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Lenni BRENNER
ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF DICTATORS
Chapter 10
ZIONIST-REVISIONISM AND ITALIAN FASCISM
Menachem Begin's surprising rise to power in 1977, after a lifetime of opposition
within the Zionist movement, quite naturally created considerable interest
in his personal career. However, Begin himself, for all his present fame
and power, would still refer to himself as nothing more than a disciple
of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of his tendency and the man he considers
the greatest Jew since Herzl.
The creator of the Jewish Legion and the founder of the Haganah (Defence),
Jabotinsky is the Revisionists' acclaimed hero. Yet at his death in New
York's Catskills in August 1940, he was the most despised ideological thinker
in the Jewish political world. Typical of the style of the man was the extraordinary
Ukrainian pact he engineered in a hotel room in Prague in August 1921. He
had travelled to Prague for a World Zionist Congress, and he had a visitor
there, an old friend, Maxim Slavinsky, Simon Petliura's ambassador. The
regime in the Ukraine had collapsed. Petliura, caught between Polish imperialism
and Bolshevism, had let Poland take Ukrainian lands in return for arms against
the Red Army, but the aid was to no avail and the remnants of his army had
to flee into Polish-occupied Galicia. Slavinsky told Jabotinsky of the latest
plan: the 15,000 remaining troops would attack the Soviet Ukraine in 1922.
The ambassador of the notorious pogromist Petliura government and the organiser
of the Haganah worked out a secret agreement. Jabotinsky, on his own, without
reference to the WZO, pledged to work within his movement to organise Zionist
police to accompany Petliura's troops in their raid. They were not to fight
the Red Army, but would guard the Jews of the towns captured by the very
soldiers that would bring them into the region.
The pact was disclosed by the Ukrainians to prove that they had changed
their ways. The WZO was aghast, and Jabotinsky had to defend himself against
all Jewish opinion, which could not stomach any association with the discredited
murderer. In the end the incursion never came off; France withdrew its subsidy,
and the nationalist force disintegrated. Jewry divided between those who
regarded Jabotinsky as a fool or a villain; everywhere the Communists used
the pact to discredit Zionism among Jews, but Jabotinsky was unrepentant.
He would have done the same for the Leninists, if only they had asked:
A Jewish gendarmerie with the White Army, a Jewish
gendarmerie with the Red Army, a Jewish gendarmerie with the Lilac and Peagreen
Army, if any; let them settle their quarrels, we shall police the towns
and see to it that the Jewish population should not be molested.[(1)]
The Poale Zionists demanded an investigation, as they claimed the agreement
had endangered the legality of their own barely tolerated organisation in
the Soviet Union, but Jabotinsky had travelled to the United States on a
seven-month lecturing tour and the investigating panel could not be scheduled
until 18 January 1923. In the end the hearing was never held, as Jabotinsky
suddenly resigned from the WZO the night before he was to testify. He always
claimed that his resignation had nothing to do with the pending inquiry,
and insisted that he resigned due to a running dispute concerning relations
with Britain, but few believed him. He re-entered the ranks shortly after,
but his opponents saw no further point in officially pursuing the matter
as he no longer had any position within the movement. When he began to organise
his new tendency the attacks resumed, and for the rest of his life he had
to defend his escapade. But throughout his career Jabotinsky was noted for
his imperious contempt for his critics; he simply told the hostile world
that 'When I die you can write as my epitaph --''This was the man who made
the pact with Petliura".'[(2)]
'We Want a Jewish Empire'
Jabotinsky returned to the now wary WZO in 1923 as the far-right opponent
of the leadership, determined to 'revise' their stance; he denounced Weizmann
for not demanding the reconstitution of the Jewish Legion. He had also seen
Churchill separate Trans-Jordan from the Jewish 'National Home' in Palestine,
and when the WZO reluctantly accepted Churchill's decision he had only gone
along out of a sense of discipline but thenceforward the claim that Jordan
was eternally Jewish became the idée fixe of his new programme:
'One side of the Jordan is ours-and so is the other'. So goes Shtei Gadot,
the song still most commonly identified with the Revisionist movement.
