http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nothing-new-under-the-sun-slaves-of-the-revolution-revisited/
The other day, my wife finally got me to go through some old cartons in our storage room that I had managed to not disturb for more than a decade and a half. While sifting through the boxes I found copies of old articles I had written and published back in the 1980’s. One column in particular struck me that was originally published in The Jerusalem Post on January 27, 1985, entitled “Slaves of the Revolution.” After reading it again after more than a quarter of a century, I realized, sadly, that I could have written the same article today with very few changes and minor updates. For your edification I reproduce said article below.
“Slaves of the Revolution”
“We are still faced with the task of training our youth to rebel against ‘servility within the revolution’ in all its forms – beginning with those Jews who were so much the slaves of the Russian Revolution that they even distributed proclamations calling for pogroms in the name of the revolution, and including the Palestine Communist Party (Jews) of our day, which is acting in alliance with the pogromists (Arabs) of Hebron and Tzefat.”
( Berl Katzenelson: Revolution and Tradition, 1934)
Berl Katzenelson was one of the central figures of Socialist Zionism of the group that spawned the likes of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. One wonders how he would react were he alive today – in light of above stated views – to Peace Now demonstrators in the center of Hebron demonstrating against the Jews there and for today’s pogromists? How would he react to hearing major leaders of his own Labor Party declare that the fault of a Jew brutally murdered in Hebron lies, not with the Arab pogromists, but with the Jewish victim for having the chutzpa to “provoke” the descendants of the Arab pogromists of 1929 by being in Hebron in the first place?
One wonders how he would perceive the actions of a Jewish Defense Minister who orders Jewish soldiers to prevent, physically if necessary, the public lighting of a Chanukah menorah (Chanukia) on the site of ancient Jewish Shechem in order to avoid the possibility of Arab sensibilities being disturbed – Jewish sensitivities be damned? And what would Berl Katzenelson do today were he to see and hear members of his own Labor Party denounce a lone Jew for maintaining a vigil against the idea of Jews being summarily stoned on the roadways of Eretz Yisrael becoming an acceptable concept?