Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, Hillel Kook-Peter Bergson, and the Campaign for a Jewish Army

Abstract

Viewed within the larger context of Zionist ideology and Zionist politics, the story of the campaign for a Jewish Army in World War II must begin with Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. As early as 1923, the founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I and of the first Hagana units in Jerusalem against Arab attack in 1920, respectfully analyzing adamant Arab opposition to Zionist aspirations, advocated the only solution to be a Jewish majority with a formidable army in an independent Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. The thesis of this pioneering essay, ‘‘The Iron Wall,’’ was reiterated in the right-wing political platform of Jabotinsky’s World Union of Zionist Revisionists two years later. 1 Jabotinsky was not, at the same time, prepared to embrace the maximalist trend in Revisionism, spearheaded in the early l930s by Abba Ahimeir, Yehoshua Yeivin, and poet Uri Zvi Greenberg. While Greenberg had already called in 1923 for ‘‘biryonim’’ (ruffians) who dreamt of ‘‘the Kingdom of Israel’’ and in 1928 for a Jewish armed force to conquer Palestine, and Yeivin blasted the World Zionist Organization (WZO) executive for relying on the British mandatory power, Ahimeir urged Jabotinsky to become Zionism’s authoritarian Duce a la Mussolini. Ahimeir also called on Revisionist Betar youth to become the fighting avant-garde for Jewry’s national liberation and, with Yeivin, even raised the possibility of political terror. Jabotinsky applauded Ahimeir’s personal example of imprisonment, but his own abiding faith in British parliamentarianism, in liberal values, and in open diplomacy precluded the revolt demanded by Ahimeir’s small Brit HaBiryonim circle; he refused to resign from the WZO. After the 1929 Arab riots, Jabotinsky pressed for a renewal of the Jewish Legion in Palestine, all the while preferring that a Jewish commonwealth become part of Britain’s dominions as advocated by Josiah Wedgwood, M.P. 2 Ahimeir’s influence extended to young Revisionists within the El-Al fraternity at the Hebrew University, who responded to his call