Jabotinsky never shared the naive illusion that the Palestinians would some
day welcome foreign domination of their country. At a time when Ben-Gurion
and his friends still thought they could convince the Palestinian masses
to accept Zionism as in their own interest, Jabotinsky developed his own
blunt thesis in an article, The Iron Wan (We and the Arabs), written
in 1923:
Zionist colonisation must be either terminated
or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonisation
can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection
of a power independent of the native population--an iron wall, which will
be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is,
in toto, our policy towards the Arabs... A voluntary reconciliation with
the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the near future.[(3)]
He had nothing but ridicule for the Zionist leaders who mouthed peace while
demanding that the British Army protect them; or their hope of an Arab ruler
(the favoured candidate was Faisal of Iraq) who would deal with them over
the heads of the Palestinians and impose them on the natives with an Arab
bayonet. He repeated over and over that there could be only one way to a
Zionist state:
If you wish to colonise a land in which people
are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some
'rich man' or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or
else --or else, give up your colonisation, for without an armed force which
will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this
colonisation, colonisation is impossible, not 'difficult,, not 'dangerous',
but IMPOSSIBLE !... Zionism is a colonising adventure and therefore it stands
or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew,
but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot -- or
else I am through with playing at colonisation.[(4)]
Jabotinsky understood that, for the moment, the Zionists were too weak to
hold off the Arabs without the backing of the British, and Revisionism became
loudly Empire loyalist. In 1930 Abba Achimeir, the ideologue of their Palestinian
branch, proclaimed their interest lay 'in expanding the British empire even
further than intended by the British themselves'.[(5)] However, they had
no intention of hiding behind the British any longer than necessary. In
1935 a Jewish Communist journalist encountered Jabotinsky on board an ocean
liner on his way to the United States and obtained an interview with him.
Robert Gessner's article in the New Masses became the talk of Jewish
America.
He announced he would speak frankly, so that Revisionism
would be made clear... 'Revisionism', he began, 'is naive, brutal and primitive.
It is savage. You go out into the street and pick any man --a Chinaman--
and ask him what he wants and he will say one hundred per cent of everything.
That's us. We want a Jewish Empire. Just like there is the Italian or French
on the Mediterranean, we want a Jewish Empire.'[(6)]
'He had Caught a Glimpse of the Great Secret of Politically Minded Peoples'
Despite its members' enthusiasm for the British Empire, eventually Revisionism
had to look elsewhere for a new imperial protector. Britain was not willing
to do more than guard the Zionists, and not too effectively at that, and
the Zionists had to buy land inch by inch. Nor could anyone seriously believe
that Britain would ever give Trans-Jordan to the Zionists. The Revisionists
therefore began to look for a new Mandatory firmly committed to a more ruthless
policy towards the Arabs and therefore willing to back the construction
of a Zionist garrisonstate. Italy seemed the obvious answer, not because
of any sympathy for Fascism, but because of Italy's own imperial aspirations.
Jabotinsky had been a student in Italy and he loved the old liberal-aristocratic
order. In his own mind he was the Jewish Mazzini, Cavour and Garibaldi all
rolled into one, and he could not see anything wrong with the liberal traditions
that Mussolini so thoroughly repudiated. In fact he sneered at Fascism.
In 1926 he wrote:
There is today a country where 'programs' have
been replaced by the word of one man... Italy; the system is called Fascism:
to give their prophet a title, they had to coin a new term --'Duce'--
which is a translation of that most absurd of all English words-'leader'.
Buffaloes follow a leader. Civilized men have no leaders.[(7)]
Yet, despite Jabotinsky's broad-mindedness, his own style came to mimic
the militarism of Mussolini and Hitler. His novel Samson, published
in 1926, remains one of the classics of totalitarian literature.
