This August 3 marks the 61st anniversary of the death of the Zionist leader Vladimir Ze?ev Jabotinsky, ideological forefather of today?s Likud Party.
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When waves of Arab violence rocked Palestine in the late 1930s, and the British Mandate authorities responded by severely restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases, Zionist leaders realized that an entirely new path would be needed to reach Jewish statehood. That path would have to go through Washington. A new era was about to dawn, in which lobbying Congress and wooing American public opinion would become as crucial as draining swamps and guarding frontier settlements.
David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Labor Zionists in Palestine and chairman of the Jewish Agency, recognized that the United States had the leverage to change England?s position on Palestine: ?More and more, England must look to America as the only great power to which it could look for help in case of war,? Ben-Gurion realized, ?and more than ever America can demand certain things from England.? He traveled to the United States in late 1938, and again in late 1939, to urge American Jewish organizations to press their government to demand that London reverse its pro-Arab policies in Palestine. But Ben-Gurion was rebuffed by American Jewish leaders who feared that a Zionist pressure campaign might provoke accusations that Jews were trying to drag America into overseas conflicts.
Ze?ev Jabotinsky, fiery leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement tried another approach. He, too, recognized that changing opinion in Washington could change British policy in Palestine, but what was needed to make inroads on Capitol Hill was an issue that could attract the sympathy of non-Jewish Americans. Arriving in the United States in the spring of 1940, Jabotinsky decided to focus on the idea of establishing a Jewish military force that would join the Allies in combat against the Nazis. Non-Jews would welcome an ally on the battlefield, the Jews? postwar case for a state would be strengthened by their contribution to the war effort and the Jewish army would form the nucleus of that state?s armed forces.
Jabotinsky?s inner circle in New York - many of whom had arrived from Palestine in recent months - included Benzion Netanyahu, father of future Entebbe rescue hero Jonathan Netanyahu and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benjamin Akzin, later a distinguished law professor and president of Haifa University. They set to work organizing a rally to promote the Jewish army cause. Akzin was dispatched to Washington to recruit support from Members of Congress and the diplomatic corps.
The former U.S. ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, agreed to speak at the rally, but then withdrew at the behest of "Jewish friends" who opposed the army idea. The British ambassador, Lord Lothian, agreed to attend, but then reversed himself after a visit from a delegation of mainstream Zionist leaders, led by Stephen Wise. They resented Jabotinsky for acting independently of the established leadership and they feared that creating a full-fledged Jewish army would ?throw into question the loyalty of American Jews,? as one Zionist leader put it.
The Jewish army rally was a success nonetheless. An overflow crowd of more than 5,000 jammed into the Manhattan meeting hall, deterred neither by the hot weather nor by the leftwing Zionist protesters outside, whose leaflets called the Revisionists ?Mussolini?s buddies.? Passionate speeches were delivered by Jabotinsky and the famed British lion-hunter, Col. John Henry Patterson. Messages of endorsement from the Czech and Polish Consuls-General, Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, Senator Frederick Coudert Jr. of New York and Yale University president Charles Seymour were read aloud.
The Jewish army campaign, which was soon expanded to include full-page newspaper advertisements and the introduction of a Congressional resolution, aroused enough sympathy in Washington that it eventually helped prod the British to establish the Jewish Brigade. The Brigade saw action against the Nazis in 1945 and smuggled thousands of Holocaust survivors to Palestine after the war. But Jabotinsky did not live to see the fruits of his labor. On Friday afternoon, August 3, he arrived at the upstate New York summer camp of his Betar youth movement, where hundreds of excited teens lined the road to greet him. ?He walked past us slowly, pale and exhausted, without the strength to stop and talk,? one of the youths later recalled. ?We all sensed that something was terribly wrong.? When he reached his room, Jabotinsky collapsed and died, the victim of a massive heart attack. ?His was a great heart and a strong heart,? one of his followers would later write, ?but it was not strong enough to stand the strain of the eclipse of humanity in the world and of the petty bestiality of Jewish politics.?
