By Ted Belman
I was once complaining to a leftist that the left are unscrupulous in their efforts to win. She said in return that the right is too. She went on to identify how the right uses civil disobedience and other techniques to thwart the government and asked how is that any different than the tactics of the left. In my gut I knew that she was wrong but wasn’t able to distinguish the difference at the time.
This conversation came to mind as I was reading more of Lone Wolf, Shmuel Katz’s biography of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Throughout the twenties, Weizmann and Jabotinsky were at logger heads. They differed in a fundamental way on how to deal with violation of the Mandate by the British, i.e., whether to call them out and confront them or to go along to get along. Jabotinsky favoured the former and Weizmann the latter. They also differed on what the goal of Zionism should be, as strange as that may seem. Jabotinsky would settle for nothing less than a Jewish State as envisaged by Herzl while Weizmann favoured something less. In fact in the summer of 1930 he said:
“The Jewish State was never an end in itself, it was only a means to an end. Nothing is said about a Jewish State in the Basle Programme, nor in the Balfour Declaration. The purpose of Zionism is to create in Palestine a number of significant bases, upon which an autonomous, self-sufficient and productive community can be established…Palestine could become a Jewish State if it were an uninhabited country. But it is not an uninhabited country…
“The essence of Zionism was not so much the Jewish State as the creation of material conditions for the establishment of an autonomous productive society…”
Herzl turned over in his grave.
Weizmann was supported by the bulk of the Actions Committee of the Zionist Organization and by Ben-Gurion. He was strongly opposed by the Revisionists led by Jabotinsky.
Another basic difference between them was that Weizmann wanted the Jewish Agency, then being formed, to include non-Zionists, thinking that such an agency would provide more money to the Yishuv. Jabotinsky was vehemently opposed and even suggested that it would not garner the Yishuv more money. He wanted to remove non-Zionists from the Jewish Agency. He was proved right on both accounts.
At the 17th Zionist Congress in 1930 Weizmann said:
“I have no understanding and no sympathy with the demand of a Jewish majority in Palestine, Majority does not guarantee security, majority is not necessary for the development of Jewish civilization and culture. The world will construe the demand only in the sense that we want to acquire a majority in order to drive out the Arabs.”
Needless to say this did not go down well even among the Labor ranks.
It appeared that the position of the revisionists would win the vote so the Labor leadership resorted to fraud and deception to turn things in their favour. They had a fraudulent telegram sent from Palestine, ostensibly from the Va’ad Leumi, urging caution accompanied by a dire warning of Arab violence. This was enough to defeat the Revisionists.
After the Congress, Labour leaders such as Katznelson, Ben Gurion and Golumb were not comfortable that they had abandoned the fight for a Jewish State. Jabotinsky continued to rake them over the coals and they decided to crush the Revisionists resistance to the Labor Party hegemony in the economic field.
Jabotinsky was demanding a “special contract”, between workers and employers under which neutral labour exchanges would ensure equal opportunity for all workers. Such a request completely negated the practice and purpose of the Histadrut policy. With the Histadrut in charge of the labour exchanges, it would only give jobs to workers of their political persuasion. Revisionist were unable to get work.
To thwart Jabotinsky, the Labour leaders enlisted their newspaper Devar, to produce slanted and one-sided reports and attacks of the most violent character on Jabotinsky, the Revisionists and Betar.
Katz writes:
“Controlling the Histadrut as they did, and enjoying a near-monopoly of subsidies of Zionist funds, the Labour leaders had ready at hand the most effective weapon in their bid for hegemony in the national economy: control of the right to work. That part of the dream of Boshevik-styled dictatorship and control of the workers lives, explicitly expounded by Ben-Gurion a decade earlier, was being realized. The use of violence by the Labor movement was not a product of local and immediate frustration. It had its origin in Marxist ideology.”
For a decade the Histadrut, with the support of Labor leaders, had resorted to violence to secure a monopoly on the right to work and to force people to join the Labor Party in order to secure work.
Katz:
“The Labor leaders were determined to eliminate Revisionism root and branch and the means for doing so were a relentless propaganda campaign of demonization and, where applicable, deliberate use of violence – accompanied by the dissemination of reports that it was the Revisionists and Betar victims who were in fact the perpetrators of the violence.”
Katznelson, to his credit, left the Labor Party because of its resort to violence. Ben-Gurion, to his discredit, supported its use.
Jabotinsky received the brunt of the demonization, not for the first time. He was called a fascist, a militarist and any other pejorative that came to mind.
