A "comparative gaze" typically refers to the analytical perspective of viewing one's own culture, philosophy, or discipline by looking through the lens of another. It is an intellectual framework, commonly found in history and sociology, that examines how societies analyze and define themselves by evaluating the "other".
The Three Languages of Right-Wing Zionist Radicalism: Politics of a Comparative Gaze
Arie M. Dubnov
Palestine/Israel Review (2025) 2 (2): 310–339.
https://doi.org/10.5325/pir.2.2.0005
Abstract
This article examines the radicalization of "maximalist" Revisionist Zionists from the late 1920s to the 1940s, aiming to fill a gap in the contextualization of the Zionist Right's ideological historical development. Employing an intellectual historian's approach, it reconstructs the political language and ideological borrowings of second-tier authors and activists, highlighting their eclectic incorporation of various strategies. At first, it focuses on "Brit Habiryonim," tracing its transition from Leninist admiration to Italian fascist support. Next, it explores the role of lesser-known Betar movement activists in Italy, who facilitated connections between Palestine-based radicals and Mussolini's regime. In the third section, amid rising anti-British sentiment, Jewish insurgents draw parallels with Irish Republicans and Sinn Féin. This article argues that the maximalist imagination emerged from a "remix" of diverse European ideas, fueling paramilitary actions of groups like the Irgun and Lehi. It suggests that borrowing from fascist and anticolonial sources reflects intellectual adaptation revealing the logic of mimicry even in the semiotics of violence.
Revisionist Zionism, Brit Habiryonim, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Abba Ahimeir, Isacco Sciaky, Leone Carpi, Menachem Begin Introduction: On "-isms" and Mental Acrobatics
The present article aims to revisit the processes of political radicalization in the Revisionist movements during its formative decades, before the 1948 War. Rather than talking of Revisionism as a "political tradition"—a term that assumes coherence and persistence of political ideas over time and place—or an uninterrupted "legacy," it proposes regarding Zionist Revisionism as a flexible assemblage of ideas that adapt according to time and place and, to underline contingency, examining how historical actors and theoreticians respond to changing circumstances and mix ideas from various sources. More specifically, I see the mechanism of borrowing operating through what I call a comparative gaze: Thinkers have an innate drive to evaluate their position, especially in times of quandary, in comparison to others, and to import and reproduce ideas from other political arenas. I identify these acts of borrowing as central to the processes of radicalization of the movement, particularly with the rise of the so-called maximalist branch of Revisionist Zionism between the late 1920s and the end of the mandate period. The following pages will therefore highlight the diverse, continually evolving—and not necessarily consistent—maximalist rhetoric that evolved as a product of incorporation or a remix of eclectic borrowing of diverse ideas, including Leninist theories of revolution, Italian fascist conceptions of the state, and even Irish notions of anticolonial insurgency.
Radicalism is a term usually associated with Left-Wing revolutionary thinkers, not Right-Wing conservatism. And yet, thinkers advocating for profound and transformative changes in existing political structures, if not their abolishment altogether, are not less radical. What made these Zionist Revisionist thinkers radical was not the way they took Jabotinsky's Right-Wing ideas to their extreme but the way they quickly transcended and departed from them in three major directions, developing a theory of a revolutionary avant-garde, a vision of a Hebraic Mediterraneanism, and a doctrine of anticolonial terror. Never forming independent organizations or a viable mass movement, the importance of these Right-Wing intellectual warriors lies elsewhere: in their ability to provide the vocabulary, pathos, imagery, and poetics of struggle. These ultimately fueled the paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi that chose the path of open confrontation and violent struggle against both Palestinian Arabs and the British mandatory forces during the last stages of the mandatory period in Palestine. Most strikingly, the willingness of these radicals to borrow fascist notions did not contradict their use of anticolonial rhetoric and practices. To explain this seemingly paradoxical position, we will be using the intellectual historian's toolbox and interpreting the development of the maximalist language "glocally" as a local fruit that is simultaneously a result of borrowing foreign idioms and an outward-looking, comparative gaze.