Jabotinsky?s passing devastated his followers. "Losing him was, for all of us, like losing our father. I felt orphaned," one wrote. ?Fate had taken Jabotinsky from our people at the most crucial time in our history ... Jabotinsky was the one leader who could have injected pride and courage in the Jews around the world ... He could have rallied thousands of people, sounding the alarm and awakening America?s conscience. He could have reached the White House...? At Jabotinsky's graveside, his followers wondered if they could carry the mantle of their fallen leader. One mourner remarked, "In a few weeks we shall know who is buried here: ?Jabo? or his work with him."
Somehow, in their darkest hour, Jabotinsky?s disciples found a way to carry on his legacy. Colonel Morris Mendelsohn, a one-armed hero of the Spanish-American war, took on the presidency of the Revisionist Zionist movement in America. "After he gave one arm for the liberation of Cuba, he decided to devote his second arm, his brain and his soul to the liberation of the Jewish nation," the movement?s journal announced. Benzion Netanyahu soon signed on as executive director and throughout the 1940s organized effective newspaper ad campaigns and Capitol Hill lobbying to help turn Congress and public opinion against British policy in Palestine. It was a form of psychological warfare which helped increase the pressure on the British to withdraw from Palestine.
Another member of Jabotinsky?s inner circle, Hillel Kook, operating under the alias ?Peter Bergson,? established the Emergency Committee to Rescue the Jewish People of Europe, which organized rallies, pageants, Congressional lobbying, and newspaper ads to help pressure the Roosevelt administration to establish the War Refugee Board, which rescued many tens of thousands of Jews from Hitler in 1944-1945.
And in Palestine, the militant underground Irgun Zvai Leumi regrouped under the leadership of Jabotinsky disciple Menachem Begin, and launched an armed revolt against the British that ended with the establishment of the State of Israel.
Ultimately, Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion were proven right. The United States replaced Great Britain as the major Western power in Middle East affairs. Washington became the new battleground for Zionist diplomacy. And the lobbying campaigns and publicity tactics pioneered in the 1940s are still the mainstay of pro-Israel activists as they seek to influence Capitol Hill and sway public opinion on Israel's behalf.
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Dr. Medoff, Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase, is author of Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1925-1948, which will be published in 2002 by the University of Alabama Press.
******
When waves of Arab violence rocked Palestine in the late 1930s, and the British Mandate authorities responded by severely restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases, Zionist leaders realized that an entirely new path would be needed to reach Jewish statehood. That path would have to go through Washington. A new era was about to dawn, in which lobbying Congress and wooing American public opinion would become as crucial as draining swamps and guarding frontier settlements.
David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Labor Zionists in Palestine and chairman of the Jewish Agency, recognized that the United States had the leverage to change England?s position on Palestine: ?More and more, England must look to America as the only great power to which it could look for help in case of war,? Ben-Gurion realized, ?and more than ever America can demand certain things from England.? He traveled to the United States in late 1938, and again in late 1939, to urge American Jewish organizations to press their government to demand that London reverse its pro-Arab policies in Palestine. But Ben-Gurion was rebuffed by American Jewish leaders who feared that a Zionist pressure campaign might provoke accusations that Jews were trying to drag America into overseas conflicts.
Ze?ev Jabotinsky, fiery leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement tried another approach. He, too, recognized that changing opinion in Washington could change British policy in Palestine, but what was needed to make inroads on Capitol Hill was an issue that could attract the sympathy of non-Jewish Americans. Arriving in the United States in the spring of 1940, Jabotinsky decided to focus on the idea of establishing a Jewish military force that would join the Allies in combat against the Nazis. Non-Jews would welcome an ally on the battlefield, the Jews? postwar case for a state would be strengthened by their contribution to the war effort and the Jewish army would form the nucleus of that state?s armed forces.
Jabotinsky?s inner circle in New York - many of whom had arrived from Palestine in recent months - included Benzion Netanyahu, father of future Entebbe rescue hero Jonathan Netanyahu and future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benjamin Akzin, later a distinguished law professor and president of Haifa University. They set to work organizing a rally to promote the Jewish army cause. Akzin was dispatched to Washington to recruit support from Members of Congress and the diplomatic corps.
