You Say You Want a Revolution
Eran Kaplan: The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy
Reviewed by Alexandra Levy
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The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy is about the philosophical words that first shaped Israeli political parties and continue to define Israeli political ideology until today. The work explores the philosophy of the Revisionist movement, which was headed by Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) and whose adherents later founded the modern Likud political party. Jabotinsky and his fellow Revisionists developed a complete ideology defining how a modern Jewish state should operate once created. They continually criticized the then-mainstream Zionists—the forerunners of the Labor party—for losing sight of the all-important goal: the formation of a Jewish state in the Mandate of Palestine. For Kaplan, the Revisionists were far more important than most historians give them credit for (many books on the creation of Israel almost exclusively focus on the Labor Zionists), as their ideology resonates in early and current Israeli politics. Instead of focusing on the actual lineage of political movements, however, Kaplan performs a reversal by using the philosophical underpinnings—words and ideas—as the basis for tracing the inheritance of the Revisionist movement.
The Revisionists believed that socialism, as a universal movement that sought to unite not just Jews but members of the proletariat everywhere, actually weakened the fight for a Jewish state. The Jewish struggle for a country involved cultural and economic facets that contributed to the nationalism inherent in Revisionist philosophy. To the Revisionists, film, literature, and language were all natural mediums through which the Jewish people would come to better understand and appreciate a new culture, a culture based not on cold Western rationalism, but on the mingling of the subjective and objective that is united in the state, their state. Jabotinsky believed that war and the discipline that comes with turning a people into a singular, fighting unit were the means needed to achieve the goal of a Jewish state. The Revisionist youth movement, known as Beitar (arsenal), exemplified this ideal with its anthem extolling Jewish youth “to die or conquer the mountain.”1
The Revisionists did not embrace the idea of settlements; rather, they favored the further development of cities that could be more easily protected. To the Revisionists, there was only one relevant goal: the creation of a Jewish national state in Palestine. Anything that distracted from that goal—like the settlements, or the debate about the future governmental structure (i.e. should it be socialist or not, etc)—was irrelevant. On the other hand, David Ben-Gurion and other members of the Labor party were fierce supporters of the settlements, somewhat ironic in light of the stance of today’s major Israeli parties.
Jabotinsky left an ambiguous legacy, if one judges according to his followers’ actions, at least. In 1970, Menachem Begin, Jabotinsky’s successor as head of the Revisionists, and later Prime Minister of Israel, declared that he was against withdrawing from any territories captured in the 1967 Six Day War—yet in 1978 he signed the Camp David Accords returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, while head of Likud, suggested and implemented the dismantling of all settlements in Gaza—a move that completely opposed the party’s previous stance. Sharon’s subsequent decision to leave Likud and form a new centrist party, “Kadima,” may result in an even more ideologically fractured political system, with supporters of the settlements remaining in Likud and those in favor of abandoning the settlements either staying in Labor or drifting to Kadima. Thus, Jabotinsky’s legacy has, in essence, become reversed: the current Likud backs the very settlements that the Revisionists ignored, while the Labor party tends to be more critical of them, with some members even calling for the wholesale dismantling of all settlements in the West Bank.
In his epilogue, Kaplan poses a curious conclusion: that the true legacy of the philosophy of the Revisionists lies with the post-Zionists, left-wingers who criticize the current Israeli establishment. By dissenting from the philosophy embraced by the majority of Israelis, the post-Zionists, Kaplan argues, are the modern day Revisionists in that both groups appear to be on the fringe of the spectrum politically and culturally. As a result, he lingers only briefly over the connections between the Likud party of the last thirty years—after it came to power in 1977—and the Revisionists.
Kaplan does not discuss the formation of the Likud party, nor does he really explore the ideological influence of the Revisionists on Likud today, a serious omission. He does, however, hint at the Revisionists’ impact when writing of Begin. Begin believed that the Arabs were attempting to finish what Hitler had begun. Thus Begin held that maintaining a strong, territorially large Israel was absolutely necessary for the survival of the Jewish people. Ariel Sharon has adhered to this view: in his speech commemorating the sixty-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Sharon said, “…Since its [the State of Israel’s] establishment it has done its utmost to defend itself and its citizens, and provide a safe haven for any Jew, wherever he may be. We know that we can trust no one but ourselves.”2 Israel today operates much on this philosophy. No country came to help the six million who perished in the Holocaust; Israel has lost many thousands of people in its defensive wars against its neighbors and to the bombs and bullets of Palestinian terrorists. Indeed, Sharon and past prime ministers assume that, in Israel’s fight to remain a state with legally conquered territory, Israel stands alone. The United States and other countries provide some military and financial support, but in the end it is the Israeli Defense Forces that battle. This is the Revisionist legacy: the reality of a powerful military, well disciplined, technologically advanced, and self sufficient. Unfortunately, Kaplan does not go into depth on these points.
Kaplan could have chosen to analyze the presence of Revisionist philosophy in modern Likud undertakings; instead, he focuses on the intellectual aspect of the post-modern, left-wing intellectuals that he claims, because of their anti-modern posture, are the true children of the Revisionists. He glosses over the policies of the modern Likud party and does not delve into the many varied links between the early twentieth-century Revisionist philosophy and the later platform of the Likud party. Kaplan loses the reader in a highly technical discussion of post-modern philosophy that is irrelevant to current, highly-charged Israeli politics. By ignoring the importance of the influence of the Revisionists on the modern Likud party, Kaplan creates a distance between the two groups—a distance that contradicts the whole history of the Revisionist movement and its inheritance.
Alexandra Levy is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and is planning to major in History and Economics.
Notes
1. Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right (The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 2005) 25.
2. Ariel Sharon, Special session of the Knesset, January 26 2005 <http://www.historyplace.com/pointsofview/speeches-auschwitz-anniv.htm>.