Furthermore, the worker’s schools, run by the Labor Party, began to indoctrinate the students to hate Revisionists, Betar and Jabotinsky and to embrace the ideology of the Labor Party. The kibbutzim, where Devar reigned supreme, were hermetically sealed off from any outside influence. The same went for the socialist indoctrination in the towns.
Katz:
“The chilling consequences of this indoctrination imbibed in the youth were lasting. The later history of the Jewish community in mandated Palestine, leading into the period of the State of Israel, was heavily flecked with that traditional hatred.”
In the forties, the Irgun issued a proclamation of war against the British much to the chagrin of the Yishuv leadership headed by Ben-Gurion. Their primary concern was to protect their leadership role. In 1944, Sneh and Golomb representing the Haganah, met with Begin and said as much..
Moshe Sneh said, inter alia: “To expand your activities requires control of the souls and the property of the public. And it is we who control the public. We do not intend to renounce that control, because it is we who have received a mandate from the Jewish people… If you continue your activities, a clash will result.”
Eliyahu Golomb was even blunter:
“We demand that you cease immediately [your activity against the British]… We do not want a civil war… but we will be ready for that as well. We will be forced to adopt our own measures to prevent your activities. The police, in our opinion, will not be able to liquidate you, but if the Yishuv rebels, it could come to that.“
Following the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo in late 1944 by Lehi fighters, the Jewish Agency executive declared war on the Irgun and Lehi and collaborated with the British to bring about the arrest of their fighters. As a result of this operation called the “Hunting Season”, the Haganah handed over to the British a list of names of persons suspected of being members of the Irgun and they kidnapped Irgun fighters.
Close to one thousand people were handed over to the British. Most of them were taken to the Latrun detention camp and several hundred were deported to detention camps in Africa (see “African Exile”) . In addition, dozens of suspects were kidnapped and detained in prison cells built especially for this purpose on various kibbutzim. They were interrogated by members of the Haganah Intelligznce Service and occasionally suffered torture.
This background is the context in which to view the sinking, in 1948, of the Altelena, which name was chosen as it was Jabotinsky’s pen name. The attack on this ship was ordered by Ben-Gurion and executed by Rabin. Many Revisionists were murdered by Rabin’s forces as they fled the doomed ship. The hatred was so great that it trumped any consideration for saving a shipload of much needed arms and munitions in the middle of the War for Independence. These weapons would have enabled the Jews to conquer Jerusalem in that war. Ben-Gurion justified his order at the time saying: “What is happening endangers our war effort, and even more important, it endangers the very existence of the state because the state cannot exist until we have one army and control of that army. This is an attempt to kill the state.” Hardly.
The Irgun, led by Begin, had brought the ship to Israel. He was one of the last to abandon it. Though his men were being shot at, he ordered his men not to shoot back. It was one of his cardinal principles to avoid a civil war in which Jews killed Jews. Not so for Ben-Gurion.
It took Begin 25 years before he became Prime Minister. It took another 20 years or so before PM Netanyahu tamed the Histadrut and began the process of making Israel a capitalist nation rather than a socialist one.
The left die hard.
Even today Leftists are doing everything they can to prevent Israel from being a Jewish State. Even though they are now in a minority they are thwarting the will of the majority at every turn. They are still in the indoctrination and demonization business. They are still anti-Zionist and anti-Judaism. They fight for the Arab cause and not the Jewish cause.
My leftist friend was wrong. There is a difference.
yamit82 Said:
LOL, you fell for it too?
phantoms from 2012….. what happened to dweller?????
honeybee Said:
LOL, HB chatting with phantoms from 2012
@ honeybee:
Falls at any age are dangerous. If at my age if I take a fall
it would be a disaster.
I took a fall in the shul after Shabbat and luckily it was in an area where it was covered with very thick carpeting.
Still it took a couple of days to recuperate.
The trip was fine. After six months I found out the little girl is not so little anymore. Friends makes them wise in more ways than one. The school gave a test to see who would qualify to take three years of Math in two years.
Needed score was 38 out of 50. S. made it with 48 out of fifty. Six kids from her school qualify to go to a very special school. Guess what? My granddaughter was the only girl who qualifies. She play with boys and girls. She is not a prissy prim. Just like her mother.
The boy is very funny at four. Likes girls older than he is. Hope you get better very quickly. We miss you around here.
@ mar55:
I took a hard fall two weeks ago and have been slowly recovering. Tx drove me to the ER, but there was nothing wrong with me they could fix. Badly bruised ribs.
