Jabotinsky's 1935 'Band Wagon'

This is the first of a series of three articles by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader, written specially for the Jewish Daily Bulletin. The second of the series will appear in tomorrow’s Bulletin.

It is not only difficult but probably impossible to bring home to American Jews the intensity of Zionist feeling in the Zone of Jewish Distress—Eastern and Central Europe. That is a terrible and cruel intensity; it looks irrational, for there is the impression that Palestine (they now call Palestine simply “certificate,” for short) is wanted at once and for every single individual out of a crowd of several millions, and yet it is realistically wise because there actually is no other way out for all those millions but Palestine. During my present tour I have many a time thought of trying somehow to convey to the American audiences this tangible, immediate mass hunger - but had to renounce the attempt for fear of dropping into sob-stuff.

So it probably will have to be accepted as inevitable - that the largest and most powerful of Jewish communities should remain in a state of just sympathetic aloofness while the zone of distress across the ocean is traversing a period of acutest mass agony.

Some readers may here feel shocked by the term “sympathetic aloofness,” they may find it unjust, may claim that theirs is much more than mere “sympathy,” and the claim may be true: but I cannot help it - compared with the tremendous immediacy of that painful “certificate-hunger” out there the American attitude strikes me as condolence by remote well-wishers, rather skeptical as to all those stories about a “frozen stampede” to Palestine.

This is probably also why American Jews can play with pink leftism just at a moment when all the Jewish “middle class” in the zone of distress is up in revolt against the present left wing hegemony in Zionism. What is fanning that revolt into real white heat is, naturally, the monopoly over “certificates.” The “mittelstand” (eighty per cent of the whole ghetto) can no longer afford to renounce them for the benefit of “halutzim;” it needs them for itself, too.

No Jew of the “mittelstand” imagines that Palestine can absorb shopkeepers or luftmenschen: he knows that, apart from people with money, only laborers are wanted; but he is himself, in many cases, an artisan, and in any case believes himself fully capable of becoming a laborer, and quite rightly so in most cases. Yet he is debarred from even asking for a “certificate” because he does not belong to the monopolist party and (being a man above 25, probably already married) cannot go to a “hachsharah” place (where, as everybody by now admits, they learn nothing of any use). He realizes, moreover, that there are too few “certificates” to go round, that it is a lottery with hardly one lot for 10,000 applicants -  but for him there is even no lottery ticket, and resents it bitterly; and as conditions grow worse his bitterness threatens to degenerate into hate.

There is, of course, also the ideological controversy about “class war;” even without the “certificates” complication it has ever been an irritant. The ordinary poor shul-goer who, as long as he could spare a cent, has been feeding the funds that fed the Halutzim and has made the Histadruth what it now financially is, feels profoundly insulted being treated as white trash by those very Halutzim. The small and medium capitalist whose initiative, since 1925, has endowed Palestine with hundreds of factories providing work for 20,000 Jewish workers, stands bewildered in discovering that even in Zion he is nothing else but a class enemy, an exploiter, and altogether a social nuisance. All that has long been causing a great deal of resentment; but now, added to the non-admission of the “mittelstand” to that “lottery,” it makes people see red.

American Jewry is also mittelstand, but their life is paradise in comparison, they do not feel that searing pain, and sears can never be “explained.” So they have chosen just this moment for getting infatuated with the party whose domination is gall and wormwood to four-fifths of distressed European Jewry, chosen this moment for no other reason, I fear, than a purely local coincidence - the fact that just now “Labor” catchwords happen to be popular in America.

American Zionists are under the impression that this is a very noble and very liberal spiritual departure. I see in it something quite different. There was no trace of such infatuation when Palestinian labor was poor and helpless, in those days of the “stone breakers” when Halutzim were really “pioneers” in the heroic sense of the term, suffering untold material privations and ready to stand even more the glory of Zion. Yet in those days American Zionism, though generous with its money for the improvement of their position, never dreamed of accepting their ideological leadership. Today Palestinian left wing labor gets wages that would make English working men envious; they have abandoned en masse the agricultural colonies, partly even the Dead Sea, because they are better paid in towns; a quarter of the membership of the left-wing Histadruth either live in neat little houses of their own, or else are already listed to get such houses as soon as donations from the bourgeoisie will permit it.

The Histadruth cooperatives employ hired Jewish labor just like capitalist enterprises do: at last year’s Histadruth convention a special report on this painful subject was read by a Mr. Garfinkel from which we learned some really piquant facts, e.g., that more than 50 per cent of those Histadruth members working for Histadruth employers get wages of “from one to six pounds” a month (the Trade Union minimum in Palestine is seven pounds a month); or that some of those cooperatives, whose shares originally cost 100 to 200 dollars, now refuse to sell them, owing to the boom, for less than “two to three thousand dollars.”

Individual members of the left wing Histadruth also employ hired labor - the proletarian “boss” working for high wages in town, but letting his vegetable plot in a nearby colony to be tended by another proletarian for a lower wage; after which, of course, he will sell those vegetables to the bourgeoisie and pocket the profit. In short, belonging to the left wing Histadruth is nowadays rather a comfortable social position.

The Histadruth itself, and the “Mapai” (the Socialist Party) which dominates it, are also very “comfortable:” in proportion to membership, probably one of the richest trade unions throughout the world. Beside the ordinary Keren Hayesod sources, and the “Gewerkschaft” campaigns, the Histadruth now also enjoys a nice steady clean income from the Transfer Agreement between some of its organs and Hitler’s government, helping Germany to import her wares into our Holy Land. This is why left wing labor has at its disposal such a mighty war chest for sending delegations across all the oceans, and for election campaigns to Zionist Congresses.

