‘Jabotinsky would be turning in his grave’ at Netanyahu’s Israel

One hundred years ago, the Revisionist Movement was established at the Café du Panthéon in the heart of the Latin Quarter in Paris by acculturated Russian Jews. Its leader was Vladimir Jabotinsky – an intellectual, a man of letters and a spellbinding orator, a figure often quoted by Benjamin Netanyahu. The link is not coincidental. The political origins of Israel’s governing Likud party be traced directly to Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Movement.

In 1925, the Revisionists promised a return to Herzlian dynamism, a back-to-basics Zionism, a way out of dead-end diplomacy and a bold activism for discriminated Jewish youth. 

Menaḥem Begin idolised Jabotinsky and called him “my teacher”. Yet Begin subtly radicalised Jabotinsky’s teachings, and his actual ideological differences with Jabotinsky were written out of the official Likud version of history. Begin’s successor as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, was instead a follower of Avraham Stern – “the Stern Gang”– and had little time for Jabotinsky. To underscore this, in the underground, Shamir used the name “Mikhael” – after the progenitor of the IRA, Michael Collins.

Despite his mesmerising rhetoric, Jabotinsky believed in England and diplomacy. He tried to rein in his youthful supporters who believed in the cult of “military Zionism”. He was never religious, did not fast on Yom Kippur or observe kashrut (eating only kosher food) and thought that the wearing of sheitls (a wig as a hair covering for religious women) was an affront to the modern woman.

Vladimir Jabotinsky was also clear on the Zionist approach to the Arabs of Palestine. “A Jewish majority [in Palestine] does not mean that we intend to rule over our neighbours; but we want Zion to become a country where the Jew can no longer be overruled. The main characteristic of the Galut [exile] is precisely the fact that everywhere in the Diaspora the Jew can be, and always is, overruled – because the Jews are everywhere in a minority. (The Zionist May 14, 1926)

On a visit to Dublin in early 1938, Jabotinsky stated that he opposed the transfer of Arabs out of Mandatory Palestine. Moreover, he differentiated between “Easterness” and the “East” as a geographical locality. He argued that Baghdad at one point in its history was more “Western” than Rome.

What would Jabotinsky have thought about today’s Israeli government, and  the proposal to “evacuate” Gaza of its inhabitants? It is no stretch of the imagination to state that he would not have recognised the Likud as the ideological heir of his teachings. It is more likely that he would have been cast out of the Likud as a Leftist and an Arab-lover.

It can be argued that the rise of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party in opinion polls has been at the expense of the Likud – and that this has been the real reason for the language and actions of many of today’s Likud politicians. This belies the fact that the seeds of extremism were always present in the Zionist Right – even in Jabotinsky’s time.

During the 1930s, During the 1930s, the maximalist wing of the Revisionist movement was led by Abba Ahimeir. A writer and a political activist, Aḥimeir was born in Belarus, then in the Tsarist Empire who admired Mussolini and saw Italy as the model for a future Jewish state. Aḥimeir saw fascism as a bulwark against the advance of communism. He remarked that it was “absurd to speak of Italian fascism as a murderous regime”.

The maximalists were sceptical about “parliamentary representation, the principle of democracy and the independence of the judiciary”. Instead, Ahimeir placed his faith in “the national dictatorships” in Europe during the interwar years.

When Jabotinsky arrived in Palestine in 1928, Aḥimeir wrote an article which he headlined On the Arrival of Our Duce. It was part of a series of articles entitled From the Notebook of a Fascist. Aḥimeir argued that Jabotinsky’s followers would follow him to the ends of the earth. He wrote that “our messiah will not arrive as a pauper on a donkey. He will come like all messiahs, riding a tank and bringing his commandments to his people”. Jabotinsky found such comments and the depiction of him as a “Duce”, repulsive and hideous.

At that time, Italian fascism was not officially antisemitic – legislation was only passed in 1938. Even so, Aḥimeir’s blindness even extended to semi-praise for Hitler on being appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg in 1933.

“Hitler has not yet treated us badly as Stalin has done…the antisemitic shell must be discarded, but not its anti-Marxist kernel,” he wrote at the end of March 1933.

Jabotinsky was apoplectic at the publication of this article and threatened resignation.

The comparison with today is not that there are goose-stepping believers in Tel Aviv but that there is similarly a righteous madness and arrogant myopia in official circles in Israel.

Jabotinsky would have been aghast at the disruption of a recent joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony held by bereaved families in a synagogue in Ra'anana. Instead of condemning the mindless thugs responsible, the Likud’s Ofir Katz, praised them from the podium of the Knesset. For Katz, the ceremony was “an inconceivable event”. He transformed all Palestinian victims of the conflict into armed Hamas terrorists and castigated Israeli bereaved families as traitors and turncoats.

During the past decade, Netanyahu has tried to ensure that no right-wing vote was wasted through voting for small extremist parties. His solution has been to forge a broad alliance with them – with the result that the Likud has lost its immunity against the virulence of the Ben-Gvir’s Kahanists. Likud members of the Knesset these days call for the burning down of Gaza (Nissim Vaturi) and the starving of all its citizens (Tally Gotliv). Today the Likud has become little more than an appendage of Otzma Yehudit.

Such views initially confused and then exasperated the many solid friends who defended the State of Israel in the months after the pogrom of October 7, 2023. British and European patience, however, has finally run out amidst a realisation that the comments of Vaturi and Gotliv are not fringe opinions within the Likud but mainstream.

The British and Europeans see clearly now that the Netanyahu coalition, led by the Likud, is indifferent to their views and has no intention of securing an end to hostilities.

They took note of Netanyahu’s recent confirmation of what most observers have long understood – that his priority was to destroy Hamas and not to rescue the hostages. As far as Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are concerned, the sacrifice of the hostages is a sad necessity – a price that had to be paid.

Last week, the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, made a passionate speech in the House of Commons which combined frustration and outrage at the government of Israel with solidarity for the state of Israel. Lammy suspended negotiations over a new free trade deal with Israel.

European Union foreign ministers further decided to review the EU’s trading agreement with Israel. 17 out of 27 states supported the move. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 32% of Israel’s total trade in goods in 2024.

Unlike Netanyahu today, Jabotinsky, 100 years ago, had red lines when it came to working with extremists. Unlike Netanyahu, he respected his colleagues in the media, lauded the rule of law and promoted understanding over ignorance. Unlike Netanyahu, he was never accused of moral corruption and lived his life out of a suitcase as a worker for Zion.

It is no exaggeration to state, clearly and unequivocally, that Vladimir Jabotinsky, “the Father of the Israeli Right”, would be turning in his grave at what has come to pass.