The Jewish radical right: Revisionist Zionism and its ideological legacy

Abstract

This is the first comprehensive analysis of Zionist Revisionist thought in the 1920s and 1930s and of its ideological legacy in modern-day Israel. The Revisionists, under the leadership of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, offered a radical view of Jewish history and a revolutionary vision for its future. Using new archival material, Eran Kaplan examines the intellectual and cultural origins of the Zionist and Israeli Right, when Revisionism evolved into one of the most important movements in the Zionist camp. He presents revisionism as a form of nationalism, intellectually related to the radical right-wing ideologies that flourished in the early twentieth century. Kaplan suggests that Revisionism's legacies can be found both in the right-wing policies of Likud and in the heart of post-Zionism and its critique of mainstream (Labor) Zionism.