This is the moment when America’s middle class intelligentsia has chosen to . . . to jump on the band wagon.

_____

This is the second of a series of three articles published in the JTA by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader, written specially for its Jewish Daily Bulletin. 

Foreign words should be used with a bona fide knowledge of what they really mean. Fasces was the Latin term for a bunch of rods with an axe in the middle. Roman “lictors” used to carry them ostentatiously, to remind the citizens that if they don’t obey orders they will be beaten, or their heads chopped off. Fasces was the symbol of coercive discipline, of the State’s resolve and power to enforce obedience on all dissenters, no matter whether wicked criminals or honest conscientious objectors. Italian Fascism is an attempt to reaffirm the principle that the State has the right and the duty to "coerce” and the actual power, too.

Right or wrong, all this can have no application to Jewish social phenomena. There is no Jewish government, and no Jew can be administratively “coerced” to obey orders issued by any Jewish leader or committee of leaders. Jewish political organizations are voluntary associations and can be nothing else. Should one of them conceive the whim of imposing on its membership the strictest kind of “compulsory” discipline, that would simply mean that all its members choose to agree to this kind of game: all of them, for if you or I suddenly cease to agree we can simply walk out of that organization and cannot be “coerced.” When a minority of that membership say “We submit to the will of the majority,” they simply mean that they voluntarily condescend to submit. The doctrine of Fascism is rooted in the opposite principle; the individual will be made to agree whether he agrees or not. In Jewish life this doctrine is simply unreal, as unreal as “depth” in a two-dimensional oil painting.

As to the very old principle that the interests of a nation should supersede those of an individual, a family, or a “class” - to describe this idea as “Fascism” is silly. This is everyman’s view, including ninety-nine per cent of all Socialists, probably also of all Communists if ever put to the test.

The really “Fascist” addition to this world-old idea is, again, only that thoroughness of coercion which Fascism applies to social relations. It refuses to rely on the workers or the employers’ own patriotism: it simply commandeers all the workers and all the employers, treats them as battalions of the State, orders, forbids and punishes. This again, cannot be initiated in our Jewish life. When we Jews speak of “compulsory” arbitration in Palestine, what we mean is a free pledge by all concerned to renounce voluntarily any other method of settling industrial disputes and to accept (voluntarily) the arbitrators’ judgment however unpalatable.

Whether such a covenant is a possibility (as I believe) or a dream (as pessimists affirm) is beside the point: the point is that this program is the reverse of Fascism. Fascism says to both Labor and capital: “I don’t ask you to be patriotic, you may go on feeling selfish: but you will have to accept the State’s ruling or go to jail - and even if you do go to jail, it won’t help you, for the State’s ruling will be enforced in your enterprise all the same.”

There is, on the other hand, also this difference - that, while in Fascism any concrete form of “class war” is only verboten, in Zionism (where nothing can actually be “verboten”) the very idea of “class war” is immoral. The national funds which support the proletarian Halutzim are being provided by the. bourgeoisie. That bourgeoisie is being daily urged to leave the Galuth and come and build factories in Palestine, because there “you can be among your brethren. When a bourgeois starts a workshop in Palestine, he is being urged to employ expensive Jewish labor instead of cheap Arab labor - because “the Jewish workmen are his brethren.”

All this is absolutely fair: they are brethren, and partners in the great enterprise of building the Homeland, and comrades in Zionist ideology: brethren, partners, comrades in a sense incomparably more intense and more concrete than it can be said of capital and labor in any other country. That is why it is unfair and immoral to import “class war” ideas into Palestine - even though it cannot be “verboten.”

Fascism is wholly and organically inapplicable to any aspect of Jewish lfe; it is therefore simply dishonest to call any Jewish party “Fascist.” In many cases, it is even akin to hitting under the belt. In liberal or democratic countries Fascism is looked upon as politically subversive, governments have been known to take active measures for suppressing it by police action, and may have to do so in the nearest future with considerable severity. In view of all this, decent opponents should be very chary of stamping a Zionist party as “Fascist.” It is just as indecent as calling Socialists “Communists,” and likely to lead to the same kind of outside interference.

In countries like Austria, where the term “Marxist” is equally dangerous, we Revisionists have instructed our followers never to apply that term to left-wing Zionists, quite regardless of whether that would be scientifically true or untrue; and, though we officially disbanded our German branches when we decided to join the boycott movement, that wing of Zionists in Germany who share our Herzlian views also know that “Marxist” is a word never to be used in Polemics.

_____

And I finally figured out to find the third section, here.

When a man in America says, “I am not a Republican,” it means that he is an adherent of some other party, probably a Democrat. When a man says the same thing in England, it means that he is a Monarchist. Which is a reminder that the same term can often cover quite different phenomena: another example is the word “petition.”

The officially prescribed way in which a private group or individual in Palestine can approach the Permanent Mandate Commission in Geneva, is by sending their request or memorandum through the High Commissioner: and the document thus forwarded is called “petition.” It may bear many signatures or one only: the Revisionist memorandum was signed by Mr. A. Weinshal on behalf of the Palestinian Revisionists.

This has nothing to do with the “Petition Movement” initiated by the Revisionists a year ago. That movement demands signatures en masse: between April and June, 600,000 signatures were collected, and this year we intend to raise the number up to several millions. The mass petition is not addressed to the Mandate Commission or to the League of Nations: its four different texts are explicibly addressed (a) to his British Majesty, (b) to the British Parliament, (c) and (d) to the government and parliament of the country where the petitioners reside. And, in fine, this mass petition has not yet been “presented” either in London or in any other capital, but will only be presented after many preliminary manifestations, culminating probably in a World Congress of the petitioners themselves.

