Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Benito Mussolini
Jabotinsky grew up in Odessa in a not particularly Jewish environment. He spoke Yiddish with difficulty, Russian was his mother tongue. And Russian literature was his great passion. He first studied in Switzerland and later in Italy. It was the pogroms of 1904-5 that awakened him politically. He met Herzl and was enormously influenced by him. He became a professional Zionist, a traveling agitator. But he had several clashes with the Zionist politicians.
When the WZO Action Committee (AC) decided to establish an office in Copenhagen in 1914, Chaim Weizmann suggested closing the office in Berlin and moving it to London. Unlike the people at the Berlin office and in Copenhagen, Weizmann was openly pro-English. Another pro-English Zionist was Jabotinsky. He was a correspondent for Russkija Vjedomosti, a liberal Russian newspaper.
When Turkey entered the World War on October 30, 1914, he became convinced of an Allied victory. Turkey would be the loser and cut to pieces. He telegraphed his newspaper that he would like to travel to North Africa and several Muslim countries. In December 1914, he arrived in Alexandria; at that time, the Turks had begun expelling Jews from Palestine. In total, 18,000 were expelled, of whom 12,000 to Alexandria.
There were disputes among them, but Jabotinsky, together with the former Russian-Jewish officer Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920), formed a police corps among them. It was here that Jabotinsky got the idea that the Zionists should establish a Jewish legion that could help conquer Palestine together with the English and French. The thought was that once there were armed Jewish legionnaires in Palestine, Zionist wishes would be given more attention at an upcoming peace conference.
In March 1915, 200 of the expelled Palestinian Jews issued a manifesto to form a Jewish legion and proposed that the English use it. Initially, ‘The Zion Mule Corps’ was formed, which was deployed in the Battle of Gallipoli at the Dardanelles Strait. After demobilization, 120 from the mule corps re-enlisted in the English army in 1916 and were accepted into the 39th Battalion of Royal Fusiliers, a unit that was transferred to conquered Palestine in 1918.
In early June 1915, the Danish Yiddish-language newspaper Yidishe folkst-saytung reported:
Jewish refugees now in Odessa tell the following about the Jewish legion, which has been organized on the initiative of V. Jabotinsky.
Before the legion was organized, Jabotinsky had appeared among the refugees in Alexandria with fiery speeches about the duty of Jews to join the English army to participate in the conquest of Palestine. The speeches were effective, and soon after, a legion of six hundred Jewish young men was founded. Later it emerged that they did not intend to occupy Palestine, but sent them to the Dardanelles. At the head of the legion, they placed the Port Arthur hero, the well known Trumpeldorf, who happened to be among the refugees.
The WZO leadership held a meeting on the matter on June 10-11, 1915 in Copenhagen. Jabotinsky was invited to the meeting with an advisory vote, but three of the leading Zionists Otto Warburg (1883-1970), Alfred Klee (1875-1943) and Abraham Ussishkin (1863-1941) announced that they could not participate in the meetings unless Jabotinsky first made a public declaration to abstain from his plans for a Jewish legion. Ussishkin refused to participate in any meeting with Jabotinsky at all. It was therefore proposed to start with a private conversation about the legion, but Jabotinsky rejected this, saying that the necessity of the legion could only be unfolded based on a critique of the entire AC’s policy. Therefore, AC should report first, so that there could be a debate about the policy. The legion had to be saved for later. Yehiel Tschlenow (1863-1918), who negotiated with Jabotinsky, suggested that both parts be debated and thought he could get the others to agree to such a compromise, but Jabotinsky rejected it, saying that then everything would be about the legion. Then the negotiations were interrupted. At the AC meeting itself, the following decision was adopted:
“Due to rumors about the alleged formation of a Jewish legion for the conquest of Palestine, AC declares:
1) that such an undertaking is in sharpest contrast to the entire character of Zionist work, and
2) that the Zionist Organization has nothing to do with such a project. AC demands that no Zionist can participate in or support such a project.
According to Jabotinsky’s comrade and biographer Joseph B. Schechtman (1891-1970), Meir Grossman (1888-1964), editor of the daily newspaper Yidishe folks-tsaytung in Copenhagen, became interested in the legion idea, and on his initiative, he met with Jabotinsky in Malmö. After Jabotinsky had broken with the WZO, he organized a meeting in Copenhagen with Grossman’s help, where he developed his legion plan.
