their duties in accordance with the mandate, but did not believe that the alternative was as easy and clearcut as Jabotinsky contended. ‘Either there is a community of interest, in which case they will ultimately do what we want, or there isn’t, in which case we have nothing to lose, because the mandate will be repudiated anyway.’ Weizmann, who understood the British better than Jabotinsky, knew that some British statesmen were more in favour of cooperation with Zionism than others; that Zionism was just one factor among many in British Middle Eastern policy. In other words, there was nothing Jabotinsky could have done which Weizmann did not do. He could have protested more often and more loudly, but what difference would it have made? The only real alternative would have been a fundamental reorientation - away from Britain, towards some other power, or group of powers. But Jabotinsky was not at all in favour of reorientation, though later on, in the 1930s, he played half-heartedly with the idea of an alliance with Warsaw which was not, however, a real alternative.

The fundamental weakness of Jabotinsky’s policy clearly appeared from the moment he went into opposition to official Zionist policy. His analysis of the weaknesses of the line his colleagues were taking, especially in the foreign political field, was forceful if usually somewhat exaggerated. But he had no alternative to offer, other than the promise that if given the opportunity he would achieve better results. At the fourteenth Zionist congress he was challenged by his critics to say what he would use to bring pressure to bear on Britain. He replied that he was neither a friend nor an enemy of Britain but that he knew that force was not needed to persuade a civilised people like the British. He could not tell them in advance how he would convince them; nor would Herzl have been able to give such information to the congress. The main thing was that the demands of the Zionists were logical and consistent and should be pressed forcefully.
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The origins of Revisionism

When Jabotinsky left the executive he intended to withdraw from politics altogether for a time, but he was deluding himself. Temperamentally he was quite unsuited to a life outside politics. He felt constantly obliged to react in print and by word of mouth to current Zionist politics, needing immediate contact with his readers and listeners. He was invited to join the editorial board of
Rassvet
, for many the leading organ of Russian Zionism, which now became his mouthpiece. But the appeal of his articles, always hard hitting and well written, was limited.
Rassvet
was not the ideal platform for reaching the Jewish masses, certainly not the younger generation. The idea of setting up a political party and a youth movement occurred to him during a trip to Latvia and Lithuania in late 1923. The day after a speech in Riga on Zionist activism he was invited to speak to the local Jewish student association and was told that he had no right to preach such views and to stir up young people if he did not intend to call them to action: ‘You either keep quiet or organise a party.’
†
On his return he wrote to a friend that he had met a generation of youth that was worth believing in and that he had made up his mind to enlist them for the cause of Zionist activism. Riga, where a youth organisation (named after Trumpeldor) became the birthplace of
Betar
, the revisionist youth movement.

Jabotinsky now had to formulate the basic tenets of revisionism, as the new movement was to be called, following the suggestion of one of his lieutenants. It was not intended as a radical new departure. Not Zionism was to be revised, only its current policies. Revisionism saw itself as the only true heir of the Herzl-Nordau tradition of political Zionism, in contrast to the official Zionist leadership, which, by making concession after concession, had deviated from it. Jabotinsky and his followers were maximalists, claiming not only Palestine for the Jews but ‘the gradual transformation of Palestine (including Transjordan) into a self-governing commonwealth under the auspices of an established Jewish majority’.
*
They regarded this as the only admissible interpretation of the term ‘national home’ in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate. Transjordan was an inseparable part of the territory of Palestine, to be included in the sphere of Jewish colonisation. The British White Paper which had restricted the interpretation of the Balfour Declaration in 1922 had been accepted by the Zionist movement under duress, in the hope that it would lead to the acceptance of the Declaration by the Palestinian Arabs. Since the Arabs had refused to recognise the Declaration, the 1922 White Paper was no longer valid.

Writing in 1926, Jabotinsky defined the creation of a Jewish majority in Palestine, west and east of the Jordan, as the first aim of Zionism. A normal political development on a democratic parliamentary basis could be envisaged only after this target had been achieved.
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The final aim was the solution of the Jewish problem and the creation of a Jewish culture. Jabotinsky emphatically rejected the thesis that the Zionist aim should not be openly proclaimed. It was too late to preach minimalism, for the Arabs, too, were aware of Herzl’s
Judenstaat.
To engage in conspiracies, to cover up their real aims, would confuse their friends, not their enemies. To achieve a majority Jabotinsky proposed immigration at the rate of forty thousand a year over a period of twenty-five years. If Transjordan were included, there would have to be fifty to sixty thousand immigrants a year. Transjordan, he claimed, had always been part of Jewish Palestine; it was also much less densely populated and therefore more promising for colonisation.

