DAN FRIEDMAN: WHAT WOULD JABOTINSKY DO?
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-would-jabotinsky-do/87359/
It’s strange that a man who needs no introduction should need an introduction. But such has been the fear and loathing for Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky by the Jewish socialists who founded Israel — and ruled unopposed for decades — that they have almost succeeded in obscuring his name.
Born at Odessa in 1880, Jabotinsky witnessed the Kishinev pogroms of 1903. From that point on he devoted his time and prodigious talents to Zionism and protecting Jews. At great personal risk, he spent the late 1930s traveling across Eastern Europe and warning the seminal Jewish communities there of the “all-consuming lava” that would soon destroy them. Pleading for them to get out and seek refuge in their homeland in Zion. “Eliminate the diaspora or the diaspora will surely eliminate you.”
For the most part, he was ignored — until it was too late, and the British closed the door.
Jabotinsky is the archetype of a great Jewish patriot. His was the greatest political mind the Jews have produced since the biblical era. Greater even than Herzl because only Jabotinky’s ideology came to terms with the Arabs as a proud people, and warned of the stubborn intransigence and resistance that would be met upon our arrival, and that we still see today.
Jabotinsky died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of 60. By comparison, his bitter opponent, Labor-Zionist Ben Gurion, lived from 1886 to 1973. We can only imagine how Jabotinsky’s brilliant thinking, and his deep devotion to the Jews, would have evolved if he lived to see the true extent of the Holocaust and taken his rightful place among the Zionist leaders who founded his beloved Jewish state. Israel, along with the world she inhabits, would be a very different place.
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