@ bernard ross:
Thank, I get the at the Flea Market, the Mexicans sell produce.
@ honeybee:
@ bernard ross:
Hello, HB where have you been? BR, there is another way to do ripe plantains. Peel one not too ripe, add a bit of brown sugar on top, some mozzarella cheese on top of the sugar and, microwave it for about three or four minutes. Enjoy it!
It is not my recipe but a friend of mine who understands more about plantains than I do. My husband likes only the ripe ones.
@ honeybee:
I just learned about microwaving plantain and it works great. I microwaved a very ripe plantain in its skin and it opened and It just rolled it out. No oil, etc. wrap plantain in paper towel,2 min on high on one side, turn over with 2 min on high the other side. The plantain opens by itself down one fold and you can scoop or roll it out. I do it with ripe soft plantains but if it has almost fully turned black and soft you must micro it a bit less or you get a very soft plantain . I did that too and ate it like a dessert.
@ bernard ross:
Your avatar would be that Carrabinian fried plantain dish.
@ honeybee:
looks like i never got an avatar 🙂
yamit82 Said:
it looks like Ted posted an article from 2012 with the comments as most of the commenters have disappeared. I dont understand the avatar comment
@ yamit82:
So take that BR. Yamit82 where’s the our new avatar ??? Same as the old one, even somewhat diminished !!!
@ bernard ross:
He had to have posted an older comment otherwise his avatar would not have shown…. So he did return after a fashion 🙂
A bit of revisionist history (no pun intended) The real control of the Histradut was not labor and distribution of jobs especially with an acute labor shortage but the Kupat Holim health services they combined the two and one had to be a member of the Histradut to get either any medical care for family of one not subsidized. That’s the biggest danger of Obamcare down the road. As for Haganah vs lechi actuallly the Lechi had few claims to make of outright military victories and few if any made it up the ranks in the IDF after all the services were combined. To blame the rioting in the thirties on the incompetence of the Haganah is like blaming the Israeli govt and IDF for allowing the Intifada to go in for over 5 years.
@ bernard ross:
My heart is broken, broken.
honeybee Said:
check the date of his post
@ yamit82:
My Daddy always said, ” Jews don’t drink, they gamble”
Rabin was Drunk
@ dweller:
No he was drunk. I happen to know and your propensityu to paint shitheads with christian charity is deplarable but in character.
@ Shy Guy:
Another returnee !!!!!!! Welcome back !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dweller Said:
Dweller Darlin, you’re back Sugar, missed you, life so dull without you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ dweller:
dweller Darlin, you’re back, Thank Goodness Sugar, my teeth and nails have gotten so dull !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for your kind words. In America, we are rapidly descending into the centralized government tyranny you describe. All of our values and institutions are under full scale assault, and we currently lack the means to defend ourselves. In 2010 and again in 2014, we voted for the Republicans to stop the onslaught, but they instead have chosen to collaborate with their leftist Democrat brethren.
Liberalism extended to its logical conclusion is North Korea, where everyone is equal…equally impoverished and equally anguished. Except of course for the advocates of such equality, who live like kings and queens as reward for their magnificent contributions to the egalitarian society.
I pray that Israel is wiser than America, and resists the siren song of utopianism. Our quest to attain the liberal holy grail of “social justice” is going to be the ruination of the greatest nation ever.
Behave like Greeks, wind up like Greece. I am unsure why most people prefer failure to success, but based on the choices they make they most certainly do.
@ babushka:
Your description of communism is very accurate. I had to experience living under the beast for a year and a half which did seem interminable.
I just would like to add to your well thought description.
The equality of communism consist of making the rich poor and the poor indigent.
There is not any other philosophy that goes against every
human believe of honesty and decency. You stated it very well. It preaches peace and creates war. It preaches truth and their philosophy is based on lies.
May Hashem protect Israel from communism.
Out of fear that the Brits would totally renegade on their verbal and written promises, Weizmann and BG preferred half a deal than a full deal for a country for the Jews (or perhaps no deal). This mentality perpetuates itself until to day and that is why the successive IL Gvts have refused to make the legal case for the ownership of J & S + Golan. If IL does not try, she not only will never know if she could win the legal arguments but this embolden the enemies to do whatever they can to destroy IL because IL reveals her fear!!!
What about the Levy Report?
I have no leftist friends. Leftism is cancerous and inimical to Judaism. Everything that leftists touch turns to shit. They transform liberty into tyranny and prosperity into poverty. They invert good and evil. When provided a choice between virtue and wickedness, they invariably choose the wicked.