The former U.S. ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard, agreed to speak at the rally, but then withdrew at the behest of "Jewish friends" who opposed the army idea. The British ambassador, Lord Lothian, agreed to attend, but then reversed himself after a visit from a delegation of mainstream Zionist leaders, led by Stephen Wise. They resented Jabotinsky for acting independently of the established leadership and they feared that creating a full-fledged Jewish army would ?throw into question the loyalty of American Jews,? as one Zionist leader put it.
The Jewish army rally was a success nonetheless. An overflow crowd of more than 5,000 jammed into the Manhattan meeting hall, deterred neither by the hot weather nor by the leftwing Zionist protesters outside, whose leaflets called the Revisionists ?Mussolini?s buddies.? Passionate speeches were delivered by Jabotinsky and the famed British lion-hunter, Col. John Henry Patterson. Messages of endorsement from the Czech and Polish Consuls-General, Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, Senator Frederick Coudert Jr. of New York and Yale University president Charles Seymour were read aloud.
The Jewish army campaign, which was soon expanded to include full-page newspaper advertisements and the introduction of a Congressional resolution, aroused enough sympathy in Washington that it eventually helped prod the British to establish the Jewish Brigade. The Brigade saw action against the Nazis in 1945 and smuggled thousands of Holocaust survivors to Palestine after the war. But Jabotinsky did not live to see the fruits of his labor. On Friday afternoon, August 3, he arrived at the upstate New York summer camp of his Betar youth movement, where hundreds of excited teens lined the road to greet him. ?He walked past us slowly, pale and exhausted, without the strength to stop and talk,? one of the youths later recalled. ?We all sensed that something was terribly wrong.? When he reached his room, Jabotinsky collapsed and died, the victim of a massive heart attack. ?His was a great heart and a strong heart,? one of his followers would later write, ?but it was not strong enough to stand the strain of the eclipse of humanity in the world and of the petty bestiality of Jewish politics.?
Jabotinsky?s passing devastated his followers. "Losing him was, for all of us, like losing our father. I felt orphaned," one wrote. ?Fate had taken Jabotinsky from our people at the most crucial time in our history ... Jabotinsky was the one leader who could have injected pride and courage in the Jews around the world ... He could have rallied thousands of people, sounding the alarm and awakening America?s conscience. He could have reached the White House...? At Jabotinsky's graveside, his followers wondered if they could carry the mantle of their fallen leader. One mourner remarked, "In a few weeks we shall know who is buried here: ?Jabo? or his work with him."
Somehow, in their darkest hour, Jabotinsky?s disciples found a way to carry on his legacy. Colonel Morris Mendelsohn, a one-armed hero of the Spanish-American war, took on the presidency of the Revisionist Zionist movement in America. "After he gave one arm for the liberation of Cuba, he decided to devote his second arm, his brain and his soul to the liberation of the Jewish nation," the movement?s journal announced. Benzion Netanyahu soon signed on as executive director and throughout the 1940s organized effective newspaper ad campaigns and Capitol Hill lobbying to help turn Congress and public opinion against British policy in Palestine. It was a form of psychological warfare which helped increase the pressure on the British to withdraw from Palestine.
Another member of Jabotinsky?s inner circle, Hillel Kook, operating under the alias ?Peter Bergson,? established the Emergency Committee to Rescue the Jewish People of Europe, which organized rallies, pageants, Congressional lobbying, and newspaper ads to help pressure the Roosevelt administration to establish the War Refugee Board, which rescued many tens of thousands of Jews from Hitler in 1944-1945.
And in Palestine, the militant underground Irgun Zvai Leumi regrouped under the leadership of Jabotinsky disciple Menachem Begin, and launched an armed revolt against the British that ended with the establishment of the State of Israel.
Ultimately, Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion were proven right. The United States replaced Great Britain as the major Western power in Middle East affairs. Washington became the new battleground for Zionist diplomacy. And the lobbying campaigns and publicity tactics pioneered in the 1940s are still the mainstay of pro-Israel activists as they seek to influence Capitol Hill and sway public opinion on Israel's behalf.
____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Medoff, Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase, is author of Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1925-1948, which will be published in 2002 by the University of Alabama Press.