The Old Machon Campus

If you drop by Hezkiyahu Hamelech Street in Katamon, Number 15, you can see the location of the Mayanot educational institution.

But back in 1966-1967, it was the Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz center (it moved there probably in 1949 as in 1948, it was held in Petah Tikva) where I lived for 5 months, ate and studied (there was a nearby secondary dorm building which, I understand, was more a lively place than ours). It used to be the Claridge Hotel during Mandate times, built by the Freij Family in the 193os. The Czech consul resided there in 1947-48.

From the Palestine Post October 27, 1947:

It was opposite Villa Regina where J.N. Stubbs, M.C., A/Commissioner for Lands & Surveys in the Mandate Palestine government (1921-1947), originally of the Legal Department, lived. In December 1948, the Palestine Post reported that its courtyards housed chicknes from the Girls' Training Farm formerly of North Talpiot.

Since one of my sons lives nearby with his wife and baby son, I've passed it more than I used to. And it brings back memories.

This was a lecture room, usually for arts & crafts, camping activities and games:

The complex behind that pre-fab lecture room:

The entrance to the inner courtyard, into which we once lifted up four steps a teacher's Volksvagen:

and where we danced

If you are unfamiliar with the area, the map location is #39 in David Kroyanker's book:

and today:

The main building of the administration offices, library, dining hall and some other learning rooms:

The Machon "provides leadership training for graduates of Zionist Youth Movements from around the world".

We were the 39th Session ('Machzor').

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Two Crosses

Here is Foreign Mnister Abba Eban meeting Pope Paul VI in 1969:

It was 1969 in the Vatican.

The Pope has his cross prominently displayed. Eban is in a business suit. No Jewish identification.

Three years later, Geulah Cohen was visiting Italy. Her younger brother was an emissary there and it so happened that a visit for an interview with the Venice's Patriarch, Albino Luciani, was arranged.

She asked how to dress and was told that, among other things, the Cardinal would be wearing a cross as part of his attire and she shouldn't be surprised.  Geulah asked how large and was told it was big.

She immediately headed off for a Jewish souvenir store and purchased the largest Magen David she could find.

The result:

Six years later, that Cardinal became the Pope, John Paul I, if for only 33 days.

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Fifty Years to Our Aliyah - Part One

On Saturday night, September 5, the 5th of Ellul, after Shabbat was out, my wife and I, together with over 429 other Olim (see newspaper clip below), walked off the gangplank of the Queen Anna Maria which we had boarded in New York:

Just prior to boarding with my wife's sister (right) and my two cousins 
and my step-grandmother (far left)
(Credit: Nisan Teman)

It was a 12-day cruise from New York via Lisbon and Piraeus/Athens into the Haifa Port complex (I think we left New York on August 25) arranged ny the Jewish Agency's Aliyah Department.

We had arrived to Eretz-Yisrael. The bureaucracy began:

Both of us had been in Israel previously. I was on the year-long program of the Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz 1966-1967 and Batya was at Machon Greenberg for a few months in 1969 (I failed at planning our wedding and asked she return early).

We were met by several Betarim, themselves studying at the Machon L'Madrichim, who assisted us with all what we had brought (a lot) and we went to Jerusalem. Our first night was at the old Machon location at Hizkiyahu Hamelech Street and then two or three more nights at the old Ron Hotel at Zion Square (now the Jerusalem Hostel). Shabbat meals we took at the two downtown restaurants open on Shabbat for people who pre-paid and presented the coupons, Sova on Hahistadrut, what is now the Superpharm, and Tarablus at the corner of Yafo and Strauss, where Super Adika is now.

From there we moved to our home for the next 10 months, the Betar Student Hostel in the Old City, corner of Rechov HaYehudim and Plugat HaKotel.

The Jewish Agency paid for moving all that we brought:

And towards our move to Bayit Vegan at the end of our first year, we got a "Sochnut bed"

That was our home, a 2-room apartment on the second floor, and where I was employed as director of the dorm. Betarim studying at the Hebrew University were the core along with a few others. Ben-Tzion Givoni and Aryeh Bechar had seen fit to give me the job.

