Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a key figure in the development of the Zionist movement, which led to the founding of Israel in 1948. After breaking from mainline Zionism, Jabotinsky, born in Odessa (Ukraine), established Revisionist Zionism, a more openly militant version.
What is Revisionist Zionism? Even fellow Zionists saw similarities with fascism. According to Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, “Before the opportunistic alliance between Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1936… a degree of affinity existed between Zionist and Fascist leaders in Rome.” Baroud and Rubeo went on:
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which Israel’s current Likud party and other right and far-right groups are the offspring, saw in Italy “a spiritual homeland.”
“All my views on nationalism, the state, and society were developed during those years under Italian influence,” Jabotinsky wrote in his autobiography, referring to his ideological formation years in Italy.
In return, Mussolini had expressly spoken in support of Zionism and of Jabotinsky in particular: “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky,” Mussolini said… in November 1934.
Paradoxically, Jabotinsky was also known as a classical liberal supporter of the market economy and the equal rights of all, including members of minority communities. He seems to have had early misgivings about the use of violence, but apparently overcame them. Historian and journalist David Hirst writes that Jabotinsky “once told a colleague, ‘I can’t see much heroism and public good in shooting from the rear an Arab peasant on a donkey, carrying vegetables for sale in Tel Aviv.’ …By June 1939 he had come to the conclusion that ‘it was not only difficult to punish only the guilty ones, in most cases it was impossible.’” (David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East.)
According to the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), Revisionist Zionism’s goal was “the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority in the entire territory of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan [river].
Jabotinsky’s organization favored a powerful Zionist military component. The JVL described the program:
The Revisionist program soon became more elaborate, asking, in addition to the demand for Jewish military units for the introduction of a whole new system of policy in Palestine, defined as a “settlement regime” – a system of legislative and administrative measures (such as land reform, state protection of local industries, a favorable fiscal system, etc.) explicitly designed to foster Jewish mass immigration and settlement.
Jabotinsky also founded the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, known as Irgun, a paramilitary squad that committed terrorist acts in British-controlled Mandatory Palestine from 1931 to 1948. The Irgun became infamous for bombing Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in July 1946, where the British administration was headquartered, and conducting a massacre in the peaceful village of Deir Yassin in April 1948, a month before Israel declared its independence. The Deir Yassin massacre was one of the acts of Zionist militia violence that incited some 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homes in 1948. This is known in Arabic as the Nakba (catastrophe). During this time, Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1977. “Begin and his followers had shed few of the romantic, ultranationalist beliefs imparted by their spiritual godfather Vladimir Jabotinsky,” Hirst writes.
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