From here, Shlomo Avineri:
"In connection with the central
position of national existence in Jabotinsky’s theoretical concept, his
approach to the position of Zionism in the Arab question is especially
interesting. And we repeat, we are not interested in tactical positions, but in
the question of principle, and here Jabotinsky inevitably faces a very difficult
problem.
On
the one hand, one might believe that a person like Jabotinsky, who saw in
nationalism, in national characteristics, in the national desire to separate
from others and in national pride, the focus of state and historical
development, would be attentive to the aspirations of Arab-Palestinian
nationalism. One who did not shy away from Ukrainian nationalism with its
anti-Semitic manifestations, as we saw above, who was intellectually interested
in Serbs, Croats and Albanians with their national rights, who believed that
Estonian choirs testify to the strength of the national feeling seething in the
Estonian people , - from such a person one could expect that, having come to
analyze the Middle Eastern reality, he would try to find a place for Arab nationalism
- in Palestine and in neighboring countries - in the overall picture of his
worldview.
But
that did not happen. Anyone who wants to find in Jabotinsky an attempt to
resolve this issue will be disappointed. The fundamental decision here was not
easy for any of the Zionist thinkers, but perhaps it could have been expected
from such a thinker as Jabotinsky, in whose philosophy nationalism, as a
universal phenomenon, occupied such a central place. However, Arab nationalism
is discussed infrequently and in passing in his writings, and anyone who
detects a considerable amount of disdain for the Arabs in this limited material
would be right.
True,
Jabotinsky, with his moral conviction, stood for the fact that in the future
Jewish state, where the Arabs would be a minority, they would receive full
civil rights as individuals. But a continuous thread runs through all of
Jabotinsky’s literary and political activities: he does not seem to notice the
Arabs as a serious political, social or cultural factor.
Once
again, this seems to be driven not by tactical considerations or an attempt to
evade a question that may be difficult to answer, but by something deeper: at
the heart of this position is Jabotinsky's concept of the superiority of
European culture; therefore, he views Zionism as an expression of this cultural
power of Europe. In his writings, he resolutely rejects the idealization of the
East or the Arab world, and in the article “Fashion for Arabesques” (1927) he
argues with those participants in the Zionist movement who strive to see in the
return to Zion also a return of the Jewish people to their origins - to the
East. The Jewish people, Jabotinsky argues, are a European people, their
culture took root in Europe, European culture itself is based on elements to
which the people of Israel contributed from the best of their heritage, and
there, in the West, and not in the East, the place of Israel as a people .
According to Jabotinsky, this also applies to the Sephardi community: “Our
origins from Asia, of course, are not proof. All of Central Europe is filled
with races that also came from Asia - and much later than us.
All
Ashkenazi Jews and perhaps half of the Sephardic Jews have lived in Europe for
almost two thousand years. Enough time to take root spiritually.
Even
more important is the other side of the issue: we not only lived in Europe for
many centuries, we not only learned from Europe: we, the Jews, are one of those
peoples who created European culture, and one of the most important among
them...
The
spiritual atmosphere in Europe is ours, we have the same right to it as the
Germans, English, Italians and French: the “copyright” right. And in Eretz
Israel this creativity of ours will continue... Nordau said it well: we are
going to Palestine to push the moral limits of Europe to the Euphrates
River" [5] .
In the same year (1927),
Jabotinsky wrote a long article entitled “Merchants of the Spirit,” in which he
tries to prove that the Arab medieval culture was, in essence, not Arab, and
not even Muslim, and that most of the famous names in the field of thought in
the Arab world of the Middle Ages belongs to the Syrians, Jews, Persians, etc.
- and not to the Arabs themselves. It is clear that the main question here is
not the historical correctness of such a definition, which itself is historical
and conditioned by time; It is interesting that the same thinker who, when
discussing Ukrainian nationalism, carefully emphasizes the element of
difference between Ukrainians and Great Russians, does the opposite when
discussing Arab culture [6] .
