Andreas Whittam Smith (Opinion, 19 April) quotes selectively from a harsh English translation of Jabotinsky’s famous article “The Iron Wall” which was originally published in Russian in 1923. Jabotinsky wrote in the aftermath of Arab attacks in 1920 and 1921 and was actually protesting about the British inability to protect the Jews or arm them….
Isaiah Berlin and Vladimir Jabotinsky In his ‘personal impression’ of Chaim Weizmann in 1958, Isaiah Berlin made a passing reference to Vladimir Jabotinsky as ‘the leader of the extreme right wing Zionists’.1 In one sense, such a comment presupposes that a leader must hold the same opinions as his followers. In the case of Jabotinsky,…
Christopher Hitchens’ articles in the Evening Standard, Barbara Amiel’s reply in the Daily Telegraph and Malcolm Palmer’s reply in the last issue of LJN all show a highly selective reading of the history of the Revisionist Zionist movement and its main characters, Jabotinsky and Begin. Barbara Amiel was right to condemn Christopher Hitchen’s depiction…
Jabotinsky and Ukrainian Nationalism: A Reinterpretation Israel Kleiner, From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian Question (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2000). 199pp. Foreword by Wolf Moskovich. Bibliography. Index. ISBN 1-895571-33-2 (paper) A unique figure in the Zionist firmament Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist…
Eighty years ago, the guns fell silent on the killing fields of France and Belgium. The seemingly pointless slaughter of millions and the defeat of Imperial Germany initiated the growth of revolutionary movements, including both Fascism and Marxism-Leninism, and propelled them on the road to power. The break-up of great empires permitted small nations to…
Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin by Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman 292pp, (Granta)13.99. On November 4, 1995, at the end of a jubilant rally for peace, Yigal Amir, a religious student, pumped two bullets into Yitzhak Rabin and a third into his bodyguard.The shots ruptured his spleen, severed…
The State of Israel and the Land of Israel One of the more interesting manifestations of the 1999 election campaign in Israel is the unraveling of the grand coalition which Menachem Begin assembled and coalesced as the Likud in 1973. It was based on Begin’s shrewd capitalising on the deep antagonism which many groups-—religious, Sephardim, the underclass, the far right-felt towards an indolent…
Christopher Hitchen’s articles in the Evening Standard, Barbara Amiel’s reply in The Daily Telegraph and Malcolm Palmer’s reply in the last issue of LJN all show a highly selective reading of the history of the Revisionist Zionist movement and its main protagonists, Jabotinsky and Begin. Amiel was right to condemn Hitchen’s depiction of the politics…
You were amongst the pre-war founders of Bnei Akiva-Bachad in London, but when did you leave for Israel? After my father discovered that her father had perished in Auschwitz, the family went from London to Palestine in May 1947. I was still engaged in Zionist work in London at that time as Director of…
The Stern Gang : Ideology. Politics and Terror 1940-1949 (Frank Cass) by Joseph Heller Blood in Zion (Brasseys) by Saul Zadka Jerusalem: Backgrounds or Memory (Biblios) by Amos Elon Jerusalem: the Endless crusade (Century) by Andrew sinclair When Joseph Heller’s comprehensive study of the Stern Group (Lehi) was first published in Hebrew, it aroused the…