One day, he was present at a festival at the temple
of Gaza. Outside in the square a multitude of young men and girls were gathered
for the festive dances... A beardless priest led the dances. He stood on
the topmost step of the temple, holding an ivory baton in his hand. When
the music began the vast concourse stood immobile... The beardless priest
turned pale and seemed to submerge his eyes in those of the dancers, which
were fixed responsively on his. He grew paler and paler; all the repressed
fervor of the crowd seemed to concentrate within his breast till it threatened
to choke him. Samson felt the blood stream to his heart; he himself would
have choked if the suspense had lasted a few moments longer. Suddenly, with
a rapid, almost inconspicuous movement, the priest raised his baton, and
all the white figures in the square sank down on the left knee and threw
the right arm towards heaven --a single movement, a single, abrupt, murmurous
harmony. The tens of thousands of onlookers gave utterance to a moaning
sigh. Samson staggered; there was blood on his lips, so tightly had he pressed
them together... Samson left the place profoundly thoughtful. He could not
have given words to his thought, but he had a feeling that here, in this
spectacle of thousands obeying a single will, he had caught a glimpse of
the great secret of politically minded peoples.[(8)]
The wish for a more determined Mandatory easily overcame Jabotinsky,s distaste
for Italy's internal regime, and many of his recruits had never had any
difficulties with Fascism's domestic style. By the mid1920s he had attracted
several ex-Labour Zionists who turned savagely on their former comrades
and Mussolini became their hero. In August 1932, at the Fifth Revisionist
World Conference, Abba Achimeir and Wolfgang von Weisl, the leaders of Palestine's
Revisionists, proposed Jabotinsky as Duce of their one faction of
the WZO. He flatly refused, but any contradiction between himself and the
increasingly pro-Fascist ranks was resolved by his moving closer to them.
Without abandoning his previous liberal rhetoric, he incorporated Mussolini's
concepts into his own ideology and rarely publicly criticised his own followers
for Fascist-style assaults, defending them against the Labour Zionists and
the British.
The argument has been made that Revisionism as such was not Fascist because
there were legitimate differences within the ranks and that ultimately decisions
were made by vote at conventions or by means of the plebiscite. In reality,
it is difficult to think of how much more undemocratic the movement could
have been without it formally becoming a proper Fascist grouping. By 1932-3
Jabotinsky had decided that it was time for them to withdraw from the WZO,
but most of the Executive of their world union were opposed as they saw
nothing to be gained by splitting. He suddenly cut the debate off by arbitrarily
taking personal control over the movement and letting the ranks choose between
him and the superseded Executive in a plebiscite. A letter written in December
1932 demonstrates that he knew full well in what direction he was leading
the organisation: 'The time has apparently come when there must be a single,
principal controller in the movement, a "leader", though I still
hate the word. All right, if there must be one, there will be one.'([(9)]
Jabotinsky knew he could not lose the vote; to the tens of thousands of
youthful Betar brownshirts he represented the militarism they wanted against
an Executive of the same genteel bourgeoisie as the Weizmann clique. It
was always the Betar youth group that was the central component of Diaspora
Revisionism. The semi-official History of the Revisionist Movement declares
that, after a discussion of whether to set up on a democratic basis, the
decision was taken for a 'hierarchic structure of a military type'.[(10)]
In its classic form the Betar chose its Rosh Betar (High Betar),
always Jabotinsky, by a 75 per cent majority vote, he picked the leaders
of the national units; they, in turn, selected the next lower leaders. Opposition
was allowed, but after the purge of the moderates in the early 1930s the
only serious internal critics were sundry 'maximalists', extremists who
would complain, at various times, that Jabotinsky was not a Fascist, or
was too pro-British or was insufficiently anti-Arab. When the average Betari
put on his brownshirt he could be forgiven if he thought he was a member
of a Fascist movement, and that Jabotinsky was his Duce.
The Jewish Bourgeoisie-the Only Source of our Constructive Capital
From the beginning the Revisionists saw the middle class as their clientele
and they had a long hatred of the left. In 1933 a youth wrote to Jabotinsky
asking why he had become so vehemently anti-Marxist; Jabotinsky wrote a
remarkable article, 'Zionism and Communism', explaining their total incompatibility.
In temms of Jewry, 'Communism strives to annihilate the only source of our
constructive capital --the Jewish bourgeoisie-- because their foundation
is our root, and its principle is the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.'
In Palestine Marxism, by definition, meant the sharpest opposition to Zionism:
the essence of Communism consists in that it agitates
and must incite the Eastern Nations against European dominance. This dominance
in its eyes is 'imperialistic' and exploitative. I believe otherwise and
think that European dominance makes them civilized, but that is an incidental
question and does not belong to the matter. One thing is clear: Communism
incites and must incite the Eastern Nations and this it can do only in the
name of national freedom. It tells them and must tell them: your lands belong
to you and not to any strangers. This is how it must speak to the Arabs
and the Arabs of Palestine... For our Zionist lungs, Communism is suffocating
gas and this is how you must deal with it.[(11)]
Typically for him, he jumped from a correct premiss to an incorrect conclusion.