The dorm soon became a hub of activity. We were involved in attempts to settle on the Land (my wife and I took a bus from the Arab bus station opposite Damascus Gate to just past Jalaoun Refugee Camp and walked back to the Army base of Bet El), 

(that's the late Yisrael Lederman to our left)

demonstrated for Soviet Jewry, we opposed the Left, entered the Temple Mount, and on and on. I became a Madrich in Jerusalem Betar:

My wife and I took a hike along Wadi Kelt. Spent first chag of Succot and then later Seder night with the Mageni family in the Military Governorship Compound in Hebron.  

At Chanukah we hosted a reunion of members of Brit Hashmonaim (at right: Batya, me, Rachel Segel and Rav Moshe Segel):

On Taanit Esther, there were contretemps when we were kicked out of the Temple Mount (I am at far left in picture below) and encountered some Arab who were displeased at our entry.

I served once a week as the Betar movement liason with the Machoniks. Attended lectures of Israel Eldad. And many demonstrations. I showed up at meetings of World Betar. Met with Geula Cohen to begin our 49 year relationship. Helped some people on the run. And our laundry the whole time was done by my wife, by hand. 

By the end of that eventful year, we were parents. On 29 Tammuz our first child, a daughter, was born. We moved to an apartment in Bayit V'Gan and I began to work at the Torah Culture Department of the Jerusalem Municipality, thanks to proteczia of Rav Segel, but moved on to the Public Relations Department of Shaare Zedek Hospital for the next four years under Elchanan Peles.  I also began my part-time stint at Geulah Cohen's Midrasha Leumit in Jerusalem supervised by her former husband, Emmanuel Hanegbi. We joined the Herut Movement and were driven back to the Old City by the late Haim Corfu (who had only earned his driving licence three weeks previously) and joined the Kuppat Cholim Leumit (pasting in a booklet the monthy pay receipts).


(To be continued)

UPDATE:   My wife's version.

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Palestine - or Judah?

Judah.

As reported by a "Correspondent With the British Forces In Palestine":

Within the country, the English advance is taken almost as a matter of course . The Jewish people have been counting on it for a year, and they show no exuberant enthusiasm now that their expectation has been fulfilled. They are more excited abou the formation of the Jewish regiment, of which tidings have reached them in a somewhat distorted form. They regarded it is a striking manifestation of the national spirit which is their peculiar pride, and they inquire anxiously when it will arrive in the country* to help drive the Turks from Galilee.  

Many imagined it was to come out under "General Jabotinsky, " the "general" being a prominent Russo-Jewish journalist who has had much to do with the promotion of the idea, but who holds in fact a far less exalted position in the unit. Probably many of the young men would be eager to join the ranks when the regiment arrives in the land; until then, the settlers agree that the redemption came just in time to save them and their colonies from ruin. 

*  The first units arrived in June 1918.

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Were the Revisionists Founded in 1925 or 1923?

When did the Zionist faction led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky become known as the "Revisionists"?

In April 1925?

Or, perhaps earlier, in 1923?

Here, third line, at end:

and it continues:

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Jabotinsky, in 1923, 'Made a Lot of Trouble'

From this archive:

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Jabotinsky vs. Weizmann October 1920

From this archive:

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A Communist's 1939 Attack on Jabotinsky

How bad can Jews attack Jews?

Here's an example selected from the column "Change the World" in The Daily Worker, December 21, 1939 by Mike Gold.

Gold was the pen-name of Itzok Isaac Granich, lifelong communist, novelist and literary critic. In 1930, he published his semi-autobiographical novel, Jews Without Money.

In the example, he attacks Ze'ev Jabotinsky, misinterpreting and misrepresenting the facts and circumstances of the Slavinsky/Petlura-Jabotinsky Agreement treated by JB Schechtman here.*

Here is Gold:

Anyway, the glee with which these Jewish reactionaries cooperate with the Ku Klux Klan-Dies Committee always reminds me of Jabotlnsky, leader of the extreme wing of the Zionists. This Jabotinsky, in the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, hated Communism so much that he organized a Jewish Legion in Poland, and put it at the service of the White Guard General Petlura.