And they are appallingly dishonest, because their invalid philosophy necessitates deceit. Truth to a leftist is like salt to a snail.
I must admire someone to include them as a friend, and I cannot admire the miscreants of the Left. My friends must be friends of Israel. Anything less is a deal breaker, and liberals are no friends of Israel so they are no friends of mine.
In fairness, my pet crocodile seems to love liberals. I feed two of them to him every day.
@ dweller:
Thank you for adding to and correcting this history.
BlandOatmeal Said:
Yes. It was 210 years.
BlandOatmeal Said:
No. G-d is supposed to rule the world. The mashiach (not your dead Jew on a stick pagan mangod) is to redeem Israel, bring back the remnants of the nation from the 4 corners of the Globe, draw them back to G-d and Torah and build the 3rd and final Beit Hamikdash.
Simple to remember:
“And the LORD shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the LORD be One, and His name one.” – Zechariah 14:9
@ Arnold Harris:
He seems to have had something in the nature of a nervous breakdown as the enormity of what he was facing by way of responsibilities began to dawn on him.
You’ve heard of PTSD — Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (formerly known as “shell-shock”).
Perhaps this was a case of PTSD — Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
It was actually Labour’s control of the Histadrut — and the Histadrut’s domination of the Haganah — which led to the creation of the Irgun.
The Haganah [“defense”] had originally been Jabotinsky’s brainchild. He was in fact its Jerusalem director at the time of the 1920 Easter Pogrom [aka, the Nebi Musa Riots, orchestrated by Hajj Amin al-Husseini]. But at the end of that year, the organization came under the direct control of the Histadrut — headed up by Ben-Gurion.
By the end of the decade, however, the incompetence of the Haganah’s response to Arab rioting (as graphically demonstrated in the August 1929, country-wide disturbances) — as well as dissatisfaction with Histadrut’s dual drive to indoctrinate and to control work opportunities throughout the Yishuv — had prompted the resignation of several officers from the Haganah and the institution of an alternative body, “Haganah Bet” — subsequently re-named Irgun Tzva’i Le’umi [“National Military Organization”].
Actually the Saison was not conducted against Lehi. The irony of it all (if irony’s the right word for it) is that while the Moyne hit was clearly a Lehi project, the only fighters given up to the Mandate authorities by Haganah & the Jewish Agency, in the wake of the hit, were IRGUN members — who’d had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Didn’t lay a hand on Lehi.
I can’t claim I was ever a religious Jew according to glatt kashrut standards. And I surely never was any kind of a Jewish leftist. For me, that left only secular Zionism.
The one thing about Judaism that always has appealed to me without fail was a sense of belonging to the 3600-year-old Jewish nation. My heroes were, and remain, Jabotinsky, Shamir, Eldad, and Kahane. Begin disappeared from my hall of heroes when he allowed the execrable James Earl Carter to twist the collective arm of the State of Israel and return Sinai to what has become the ultimate control of the Moslem Brotherhood.
Rabin never was one of my Jewish heroes. Certainly not after I read that he was drunk for part of the run-up for Moshe Dayan’s and Levi Eshkol’s victorious 6-Day War. That, plus his dishonorable role in sinking the Altalena during the Israeli War of Independence. Because of all that, I cannot say I ever grieved over his death.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
So,is the author is saying that Ben Gurion, Haganah and Labour party were traitorous jew killers? Yet medals and glory abound for all three. Apparently there is a tradition that sees opportunity in maintaining ignorance of the truth.
The left is evil.
Incredible. 2000 years in exile has taught the Jews how to be a quasi-people. Come to think of it, they were a quasi-people for 430 years under the Egyptians too. I am, of course, an ignorant goy; but it seems to me that God spoke more than once about wanting the Jews to come OUT of Egypt and become a REAL people. They did, then they went back to being a quasi-people. I think the matter is coming to a head; but some matters need to be cleared up in Jewish thinking AND Christian thinking. M e s s i a h is supposed to come and rule THE WORLD; but the Jews of today are loathe to acknowledge followers of M. — ANY M. as their kin. The problem isn’t the choice of M. — it’s the attitude of the Jews, who don’t even accept one another as brethren. Some Christians also have a problem in not accepting Jews, though I don’t know many of them. Until the parties involved can get these matters in perspective, the Jews will remain a divided quasi-people in a quasi-state in a hostile world. Lots of exciting things to come. Hold on to your hats.