Those who are genuinely interested should, therefore, remember that anything that may have happened in Geneva to Dr. Weinshal’s memorandum, officially described as “petition,” or may subsequently happen to his next memorandum to Geneva, has no bearing whatsoever on the progress of the real petition - the mass movement petition.

The two have also different aims. The mass petition is primarily meant to register all those who actually and personally want and need repatriation to Palestine. Secondly, - to impress upon the governments of those countries where the Jewish distress has become a grave local problem that it is in those governments’ interest to start a friendly talk with the British Mandatory about facilitating Jewish immigration. Thirdly, - to bring home to British Jews’ suffering, and to British public conscience the discrepancy between a pledge and a reality.

The memorandum to the Mandates Commission had another aim, to “draw” that body into a discussion on that all-important subject: what is the true meaning of a “national home” -  is it a Jewish State or just a new Jewish minority?

I know, of course, that there are people who consider such a discussion undesirable. We Revisionists consider it necessary and intend to go on promoting it until we obtain the inevitable final result: an admission, on the part of the League’s organ supervising the Mandates, that “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine” means Palestine transformed into a self-governing commonwealth with a Jewish majority; that this was the intent of the Balfour Declaration and of the Mandate. As I said, such an admission is inevitable provided there is a discussion: wherefore, we will see to it that the discussion should continue.

In forwarding to Geneva Mr. Weinshal’s memorandum we knew, of course, that the first reaction of the Mandates Commission would be negative. For the last seven years or more I have been quoting in my public addresses a proverb current in one of the Mediterranean countries: “In politics, just as in true love, it is only after the seventh ‘no’ that you can hope to hear the bashful ‘yes.’ No important political advance has ever been reached in any other way but via several preliminary refusals: the first very dry and curt, the second probably angry. This is how the Jewish Legion was formed: the story began with Kitchener’s “no.” The same applies to the story of the Balfour Declaration, or to any political story worth telling. Whoever fears that preliminary cold drop had better renounce all hope of ever getting anywhere.

The Mandates Commission has said its first “no.” That important body must forgive me for pointing out that this answer clashes with the Commission’s own attitude with regard to all the problems implied in our question. Logically, the present situation in Palestine can only end in one of the following three ways: (a) the Mandatory withdraws, leaving Palestine a State with an Arab majority; (b) the Mandatory stays on forever and ever; (c) a State with a Jewish majority.

As to the first eventuality - the Permanent Mandates Commission at half a dozen of its sessions, when dealing with the question of a Legislative Council for Palestine has always stubbornly maintained that any kind of majority rule by the Arabs would endanger the Jewish national home, would therefore be contrary to the Mandate, and was therefore inadmissible - which all, and a fortiori, applies to an Arab State.

As to the second eventuality (“the Mandatory strays on forever”) - that would be tantamount to annexation, therefore contrary to the very letter and essence of the League of Nations’ Covenant. Some people in England may desire it, but there is at least one body under the sun which simply cannot admit such a perversion of the Covenant - and that body is (last part couldn't copy text, so here:)

^

When Jabotinsky Wrote An Article Entitled "Zionist Fascists"

The term "fascism" has been applied to Ze'ev Jabotinsky unrelentingly since 1921 and his involvement in the Petliura Affair.

The Zionist Left, Ben-Gurion and especially HaShomer HaTzair, were quite accusing during the 1930s.

Some antagonistic sources are here and here. More neutral ones are here and here. He wasn't a fascist, by the way. Chaim Weitzmann met Mussolini four times but Jabotinsky declined as Mussolini's policies were intolerable for Jabotinsky, even if to advance Zionist aims. He did, though, exploit contacts among pro-fascist Italian Revisionists in 1934 to found the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia. He criticized Abba Achimeir, a member of his Revisionist movement who was enamored of fascism in the late 1920s and early 1930s until Hitler's anti-semitism became blatant.

However, in fact, an article did appear penned by him which carried the title "Zionist Fascists". It was published, in a shortened edited version in English translation under the title "Zionist Fascists" in the organ The Zionist, Volume 1, Issue Number 6, dated June 1926. The original Russian-language piece appeared in November 1925 in Rassviet.

Jabotinsky wrote it after his first appearance at a Zionist Congress, the 14th Congress of 1925  held in Vienna, Austria, a short few months after founding the Revisionist Union of Zionists.  Jabotinsky demanded a more activist policy for the Zionist movement and opposed the inclusion of non-Zionists within the Jewish Agency. His speech, in Hebrew, was reported in Davar (p. 2). The ruling leadership attempted to quash his independent, oppositionist stand.

I found the original Russian (1) and translated it, comparing to a Hebrew translation found in הרוויזיוניזם הציוני בהתגבשותו that appeared in 1985.

It shows that, at least in 1925, for Jabotinsky, as well as for his presumed audience, the term "facism", basically meant an overbearing, dominant leadership that was fairly intolerant of criticism and wasn't enthralled with democracy. Moreover, the article argued for a much more democratic Zionist movement that what he faced at that time.

Judge for yourselves:

Fascists of Zionism.

V. Jabotinsky, Rassviet, No. 51, Paris, November 11, 1925

I.

There is no other name for the trend that now dominates official Zionism. 

