Tuesday, July 16, 2024

'White Privileged' Jews and Jabotinsky

I found that a 2008 thesis entitled 'Quasi-barbarians' and 'wandering Jews': The Balfour Declaration in light of world events presented by (and later incoporated in her book) Maryanne Agnes Rhett that she writes of Ze'ev Jabotinsky as becoming "the vehicle of [Max] Nordau‘s activist approach". He began

advocating the masculinization of Judaism and the militarization of the people via the creation of a Jewish legion. Jabotinsky recognized that in order to carry out the process of militarization, a new ideology to help reinforce muscular Judaism was necessary. For this model Jabotinsky turned to legend and lore of Biblical Israel and closely allied it with modern philosophical and ideological trends.

She then goes further postulating that Muscular Judaism is an Extension of Muscular Christianity:

Parallels that exist between what Max Nordau sought for the Jewish community and what European Christians were seeking are significant for our study. The policy of Anglicization‘ and the prevention of societal degeneration were driven by the same impulses that inspired the creation of the New Jew. While Anglicization was closely associated with an Anglican Christian viewpoint, it nevertheless shaped the identity construction of all Jews, Catholics, and other Christian denominations, especially those of the upper class. Among the Anglo-Jewish elite, identity construction manifested itself not only in sending their sons to the same schools as their Christian counterparts, but in establishing parallel Jewish organizations, like the Anglicized Boy Scouts, for immigrant Jewish boys and girls.

Just as muscular Christianity was a means for inculcating the Christian youth of Britain into a militarized physical identity; British Judaism underwent a revitalization of its own militaristic past with the development of paramilitary organizations like scouting groups. The Jewish Lads‘ Brigade, the most prominent example of these groups, was founded in Great Britain in 1895.

Later on, p. 153, she adds about 

Jabotinsky‘s campaign for a militarized Jewish body

and at p. 232 she suggests, based on "Historian Yakov M. Rabkin" who

argues that one reason De Hahn became disillusioned with political Zionism was because of its aggressive nature,‘ in particular the proto-fascism Vladimir Jabotinsky and his followers seemed to advocate. Rabkin contends that ―his [De Hahn‘s] acquaintance with Jabotinsky and other leaders of the future Israeli right wing, which was fascinated by the growing fascist movements of Europe, alerted De Haan to the threat that Zionism‘s violent side represented. (Footnote: Yacov M. Rabkin, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2006, 130)

DeHa an arrived in Palestine in January 1919 and Jabotinsky left Palestine in July 1920. What other "future right-wing Israeli leaders" did he know? How well did he know Jabotinsky?

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