Zeev Jabotinsky Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Ze'ev Vladimir (Evgenevich) Jabotinsky (or Zhabotinski) (October 18, 1880 - August 4, 1940) was a Zionist leader, author, orator, and founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I. During World War Two a similar and larger unit known as the Jewish Brigade would follow.
Born in Odessa, Ukraine, he was raised in a traditional Jewish home and learned Hebrew as a child, but as he grew older, he came to identify with the acculturated Jewish youth of the city.
Jabotinsky's talents as a journalist became apparent even before he finished high school, and upon graduation he was sent to Bern, Switzerland and later to Italy as a reporter for the Russian press. While abroad, he also studied law, but it was only upon his return to Russia that he qualified as an attorney. His dispatches from Italy earned him recognition as one of the brightest young Russian-language journalists: he later edited newspapers in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
After the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist movement, where he quickly earned a reputation as a talented speaker and leader of the intellectually oriented youth. During that time, he concentrated on learning modern Hebrew as a spoken language. During the ensuing pogroms, he organized self-defense units in the various Jewish communities throughout Russia and struggled for the civil rights of the Jewish population as a whole.
During World War I, he conceived of the idea of establishing a Jewish Legion to fight alongside the British against the Ottomans who then controlled Palestine. Together with Joseph Trumpeldor, he created the Zion Mule Corps, which consisted of several hundred Jewish men, mainly Russians, who had been exiled from Palestine by the Turks and had settled in Egypt. The unit served with distinction in the Battle of Gallipoli. When the Zion Mule Corps was disbanded, Jabotinsky traveled to London, where he continued in his efforts to establish Jewish units to fight in Palestine as part of the British Army. Only in 1917, however, did the government agree to establish three Jewish units. Jabotinsky himself fought against the Turks in the Jordan Valley in 1918 and was decorated for bravery.
After the war, Jabotinsky was elected to the first legislative assembly in Palestine, and in 1921, he was elected to the executive council of the World Zionist Organization. He quit the latter group in 1923, however, due to differences of opinion between him and its chairman, Chaim Weizmann, and established the Revisionist Party and its youth movement, Betar (a Hebrew acronym for the "League of Joseph Trumpeldor"). His new party demanded that the Zionist movement recognize as its objective the establishment of a Jewish state along both banks of the Jordan River.
In 1929, Jabotinsky left Palestine to attend the Sixteenth Zionist Congress. The British authorities did not allow him to return. The movement he established gave birth to the Stern Gang, the Irgun, Herut and later the Likud Party in Israel. His greatest disciple became Menachem Begin, future prime minister of Israel.
After the World Zionist Organization rejected Jabotinsky's proposals, he resigned from the organization and founded the New Zionist Organization in 1933 to promote his views and work independently for immigration and the establishment of a state. The NZO rejoined the WZO in 1951.
Accusations have been made by a number of left-wing writers such as Shlomo Avineri and Christopher Hitchens that Jabotinsky's movement was "fascist" in the 1930s. They point out that during this period Abba Ahimeir, Jabotinsky's lieutenant, had a column in the Revisionist Zionist magazine Doar Hayom which ran under the title "From the Notebook of a Fascist" in which he would praise Mussolini and refer to Jabotinsky as "our Duce". Similarly, supporters of the Jabotinsky movement in Poland used the slogan "Germany for Hitler, Palestine for us" in the mid-1930s. This in no way means that Jabotinsky supported Hitler in any way, on the contrary, he constantly warned the Jews of Poland about their impending doom and urged them to save themselves by attempting to find their way to Palestine, which was blocked and blockaded by the British.Early life
Education
Active Zionist
World War One
Founds the Revisionists
Exiled by the British
His legacy