In mid-July 1915, Grossman published a two-day interview with Jabotinsky in the newspaper. In the interview, Jabotinsky denounced the leadership of the WZO:
“I don’t believe the Zionist party can live up to the demands of the current situation. Unfortunately, our leadership is unable to establish a clear plan, nor does it have the necessary horizon and energy. The Zionist Organization is doing nothing at all. The exception is in England, where Chaim Weizmann has done important work and diplomatically achieved what I had not dared to hope for.”
He went into detail about the Zion Mule Corps’ efforts and concluded:
“I would just like to note that it is not, of course, about the Jews independently ‘conquering’ Palestine. It is about a larger Jewish contingent for the occupation of Palestine together with the Allies. If Palestine is occupied when the peace conference is held, it will likely mean an occupation force of roughly 40,000 soldiers for that small country down there. If there is a significant Jewish contingent in this occupation force, it will certainly have an influence on the solutions at the peace conference.”
After the interview, several articles about the legion’s efforts appeared “from our Alexandrian correspondent”.
Grossman was dismissed as editor by the Copenhagen Zionists after the interview. He later emigrated to Palestine and joined Jabotinsky’s revisionism.
Jabotinsky went to Palestine, and from 1921 to 1923 was a member of the Zionists’ executive committee but left it after a conflict with the majority. The conflict was about a Jewish militia and how to break with the British, and whether a Jewish Palestine should include Transjordanian territory. In August 1921, he made an agreement with Maxim Slavinsky (1868-1945), ambassador for Simon Petliura (1879-1926), the leader of Ukrainian nationalism. Jabotinsky wanted to create an anti-Soviet militia, which was especially meant to save Jews. Petliura was known for his bloody Jewish pogroms, and the agreement was made without the WZO’s involvement. When the Ukrainians revealed the agreement, the WZO began an investigation of Jabotinsky.
Jabotinsky was a declared opponent of labor Zionism in Mapai (Social Democracy) and Histadrut, labor Zionism’s trade union organization in Palestine. But as the American political scientist Madeleine Tress (1932-2009) writes:
Jabotinsky’s hostile attitude towards the labor movement and class struggle was not limited to criticism of labor Zionism. He was influenced by Mussolini’s [1883-1945] “Carta del Lavoro” in the way that he believed class struggle should be non-existent for the Zionist movement to succeed, and that trade unions should discipline labor organization.
The Revisionists, Jabotinsky’s party founded in 1932, opposed Histadrut’s strikes by organizing strikebreakers who would work for lower wages. He believed that Histadrut would become a Jewish-Arab organization that would end up opposing the Jewish state. Tress writes further:
“Like Mussolini, Jabotinsky believed that no one was outside the forces of production, and that labor and capital must be sacrificed for the national cause. Like Mussolini, he believed that his movement transcended any class distinction: ‘Revisionism stands – and will continue to do so in the future – above all classes.'”
From his Jewish Legion during World War I, he was obsessed with the idea of an armed Jewish corps in Palestine. During the Arab general strike in 1936, he stated:
“By mobilizing five thousand Jewish youth during the months of April and May, one could have stopped the unrest. This mobilization has placed us in the position that our halutzim [Zionists undergoing agricultural training] are not pioneers, but cowards.”
In his book A History of Zionism, historian Walter Laqueur (1921-2018) writes:
“Perhaps he saw himself as a Jewish Garibaldi [1807-82] liberating Palestine at the head of a Jewish army. Above all, there were two basic considerations that made him so fanatically insistent in his fight for the legion. He was absolutely convinced that a Jewish army was a historical necessity. […] Jabotinsky firmly believed in the value of military training and discipline, which he considered of particular importance for a people who for so many centuries had been unable to defend themselves.”
Furthermore, one could point to the racial theories:
“Jabotinsky incorporated racial theories into his Zionism from the international eugenics movement, whose leading advocates wrote Hitler’s racial theories. In 1913, he wrote a document that could have been used by the German Nazi party. ‘Let us draw for ourselves the ideal type of an ‘absolute nation’,’ he wrote. ‘It should have a racial appearance with a distinct unique character, an appearance that was different from the nation’s neighbors. It should, since time immemorial, own a coherent and clearly defined piece of land; it would be highly desirable if there were no foreign minorities in this area that could weaken national unity. It should have an original national language that was not developed from any other nation.'”