It has no program nor any theoretical ideology either. There is only a cult of "leaders", and the bearers of the official banner themselves admit this. I saw it in Kovno, in Frankfurt am Main, in Brno, in Chernivtsi [Tshernowitz] and all over. In discussion meetings or just in interviews, after letting them criticize our heresy (high duties lead to higher living costs, England will not agree to agrarian reform, and the legion is militarism, etc. [that is, the Revisionist program]), I always asked them the same question: 

"Okay; let's assume that Revisionism is no good. But what do you propose — you, the majority of the 14th Congress? How will you provide markets for the sale of Palestinian goods? How are you going to get agricultural colonization off the ground, at prices of almost 20 pounds per dunam? And how will you ensure the protection of hundreds of scattered Jewish settlements with a garrison of 1,500 people? Please show me the program." 

This question always and everywhere acted in a magical fashion: half of the opponents became vague, the other half began to stutter or fall into abstract eloquence (in Brussels, one local talent answered my question with a speech about the theory of knowledge in connection with [Henri-Louise] Bergson’s system. Really.), and in the end a frank confession: “We don’t have a program in this sense, and it’s not our business. We have leaders, we trust them; they know what needs to be done and they will do it as soon as the opportunity arises.”

I am not discussing today the question of who these “leaders” are, what their human and political value is, and whether they have already twenty times, or at least once in their lives, presented the government with a demand for agrarian reform [the claim was that the local Ottoman land system inherited by Mandate Palestine as inefficient, destructive, and in need of reform such as the land tenure system]. We are not talking about these “leaders,” but about the psychology of the majority. It has now been completely and utterly reduced to the cult of individuals, and it manifests and proclaims it with all the grace of unprincipled and carefree cynicism. Programs, directions, beliefs are all worthless. The whole point is that A, B and C are at the head of the movement. They will do everything that is necessary and possible and if they don’t do something, it means it’s either not necessary or it's impossible.

This was once a case in a Balkan kingdom of parties, even directly named after the surnames of their 'tzaddiks': Rallists for G. Rally, Theotokists for G. Theotokis. What the difference between the programs was unknown and unimportant. Perhaps an even more vivid analogy can be found if you decide to take a walk through the annals of medieval Islam. The textbook says that Caliph Omar ordered the burning of the library of Alexandria, because if these scrolls say the same as in the Quran, then they are superfluous. And if they say something that did not occur to Mohammed, then they are harmful. Mohammed knew the whole truth and set it all out in the Quran, but the rest is unnecessary.

This is the psychology that was revealed at the 14th Congress, which now dominates the thinking amongst Zionist officials. To discuss it seriously is somehow awkward: it is outside the bounds of culture. Nevertheless, it is necessary to discuss it, if only to disassociate ourselves from it.

II.

The cult of personality is now in great fashion everywhere. The Italian example has partly had an influence in this respect, which will probably continue to poison the atmosphere until it ends in inevitable shame. As for us, in Zionism, the English psychology and terminology, which many of us hurried to adopt, played a role in the same direction. As we know, the idiotic notion of "leader" is also of English origin. You hear phrases now like "it is the person, not the program, that counts."

Of course, this is not news in Jewish life. The old ghetto did not seem to know any other principle of orientation. The direction of the flock was determined unquestioningly by authority. There were two types of authority: of the "scholar" and of the "plutocrat" or gvir. The scholar knew the Talmud well, the gvir skillfully conducted his business.The congregation therefore believed that they could get all sorts of information about the governor and about the typhoid epidemic. When the "leader" changed his views, the flock also changed them. All this was not dangerous at that time, since there was no objective possibility at all to fight either the epidemic or the governor. Unfortunately, we have transferred the skills of the ghetto to Zionism — and not only in this one respect.

No one argues against the fact that personality can sometimes play a major role in history. If there had been no Napoleon or Garibaldi, not even Marx or even the Besht, Europe or, in particular, Jewry, would now be nothing like what they have actually become. There are, of course, "leaders" of parties. But personalities of this caliber do not arise on demand.They cannot be turned into a permanent institution; there is no such principle as "let there be a leader". And it is impossible to build a durable political system on this principle.

Moreover, no one anywhere is building a political system on this principle, with the exception of fascism and the three backwaters mentioned above: the Balkan kingdom, the old ghetto, and, unfortunately, the Zionist organization in its current composition. The English piously preserve the notion of "leader" simply out of habit, bowing to tradition, but in reality, when seriously needed, they have as little regard for this tradition as for all others. In elections to the lower house, they argue not about who is the best "leader"- Lloyd George, Macdonald, or Baldwin - but about which party has the most suitable program. It happens that the Conservatives win, although no one denies that Lloyd George has a real talent for leadership, and Baldwin is merely a middle-sized gentleman. And in France, parties win or fall quite regardless of whether the best "leader" is [Raymond] Poincaré or [Paul] Penlévé. It is the same - with one temporary exception - in every civilized country: the political struggle can proceed only along the lines of programs, without any reference to the personal genius of the representatives and secretaries.

Again, no one ever raises the question - except in the Middle Ages and in the provinces - that "if the opposition’s demands were reasonable, wouldn’t the current prime minister himself understand their rationality? After all, he’s so smart!" Civilized peoples have become accustomed to the idea that although Gladstone is smart and Disraeli is smart, and both "understand", yet they understand differently, and that is why they belong to different parties, and nothing can be done about it. Gladstone will not accept tariff reform, Disraeli does not believe in Home Rule. 