Jabotinsky, the Zionist and Soviet-hater, signed a mutual assistance pact with Petlura, also a Soviet-hater. But Petlura was not a Zionist.  In fact he was a bitter anti-Semite. He conducted some great and bloody pogroms of Jews. He slaughtered tens of thousands. That is how he paid off Jabotinsky. And that is the sort of pay Jews who stool-pigeon for Martin Dies can expect from him, too. Dies represents the emergence of American Fascism—a Ku Klux America. And Jews, trade unionists, Negroes, liberals and similar groups can expect no mercy from such an America when it comes.

If you read into this any contemporary echo, you may do so but on your own responsibility.

* Schechtman quotes Jabotinsky on this:

Wherever there is danger of Jewish pogroms, because of a conflict between two or more non-Jewish armed camps, I recommend an agreement to form a Jewish gendarmerie with all sides that will agree to the establishment of a Jewish gendarmerie. A Jewish gendarmerie with the White Army, a Jewish gendarmerie with the Red Army, a Jewish gendarmerie with the lilac and the pea-green 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.

And here is another view:

Much has been written about the so-called Jabotinsky-Slavinsky agreement of 1921 on the creation of a Jewish militia to defend the Jewish population on Ukrainian territory. Jabotinsky’s opponents denigrated him for concluding that agreement with Petliura’s representative, Maksym Slavinsky. The blame was undeserved. In making the agreement, Jabotinsky held fast to his tenet of Jewish self-defence, maintaining that Jews had to stop relying on others and protect themselves. This principled position, which he implemented in 1920 as commander of a Jewish self-defence force repulsing an Arab pogrom mob in Jerusalem, resulted in his imprisonment and banishment from Palestine by the British authorities.

As for Jabotinsky’s attitude to Petliura, who was blamed for pogroms during his rule, the Zionist leader explained that in defending the interests of the Jewish people he was prepared to speak with the devil himself. Subsequent historical events, such as Rabin’s handshake with Arafat in the White House in 1993, seem to justify this pragmatic view.

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Sharp, Caricaturist, Views Jabotinsky

Found in the PM newspaper of June 25, 1940, five weeks before Ze'ev Jabotinsky's death:

Bio information:

Leon Schliefer was born in 1900 in Germany. He served in the German army at the end of World War I (1914-1918). He attended the Academy for Arts and Industry there and continued his studies in Kraków, Poland, Berlin, and Munich. After service in World War I, he became a newspaper artist in Berlin and a well-known etcher. He became a political cartoonist and his work was published in the anti-Nazi press. He also specialized in courtroom trial sketches. After the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, Schliefer emigrated to the United States. He changed his name to William Sharp* and continued his career as an editorial cartoonist and illustrator. His work was published in the New York Times, Life Magazine, and other publications. He died in 1961, age sixty-one years.

He lived in Forest Hills. He was one of the main illustrators for the comic adaptations of novels that King Features distributed in cooperation with the Book-of-the-Month Club. Sharp illustrated 'The Seventh Cross' (1942), 'Combined Operations' (1943), 'Into Occupied France and Out' (1943) and 'Betrayal from the East' (1944).

A 1933 example:

* In Yiddish, "sharp" is שאַרף (scharf).

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NYTimes Reporting on Jabotinsky in 1923

SAYS ZIONISM DECLINES.

Jabotinsky Declares Jewish Army Must Defend Palestine.By Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
 RIGA. Nov. 21.—The well-known Zionist, Vladimir Jabotinsky, who held a commission in the British Army and served in Palestine during 1918, is touring the Baltic States lecturing on Zionism. Jabotinsky declares that during the last five years Zionism has considerably declined in consequence of the present British policy in Palestine and considers the proposed Immigration commission is a danger to the success of Zionism in Palestine.  In his Riga lecture Jabotinsky stated that while formerly a great part of the British press had been enthusiastically in favor of Zionism, now three-quarters of it was hostile, because Zionism made it necessary to keep extra British forces in Palestine. The British soldier was always willing to defend British interests, but they did not understand the necessity for defending Jews against Arabs. It would be necessary, therefore, to organize Jewish forces under the British Government so that Jewish soldiers could defend Palestine. If Zionism was worth anything, Jews must be willing to organize themselves, to train and to submit to proper discipline in order to be able to defend Zionism themselves. The garrison of Palestine must consist exclusively of Jewish soldiers. 