Stephen Meyer writes further: “In 1933, Jabotinsky published A Lecture on Jewish History, which further developed his racial science. As Rabbi Goldberg emphasized, it was a crucial text that would allow Jabotinsky’s followers, who were well-established in Palestine, to feel superior to the Arabs. ‘Every race has a different spiritual mechanism,’ wrote Jabotinsky. ‘This has nothing to do with the fact of whether ‘pure’ races exist or not; of course, all races are ‘mixed’, including among Jews. But the mixture is different from one case to another. The spiritual mechanism depends on race; the degree of intelligence, a stronger or weaker tendency to seek new experiences, the readiness to accept the existing situation or the courage to make new discoveries, stubbornness or conversely the character that gives up after the first failed attempt: all these forms are themselves a product of race.
Jabotinsky made it clear that he wanted a non-Oriental Jewish state in Palestine. “We Jews are Europeans,” he wrote in 1925 to Senator O.O. Grusenberg (1866-1940), US, “and we are not just pupils of, but co-creators of European culture.” He referred to Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) as “an honest Christian woman” for saying:
“If a country is to be found for the Jews, it must be suitable for white people to live in.
Also in relation to the Arabs, Jabotinsky was clear in his speech:
“A voluntary agreement between us and the Arabs of Palestine is inconceivable now and in the foreseeable future. We cannot promise any reward to the Arabs of Palestine or to other Arabs. A voluntary agreement is unattainable, and those who regard an agreement with the Arabs as a sine qua non for Zionism must now admit that this condition cannot be achieved without abandoning Zionism. We must either abandon our settlement efforts or continue them without concerning ourselves with the natives’ mood. Settlement develops protected by a power that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they [the Arabs] will be unable to break down.”
And:
“Jabotinsky then publishes The Ethics of the Iron Wall, a Nazi-like propaganda text related to Nietzsche’s [1844-1869] Will to Power. He wrote: “Zionism is a positive force – a moral movement with justice on its side. If the cause is just, regardless of support or opposition from anyone […] [the world] belongs not only to those who have too much land, but also to those who have none.
Taking a territory from a nation with large pieces of territory to create a home for a wandering people is an act of justice, and if the land-owning nation does not wish to cede it (which is quite natural), it must be forced. A sacred truth, for which the use of force is essential, does not thereby cease to be a sacred truth.”
The Italian historian Vincenzo Pinto (1974-) writes:
“Jabotinsky experienced fascism firsthand on his mission to Italy for the Zionist Executive Committee in 1922. It should be emphasized that he was one of the few Zionist leaders who knew Italy well, having studied law in Rome from 1898-1901.
He was to try to influence Italian politicians toward a more positive policy regarding Jews and Zionists. Especially Mussolini, who had used Jewish stereotypes in articles.
“Jabotinsky wanted Mussolini to understand that the Zionists’ proposal was based solely on ‘vero e sacro egoismo nazionale’ (true and sacred national egoism), i.e., pure realistic and cynical judgment.”
He tried to contact Mussolini, but failed, and instead wrote him a letter that concluded:
“Mr. Mussolini, it seems to me that you do not know the Jew. I may be wrong, but it seems that you think Jews are docile, greasy, cunning, always on the defensive, always preachers of their own loyalty to Italy, the ideal, etc. These are stories from the previous century, and perhaps they were stories even then. If you wish to understand our level of vitality, look at our fascisti and add only some tragedy, some firmness – perhaps some more experience. I ask you: Do you think it is constructive Italian policy to insist on the defeat of our hopes, on the collapse of the ethnic unity we have maintained against the whole world’s will?”
The Italian historian Renzo de Felice (1929-96), who wrote a book about The Jews in Fascist Italy, writes that Jews in Italy in the 1920s were pro-Zionist:
“As far as the most openly fascist Jews were concerned, they were somewhat restrained in their criticism of Britain for what had happened in Palestine. The fascist Jews shared views with the revisionist Zionists, who had organized in Italy in 1925-26. In 1929 they did not have their own press, but their position was clear and was confirmed by the first issues of Idea sionistica, which began publication in May 1930. The very first issue published an article by Jabotinsky, which was clearly anti-British and a detailed criticism of the report from the Investigation Commission established by the British government to shed light on the events of May 1930; the new journal fully supported the Russian Zionist’s ideas.”
