It is instructive to review the clarity with which Jabotinsky explained the watershed events of 1922-3. Speaking to the Zionist Actions Committee, he repeated his warnings "against the assumption that the desire of the Arabs to keep the country for Arabs only can be bought off by subsidies or bribes. The contempt implied in such schemes is totally unjustified." He was also prescient in noting that only "legislative and military power" could guarantee Jewish settlement under the Mandate. Jabotinsky requested that the Zionist Actions Committee formally protest and inform the British Cabinet (and thus assist allies of the Jewish people in the British government and public) that the "transfer" of Trans-Jordan and declaration that lands east of the Jordan were off-limits to Jews "threatened to ruin the Zionist movement." He also called for instructing the Cabinet "to remove anti-Semites from the Palestine administration" and to re-assert that the Zionist "movement stands on its historic claim" to the Land. Weizmann and the others barred these proposals from even being voted upon. (Lone Wolf, 849-53)

It was not only by suppressing debate and community knowledge of the crisis already facing Jews and their return to the Land that a hole opened in the heart of the Israel struggling toward rebirth. To justify attempts to silence Jabotinsky (the founder of the Jewish Legion, the Haganah, and the Irgun Zvai Leumi), "they dipped into their lexicon of epithets like "extremist" and "firebrand," just as faithful Jews in the heartland are vilified today (Lone Wolf, 858). It is ironic and indicative of leftwing, anti-national methods, that those who make a cult of "subjectivity" and "I-thou dialogue" relentlessly attack those who do not share their ideology.

They "are turning Eretz Israel into a land where it is forbidden to sing Hatikvah," Jabotinsky wrote in February 1923, "while it is permissible for Arabs to sing, 'the Jews are our dogs' in the squares of the cities." (Katz, 900) Already in the early 1920s, Jabotinsky recognized the preference for Jewish weakness and self-abasement that Hazony locates in the post-Ben-Gurion era. Here already was the same suicidal streak which Hazony chronicles so well in the current Israeli elite.

In November 1923, Jabotinsky identified the core issues that still inform debates on the survival and flourishing of Israel as an independent Jewish state. "We will never violate the religious rights of the Arabs," he said, but added, achieving this peaceful goal "depends not on our attitude toward the Arabs but on the attitude of the Arabs toward Zionism." Jabotinsky here zeroed in on the suicidal arrogance of those whose defeatist policies implied that Arab attitudes don't matter, that all depends on Jewish concessions and subsidies. Looking clear-eyed at the realities of daily life rather than the mysteries of the "I-thou relationship," Jabotinsky noted, "a voluntary agreement between us and the Arabs is out of the question, now or in the foreseeable future. Except for those who were born blind, moderate Zionists have long realized the utter impossibility of obtaining the will-ing agreement of the Palestine Arabs to transform 'Filastin' into a land with a Jewish majority." This would remain true, said Jabotinsky, "even if we had our pockets full of all sorts of concessions, even to the extent of agreeing to become part of an Arab Federation." (Katz, 930-4) Jabotinsky's answer then remains the only viable option today. He wrote:

The only way to achieve [a peace] agreement is an iron wall, strengthening our rule in Eretz Israel. In other words, the only way to an agreement in the future involves complete abandonment of all efforts to reach an agreement in the present.

Jabotinsky elaborated the point with a Talmudic parable about how justice is destroyed. Two men grab the same piece of cloth, each claiming it is his. Then one decides to be a gentleman. "Let's share it. Half is mine, and half is yours." But the other continues screaming that it all is his, from time immemorial. "The result," he noted, "is that the obstinate one takes three-fourths while the 'gentleman' gets one-fourth." "It is fine to be a gentleman," and to love peace, he added. "But one doesn't have to be stupid. Our forefathers understood this, but we have forgotten." "The concessions we can make to Arab nationalism without destroying Zionism are very limited," Jabotinsky wrote. "We cannot agree to Arab supervision of Jewish immigration. We cannot agree to [an Israeli] parliament with an Arab majority. Nor can we ever join an Arab Federation. So it will continue, until the iron wall compels the Arabs to make peace with Zionism."

And so let us give the final word here to the great hero and brilliant, tireless advocate of the Jewish people who is all but invisible in The Jewish State. In November 1923 Jabotinsky wrote: "Even discounting the extensive lands currently desert in Arab states, Eretz Israel [including "Jordan"] is 1/200th of their territory. Yet when the Jewish people claims Israel as its homeland, this claim becomes 'immoral.' This kind of morality is appropriate for cannibals, not for the civilized world....A truth which is implemented by force does not thereby cease to be a sacred truth. Hence the [iron wall] is the only policy objectively possible for us toward the Arabs."

Eugene Narrett teaches at Boston University.

October 2000               - 7 -               Outpost