The
same question finds artistic expression in the story “Zhidenok”, which appeared
in a collection in Russian published by Zhabotinsky in 1930.
Jabotinsky
himself is aware that the story can be called “obviously chauvinistic.” The
main story is a detailed story about a Jewish teenager in one of the
settlements of Eretz Israel, proving how much better he knows Arab culture and
the geography of the Middle East than all the students of the village Arab
school, which is known as “an amazing school: six classes, geographical maps
and teacher from students of Cairo Al-Azgar University.” The story may be
trivial, but the lesson that Jabotinsky wants to draw from it is clear,
especially since the Jewish teenager in the story sums up the goals of this
education in a very simple form: “The students must learn two branches of
knowledge: to speak Hebrew and to beat face."
Jabotinsky
gives this assessment not only to the Arabs, but also to Islam in general. In
the article “Islam” (1924), Jabotinsky points out a number of cases in which a
handful of European soldiers managed to defeat vastly superior Arab or Muslim
forces. The Italian victory over the Senu Sith in 1911 in Tripoli, the victory
of the French expeditionary force over Faisal in Damascus in 1920 - all this
serves as decisive proof for Jabotinsky of the significant superiority of the
West.
“I
am not writing this to humiliate or ridicule the Arabs; I have no doubt about
their military valor... In our time, war is a scientific and financial matter;
backward peoples cannot do it.”
This
backwardness is not only a matter of time, according to Jabotinsky, as far as
the Muslim world is concerned. “Its real power in the future will be even less
than before,” he says, objecting in particular to those who believed that
Britain was forced to reckon with the Arab and Muslim factor in its Middle East
policy. The Muslim world does not represent—and will not represent—a political
force, as Jabotinsky says in the same article: “220 million people or even more
profess Islam; but “Islam” as an integral factor in international relations
does not exist... in the same way it is possible now, as it was possible a
hundred years ago, to bring a conflict with any Muslim people to any end,
without risking any complications of a pan-Islamic nature... As a political
fist … Islam does not exist.”
If
this concept defines Jabotinsky's position in assessing Arab nationalism, then
it is clear that his conclusions regarding the demands of the “Palestinian”
Arabs are unambiguous. Testifying before the British Royal Commission on
Palestine (Peel Commission) in 1937, Jabotinsky demands the establishment of a
Jewish state throughout the land of Israel in accordance with the basic principles
of the revisionist movement and continues: “We unanimously affirm that the
economic situation of the Arabs in the country is in the period of Jewish
settlement, and thanks to Jewish settlement, is the envy of neighboring Arab
countries to such an extent that Arabs from these countries show a clear
tendency to migrate to Palestine. And I have already shown you that, in our
opinion, there is no need to oust the Arabs. On the contrary, we mean that
Palestine on both sides of the Jordan will accommodate both the Arabs and their
descendants and many millions of Jews. I do not deny that in the course of this
process the Arabs will inevitably become a minority in Palestine. However, I
deny that this will cause them suffering. This is not a misery for any race or
nation if it already has so many nation-states and many more nation-states will
be added to them in the future. One part, one branch of this race, and by no
means the most significant, will join the state belonging to others in order to
live in it... This is a completely normal thing, and there is no “suffering” in
it.”
Note
that Jabotinsky does not argue that, compared with the Jewish claims to Eretz
Israel, the Arab claims are less valid or that, compared with the possibility
of the Jews remaining in the minority, the situation in which part of the Arab
nation will be a minority in the Jewish state will be a lesser disaster and
will entail less hardship.
For
him, turning the Arabs in Palestine into a minority will not cause them any
trouble at all. Personal rights, of course, will be granted to them - but on a
national level they have no claims. Here the right is not opposed to the right
and 13* 387 claims - claims, as Weizmann and his like-minded people saw it.
From Jabotinsky’s point of view, everything that was once said about Jews in
the Diaspora can also be said about Arabs in Palestine: the Arabs of this
country as individuals have everything, but as a collective nothing."
^