The Zionists had an interest in Trieste being used as a port for Jewish emigration to Palestine. In September 1926, Chaim Weizmann met with Mussolini for the second time, and Mussolini offered to rebuild the Jewish state. In 1927, the Zionist leaders Victor Jacobson (1869-1935) and Nahum Sokolow (1859-1936) had an audience with Mussolini. His prejudices had been replaced by accommodation.
Jabotinsky had founded the Betar movement in Riga in 1923 as a revisionist youth organization. The movement also came to Palestine, where it became strong. In the early 1930s, it published the newspaper Doar Hayom in Palestine. It had a weekly column called ‘From a Fascist’s Diary’, written by Abba Achimier (1887-1962). He referred to Jabotinsky as ‘Our Duce’ and was very pro-Mussolini. He had great influence in the revisionist movement and was a close associate of Menachem Begin. Benzion Netanyahu (1910-2012), Jabotinsky’s personal secretary and father of Benjamin Netanyahu (1949-), gave a speech about Achimier at Israel’s 50th anniversary and praised him as his political role model.
Regarding Jabotinsky’s cooperation with Mussolini, Renzo de Felice has published a lengthy Italian government paper from 1935. In April 1932, Jabotinsky proposed to Isacco Sciaky (1896-1979), a Jewish professor at Liceo Galileo in Florence, to establish a central school for instructors in military preparation of Jewish youth. The proposal was also made to the ministry. The ministry did not follow up on the matter because of “the problem such a center located in Italy would create for us in the Arab world”. The paper explains the split in the Zionist movement and points out that Jabotinsky wants an independent Jewish state, while Weizmann and the other Zionists wanted a solution within the framework of the British mandate.
“The movement led by Jabotinsky is fundamentally in opposition to the British mandate and is based, in imitation of fascism, on youth in an organization known as Betar. This is the second year that this organization has sent students to the Maritime School in Civitavecchia: Italy’s agreement with Mr. Jabotinsky’s desire to establish a central school for instructors in military preparation of youth in Italy would be step two after the admission of Jewish students to the Civitavecchia school and would help liberate Palestine from the British mandate.”
If Mussolini desires it, the government can make it possible.
“A few days ago [in 1935] I had a private conversation with Mr. Jabotinsky, who was traveling through Rome. He confirmed the Zionist revisionism’s accommodating attitude toward Italy and fascism, as its attitude to general “Zionism,” which is now under the control of democracies, is the same as fascism’s attitude and function in relation to liberal and socialist democracies. […] Mr. Jabotinsky is a very intelligent and powerful man with a strong personality, completely without the mysticism that has been so negative for Jews until now.”
The letter writer ended by recommending Mussolini to help revisionism.
The Jewish section of the school in Civitavecchia began in December 1934, when four young revisionists arrived at the school, which was run by the fascist party Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF. In the April 1935 examination, 24 out of 29 passed. The next course was attended by 50 cadets. In 1935, the revisionists were given a four-masted yacht by a Belgian wealthy man, which they named Sara after the wealthy man’s wife. It sailed under Italian flag. Later the fleet was increased with a large fishing boat. In 1937, the cooperation on the maritime school ended. This was because it became clear that Mussolini had allied himself fully with Hitler and accepted the Nazis’ anti-Semitic program. In the summer of 1938, Mussolini banned several Betar courses in Civitavecchia, and Informazione diplomatica wrote in February 1938 that the fascists were willing to solve the Jewish problem outside Palestine (in Ethiopia, for example).
Revisionism
At the same time as Jabotinsky founded Betar in Riga, he conceived the idea for a new Zionist party, the Revisionists. Jabotinsky and his followers were maximalists. They not only declared Palestine for the Jews, but according to the ‘Basic Principles of Revisionism’, advocated for ‘the gradual transformation of Palestine (including Transjordan) into a self-governing society under the leadership of an established Jewish majority’.
This was their interpretation of the Balfour Declaration and the mandate, thus omitting the requirement that a ‘Jewish national home’ must not prejudice the interests of the original inhabitants. This made the creation of a Jewish majority crucial to Zionism. The ultimate goal was the solution of the Jewish problem and the creation of a Jewish culture. For this, he proposed Jewish immigration of 40,000 per year for 25 years.