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Hitler, the "Greatest Zionist"

Remember Ken Livinsgstone and his Hitler = Zionism claptrap?

Well, the INS correspondent Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker (whose reporting in April 1933 on the situation of Germany's Jews was nigh prescient) used the comparison already on September 28,1938 but seemingly in a sardonic fashion:

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Jews Celebrate "Palestine Day"...With Jabotinsky

When Palestine was known as the historic Jewish national homeland, sanctioned by the League of Nations in international law with the guaranteed right of "close settlement by Jews on the land" (Article 6) including Judea, Samaria & Gaza:

Source.

Thanks to Yitzhak Sapir.

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Hagia Sophia Really Doesn't Interest the NYTimes

Following an editorial published by the New York Times, I sent the newspaper the following letter:

Your editorial, "The Hagia Sophia Is Converted Again" (July 23, 2020), informs that Turkey's President R.T. Erdogan indicated that when not being used for Moslem prayer, the Hagia Sophia, built to surpass Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem as you note, would remain open to the public. This is a welcome sign that Islam can tolerate shared space for holy sites of two different religions.

I hope that this spirit will move the Moslem Waqf authorities in Jerusalem, supported incidentally by Erdogan, to find a compromise whereby Jews can be present within the Haram A-Sharif, originally the Temple Mount, without discrimination or prohibition so they can express respect for our holy site.

It was not published.

Was I being outlandish?

In 2006, Spanish Muslims wrote to then Pope Benedict XVI and ask for hs permission to hold Islamic prayer in Córdoba Cathedral.

In part, it read:

"We invite you to create a new example, to send a message of hope to the world...[it would create a] unique ecumenical space...Do not fear. Together we can show the violent, the intolerant, the anti-Semites, the Islamophobes and also those who believe that only Islam has a right to remain in the world, that prayer is the strongest weapon imaginable..."

Whether or not one assumes that letter was an honest expression of shared place conflict resolution, nevertheless, Moslems should no be allowed to make an unequal claim in Jerusalem, denying Jews a change in the status quo and freed access and the right to worship, while they claim they be afforded those same rights in  Cordoba.

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Jabotinsky - a la Beinart

A shortened version of this article appears

in the Summer edition of Fathom Journal

___________________

In his recent infamous Jewish Currents essay, Peter Beinart, seeking to minimize the element of the demand for a Jewish state amongst Zionist lumanaries, includes this snippet as reflecting the thinking of Ze’ev Jabotinsky as regards the requirement for Jewish statehood:

As Jabotinsky explained in 1909, “The full pathos of our ideal was never focused on sovereignty, but rather on the idea of a territory, a compact Jewish society in one continuous space . . . not a Jewish state but a Jewish collective life.” 

The original Russian text

with thanks to Ira of the Jabotinsky Institute

That excerpt, which he - or rather one of the three research assistants he employed – found in an article by Dmitry Shumsky, would be fairly surprising for those familiar with the Jabotinsky who demanded a Jewish State. Beinart uses it to buttress his agreement with Shumsky that “the demand for a Jewish state did not define Zionism until the 1940s”.(Shumsky, who promotes a historic revisionism focused on "nonstatist Zionism", is problematic and as Alan Arkush notes: "evidence presented by Shumsky the historian seems to be tailored to substantiating the thinking of Shumsky the polemicist"). He could have also referred to a 1918 booklet entitled ‘The Jewish Nation’ in which Jabotinsky proposed a formulation of an administrative government in Palestine, writing,

“our friends as well as enemies…think that we claim an independent Jewish State – which of course, we do not, and most emphatically not … . A “Jewish state” is so premature”.

