Ze'ev Jabotinsky, grandson of the famous Zionist leader of the same name, wrote an open letter - published as a large ad in Ha'aretz - to the Likud membership, asking them not to vote for Ariel Sharon in next week's internal party election. Excerpts from the letter:
"Shalom. I am a member of the Likud, and my grandfather Ze'ev Jabotinsky is the founder and spiritual father of our movement. Our movement has always strongly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Land of Israel. Such a state would have all the sovereign and military capabilities to threaten our very existence, which [the Palestinians] do not have today… Despite this, Prime Minister Sharon has recently [more than once] expressed his support for a Palestinian state. If Mr. Sharon thinks that this is the correct path, he should be vying for leadership of Labor, and not of our movement. Do not vote for a Palestinian state in our land. Do not vote for Ariel Sharon."
Arutz-7's Haggai Segal spoke with the author of the letter today, and asked him if Binyamin Netanyahu was behind it. "Netanyahu did not initiate it," Jabotinsky said. "I was the went who turned to the Netanyahu camp. This is perhaps the first time that a citizen who was very concerned about an issue used the political establishment, and not the opposite. I couldn't pay for the ad myself, so I asked the Netanyahu campaign to sponsor it, and they did."
Segal: "You say not to vote for Sharon, but are you sure that Netanyahu is against a Palestinian state?"
Jabotinsky: "I talked about this with Netanyahu beforehand at length, and I can say this: I am sure that Sharon wants to establish such a state, because he keeps saying it. He says it will solve our economic and security problems - while in my opinion it will worsen [both]. Look, the left wants to have Sharon elected, and many of them registered for the Likud for exactly this purpose. Most of Kibbutz Netzer Sireni, for instance, signed up for the Likud; they say that since it's obvious that the Likud will win in January, the main fight is the election within the Likud."
Segal: "Maybe the problem is not with Sharon, but with the entire Likud. Today happens to be the 25th anniversary of Sadat's visit to Israel, which led Menachem Begin to agree to give away the Sinai, and propose autonomy for the Arabs in Yesha, and to give weapons to the Palestinians, though of course not as much as Labor... Perhaps there is an ideological problem in the Likud that distances it from the original Jabotinsky line?"
Jabotinsky: "I don't think so. I think that most members of the Likud are strongly against a Palestinian state, as we saw in the last convention... I want to add that Sharon turned the Likud election into a referendum on the matter of a Palestinian state; if he is chosen, he will be able to say, with justification, that the Likud voted for his approach to a Palestinian state."
Jabotinsky-the-Grandfather
For a glimpse at the late Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his philosophy, we provide the following excerpts from an article by the late Daniel J. Elazar, founder of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. It was published in Sh'ma magazine in honor of the 100th anniversary of Jabotinsky's birth in May 1981:
"An important fact about [Jabotinsky] was that he was right. That is to say, in almost every position he took, he was far more right than wrong in his understanding of hard realities and Jewish necessities. The second most pronounced characteristic was that for many reasons it was usually impossible to act upon his diagnoses... the Jews were not yet ready to exercise the will necessary to do so.
"In relatively circumscribed matters, such as the creation of the Jewish Legion in World War I, Jabotinsky and a few others could act alone and secure the desired result. Today all Jews celebrate that effort. When it was a question of forecasting the imminent destruction of European Jewry and the necessity for a mass migration to Eretz Israel, then it was not something that could be done by a few people operating alone; the whole of the Jewish people had to be convinced and this proved to be impossible. Jabotinsky was right but his solution was never implemented; the Holocaust was the result…
"People who follow such matters are well aware of Jabotinsky's teachings regarding the impending demise of European Jewry, the necessity for military effort to establish the state, and the desirability of a Jewish state in the whole of historic Eretz Israel. But [another teaching] of Jabotinsky's which retains real relevance for us… is the necessity that the Jewish people be allied with the West… Jabotinsky also recognized the importance of religious belief in the shaping of a people. No less secular than his socialist Zionist enemies, he did not make their mistake of seeking to promote secularism. Rather, he sought to develop a Jewish civil religion which would retain certain beliefs and ceremonial forms, particularly the public ones, and integrate them in the service of national goals. Menachem Begin's public religiosity is very much in the spirit of Jabotinsky's civil religion. Such a civil religion is not, in my opinion, adequate for Jews but it is certainly better than the secularism which it is seeking to replace…
"Increasingly, it is becoming clear that Jabotinsky was indeed a giant in the Jewish national revival. Unfortunately for him and for the Jewish people, his genius was in foreseeing events long before others. He flowered before his time and all of us are poorer because we could not keep pace with him."