In logic, Zionism and Marxism are indeed incompatible, but it did not follow
in life that those who did try to mix the two were really in the enemy camp.
In practice, the Socialist-Zionist sacrifices socialism to Zionism, not
the other way around, but Jabotinsky maintained that there was no substantive
difference between the Communists and the Poale Zionists:
I do not believe that there is any difference
between Communism and other forms of Socialism based on class views... The
only difference between these two camps is one of temperament --the one
rushes ahead, the other is slightly slower: such a difference is not worth
the value of the ink-drop necessary to describe it in writing.[(12)]
Jabotinsky's mind always ran to the linear. The capitalist class was the
main force of Zionism; it followed, logically, that strikes repelled investment
in Palestine. They might be acceptable in advanced industrial countries,
their economies could take them, but not where the foundations of Zion were
still being laid brick by brick. In exact imitation of the Italian Fascists,
the Revisionists opposed 'both' strikes and lock-outs, with strikes being
seen as the highest of crimes:
And by 'obligatory' arbitration we mean this:
after the election of such a permanent board, recourse to it should be proclaimed
as the only legitimate way of settling industrial conflicts, its verdicts
should be final, and both strike and lockout (as well as boycott of Jewish
labor) should be declared treasonable to the interest of Zionism and repressed
by every legal and moral means at the nation's disposal.[(13)]
The Revisionists were not about to wait until they took state power to break
their Labour rivals. Achimeir, their leader in Palestine (Jabotinsky had
been barred from Palestine by the High Commissioner after Revisionist provocations
had triggered the 1929 Arab explosion) flagrantly ran his Yomen shel
Fascisti (Diary of a Fascist) in their paper. He had his equivalent
of the Italian squa dristi, the Brith HaBiryonim (Union of
Terrorists), so styled after the ancient Sicar Si --the dagger-wielding
Zealot assassins active during the Judaean revolt against Rome-- and he
whipped up the Revisionist youth for a final showdown with the Labour Zionists:
We must create groups for action; to exterminate
the Histadrut physically; they are worse than Arabs... You're no students;
you're just so much molasses... There isn't one among you capable of committing
murder after the fashion of those German students who murdered Rathenau.
You are not possessed of the nationalist spirit that dominated the Gemmans...
Not one of you is capable of murder after the manner in which Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered.[(14)]
Palestine now witnessed the Zionists, in the shape of the Histadrut, driving
thousands of Arabs out of their seasonal jobs in the Jewish orange groves
and the Revisionist Fascists descending upon the Histadrut. But although
the Arab workers still lacked the leadership to defend themselves the Histadrut
was well organised. After a series of sharp clashes, including a decisive
battle in Haifa, on 17 October 1934, when 1,500 Labour Zionists stormed
the Revisionist headquarters and injured dozens of the Fascists, the Revisionist
campaign withered away. The Histadrut ranks were quite willing to respond
to the Fascist onslaught by carrying the fight to the enemy and crushing
them, but the Labour Zionist leadership was as unwilling to fight Fascism
in Palestine as anywhere else and let them escape their defeat out of fear
that a serious battle would alienate Diaspora Zionism's middle-class following.
The Revisionists' Relations with the Italian Fascists
In the early 1930s Jabotinsky decided to set up a party school in Italy
and the local Revisionists, who openly identified themselves as Fascists,
lobbied Rome. He knew well enough that picking Italy as the locale for a
party school would only confirm their Fascist image, but he had moved so
far to the right that he had lost all concern for what his 'enemies' might
think and he even emphasised to one of his Italian followers that they could
set up their proposed school elsewhere but 'we... prefer to have it established
in Italy'.[(15)] By 1934 the Italians had decided that, for all their friendliness
to them, Sokolow and Weizmann and the WZO leadership had not the least thought
of breaking with London. Nor were the Italians pleased at the growing ascendancy
within the WZO of the Social Democratic Labour Zionists who were affiliated,
however distantly, to their own underground socialist enemies. They were
therefore quite willing to show support for the Revisionists who were evidently
the Fascists of Zion. In November 1934 Mussolini allowed the Betar to set
up a squadron at the maritime academy at Civitavecchia run by the Blackshirts.