But, as is obvious, from the wording, Jabotinsky did not reject a Jewish state in principle but rather was expressing his judgment that the time and conditions were not ripe for a declaration of independence. He could have been echoing how David Lloyd George explained the British thinking behind the Balfour Declaration to the Peel Commission in 1937:

when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea of a National Home and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth.’ 

Statehood surely and always defined Zionism while less-than-statehood defined their pragmatic practical politics to attain that goal.

Without specifically referencing the 1942 decision taken at the Biltmore Hotel Conference, Beinart is suggesting that it was only the Holocaust that tipped the scales, forcing Zionists to pursue statehood rather than other paradigms as here:

“The belief that Jews in the land of Israel risk genocide without a Jewish state is central to what it means to be a Zionist today.”

I would suggest, if anything, what galvanized a policy change, not a fundamental political alteration, was the reneging of the British government in its 1939 White Paper and its volte face from the idea of a Jewish state, or homeland, or commonwealth.

He depends on Jabotinsky further on to support his outlook that not only was the Holocaust the catalyst to demand a state but that Arab violence was not comparable to Nazi Holocaust activity and quotes from Jabotinsky’s 1923 Iron Wall article:

“prominent pre-state Zionists themselves depicted Palestinian resistance not as genocidal but as understandable. ‘Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized,’ wrote the hawkish Jabotinsky in 1923. ‘That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing’.”

But in the JTA 1940 obituary of Jabotinsky, we read:

Addressing a convention of the New Zionist Organization in Prague two years ago, Jabotinsky declared that the whole of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, had to become an independent Jewish State which would then decide its future connection with Britain.

These are two examples of what I have previously noted is Beinart’s hallmark: arguing with Beinart is frustrating because almost every source to which he refers is corrupted, is incomplete, lacks background and, in addition, he has a sophistic method of argumentation. As Daniel Gordis has observed, Beinart displays “an astonishing array of sleights of hand and misrepresentations” and his ‘piece [is] so intellectually dishonest—and manipulative.” (And CAMERA deals with Beinart corrupting more recent history.)

To return to the quotation from 1909, Jabotinsky’s article from which those words are extracted appeared in seven parts from mid-January to mid-March 1909. In order to grasp the context, one need recall that after several years of struggle, the Young Turks succeeded on July 24, 1908 in forcing Abdul Hamid to restore the constitution. They were nationalists and for all intents and purpose, their rule was nigh martial. Any attempt to propagandize in Turkey for an independent Jewish state would have been the end of Zionism in Turkey in those existing circumstances. 

Jabotinsky had been in Constantinople since 1908. He had been commissioned by a St. Petersburg newspaper to cover the revolution in Turkey and the Berlin Executive office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) had appointed him its agent there. He became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper La Jeune Turc and other pro-Zionist periodicals including a weekly, L’Aurore, the Ladino El Judeo and a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Mevasser.

As noted by Tudor Parfitt, Yulia Egorova and Jacob Landau [in their studies] there, “Regarding Palestine, [Ha-Mevasser] argued that Zionist settlement to Palestine was economically favourable for the development of the Ottoman empire…[and] rebutted claims circulated by other contemporary press outlets (such as Alemdar), which stated that Zionism was anti-Turkish.

Quite simply, and even more obviously, Jabotinsky realized he needed a more pragmatic approach to the ruling clique to advance Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Young Turk leadership was becoming more sympathetic to Zionism as long as it was still in its practical phase (see p. 75 here). Yet, Jabotinsky came to the conclusion that Palestine could
not become a Jewish state as long as the Ottoman Empire existed and the attitude of the regime was anti-minority. Anyone reading the original Russian would grasp that Jabotinsky, throughout those seven sections, was deliberately avoiding any phrasing of Zionist aims that could prove disastrous for Zionism while yielding on as little as possible for the future development of the growing Zionist presence in then Palestine both demographically and agriculturally.