"Shalom. I am a member of the Likud, and my grandfather Ze'ev Jabotinsky is the founder and spiritual father of our movement. Our movement has always strongly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Land of Israel. Such a state would have all the sovereign and military capabilities to threaten our very existence, which [the Palestinians] do not have today… Despite this, Prime Minister Sharon has recently [more than once] expressed his support for a Palestinian state. If Mr. Sharon thinks that this is the correct path, he should be vying for leadership of Labor, and not of our movement. Do not vote for a Palestinian state in our land. Do not vote for Ariel Sharon."
Arutz-7's Haggai Segal spoke with the author of the letter today, and asked him if Binyamin Netanyahu was behind it. "Netanyahu did not initiate it," Jabotinsky said. "I was the went who turned to the Netanyahu camp. This is perhaps the first time that a citizen who was very concerned about an issue used the political establishment, and not the opposite. I couldn't pay for the ad myself, so I asked the Netanyahu campaign to sponsor it, and they did."
Segal: "You say not to vote for Sharon, but are you sure that Netanyahu is against a Palestinian state?"
Jabotinsky: "I talked about this with Netanyahu beforehand at length, and I can say this: I am sure that Sharon wants to establish such a state, because he keeps saying it. He says it will solve our economic and security problems - while in my opinion it will worsen [both]. Look, the left wants to have Sharon elected, and many of them registered for the Likud for exactly this purpose. Most of Kibbutz Netzer Sireni, for instance, signed up for the Likud; they say that since it's obvious that the Likud will win in January, the main fight is the election within the Likud."
Segal: "Maybe the problem is not with Sharon, but with the entire Likud. Today happens to be the 25th anniversary of Sadat's visit to Israel, which led Menachem Begin to agree to give away the Sinai, and propose autonomy for the Arabs in Yesha, and to give weapons to the Palestinians, though of course not as much as Labor... Perhaps there is an ideological problem in the Likud that distances it from the original Jabotinsky line?"
Jabotinsky: "I don't think so. I think that most members of the Likud are strongly against a Palestinian state, as we saw in the last convention... I want to add that Sharon turned the Likud election into a referendum on the matter of a Palestinian state; if he is chosen, he will be able to say, with justification, that the Likud voted for his approach to a Palestinian state."
Jabotinsky-the-Grandfather
For a glimpse at the late Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his philosophy, we provide the following excerpts from an article by the late Daniel J. Elazar, founder of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. It was published in Sh'ma magazine in honor of the 100th anniversary of Jabotinsky's birth in May 1981:
"An important fact about [Jabotinsky] was that he was right. That is to say, in almost every position he took, he was far more right than wrong in his understanding of hard realities and Jewish necessities. The second most pronounced characteristic was that for many reasons it was usually impossible to act upon his diagnoses... the Jews were not yet ready to exercise the will necessary to do so.
"In relatively circumscribed matters, such as the creation of the Jewish Legion in World War I, Jabotinsky and a few others could act alone and secure the desired result. Today all Jews celebrate that effort. When it was a question of forecasting the imminent destruction of European Jewry and the necessity for a mass migration to Eretz Israel, then it was not something that could be done by a few people operating alone; the whole of the Jewish people had to be convinced and this proved to be impossible. Jabotinsky was right but his solution was never implemented; the Holocaust was the result…
"People who follow such matters are well aware of Jabotinsky's teachings regarding the impending demise of European Jewry, the necessity for military effort to establish the state, and the desirability of a Jewish state in the whole of historic Eretz Israel. But [another teaching] of Jabotinsky's which retains real relevance for us… is the necessity that the Jewish people be allied with the West… Jabotinsky also recognized the importance of religious belief in the shaping of a people. No less secular than his socialist Zionist enemies, he did not make their mistake of seeking to promote secularism. Rather, he sought to develop a Jewish civil religion which would retain certain beliefs and ceremonial forms, particularly the public ones, and integrate them in the service of national goals. Menachem Begin's public religiosity is very much in the spirit of Jabotinsky's civil religion. Such a civil religion is not, in my opinion, adequate for Jews but it is certainly better than the secularism which it is seeking to replace…
"Increasingly, it is becoming clear that Jabotinsky was indeed a giant in the Jewish national revival. Unfortunately for him and for the Jewish people, his genius was in foreseeing events long before others. He flowered before his time and all of us are poorer because we could not keep pace with him."