Therefore, the role of the opposition is not at all reduced to the fact that, without trying to convince a single convinced opponent, a mechanical majority removes the ruling party and takes its place. To do this, the opposition appeals to a non-partisan judge, i.e., to the mass of voters. And the duty of this mass in the elections is not to establish who is more talented, educated, tactful or effective - Disraeli or Gladstone - but to find out whether tariff reform is necessary or not, whether Home Rule is useful or harmful. The fair struggle of parties is anonymous by nature. This is the only way the masses in cultural societies understand their political duty. The Quran is a good book, Mohammed is a great prophet, but it does not follow from this that there is no truth outside the Quran and Mohammed.

III.

To take a different point of view means to get bogged down in a swamp of absurdities, and worse, in a quagmire of social disorder. If at the head of the Zionist movement there must necessarily be “personalities” possessing such and such personal qualities - and if these individuals must be preserved at all costs, regardless of their program - and if therefore the Congress, following the example of the 14th, must adapt its decisions not to its own moods, but to the leaders - then why do we have a struggle of opinions, why elections, why debates at the congress - and the congress itself? The entire Zionist community then turns into an unnecessary absurdity. A person or group who has a new thought must then simply present it to the "leaders". If the “leaders” reject it outright, then this is the end of the matter: there is no point in continuing to fight, there is no point in recruiting supporters, there is no point in speaking at the congress - after all, this is not in the Quran, which means the book will be burned, for Mohammed must remain a prophet under all conditions.

It becomes even more absurd when, in the end, new “leaders” will have to be chosen—which is inevitable in a long-lasting enterprise. We will choose them, then, again based on personal qualities: oratorical talent, knowledge of languages, manners, acquaintance with feudal rulers and local governors, those with “personal magnetism”, etc. If at the same time the city turns out to have voters have different favorites, it will be interesting to listen to this paperwork. How to measure, with objective persuasiveness, qualities completely immeasurable? In English, you can still arrange an exam. But where are the scales for such an essential detail as, say, "personal charm" as applied to the average type of the English Minister of the Colonies? I think it's superfluous to apologize for the lightness of my tone but strictly speaking, this whole "ideology" deserves nothing but mockery.

That is why I called the notion of a "leader" an idiotic notion. I repeat: the English themselves do not take it seriously but we believe in it with the fervor of a provincial who has entered a restaurant in the capital for the first time and bowed to the gilded doorman. In England, each party elects a representative and, according to the old custom, awards him the title him "leader". However, in reality, he is simply the chairman of the Central Committee. He maintains his post as long as he obeys the instructions of the party congress, and in case of disagreement, it is not the congress that abandons its views, but the chairman simply leaves. With us it is the other way around. One can't help but remember the saying: if you put him in a position to pray to God, he will bruise his forehead.

This is all about absurdities; but there are also ugly outrages. The mere fact that young people growing up in our country are indoctrinated with the rule: not to reason, not to move their brains, but to go where the god-inspired ones tell them to go - this alone is a public disgrace. The disgrace is the boom around individual names, the very injection of the term "leaders", which creates the impression that our movement is alive not with thousands of ordinary bearers of enthusiasm, not with the sweat of pioneers old and new, not with the blood spilled in Gallipoli, in the Jordan Valley and in Tel Hai, not with the pennies of ordinary people and the moral hard labor of those who collect these pennies, going from house to house - but is alive only thanks to the incidental talent of two or three individuals. 

But even worse ugliness will result if the opposition accepts all this clerical whistling as a dogma and also admits that "it's not about programs, but about personalities”. For then what can be done by those who, as honestly and sincerely as their admirers, believe neither in their divine inspiration, nor in their special talent, nor in the intellectual subtlety of their "leaders"? Instead of arguing about the benefits of agrarian reform, they will have to engage in blaspheming Mr. A. or Mr. V., while praising Mr. S., their own candidate. All this belongs in a bazaar, not in a decent movement.

In our time, in the European cultural scene, there is only one country where something similar is observed. Fascism, too, has no clear program - no such provisions and demands which would not be a rehash of what every other patriotic and bourgeois party has said a hundred times. That is why the program there is replaced by faith in a "leader." The latter concept is so alien to the Italian tradition that there was not even a suitable word for it in the everyday dictionary: we had to take the Latin "dux" and re-Italianize it into "duce". Henceforth, the truth is what the "leader" says, that is, what is not in the Quran is to be burned. But in Italy, at least, behind all this, there is a fighting temperament, youth, national pride. In our case, it is all used to justify the schutz judentum [lit.: Jews protected by the Crown who acted as go-betweens], or the abandonment of national ideology for the sake of attracting moneybags. And in Italy this blindness will end badly. In ours, it will be even worse, and sooner.

It is true that we do not have a physical club with which to subdue the opposition but we have surrogates of no less squalid and impure character. The most popular of these is simple slander. Those who deny the "leaders" are thereby declared to be opponents of the Keren-Hayesod [the funnding arm of the World Zionist Orgnaization]. Worse, they are said to advise Jews not to go to Palestine. They need to be "boycotted."

When a person from the opposition comes to Chișinău [formerly Kishinev], and he is greeted in the streets by a crowd of ten thousand people, the local Zionist Committee considers it its duty to announce somewhere in the Events section of the local newspaper that the committee in this meeting 'will not be participating'. (It is obvious that in a few years, if the executive will pass into other hands, and if Mr. Sokolov, then an opposition figure, will come to Chișinău to state his views, it then will be necessary to 'boycott' him). 

But there are worse subsitutes for truncheons. In one city, the pro-Revisionist secretary of the Zionist committee is removed from office. In another, the teacher at the Jewish gymnasium is offered an ultimatum: either to leave school or to abandon the role of chairman of the [new] activist group. Lackeyism and boorishness always go hand in hand. It is obviously impossible to defend an unprincipled position by pure means.

