Zionism's New Concepts and Where This Led: Revisionist Zionism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

In this drawing, Hasidic artist Hendel Lieberman (who lost his wife and daughters to the Nazis) depicts his brother, legendary Reb Mendel Futerfas, who spent 14 years in Siberian gulags.  The Gulag was a system of Soviet labour camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons. From the 1920s to the mid-1950s it housed political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union. At its height, the Gulag imprisoned millions of people, many of which were Jews.  

We arrive at the 20th century and what is happening?  Racism but everyone has blinders on and so it rages on.  Even Jewish leaders dismiss the signs as "alarmist" and "panicky."  They have no idea what other peoples. are talking about.  

Jabotinsky, born October 17, 1880 in Odessa, Russian Empire, died August 3, 1940 in Hunter, New York;  Vladimir Yevgenyevich (Yevnovich) Zhabotinsky was born in Odessa, Kherson Governorate (modern Ukraine) into an assimilated Jewish family. His father, Yevno (Yevgeniy Grigoryevich) Zhabotinsky, hailed from Nikopol, Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He was a member of the Russian Society of Sailing and Trade and was primarily involved in wheat trading. His mother, Chava (Eva Markovna) Zach (1835–1926), came from Berdychiv, Kyiv Governorate.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a Russian Jewish activist was more aware than all the others of current events.  He was the founder of Revisionist Zionism (Ha-Tzorar). Ze'ev  was advocating a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.  He must have studied our history and matched it with its geography.  

In the first years of the British Mandate in Eretz Yisrael, Jabotinsky supported collaboration with Great Britain, assuming that the latter will implement the mandate it supported in Balfour’s declaration. However, when Britain backed out from its support in the Zionist stand, Jabotinsky warned of a possible betrayal by the government of the British Mandate and advocated to rebel against it.

In 1923 he resigned from the Executive of the Zionist Movement, in protest against the policy of Chaim Weizmann, which he felt was moderate towards the anti-Zionist stand taken by the British Mandate Government. The support given to Jabotinsky by youth from east and central Europe was the basis for the future Revisionist Movement.

That opposed the official Zionist position who had this agreement with the British mandatory rule who had swayed the World Zionist Organization.  By 1933, the Jewish State Party had formed that was on the World Zionist side.  The new party comprised a number of veteran leaders, including Meir *Grossman, the Hebrew poet Yaakov *Cahan, Richard *Lichtheim, Selig *Soskin, Robert *Stricker, and Jonah Machover, Herzl Rosenblum, and Baruch Weinstein, but only a fraction of the rank and file Revisionists and even less of the membership of the *Betar youth movement, who remained faithful to Jabotinsky. By 1935, Jabotinsky's group ceded from it and stayed independent until 1946. 

Betar-Hebrew initials, standing for "Yoseph Trumpeldor League", then of the Herut movement, the youth movement, originated in Latvia in 1923 and at first was a scout movement.  Their 1st world congress was held in Danzig, Poland in 1931. Their principals were non-socialist Zionism, the building of Israel on a nationalist basis, militarism and the fostering of discipline.  WWII liquidated most but those alive set up in Palestine " the Histadrut ha Ovedim ha Leumit/  or National Workers Organization.  Betar was led by Jabotinsky until his death in 1940.  Menahem Begin then took over.  

    Haganah (Defense)  during practice;  Jews who organized against British rules for Jewish self defense in Palestine.  They took over Ha-Shomer in 1920 and existed until 1948, being replaced by the IDF.  Jews were not being protected from attacks by Arabs so they had to protect themselves somehow; thus the Haganah of 1920.                           

   Stanley Goldfoot, born in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa in 1914, d: 2006,  with wife Rebecca Finger, children, had little choice when he landed.  He was met by Stern, inducted into group, quickly became the  chief of Intelligence.  Parents Simon  had been from Telsiai, Lithuania and Sarah from England.  

The Haganah also had their Revisionists of which came the activist resistance forces of Irgun Tzevai Lelumi and Lohame Herut Israel.  A youth movement was called Betar.  Our own 3rd cousin was Stanley Goldfoot-chief of intelligence for the Stern Group. 

 Avraham Stern had left the Irgun Tzevai Leumi of which he had been a leader because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during WWII.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel of which the British called the Stern Gang.  They carried out acts of sabotage, etc.  Avraham Stern was killed by British police while being arrested.  (That's one story for Blacks of the USA to see that this has happened before them, but to Jews).  

Jabotinsky spoke in Warsaw, Poland in 1938 on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'av (the 9th of Av) , which was a sad remembrance day, the date of the worst event of our Jewish history, a fast day.  

It was a day marking the destruction of the 2nd Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.  Eerily, it's also the very same date when Solomon's 1st Temple fell to the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Events such as the murder of the Ten Martyrs by the Romans, expulsions from England, Spain and elsewhere, massacres of numerous medieval Jewish communities during the Crusades, and the Holocaust all started on the 9th of Av.                     