Even after the Arlosoroff assassination in 1933 and the strike-breaking
campaign organised by Achimeir against the Histadrut, Ben-Gurion still worked
out a peace agreement with Jabotinsky in October 1934, but the Histadrut
ranks rejected it and the Revisionists finally set up their own New Zionist
Organisation (NZO). Jabotinsky asked his Italian supporters to arrange to
have the first NZO world congress in Trieste in 1935, flaunting the fact
that he did not care what people would think of his movement holding its
foundation congress in Fascist Italy.[(16)] In the end the event was held
in Vienna, but Jabotinsky visited the Civitavecchia academy after the Congress.
Curiously, he never met Mussolini --perhaps he was concemed to prove he
still was not just another 'head buffalo'.
Although there is not one statement by Jabotinsky in which he called himself
a Fascist, and innumerable proclamations of his Gladstonian credentials,
every other major political tendency saw the Revisionists as Zionism's Fascists.
Weizmann privately attributed Arlosoroff's murder to their Fascist style;
Ben-Gurion routinely referred to 'Vladimir Hitler' and even went so far
as to call the Nazis the 'German Revisionists'.[(17)] Von Mildenstein told
his readers of his encounter on board a ship with 'ein judischer Faschist',
a Betari; he described the youths as 'the Fascist group among the Jews.
Radical Nationalists, they are adverse to any kind of compromise on the
questions of Jewish nationalism. Their political party is the Revisionists.'[(18)]
The highest such accolade was from Mussolini who, in 1935, told David Prato,
later to become chief rabbi of Rome, that: 'For Zionism to succeed you need
to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person
who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky.'[(19)]
The majority of the movement thought of themselves as opponents of democracy
and as Fascists or near sympathisers. Jacob de Haas, an intimate of Herzl's,
had converted to Revisionism in the mid-1930s and, to show that they were
not 'just Jabotinsky', he had presided at the Vienna NZO Congress. When
he returned to America he gave his impressions of the gathering in his column
in Chicago's Jewish Chronicle. After hastily reassuring his readers
that he really was not defending Fascism, he told them they had to:
realize that democracy is a dead issue in most
of Europe. Its chief exhibition in the common mind is the bluster and contrivance
of endless parties and subparties... The delegates were not fascists, but
having lost all faith in democracy they were not anti-fascist. They were
however very anti-Communistic.[(20)]
If de Haas, in America, had to ease his sceptical readers into awareness
that the majority of his movement had nothing but contempt for democracy,
Wolfgang von Weisl, the financial director of the Revisionists, had no such
hesitation about telling a diplomatic newspaper in Bucharest that 'although
opinions among the Revisionists varied, in general they sympathized with
Fascism'. He was positively eager to let the world know that 'He personally
was a supporter of Fascism, and he rejoiced at the victory of Fascist Italy
in Abyssinia as a triumph of the White races against the Black.'[(21)] In
1980 Shmuel Merlin described his own feelings toward Mussolini in the mid-1930s,
when he was the young Secretary-General of the New Zionist Organisation.
I admired him but I was not a fascist. He idealized
war. I felt war was necessary, but to me it was always a tragedy... I did
regret that Achimeir titled his column 'Diary of a Fascist', it just gave
an excuse for our enemies to attack us, but it certainly did not break up
our friendship.[(22)]
Whatever Jabotinsky might have thought he was leading, there can be no doubt
that these three prominent members of the Revisionist movement were talking
about a Fascist grouping. Von Weisl's evaluation seems quite reasonable;
the Fascist component within the leadership was massive and it was they,
not Jabotinsky, who ran the movement in Palestine, Poland, Italy, Germany,
Austria, Latvia and Manchuria, at least. At the very best Jabotinsky must
be thought of as a liberal-imperialist head on a Fascist body. Present-day
Revisionists do not deny the presence of avowed Fascists in their movement
in the 1930s; instead they overemphasise the distinctions between Jabotinsky
and the Fascists. The academy at Civitavecchia, they allege, was but mere
Mazzinism. Nationalists are allowed, they claim, to seek the aid of an imperialist
rival of their own oppressor; surely, they insist, that does not therefore
imply endorsement of the internal regime of their patron. They then point
to Jabotinsky's admonition to the Betarim at Civitavecchia:
Do not intervene in any party discussions concerning
Italy. Do not express any opinions about Italian politics. Do not criticize
the present regime in Italy --nor the former regime. If you are asked about
your political and social beliefs answer: I am a Zionist. My greatest desire
is the Jewish state, and in our country I oppose class warfare. This is
the whole of my creed.[(23)]
This most diplomatic formula was calculated to please the Italian Fascists
without antagonising any conservative supporters of the old regime whom
a Betari might chance to encounter. Opposition to the class struggle was
the litmus test for Mussolini, who was never particularly concerned whether
his foreign admirers specifically thought of themselves as pure Fascists.