  

IV

But an assault on an unprincipled position can and should be carried out by pure means, i.e., principles, namely: 

1. The struggle within Zionism is to be conducted only on the basis of programs. Proper names cannot play any role in this. An honest program is essentially anonymous. 

2. Congress votes not for an Executive or against an Executive, but for this or that program. Only after this do they see whose name is signed under the winning program. No matter whose name it is - Wolfgang von Goethe or Ivan Bezrodny - its bearer is entrusted with drawing up the executive agenda. We will achieve this. And, judging by the ideological collapse that I now saw in the ranks of Zionist fascism from Riga to Bucharest, soon.

___________________

(1) Here's the first paragraph, as an example:

Фашисты сионизма. В. Жаботинский

Никакого другого имени для направления, господствующего теперь в официальном сионизме, не придумаешь. Программы у него нет, теоретической идеологии тоже; есть только культ «вождей», и носители официального знамени сами в этом сознаются. Я это видел в Ковне, во Франкфурте-на-Майне, в Брюнне, в Черновцах и повсюду. В дискуссионных собраниях или просто в собеседованиях, дав им покритиковать нашу ересь (высокие пошлины ведут к вздорожанию жизни, на аграрную реформу не согласится Англия, а легион есть милитаризм, и т. п.), я всегда задавал им один и тот же вопрос: «Хорошо; допустим, что ревизионизм никуда не годится. Но что же вы предлагаете — вы, большинство 14-го конгресса? Как вы-то обеспечите рынки для сбыта палестинских товаров? Как вы-то сдвинете с мертвой точки земледельческую колонизацию, при ценах чуть ли не по 20 фунтов за дунам? И как вы-то обеспечите защиту сотни с чем-то разбросанных еврейских поселков при гарнизоне в 1500 человек? Будьте любезны, предъявите программу». Вопрос этот всегда и всюду действовал магически: половина оппонентов стушевывалась, вторая половина начинала заикаться или впадать в отвлеченное красноречие (в Брюсселе один местный талант ответил на мой вопрос речью о теории познания в связи с системой Бергсона: факт), и в конце концов раздавалось откровенное признание: «Программы в этом смысле у нас нет, и не наше это дело. У нас есть вожди, мы им доверяем; они знают, что нужно сделать, и они это сделают, как только явится возможность».

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Even Then I Was on the Mark

A good friend reminded me recently of some correspondence we had, as follows (edited):

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 10:44 AM, < > wrote:

Dear Yisrael,

I haven’t written to you for a while, and I hope all is well with you.

I have an academic question to you.  I don’t know whether I have told you that I am writing an academic book on _______ (in Hebrew, also to be translated into English). At the moment I am writing about the phenomenon of legislation designed to change the status quo in Israel, in terms of the definition of the state, the power and make-up of the Supreme Court, “problematic” human rights organizations etc. Some of this legislation is initiated by Private Members, others by the Government (especially the current Government).  I was wondering whether you know of any serious, academic article or book that defends this legislation.  Most of what is written on the subject comes from the Left, which defines the legislation as anti-democratic. Yariv Levin has on occasion spoken of the need for the Right “to finally start ruling”. I shall be talking to him about this in a few weeks’ time, but in the meantime I am seeking some serious academic literature on the subject.  Can you help?

My answer was:

From: Yisrael Medad 

Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2016 11:53 AM

To: 

Subject: Re: request

http://kohelet.org.il/

          With best regards, 

P.S.  Now see here and here.

^

How Did the Yesha Communities Vote?

The result of the voting in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley (source: Moetzet Yesha)

Number of Residents in the Jewish Communities: 456,865.

Number of Eligible Voters: 241,403 (52.8% of total population)

Percentage of State of Israel Voters: 3.78%

Percentage of Voter Participation: 76.8% (vs. 69.7% overall; 1.6% drop from April)

Voting Results per party (in percentages) :

Yamina: 24.4%

Likud: 22.4%

UTJ: 20.4%

Shas: 9.9%

Blue and White: 9%

Otzma: 6.9%

Yisrael Beiteinu: 3/6%

Labour: 1.7%

Democratic Camp: 0.6%

Other Parties that did not pass the threshold: 1.1%

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Preferred Government Poll Result

From the March 2017 Peace Indix Poll:-

The preferred government: 
If elections were to be held in the near future, a decisive majority of the Jewish public (70%) would want a right-wing (34%) or center-right (36%) government to take office as a result. A minority (24%) would prefer a center-left (22%) or left-wing (2%) government. A similar pattern of responses, but more clear-cut, emerges on the question of what government would have higher chances of being established if elections were to be held soon: 81% of the Jewish respondents estimate that a right-wing (35%) or center-right (46%) government would have higher chances, while only 8% attribute higher chances to a center-left (7%) or left-wing (1%) government. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish public prefers the hegemony of the right and also believes this hegemony would continue if new elections were to be held soon. In the Arab public, 58% would want a left-wing or center-left government (26.5% do not know) to take office, but only 10% expect that this would happen if elections were to be held in the near future.

Democracy in action.

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Kerry's "Jewish" and "Democratic" State

In his remarks on December 28, 2016, John Kerry, United States Secretary of State addressed the Arab-Israel conflict and the lack the the achievement of peace.

Paying close attention to his words, I noticed that he mentioned the term "Jewish" twelve times and "democratic" nine times and together, as the "Jewish and democratic state", twice and once as "Jewish democratic".

I picked them out:

That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state

if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both – and it won’t ever really be at peace. 

Is ours the generation that gives up on the dream of a Jewish democratic state of Israel living in peace and security with its neighbors? Because that is really what is at stake.

