You are probably laughing out loud. Stop it and bear with me.
For those not familiar with the name, Jabotinsky (1880 to 1940) was recognized as the greatest orator of his era who the lead the fight for Jewish national liberation.
We often read that people either love Palin or hate her. Similarly, Shmuel Katz, in The Lone Wolf, his biography of Jabotinsky, said of him “he was both, the best beloved and the most maligned, Jewish leader of his time”. Palin who is constantly being maligned, can relate.
The common denominator for both of them is that they both took on the permanent political class, the establishment or the intellectual elite, however you refer to them. They took the battle of ideas to them in defiance of conventional wisdom or political correctness. In many ways, they were both “lone wolves”. In Palin’s case, perhaps a momma grizzly.
In both cases, this class stood for progressivism, universalism and collectivism. In opposition, they both stood for individualism, exceptionalism and nationalism.
Palin is a fierce defender of individual ingenuity and free market capitalism. Jabotinsky once gave a speech called “Individualism and Collectivism”. The similarities in their positions are striking.
Sarah Palin keeps reminding Americans of their roots in Judeo-Christian values, in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Nationalism or pride of country, for her, are a good thing.
Jabotinsky, in his late teens lived in Italy and became very interested in the great Italian leader Garibaldi who had unified Italy fifty years earlier using his popularity and his skill at rousing the common people to do so. He exemplified nationalism and liberalism.
The Jewish question became front and center in 1905 when Russia lost a war to Japan. The Russian people turned to revolution and the Czar clamped down hard on them particularly on the Jews. HIs government organized pogroms on various Jewish communities throughout Russia. Hundreds of Jews were raped or killed or both, with the approval of the government.
Jabotinsky, a strong proponent of Jewish self-defense was aghast that the Jews cowered as they were slaughtered rather than fight back, except in few instances. Where was their pride? Where was their manhood?
Palin also believes in a strong military and believes you fight to win. She also supports the right to bear arms.
Jabotinsky once advised Jews: “Better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it.”
When Palin visited with PM Netanyahu in Israel last year, she asked “Why are you apologizing all the time?” Rick Richman, in Commentary, suggested she might have been familiar with the famous essay by Ze’ev Jabotinsky entitled “Instead of Excessive Apology:”
We constantly and very loudly apologize… Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault…. Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, “why are they so afraid of everything?” …
We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility.
Richman concluded by saying “And if she did not know, more power to her. It is another indication she has a visceral feeling for the issues she champions.” So too, did Jabotinsky.
In response to the pogroms, Jabotinsky took pen in hand and railed against the “pathetic bankruptcy of the Jewish assimilationists and the hypocrisy of the Russian progressives”.
In one of his articles “Our Every Day Phenomenum”, he denounced “the epidemic of baptism that had spread among Jewish academic youth”. Since Jews were barred from attending universities, they were resorting to baptism so they could get a university education.
. Jabotinsky once advised Jews: “Better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it.”
In order to formulate a solution to the Jewish problem, Jabotinsky studied the “nationalities problem” for eight months in Vienna. At this time he became a proponent of aliya, the use of Hebrew in the Jewish schools in Russia and in Zionist conferences and in the creation of a Hebrew university in Palestine so that Jewish youths could get an education.
He wanted to have Jewish schools teach Jewish history and Jewish pride and to teach it in Hebrew. These ideas came to fruition. He also supported a federation of minorities in Russia, the Jews being one of them.
The revolutionary atmosphere in Russia spread to The Ottoman Empire where the Sultan was unseated in 1909. The new regime instituted a policy of Ottomanization. All minorities had to assimilate in one Ottoman nation and had to learn the Ottoman language. Thus the idea of Jewish autonomy in the Ottoman Empire had no future.
But WWI changed that. The British, anticipating defeating Germany and the Ottoman Empire, offered the Jews, in return for their help in the war. a state as set out in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Both Palin and Jabotinsky were never part of the establishment but had great influence over it. They both still do.