This position was revolutionary inasmuch as it demanded the establishment of a Jewish state at a time when it was not openly advocated by any other Zionist leader or movement. At this early stage Jabotinsky was perhaps not thinking of full independence. The concept state (he once said) had various meanings in political usage - France was a state, and so was Nebraska and Kentucky. State did not necessarily imply complete independence, but while the degree of self-government could be discussed, there was no room for manœuvring with regard to one basic factor: either there was a Jewish majority or there wasn’t.
*
On this point there could be no meeting of minds with Weizmann, who at the time of the Zionist congress at which Jabotinsky launched the discussion about the
Endziel
(final aim), declared in an interview with a journalist: ‘I have no understanding of or sympathy for a Jewish majority in Palestine.’ This statement provoked much opposition and a few days later was one of the factors leading to Weizmann’s defeat. But it did not make Jabotinsky’s policy any more acceptable to the majority at the congress.

Jabotinsky did not shirk the Arab problem. He regarded Arab opposition to Zionism and Jewish settlement as natural and inevitable. But since the Jews in Europe were facing a catastrophe, whereas the situation of the Arabs was secure in the Middle East, he believed the moral case of the Jews to be infinitely stronger. Revisionism recognised that there would be a substantial Arab minority in Palestine even after Jews became the majority. Jabotinsky wrote in his programme that in the Jewish state there would be ‘absolute equality’ between Jews and Arabs, that if one part of the population were destitute, the whole country would suffer.
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Meanwhile, the Arabs would continue to fight Zionism until an ‘iron wall’ was built. Then, and only then, would they understand that there was no hope of destroying Zionism, that they would have to accept it and live with it. If the transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state was morally justified, resistance to it was unjustified. Hence Jabotinsky’s refusal to compromise with what he regarded as unjust demands from the Arab side, all the more so as on the question of the majority there was no room for manœuvre. ‘Either - or’ was the basic pattern of Jabotinsky’s policy on the Arab question, as it was in his attitude towards the British or his demand for a Jewish army: either the Jews had a right to their state, in which case Arab resistance was immoral, or they had no such right, in which case the whole argument for Zionism collapsed. These dramatisations of complicated issues were always rhetorically effective, but the issues themselves were far too complicated, both morally and politically, to be illuminated, let alone solved, by categorical declarations of this kind.

Jabotinsky never swerved from his demand for a Jewish army, however small. Why should the British taxpayer be responsible for the defence of the Jews in Palestine? Sooner or later, he would no longer be willing to carry this burden, nor was Britain morally bound to provide such security. Zionism was obliged either to offer the men and the money needed, or to give up its political demands. A small Jewish legion, consisting of three battalions (approximately three thousand men) would cost no more than £120,000 a year. This would not be unproductive expenditure, as his critics asserted. On the contrary, it was the prerequisite for any colonisation scheme.

As relations with Britain deteriorated, Jabotinsky and his friends put most of the blame on the officials on the spot: Allenby had been against Zionism, Herbert Samuel too weak to assert himself. Instead of criticising the first high commissioner and his administration, he went on, the Jewish public had never openly attacked him. The setbacks to Zionist policies and the disappointments suffered were not inevitable, not the outcome of conditions over which no one had any control, but the result of human shortcomings, of the hostile policy of the local administration, and ‘the consequence of the shortsightedness, the thoughtlessness, and the weakness of our leaders’.
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Despite his own unfortunate experience, Jabotinsky did not reject the idea of an alliance with Britain, provided the mandatory power reaffirmed the original spirit of the mandate. When Sir Josiah Wedgwood, a pro-Zionist politician, promoted the idea of Palestine as a seventh dominion within the British Commonwealth, it received the blessing of the revisionists at their third world conference in Vienna in 1928, but after 1930 hopes began to fade. Jabotinsky said he wanted one ‘last experiment’ to reach a
rapprochement
with Britain. Schechtman, another revisionist leader, wrote in 1933 that a situation might arise in which the Jewish people would no longer be interested in the continuation of the mandate.
†