There is a second backdrop element which was the publication of a book by Jacobus Kann on his impressions of his 1907 visit to Ereẓ Israel. He had sent it to Young Turk parliamentarians and it included a demand for a Jewish autonomous home rule in Eretz Israel. This aroused strong criticism from Jabotinsky who at the time headed of the Zionist press in Istanbul who claimed it had damaged the cause of Zionism in the Ottoman capital. As described:

Jabotinsky had orders from [WZO President David] Wolffsohn to push a very soft line to the new masters of Turkey: Zionism did not mean a Jewish state, only free immigration to Palestine and cultural autonomy. But suddenly, without warning to either Wolffsohn or the Constantinople office, Jacobus Kann, a banker who administered the finances of the Dutch royal family and a member of the Actions Committee, published a travelogue, in German, of his recent trip to Palestine. In it, he reiterated the traditional Herzlian line that Turkey should set up an autonomous Zionist state there.

This affair provides greater insight into Jabotinsky’s thinking contained in the article quoted and it becomes quite clear, as Evyatar Freizel found, that he was agreeable that

For tactical reasons, official Zionism was cautious in explaining its ultimate aims, especially when addressing public opinion. Terms other than ‘state’ were used in diverse political documents and official Zionist utterances: Heimstatte, nationale Heimstatte, Jewish national home, commonwealth, Jewish commonwealth. However, the accepted view is that the ultimate aim of the mainstream Zionist movement was to recreate a Jewish state in Palestine. It remained open how best to reach that goal. A widely accepted position supported an evolutionary path, ‘practical Zionism’, meaning a gradual process of economic, social and institutional development

Moreover as Jan Zouplna writes:

It had to be clear to everyone that the first and ultimate goal of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish majority in Palestine. It was yet to be decided what form of autonomy the state should possess. Like Herzl before him, Jabotinsky did not insist on immediate national and political independence…The only legitimate terms to be used were either Jewish majority or an administrative and political self-government. Jabotinsky claimed that the term “national home” was nothing else than an invention of a hostile Mandatory administration…Jabotinsky had a vision with a positive cultural content as well. As the above-mentioned ideas suggest, his vision, unlike the one of Herzl, does not stand in opposition to Ahad Ha’am and his concepts, but in opposition to his self-appointed interpreters, mostly associated with the Brith Shalom group.

Shmuel Katz in Volume One of “Lone Wolf”, p. 100, describing the affair, quotes Jabotinsky from his Autobiography as ruefully admitting that it was ironic that he, of all people, took the position to downplay the demand for statehood but given the time and place. He wrote that despite his “lov[ing] State Zionism…I love logic more”. Was Jabotinsky “guilty” as charged by Beinart? Not really, especially if one does not review and weigh the circumstances of that time and place when the article was written and not subject the article to a close reading of the actual text as opposed to relying on and interpreter such as Shumsky who, as I have shown, mistranslates Jabotinsky.

Later, in 1934, Jabotinsky's definition of Revisionist Zionist was a program that:

"The aim of Zionism is a Jewish state. The territory – both sides of the Jordan. The system – mass colonisation. The solution of the financial problem – a national loan. These four principles cannot be realised without international sanction."

Even then he was still aware of the tension between political goals and practical achievement.

One need not to be sympathetic to Jabotinsky to realize that Beinart was being imbalanced and plainly unfair in how he treated that quotation. Beinart has done this before in his Crisis of Zionism book seeking not to argue with him but rather to mischaracterize him and even demonize him. He didn't like that Jews carried a moral message (p. 100).  He held to a "racist" view (p. 101).  Nationalism, which he "revered", "bred" in him. (p. 103).

On page 101, Beinart, who describes Jabotinsky a page earlier as “brutal” and as one who of the Jews did not like “their belief that they carried a moral message”, quotes a 1910 article of Jabotinsky so:

“Only in the Bible is it written: “You should not wrong a stranger nor should you oppress him; for strangers you were in the land of Egypt”. Contemporary morality has no place for such childish humanism”.

In the first place, the second sentence in that article, “Homo homini lupos”, should more properly be

In our contemporary code of morality there is no room for this type of slobbering love and childish humanism of fellow man it would seem”.