               Ze'ev Jabotinsky, wife and son;  In October 1907 Jabotinsky married Joanna (or Ania) Galperina.

Jabotinsky spoke to Poland's 3 million Jews.   "As he pleaded with the Jews of Poland 73 years ago to save themselves from the certain death that Hitler was planning for them. In addition to seeing the horrible danger, he also foresaw the birth of the State of Israel.

“…It is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of world Jewry.
I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer.
I became grey and old in these years.
My heart bleeds, that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all-consuming lava.
I see that you are not seeing this because you are immersed and sunk in your daily worries.
Today, however, I demand from you trust. You were convinced already that my prognoses have already proven to be right. If you think differently, then drive me out of your midst! However, if you do believe me, then listen to me in this 12th hour:
In the name of God! Let anyone of you save himself as long as there is still time. And time there is very little…and what else I would like to say to you in this day of Tisha B’Av:
whoever of you will escape from the catastrophe, he or she will live to see the exalted moment of a great Jewish wedding: the rebirth and the rise of a Jewish state. I don’t know if I will be privileged to see it; my son will! I believe in this as I am sure that tomorrow morning the sun will rise.”

Jabotinsky was not a religious Jew, not in Russia.  Raised in a middle-class Jewish home, Jabotinsky was educated in Russian schools. Although he studied Hebrew as a child, he wrote in his autobiography that his upbringing was divorced from Jewish faith and tradition. His mother ran a stationery store in Odessa. Jabotinsky dropped out of school at the age of 17 with a guarantee of a job as a correspondent for a local Odesan newspaper, the Odesskiy Listok, and was sent to Bern and Rome as a correspondent. He also worked for the Odesskie Novosti after his return from Italy. Jabotinsky was a childhood friend of Russian journalist and poet Korney Chukovsky.  But he was Jewish and cared about his people. 

From the autumn of 1898 onward, Jabotinsky was registered for three years as a law student at the Sapienza University of Rome, but hardly attended any classes and did not graduate, leading a bohemian lifestyle instead. In addition to Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, he learned to speak fluent Italian.

After returning as a news reporter to Odessa, he was arrested in April 1902 for writing feuilletons in an anti-establishment tone, as well as contributing to a radical Italian journal. He was held isolated in a prison cell in the city for two months, where he communicated with other inmates through shouting and passing written notes. (a part of a newspaper or magazine devoted to fiction, criticism, or light literature.  "her sharp wit has made her one of Russia's masters of the literary feuilleton"  an article printed in a feuilleton.)

Editorial staff of Razsvet in Saint Petersburg, 1912. Sitting (R–L): 1) Max (Mordecai) Soloveichik (Solieli), 2) Avraham Ben David Idelson, 3) Zeev Jabotinsky; Standing: 1) Arnold Zeidman, 2) Alexander Goldstein, 3) Shlomo Gefstein

Activists all seem to have been journalists as well.  They saw the events, they wrote about them, and then they were forced to act.                                       

Troops of the Zion Mule Corps (part of the Jewish Legion section of the British Army, Royal Fusiliers) travelling along a dusty road in Palestine during the First World War. Date: 1914-1918

 Jabotinsky created the Zion Mule Corps, which consisted of several hundred Jewish men, mainly Russians who had been exiled from Palestine by the Ottoman Empire and had settled in Egypt. The unit served with distinction in the Battle of Gallipoli. When the Zion Mule Corps was disbanded, Jabotinsky traveled to London, where he continued his efforts to establish Jewish units to fight in Palestine as part of the British Army. Although Jabotinsky did not serve with the Zion Mule Corps, Trumpeldor, Jabotinsky and 120 Zion Mule Corps members did serve in Platoon 16 of the 20th Battalion of the London Regiment. In 1917, the government agreed to establish three Jewish battalions, initiating the Jewish Legion.              

 Joseph Trumpeldor worked with Jabotinsky with the Mule Corps.   He was only 39 when he died at Tel Hai, Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.

Who was Joseph Trumpeldor?  (1880-1920)  He was a Zionist leader who had been a dental student when he  volunteered in the Russian army where he lost his arm in the fighting around Port Arthur in 1904-1905.  He became an officer after he was freed from the Japanese captivity.   In 1912 he settled in Palestine. He had organized volunteers to protect exposed Jewish villages in Upper Galilee and was killed in the defense of Tel Hai.  

As an honorary lieutenant in the 38th Royal Fusiliers, Jabotinsky saw action in Palestine in 1918. His battalion was one of the first to enter Transjordan.

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/2011/08/08/jabotinsky-warning-to-warsaw-jews-tisha-bav-1938/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

Bibi by Benjamin Netanyahu

https://www.knesset.gov.il/vip/jabotinsky/eng/Revisionist_frame_eng.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-state-party