However, Jabotinsky's letter to the Betarim was not the end of the story.
His apologists omit the actual situation at the school where his strictures
were ignored. The March 1936 issue of L'Idea Sionistica, the magazine
of the Revisionists' Italian branch, described the ceremonies attendant
to the inauguration of the Betar squad's new headquarters:
The order --'Attention!' A triple chant ordered
by the squad's commanding officer --'Viva L'Italia! Viva Il Re! Viva Il
Duce!' resounded, followed by the benediction which rabbi Aldo Lattes invoked
in Italian and in Hebrew for God, for the king and for Il Duce... 'Giovinezza'
[the Fascist Party's anthem] was sung with much enthusiasm by the Betarim.[(24)]
We may be sure that the same chants were cried when Mussolini himself reviewed
the Betarim in 1936.[(25)] Jabotinsky knew that his Italian followers were
admirers of Mussolini, but when he was sent a copy of Mussolini's Dottrina
del fascismo all he could say in rebuke was a mild: 'I am permitted
to hope that we have the capacity to create a doctrine of our own,
without copying others.'[(26)] And, for all his personal reservations about
Fascism, he definitely wanted Mussolini as the Mandatory for Palestine,
writing to a friend in 1936 that his choices ran to:
Italy or some condominium of less anti-Semitic
states interested in Jewish immigration, or a direct Geneva [League of Nations]
Mandate... Before June 30-July 15 I sounded alternative no. 1. Result: not
yet ripe, not by a long shot.[(27)]
Jabotinsky became Mussolini's defence attorney within the Jewish world.
While he was visiting America in 1935 on a lecture tour he wrote a series
of articles for New York's Jewish Daily Bulletin, a short-lived English-language
Zionist paper devoted exclusively to Jewish affairs. In the 1930s, most
Jews followed the common usage and referred to the fight against Hitler
as part of the 'anti-Fascist struggle'; Jabotinsky was determined to put
a stop to that, since he understood too well that as long as the Jews saw
Hitler as another Fascist, they would never approve of the Revisionist orientation
towards Mussolini. His brief for the Italian Fascist regime shows us exactly
how he put his personal objections to the politics of a 'buffalo herd' far
behind his growing commitment to his hoped-for Italian Mandatory:
Whatever any few think of Fascism's other points,
there is no doubt that the Italian brand of Fascist ideology is at least
an ideology of racial equality. Let us not be so humble as to pretend that
this does not matter --that racial equality is too insignificant an idea
to outbalance the absence of civic freedom. For it is not true. I am a journalist
who would choke without freedom of the press, but I affirm it is simply
blasphemous to say that in the scale of civic rights, even the freedom of
the press comes before the equality of all men. Equality comes first, always
first, super first; and Jews should remember it, and hold that a regime
maintaining that principle in a world turned cannibal does, partly, but
considerably, atone for its other short-comings: it may be criticized, it
should not be kicked at. There are enough other terms for cussing use --Nazism,
Hitlerism, Polizeistadt, etc.-- but the word 'fascismo, is Italy's copy
right and should therefore be reserved only for the correct kind of discussion,
not for exercises in Billingsgate. Especially as it may yet prove very harmful.
That government of the copy right is a very powerful factor, whose sympathy
may yet ward off many a blow, for instance in the League of Nations councils.