Jabotinsky believed there would be an Arab minority in the Jewish state, but there would be equality between Jews and Arabs. The Arabs would fight Zionism until the ‘iron wall’ was built. Then the Arabs would realize there was no hope of destroying Zionism.
At the Revisionist party’s fourth conference in Prague in August 1930, he summarized his view that revisionism was not so much a political party or worldview as a ‘psychological race’, a definitive innate mentality that could not be communicated to those who did not possess that mentality.
Although the Revisionists grew within the WZO, Jabotinsky wanted his own organization, and in September 1935, the Revisionists founded their own New Zionist Organization (NZO) in Vienna. This was preceded by a crisis where Jabotinsky had made himself dictator of the Revisionists, and Meir Grossman broke with him and founded his own party, the Jewish State Party.
Armed Resistance
Violent resistance to Jewish colonization was present throughout the mandate period. It began with the Tel-Hai battle in 1920, where eight Jews and five Arabs were killed. Later that year, there were battles in Jerusalem where five Jews and four Arabs were killed and hundreds were wounded; several women were raped and two synagogues were burned down. In May 1921, clashes occurred in Jaffa. The two labor parties Mopsin and Ahdut haAvoda held May Day celebrations, which led to fights between Jews and Arabs. 95 were killed and 219 wounded, and consequently thousands of Jews fled from Jaffa to Tel Aviv.
Jabotinsky proposed establishing an armed Jewish force to protect the Jews. Already in 1907, a Jewish defense group called Bar-Giora had been founded, which later became known as Hashomer. After the 1920 unrest, the Jewish Agency decided to create a defense group called Haganah, which became the precursor to the Israeli army IDF.
Although the 1920s appeared calm, the doubling of the Jewish population from 87,500 in 1915 to 174,000 in 1931 was a disturbing element.
Year Jews Arabs
1800 6,700 268,000
1880 24,000 525,000
1915 87,500 590,000
1931 174,000 837,000
1947 630,000 1,310,000
It was not least the massive immigration that triggered the revolt in 1929. In the week from August 23 to August 29, 133 Jews were killed and 339 wounded; 116 Arabs were killed and at least 232 wounded.
In the wake of the 1929 revolt, there was dissatisfaction in the Jerusalem branch of Haganah with the effort to protect Jewish interests and with the amount of weapons. At this time, the labor Zionist trade union organization Histadrut led Haganah. The 1929 revolt led to the formation of Irgun Tsvai Leumi, a revisionist defense organization that attracted Betar members, had Jabotinsky as supreme leader and Avraham Tehomi (1903-90) as commander. It wanted to be an actual military organization and not just a militia like Haganah.
The Great Revolt 1936-39
In 1935, the Danish Chief Rabbi Max Friediger (1884-1947) and his wife Fanny (1888-1964) traveled to Palestine. In 1936, the book “The Land Being Rebuilt: Impressions from a Journey through Palestine” was published by Berlingske Publishing. It contains a chapter on ‘The Jews and Arabs’:
“But what about the Arabs? For in Palestine, Arabs have lived for several centuries, claiming their historical right to Palestine. In these times, when the Nationality Principle has become such an important factor in every people’s life, it would be an unforgivable mistake to ignore this right […] At the beginning of the colonization period initiated by Herzl, the Arab Problem was not given much importance. Certainly, Herzl touched upon this question, for he had the right feeling that it would one day come on the agenda, but he did not recognize the question in all its consequences, as evidenced by a short dialogue in his ‘Altneuland’. Here the question is posed: ‘But what will the Mohammedans say to this? Will they not view the Jews as a people who have unjustifiably intruded upon their territory?’ And the answer to this objection reads: ‘The Jews have made us rich – why should we not love them?'”
Not everyone saw the problem this clearly. The Zionists disagreed on their attitude toward the Arabs. David Ben-Gurion, the leader of labor Zionism, and the left-wing Zionists were inclined toward some restraint out of consideration for Britain and its mandate.
There were discussions about possible forms of alliance with or confidence-building measures for the Arab population. The Revisionists wanted to fight against the Arabs, and the communists were anti-Zionists. But at the same time, the Zionists’ policy consisted of bringing more and more Jews to the country. In 1936, 60,000 new immigrants.