But more importantly, that section is not referring to Jews. Jabotinsky is writing, foremost, about the situation in the United States after the race riots that year and of simply a “hate of one race against another, a devious hate, wide-open for all our eyes, arbitrary, without reason and without cause” which he denounces. It is “a sickness” just like the Kishniev pogrom and anti-Kurdish attacks. He then notes that the same German who sought freedom just a few years later is now persecuting Poles seeking the same goal and observes “Would the same German patriot of 1860 who shed tears when listening to village school pupils singing songs of a united Germany also have taken a strap to the Polish youngsters who refused to study religion in German?” It is here that his “only in the Bible…childish humanism” words follow. No Jews.

In fact, Jabotinsky adds: “the Poles see the Jews – and they do not hide this – as material to be exploited to strengthen their rule in the country” to illustrate how this process goes on and on as those who gain strength from a struggle then seek to stifle other struggles of weaker people, and the Jews are the weakest as he describes there.

That “childish humanism” was written in a rhetorical deprecatory, disdainful fashion. 

A corruption of the original content and intent. Indeed, on p. 104, in opposition to he trying to paint Jabotisnky as not wanting a Jewish state, Beinart writes that the Revisionists, the party Jabotinsky established in 1925, as being "feverently opposed any restraints on the Jewish pursuit of statehood".

On page 102, he returns to this, writing, “whereas Jews mocked the idea that Jews have a special responsibility to the stranger as ‘childish humanism’”. A second time he prevaricates. Indeed, anyone who has read Jabotinsky’s “Arab Angle – Undramatized”, in his Jewish War Front, knows how Beinart has perverted Jabotinsky.

A short excerpt, starting at p. 188, will suffice:

1. Civic Equality

1.1. Providing nothing be done to hinder any foreign Jew from repatriating, and, by doing so, automatically becoming a Palestinian citizen, the principle of equal rights for all citizens of any race, creed, language or class shall be enacted without limitation throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.

1.2. In every Cabinet where the Prime Minister is a Jew the vicepremiership shall be offered to an Arab, and vice versa.

1.3. Proportional sharing by Jews and Arabs both in the charges and in the benefits of the State...

2. Languages

2.1. The Hebrew and the Arabic languages shall enjoy equal rights and equal legal validity...

3. Cultural Autonomy

3.1. The Jewish and the Arab ethno-communities shall be recognized as autonomous public bodies of equal status before the law ...

3.2. Each ethno-community shall elect its National Diet with right to issue ordinance and levy taxes within the limits of its autonomy...

On page 103, Beinart terms Abba Ahimeir and Avraham Stern, who rejected Jabotinsky and who Jabotinsky had to rein in, at times unsuccessfully, as his “disciples”, as if he is directly responsible for their thinking. On the next page, he asserts Jabotinsky sought that the Arabs be “militarily and psychologically crushed”, a misleading use of language. On page 36, he quotes Stephen Wise in 1935 denouncing Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionist camps as “a species of fascism”, a charge untrue which, however, political rivals found it convenient to bandy about. But for Beinart, Wise is a divinity and why need he research that calumny?

In fact, in support of his new idea to denude the Jewish state concept, he could have attempted to misinterpret Jabotinsky. As Yitzhak Conforti has highlighted in his 2011 article,

“In a draft of a constitution which he proposed at the end of the First World War in 1918, he spoke of complete national equality between Jews and Arabs: ‘Both Jews and Arabs would enjoy from the start a complete autonomy equal to that of an independent nation.’”

However, Jabotinsky

“insisted that Palestine be recognized in a peace conference as the national home of the Jewish people and that emigration to Palestine be allowed for Jews from all over the world, with no limitations.” 

A crucial difference.

Can we trust Beinart to present us unvarnished Zionist history? In his "Crisis of Zionism", he wrote this on p. 51:

"There are to be sure, left-wing activists and Islamist militants who oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state. But they are marginal compared to the much broader and more influential swath of people who seek to 'delegitimize' not Israel, but its occupation".

Eight years later, Beinart has become part of that swath, no longer believing in a Jewish state.

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