Incidentally, the Permanent Mandate Commission which supervises Palestinian
affairs has an Italian chairman. In short --though I don't expect street-urchins
(irrespective of age) to follow advise of caution-- responsible leaders
ought to take care.[(28)]
The Revisionists Rationalise their Links with the Fascists
The orientation towards Mussolini ended in total debacle. Blindly groping
for a hammer against their Arab, British and Jewish foes, the Revisionists
were the only ones who did not see what was coming. A photostat of a letter
from Emir Shekib Arslan to the Mufti, concerning the spreading of pro-Italian
propaganda, had appeared in the Palestine press in 1935 and by 1936 Radio
Bari was blaring anti-British broadcasts at the Arabs. By then the Revisionists
were so used to defending Mussolini that they simply would not acknowledge
his collaboration with the Mufti and the Palestinian cause. As late as 1938
William Ziff, an advertising executive who headed American Revisionism,
tried to play down the Italian involvement with the Mufti in his book, The
Rape of Palestine.
In beautifully chosen words which inferred an
anti-Jewish as well as an anti-British plot, the British Foreign Secretary
pinned the whole blame on the Italians. The entire liberal press rose to
the bait so dexterously flicked upon the water. Like a pack of dogs hot
after game, the Marxist press aggressively took up the cry.[(29)]
Despite the fact that the Revisionists had clearly backed the wrong horse
he continued:
There can be no doubt that Mussolini, a hard-fisted
realist, would have considered it good business if he could have disengaged
the Jews from the British orbit. A powerful independent Zion with which
he was on a friendly footing would have suited him perfectly. The Jews themselves
eliminated this prospect by their persistent Anglophilism, and Mussolini
had come to regard Zionism as merely a mask for the creation of another
zone of English political and economic expansion in the Mediterranean. It
hence looms in the Italian mind as an anti-Italian force. Nevertheless,
not a shred of real evidence has ever been offered to substantiate the charge
that Italian intervention was a factor in the recent Arab revolt in Palestine.[(30)]
Eventually it was Spain, not Palestine, that persuaded Mussolini to support
Hitler. Mussolini grasped that he and Hitler now had to stay united to ward
off revolution elsewhere, and that it was only through an alliance with
the German power that he could hope to expand his empire. But he also knew
that it was impossible to be Hitler's ally and have Jews in his own party.
He therefore concocted a Latinised Aryanism, expelled the Jews from the
party and the economy, and geared up for war. The Revisionists declared
that they were wrong for the right reasons.
For years we have warned the Jews not to insult
the fascist regime in Italy. Let us be frank before we accuse others of
the recent antiJewish laws in Italy; why not first accuse our own radical
groups who are responsible for what happened.[(31)]
With Mussolini's turn toward Hitler, the Revisionists' own Fascism became
an impossible liability in the Jewish world and when Jabotinsky died in
New York in August 1940 they hastily dropped the title of Rosh Betar, which
had become redolent of Fascism. They would not admit that they had been
Fascist themselves, merely that no one could possibly fill Jabotinsky's
shoes. Recent Revisionist choniclers naturally tend to avoid or play down
the role of their internal Fascists, such as Achimeir, and Civitavecchia
is usually passed over with little more than an exonerating 'the founders
of the Israeli navy were trained there'.
'Among the most Disturbing Political Phenomena of our Time'
It is impossible to end a discussion of Revisionism and Fascism without
mentioning briefly Begin's role during these events. His post-war books,
The Revolt and White Nights, omit his own activities in the
1930s, and Jabotinsky is portrayed as a misunderstood exponent of military
defence. But at the age of 22 Begin was prominent enough in the Polish Betar
to sit with Jabotinsky on the presidium of the 1935 Polish Revisionist conference
in Warsaw. By 1938 he was the dominant figure at the Betar's Warsaw world
conference, and by 1939 he had been appointed head of Polish Betar. But,
despite the fact that he has been called a Fascist by innumerable opponents,
no specifically pro-Mussolini writings by him are ever cited and, by now,
it must be presumed that none exist. However, if it is true that he never
openly expounded Fascism, Yehuda Benari, director of the Jabotinsky Institute,
and the author of the article on Begin in the Encyclopedia of Zionism
and Israel, categorically states that in 1939 'he joined the radical wing
of the Revisionist movement, which was ideologically linked with the B'rit
HaBiryonim'.[(32)] Begin was a personal friend of Achimeir, who had been
deported to Poland in 1935, as well as von Weisl, who frequently came to
Warsaw to negotiate with the Polish government on behalf of the NZO. He
was an intimate friend of Nathan Yalin-Mor and at that time an admirer of
Avraham Stem, both committed totalitarians. Even after the Second World
War, as the leader of the Herut Party in the new Israeli state, Begin
had both Achimeir and von Weisl writing for their daily newspaper.