On October 16, 1935, a large shipment of weapons camouflaged in cement crates (25 machine guns and 800 rifles plus 400,000 magazines of ammunition) for Haganah was discovered in Jaffa Port. The Arabs feared that the Jews were planning a takeover. A few weeks later, a Jewish policeman was shot in a citrus grove. The Palestinian police launched a major hunt for the Syrian preacher and resistance fighter al-Qassam (1882-1935), whose forces were discovered near the dead Jewish policeman, and on November 20, al-Qassam was killed.
These events were the prelude. The revolt itself started on April 15, 1936, when a group of al-Qassam’s people stopped a convoy on the road from Nablus to Tulkarm, robbed the passengers’ belongings and declared this was revenge for al-Qassam’s death, after which they shot three Jewish passengers, two of whom died. Jews and Palestinians now attacked each other in and around Tel Aviv.
Palestinians in Jaffa moved destructively through Jewish areas and killed several Jews. After four days, the unrest spread to the entire country, and on April 19, a Palestinian general strike began, which lasted until October 1936. An Arab Higher Committee was formed to lead the strike. The demands were:
- Ban on Jewish immigration;
- Ban on transfer of Arab land to Jews; and
- Establishment of a national government.
The British had to call for reinforcements from Egypt, but on June 2, 1936, Palestinians attempted to derail the train carrying the soldiers. The British therefore had to guard the railway tracks, an enormous task for the security forces. In response, on June 4, the British arrested a large number of Palestinian leaders and sent them to a prison camp at Auja al-Hafir in the Negev. The battle at Nur Shams on June 21 was the largest engagement yet of British troops fighting Palestinians in the revolt.
The general strike ended on October 11, 1936, and relatively peaceful conditions prevailed while the British Royal Peel Commission, established on July 29 and led by Robert Peel (1867-1937), considered the causes of unrest in the mandate area. The Commission arrived on November 11, and its report was presented on July 7, 1937.
In 1981, it was revealed that the Jewish Agency had installed microphones in the Commission’s meeting room, and Ben-Gurion was able to read transcripts of the evidence on camera.
The Commission concluded that the mandate had not anticipated the massive Jewish immigration, which had grown so large due to “drastic restrictions on immigration to the USA, the rise of the National Socialist government in Germany in 1933, and the increasing pressure on Jews in Poland.” The Peel Commission also wrote: “The continued impact of a highly intelligent race, supported by large financial resources on a relatively poor native society at a different cultural level, may in time lead to serious reactions.” Wrapped in mild racism, a rather precise conclusion.
The Peel Commission’s recommendation was a partition of Palestine into a small Jewish state, based on where Jews owned most land, a larger Palestinian state, and a mandate area. Another proposal was to move 225,000 Palestinians from the Jewish state to the Arab state.
The Arab Higher Committee rejected the conclusions, as did the Revisionists. Initially, the religious Zionists, some general Zionists, and some labor Zionists were also against the conclusions. However, two Zionist leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, convinced the Zionist Congress to accept the Peel Commission’s recommendations as a basis for negotiations and to negotiate with the British.
When there was no agreement from both sides, the revolt began again in autumn 1937 with the Palestinian assassination of District Commissioner for Galilee Lewis Andrews (1896-1937) on September 26. The British in Palestine were now allowed to deport to the entire British Empire. Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) was removed as leader of the Supreme Muslim Council, and five leaders were deported to the Seychelles while al-Husseini fled to Lebanon. Censorship was imposed, and a concentration camp was established near Acre.
In July 1937, Jabotinsky held a meeting in Alexandria with other Irgun leaders, where it was decided to change tactics and move to actual revenge actions. Jabotinsky only demanded that he not be informed of the details. It was Irgun’s leader David Raziel (1910-41) who initiated a program of bombing Palestinian coffee houses in Haifa and Rosh Pinah, attacks around Jerusalem and on buses between Tiberias and Safed. The first attack occurred on Black Sunday, November 11, when Irgun murdered two Palestinians in a Jaffa bus and wounded five more. The second attack took place on November 14, killing 10 and wounding many more. Although many Jews cooperated with the British to stop the revolt, it continued and marked a change in conditions.
In the last fifteen months of the revolt there were:
• 936 murders.
• 351 attempted murders.
• 2,125 cases of sniping.