And here are mention of Israel's Jewish identity:

Israelis are fully justified in decrying attempts to legitimize [sic. that should be delegitimize'] their state and question the right of a Jewish state to exist.

Nearly 70 years ago, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 finally paved the way to making the State of Israel a reality. The concept was simple: to create two states for two peoples – one Jewish, one Arab – to realize the national aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians. 

Principle two: Fulfill the vision of the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Arab

Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been the U.S. position for years

That’s why it is so important that in recognizing each other’s homeland – Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people – both sides reaffirm their commitment to upholding full equal rights for all of their respective citizens.

There is one odd, even strange, use of 'democratic':

And we understand that in a final status agreement, certain settlements would become part of Israel to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 49 years – we understand that – including the new democratic demographic realities that exist on the ground. 

That, I think could be a result of Kerry's meandering of mind and tongue although it could indicate that Kerry is quite well aware that the decisions to revitalize Jewish life in the historic regions of the Jewish homeland was done through a very democratic process in that election after election, governments were established, except in very short time periods, that all supported, encouraged and engaged in activities that increased the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria and, until 2005, in Gaza as well.

Incidentally, refugees are mentioned in a formulation that actually disengages the issue from the existence of Israel in this way:

Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, with international assistance, that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering, and other measures necessary for a comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples...The international community can provide significant support and assistance. I know we are prepared to do that, including in raising money to help ensure the compensation and other needs of the refugees

That set off the PLO's Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi who declared on television: 

"The six principles that [US Secretary of State John] Kerry presented are undeniable Zionist principles that serve Israeli interests...he said 'a Jewish state,' giving them [Israel] a great prize. We have refused and still refuse to say that Israel is a Jewish state... Even on the issue of the refugees, he [Kerry] automatically denied them the right of return, and said that it is necessary to reach a just solution of compensation and resettling and the like. In other words, there is no right of return."  [Official PA TV, State of Politics, Jan. 3, 2017]

Of course, Jewish refugees were not included in his speech.

But getting back to the issue of Kerry deciding for Israel what "Jewish" and "democratic" mean and why they are important, we can note there also her words

he said 'a Jewish state,' giving them [Israel] a great prize

Prize?  Or a simple recognition of what Israel is?

On January 6, in an interview, Kerry returned to that matter and expounded:

I believe in the state of Israel’s dream to be the democracy and the Jewish state it wants to be. But the simple reality is you cannot be a unitary, one state, with more non-Jews than Jews and remain a democracy or a Jewish state. It’s impossible. You can’t do it. David, Ben Gurion, the first president of Israel, said that. Rabin said it... moving towards a single state without resolving this two-state issue, which is why everybody has supported it until today, is leading Israel to a very dangerous place of perpetual conflict and it will not be a Jewish state.

Besides being contradicted by Ashrawi, I would wish to point out the chutzpah of someone defining for us Jews what is 'Jewish" and how that state is to be as a 'democratic' one.  I am sure Kerry is predicating himself of J Street's ideology, among other left-wing Jewish groups, as well as Peter Beinart's thinking, most more radical than the next.

I could argue that the demographic outlook is not as Kerry thinks it is and that his projected minority status or threatened minority status are in error.

But is think it could be summed up so:

Dear American Jewish Liberal-Progressives:

You Can Be Either Jewish

or Liberal.

You Cannot Be Both.

Let's make that a poster:

Of course, that is as true as they intend their slogan of "Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both" is.  They cannot have it both ways.

They have moved far off the Jewish quotient scale and have supplanted their liberalism, what is actually a universal assimilationist progressivism, as have Jews before them, for a foreign ideology which is destructive to Zionism, the Jewish national movement.

Those who join them risk losing their Judaism, no matter how they define it in practical religious terms.  They are 'lost at sea'.  They do not realize, or refuse to do so or worse, reject, that Israel and its Zionism is their anchor.

______________

Tangentally, here is Melanie Phillips on "Real liberals must shun Palestinian colonialism".

And something similar.

^

A Demand for Elections - in the Palestinian Authority

Guy Bechor asks:   Who does Abbas represent?

and insists that

Israel must demand Palestinian general elections be held before peace negotiations resume

Why?

Who exactly does Abbas represent, apart from himself? He was elected in the Palestinian elections organized by Israel in January 2005, and years have passed since, for all intents and purposes, his term ended....the government of resigning Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was never legitimate either, because it was never approved by parliament, which, as I mentioned, was dissolved. So who does Abbas represent? Currently he only represents himself...He certainly doesn't represent Gaza – its Hamas rulers are his most bitter enemies. He certainly doesn’t represent Hamas in the West Bank, nor does he represent the Salafis or global jihadists. So does he represent Fatah? According to Fayyad, "this party, Fatah, is going to break down, there is so much disenchantment."...

...Still, who does Abbas represent? We must find out the answer to this question before we begin negotiating with him, not after...Future Palestinian leaders will claim, justifiably, that the 78-year-old Abbas conducted negotiations without any authority, so they are not bound by the agreements he had signed...

...Agreements are not reached in an imaginary reality, and the demand for Palestinian elections must precede any diplomatic process, if we want this process to be genuine and binding. 

^

Is It Democratic That the PA Rule?

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, who famously claimed at the Madrid Conference that 'Jesus was a Palestinian' among other incorrect historical facts, takes on Dani Dayan's NYTimes op-ed.

She beings asserting there is

the belief that everyone has the right to live in their own free country.

Of course, she does not mention and certainly does not apologize for decades of activities by Arabs to deny Jews to do just that, live in our own free country.

