Shamir: a colourless tough guy Yitzhak Shamir was the accidental prime minister. When Menachem Begin resigned in 1983, the mantle of responsibility fell on Shamir’s shoulders. The colourless, uninspiring, 68-year-old was the stop-gap choice instead of the feared Ariel Sharon and the lightweight David Levy. Yet, including the two years when he almost shared power … Read more
Vladimir Jabotinsky Vladimir Jabotinsky was one of the founding fathers of the modern Zionist movement. He was one of the great inspirers of discriminated and impoverished Jewish youth in Eastern Europe in the inter-war years. In a pre-television era, audiences would sit patiently for hours, enthralled and entranced by his rhetoric. A Russian-Jewish intellectual who … Read more
Right-hand man: Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party appeals to ordinary Israelis’ deep-seated fears By Dani Filc Routledge £75 Why do so many impoverished Israelis vote for the Right? Netanyahu’s policies of privatisation and empowerment of the private sector clearly seem to be against their interests. Yet they shout: “Long live Bibi and Israel”. Dani Filc … Read more
INTRODUCTION In October 1947, two weeks before the vote on UN Resolution 181, the Revisionist Zionist headquarters in Paris approached the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement, the General Zionists, the Marxists of Hashomer Hatzair, and Ahdut Ha’avodah to form an anti-partition front.1 This willingness by Arieh Altman’s Revisionists to cultivate their deadly enemies on the Left … Read more
The general election in Israel on 10 February 2009 produced a move to the political right, likely to be capped by the formation of a new governing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud. In the perspective of Israel’s history, however, there are losers as well as winners among the established forces on this side of the … Read more
When the Irish rebels were pulled out of the General Post Office on Dublin’s O’Connell Street 90 years ago, they were jeered and spat upon by the locals. Decaying fruit was hurled at the wounded and the maimed. The Easter Uprising in 1916 was a courageous, futile affair – another link in the chain of … Read more
Inevitably, therefore, the question must arise of ‘transferring’ those Arabs elsewhere so as to make at least some room for Jewish newcomers. But it must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens. So … Read more
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. … Read more
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, … Read more
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 … Read more