• 472 bombings.
• 364 armed robberies.
• 1,453 acts of sabotage.
• 323 kidnappings.
• 236 Jews killed by Arabs.
• 435 Arabs killed by Jews.
• 1,200 killed by police and military.
• 535 wounded.
The Racism Uprising of 1936-39 significantly changed the situation in Palestine.
This is where the armed struggle begins. But before we look closer at that, I would like to introduce a consideration by Edward Said (1935-2003) from 1978. It concerns a letter from Chaim Weizmann to Arthur Balfour from 1918. Weizmann was then one of the leading Zionists, Balfour was the Foreign Secretary in the British government. Said writes:
“Between Zionism and the West, there was and still is a linguistic and ideological community from which the Arabs are excluded. The community depends greatly on a remarkable tradition of hostility towards Islam in particular and the Orient in general. Arabs and Islam actually represent evil, corruption, degenerate depravity, lust, and stupidity in popular and scholarly discourse. Zionism, like its Western ideological parents, drew on this collective representation of Arabs and Islam. The Zionists took it upon themselves as a partially ‘Eastern’ people, freed from the worst Eastern excesses, to explain the Oriental Arabs to the West, to assume responsibility for expressing what the Arabs really are, and never to let the Arabs appear equal to them in Palestine. This always allowed Zionism to seem both close to and standing above the native realities of Middle Eastern existence. Consider this extraordinary letter from Weizmann to Balfour from May 1918:
‘It is with a strong sense of responsibility that I try to write to you about the situation here and about the problems confronting the Zionist Commission. The Arabs, who are superficially clever and quick, worship one thing and one thing only – power and success. While it would thus be wrong to say that British prestige has suffered because of the military stalemate, it has at least not increased.
The British authorities who know the treacherous nature of the Arab must constantly keep a careful eye that nothing happens which can give the Arabs cause for offense or complaint. In other words, the Arabs must be ‘nursed’, otherwise they will stab the army in the back. The Arab, quick as he is to perceive the situation, tries to get the most out of it. He shouts as soon as he can and extorts as often as he can.
The first cry came when Your Declaration was announced (the Balfour Declaration). Every misinterpretation and misunderstanding was attached to the Declaration. The English, they said, will hand over the poor Arabs to the wealthy Jews, who are all just waiting in the wake of General Allenby’s army like vultures, ready to devour cheap prey and throw everyone out of the country…
At the head of the administration, we see enlightened and honest English officials, but the rest of the administrative machinery remains intact, and all offices are occupied by Arabs and Syrians… We see these officials, corrupt, inefficient, who miss the good old days when baksheesh was the only means by which administrative matters could be arranged… The more fair the English regime tries to become, the more arrogant the Arab becomes. It must be taken into account that the Arab official knows the language, customs, and the country’s way of functioning, is a man of the world, and therefore has a great advantage over the fair and clear-headed English official, who is not well-acquainted with the subtleties of the Oriental mind. So the English are being ‘driven’ by the Arabs. This form of administration is decidedly hostile to Jews… the Englishman at the top is fair and just, and in trying to regulate relations between the two main sections [sic] of society, he is meticulously careful to keep the balance. But his only guideline in this difficult situation is the democratic principle, which recognizes numerical strength, and the brutal numbers operate against us, for there are five Arabs to one Jew. The current state of affairs necessarily points towards the creation of an Arab Palestine, if there were an Arab people in Palestine. It will not be the result, because the fellah is at least four centuries behind in time, and the effendi (who, by the way, is the real winner of the current system) is dishonest, uneducated, greedy, and as unpatriotic as he is ineffective…’
Jabotinsky co-founded the newly invented version of Zionism based on pure fascist considerations in close cooperation with the Italian fascists, including Mussolini.
The extreme faction of Jabotinsky’s group not only embraced fascism in the Italian context but openly declared admiration for Hitler. This to such a degree that even Jabotinsky had to ask them to tone down the rhetoric.
The group israel and their leadership live and express themselves today according to the same racial considerations. And the opposition within the group is not about being against the genocide, it is an internal struggle for power within the group.
israeli studies show that over 62% of the group believe that the genocidal approach is either proportionally appropriate or too mild. This shows a strongly indoctrinated radicalized population, and direct comparisons can be drawn to similar groups such as Islamic State, etc.