Vladimir Jabotinsky

While Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky is best known as the founding father of the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement, he was also a prolific novelist, journalist, poet, translator, and essayist in several languages. Born into a middle-class, Russified family in Odessa, the young Jabotinsky attended Russian schools and studied law in Rome and Berne. He worked as a journalist for Russian newspapers. He became a Zionist activist in 1903, led Russian Zionist efforts to retain popular support during the Russian Revolution of 1905 when many Jewish young people were drawn toward the Bund and other socialist parties, and during World War I was instrumental in forming a Jewish fighting unit in the British army. 

In 1923 Jabotinsky established his new Revisionist Zionism Party and its youth movement, Betar, both of which aspired to create a Jewish state whose territory would encompass all of historic Palestine and parts of what is now Jordan. Following the rejection in 1935 of his political program, he finally split from the mainstream Zionist camp and founded the New Zionist Organization (NZO). Jabotin­sky was a sharp critic of the Labor Zionist movement, which he accused of diluting Zionist colonization efforts in favor of socialist goals. He insisted on a natural con­vergence of British imperial interests and Jewish interests even as he raged against British unwillingness to create a Jewish state. He declared that only Jewish power could force Arab acceptance of Zionism and that Zionism ought to embrace that fact openly rather than seeking peace. At the same time, he continued to insist that a Jewish state would be morally bound and politically wise to extend not only equal individual rights but even minority na­tional rights to its Arab citizens. He continued to present himself as a liberal and practitioner of Realpolitik even as his followers embraced right-wing nationalism and ideal­ized Jewish power and violence.