In December 1948, on the occasion of his first visit to the United States,
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and others sent a letter to
the New York Times exposing Begin's politics. Given the record of
his movement and his intimate associations with the openly Fascist elements
of pre-war Revisionism, their evaluation of Begin's ideological commitment
bears quotation:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena
of our time 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... They have preached an admixture of ultranationalism,
religious mysticism and racial superiority... they have proposed corporate
unions on the Italian Fascist model... In the light of the forgoing considerations,
it is imperative that the truth about Mr Begin and his movement be made
known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership
of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts.[(33)]
Notes
[(1)]. Joseph Schechtman, 'The Jabotinsky-Slavinsky Agreement', Jewish
Social Studies (October 1955), p. 297.
[(2)]. Ibid., p. 306.
[(3)]. Marie Syrkin, 'Labor Zionism Replies', Menorah Journal (Spring
1935), p. 72.
4. Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'The Iron Law', Selected Writings (South
Africa, 1962), p. 26.
[(5)]. Yaacov Shavit, 'The Attitudes of the Revisionists to the Arab Nationalist
Movement', Forum on the Jewish People, Zionism and Israel (Spring
1978), p. 102.
[(6)]. Robert Gessner, 'Brown Shirts in Zion', New Masses (19 February
1935), p. 11.
[(7)]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'Jewish Fascism', The Zionist (London,
25 June 1926), p. 26.
[(8)]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, Samson (American edn, entitled Prelude
to Delilah), pp. 200-1.
[(9)]. Joseph Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet, p. 165.
[(10)]. Yehuda Benari and Joseph Schechtman, History of the Revisionist
Movement, vol. 1, p. 338.
[(11)]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'Zionism and Communism', If adar (February
1941), p. 33.
[(12)]. Shlomo Avineri, 'Political Thought of Vladimir Jabotinsky', Jerusalem
Quarterly (Summer 1980), p. 17.
[(13)]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, State Zionism, p. 10.
[(14)]. Syrkin, 'Labor Zionism Replies', p. 79.
[(15)]. Jabotinsky, letter to Leone Carpi, 7 October 1931, in D. Carpi,
A. Milano and A. Rofe (eds.), Scritti in Memoria Di Leone Carpi,
p. 42.
[(16)]. Ibid., 21 May 1935, pp. 54-5.
[(17)]. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion (American edn), p. 67.
[(18)]. Leopold van Mildenstein, 'Ein Nazi fahrt nach Palastina', Der
Angriff, (Berlin, 27 September 1934), pp. 3-4.
[(19)]. Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion - The Armed Prophet, p. 46.
[(20)]. Jacob de Haas, 'New Struggles in an Old World', Chicago Jewish
Chronicle (18 October 1935), p. 9.
[(21)]. 'Dr von Weisl Believes in Fascism', World Jewry (London,
12 June 1936), p. 12.
[(22]). Author's interview with Shmuel Merlin, 16 September 1980.
[(23)]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, 'Letter to Plugat Civitavecchia', Selected
Writings (USA)
[(24)]. 'Supplemento al no. 8 di L 'Idea Sionistica' (March 1936),
p. 2.
[(25)]. Mussolini, My Husband (Italian film documentary).
[(26)]. Jabotinsky, 29 January 1934, Scritti, p. 52.
[(27)]. Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet, p. 304.
[(28)]. Jabotinsky, 'Jews and Fascism - Some Remarks - and a Warning', Jewish
Daily Bulletin (11 April 1935), p. 3.
[(29)]. William Ziff, The Rape of Palestine (1938), p. 428.
[(30)]. Ibid., p. 429.
[(31)]. Paul Novick, Solution for Palestine (1939), p. 18.
[(32)]. Yehuda Benari, 'M'Nahum Begin', Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel,
vol.l,p. 116.
[(33)]. 'New Palestine Party', New York Times (4 December 1948) (Letters),
p. 12.
++++++++++++++++++
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