For her,

...the settlers in their fortress tower blocks and militarily-defensible hilltops would make it impossible in practice [to achieve a two-state solution]. At that point, Israel would become -- not by negotiations, nor by international agreement, but by force -- a single state governing a population in which a large Palestinian population could be held in subjugation only by denying them any democratic freedom...The consequence of this must be that Israel ceases to be a democracy, since the permanent settlement of Palestinian land can happen only by one people subjugating another by force.


And she goes on, and on, on this theme:

The settlers' alternative can be supported only by abandoning the belief in political freedom. It must be stressed that one cannot believe in freedom without accepting that it applies to all. Freedom that applies only to oneself fits with something else: oppression and occupation [as well as the] undemocratic, anti-freedom nature of the Israeli occupation of which -- it has to be said -- Americans know too little.

Is she correct, though, writing

...that Israel must permanently hold Palestinians under occupation, showing contempt for other people's freedom, history, and culture. Where Mr. Dayan is not honest is in failing to admit that brick by brick the settlements are burying our freedom. He never explains how the settler strategy can be reconciled with democracy because it cannot. Surely, the United States must see that this is not a strategy it can support while proclaiming its belief in freedom. Freedom must be for all, not just for the militarily strong.

There are many Arabs in Israel, citizens, who vote and get elected, serve as judges, diplomats and industrialists.  Is it not possible that democracy reign?

Even Tom Friedman adds his voice:

No wonder settlers now boast on op-ed pages that the game is over, they’ve won, the West Bank will remain with Israel forever — and they don’t care what absorbing all of its Palestinians will mean for Israel’s future as a Jewish democracy.

Oh, we care.  But, cannot we ask whether a body politic such as the Palestinian Authority be democratic?  And if not, maybe some sort of link with Israel is best for all?

If democracy is the benchmark, the Arabs residing in the territory administered by the PA deserve better.

They are oppressed and certainly Israel shouldn't which would evolve if there be an independent state of 'Palestine'.

^

The "Double D Offense"

I presume that in  mentioning "Double-D", some of you maybe thinking of a variety of things, including the Double-D Hamburger at my son's bar, The Lions' Den ("HaGov") in downtown Jerusalem.  No, I was thinking over the game of chess.  Good offense is crucial to playing - and winning - the game.

I am, however, referring to what I call the "Double-D Offense" on Israel's present policies, or rather Israel's post-1967 policies, which  include its continued administration of the territories of Judea and Samaria and the residency of over 350,000 Jews therein in over 140 communities including cities, towns, villages, kibbutzim and moshavim.

And that "offense" is predicated on two main buzzwords:

Democracy

and

Demography.

Both of those terms are intended to act as ogres, scaring people rather than actually deliberating a possible problem.

Here is Avrum Burg:

...tell Israel that it is impossible to be treated as "the only democracy in the Middle East", while it is also the last colonial occupier in the Western world….

What colonialism?  Judea and Samaria were part of the Mandate and the Partition of 1947 was not accepted by the Arabs (who also went to war to eradicate Israel, contined terror and in 1967 initiated a war of aggression) and having lost yet another war, the territory became Israel's again.

But the real point is that all these liberals are actually promoting the establishment of another Islamist terror entity which not only attacks Jews but oppresses its own Arab population.  So in the name of "democracy", Israel, which is a democracy, they push for the creation of a state that will be undemocratic internally and without a doubt will seek to destroy Israel sooner or later.

As regards demography, the simple fact is that 45 years have passed and the math doesn't add up.  The studies are out there.  The Pals. produce not only false statistics and data but are not producing the expected demographics.

But demography is trumpeted.  For example, a NYTimes' June 5 editorial links demography with the bi-national state:

Demographics are pushing Israel in that direction.

And in that editorial is another, third "D":

Meanwhile, Palestinians are despairing that settlements and outposts are expanding so fast that they could soon preclude any chance of a two-state solution. 

 

This D is a play of the victimization strategy of the Arabs of the territories of the former Mandate for Palestine.  All of this employment of terms of transformation leads to

Delegitimzation, Demonization, Double Standards.

In seeking to change the political situation, to be at ease with their liberal selves identity, to be comfortable with their image of Judaism, to be comfy with their non-Jewish comrades, they sacrifice Israel and surrender up Zionism based on inauthentic and misrepresented facts, all the while creating what will be a monster, and an uncontrollable one - all despite the information readily available to them and which, as relatively intelligent people, they should know and be able to draw different conclusions from such.

But they won't because it will cause them cognitive dissonance and will disrupt their ideological equilibrium.

So, the last "D" is for denial.

^ 

Even Jeremy J Street Admits

...most Republican candidates express unqualified support for Israeli government policy and unprecedented backing for Israeli settlement beyond the pre-1967 Green Line.

Source

He claims that what is happening is that

Settlements beyond the Green Line continue to expand, and doubts regarding the existence of a true partner for peace are used to justify continued procrastination in taking meaningful steps toward a two-state solution.


All too quickly on this path it will become clear that there no longer is a Green Line. Rather, there will be one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean left to grapple with how to remain a democratic, Jewish nation when a majority of the people living there are not Jewish.

Of course, this developing situation will force "pro-Israel" forces like Jeremy to come to terms with facts:

a) is there truly a demographic threat?  will there be a non-Jewish majority?

b) is there a threat to democracy if there is a demographic threat?

c)  are there other political resolutions other than a "one-state/no more Green Line"?

d) is the assumption that there is a "true peace partner" actually correct?

e) does Jeremy really know what he talks about?

(k/t=BT)

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