Brit Habiryonim: The Russian Roots of "Revolutionary Zionism"
Before its ideology had crystallized and its party institutions installed, Revisionist Zionism was, first and foremost, an ethos and an artistic sensibility emerging in the wake of World War I. Famously, Jabotinsky took much pride in the fact that he (alongside Joseph Trumpeldor and the eccentric British Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson) played a central role in creating a Jewish Legion that fought alongside the British during the war.1 Less known was the fact that he, like numerous other veterans, also suffered from the confusing disconnect between the wartime dreams of grandeur and the meager postwar realities. Such disconnect bred feelings of frustration and uncertainty. At other times, it fed into a machismo aesthetic and Sittlichkeit (vision of an ethical order) and a deep contempt toward the postwar order. It is a sentiment we find in abundance among postwar European avant-garde thinkers. Italian proto-fascists found inspiration in the works of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the controversial nationalist poet who formed a short-lived Italian Regency in Fiume (today's Croatia). D'Annunzio, as historian Robert Wohl put it, "sang vaguely but seductively of a new race of young Italian heroes who would supplant the old and corrupt ruling class."2 Such songs seduced Jabotinsky as well, who admired Italian culture since the time he spent in Rome as a student. In 1919, Jabotinsky described D'Annunzio to the readers of the Hebrew daily Haaretz as "the poet of spiritual aristocracy in our generation … standing above a cliff and longing for something sublime, which he himself could not yet grasp." Shortly thereafter, while imprisoned by the British, he translated D'Annunzio's poems into Hebrew.3 Jabotinsky of the early 1920s modeled himself after the eccentric Italian poet-warrior. The commemoration of the great deeds of the Jewish Legion played a central role in that respect. For him, the Legion provided the world with the ultimate proof that when needed, Jews could pick up the sword and fight. That sense of pride and splendor was projected onto Betar, the new youth movement established in 1923. The Betarist code of "hadar" (glory, impeccability) was very close to the iconic images of Lieutenant Jabotinsky dressed in British army uniforms, an Odesa Jew performing the English stiff upper lip.
These sentiments of grandeur did not lend themselves to an anticolonial, anti-British revolt. On the contrary, a continuing reliance on British imperial partnership was imperative under the political circumstances prevailing in Palestine in the early 1920s. This political premise was central to many of Jabotinsky's political writings from the 1920s. Even Jabotinsky's most notorious essay on the Arab question, "On the Iron Wall," attests to it, stating boldly that Zionism is a movement of colonization that could "continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population—an iron wall which the native population cannot break through."4 The question of whether the Iron Wall would be based on Jewish or British bayonets remained open, and purposely so, but it was clear that Jabotinsky's strategy required British permission and active assistance.
Crucially, this reliance on imperial support is muted in accounts produced by Jabotinsky's heirs, who appropriated him retroactively as the father of the 1940s revolt against the British. In the early years of the British mandate, this was not only a distant horizon but a course of action that was dismissed as needless, dire, and potentially disastrous. Not coincidentally, during the same year he published his Iron Wall essay, Jabotinsky authored another article criticizing young mavericks from within his own camp who began using the anti-British slogan "Perfidious Albion" to reprimand British policies.5 His political analysis was premised on the belief that a deeper bond between Britain and the new-old nations, modeled on this camaraderie-in-arms, was to guarantee the Zionists' success in colonizing the land.
Jabotinsky's slow, evolutionary vision of politics resting on a vertical alliance with the British was challenged from within his own circles by the members of "Brit Habiryonim" ("The Zealots' Alliance")—a trio that was composed by the essayist and activist Abba Ahimeir (1897–1962), the modernist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981), and the journalist and translator Yehoshua (Joshua) Heschel Yevin (1891–1970). In particular, it contrasted the way in which the trio understood and came to admire the Leninist-revolutionary methods that quickly, though counterintuitively, led them to admire Italian fascism.
Abba Ahimeir was the first Zionist to describe himself openly and proudly as a fascist, but his journey to fascism passed via the October Revolution. Born in Bobruisk (Mogilev Region in today's eastern Belarus) as Abba Shaul ben Isaac Gaissinovitch, Ahimeir started his writing career as a foreign affairs correspondent for Izvestia, Bobruisk Soviet's journal. A revolutionary zeal colors much of these early articles, which were signed with the pen name "Johan Geschalski" (John of Giscala aka Yohanan Ish-Halav), after one of the leaders of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 CE.6 Forging a new persona, he began calling himself Ahimeir shortly before he immigrated to Palestine (1924), in memory of his younger brother Meir—an officer in the Red Army and a committed Bolshevik who was killed in a battle against Polish forces in April 1919. More than its message of equality and social justice, Ahimeir admired Bolshevik Communism, to use the words of a prominent historian "as an example of what single-mindedness, ruthless expediency and revolutionary determinism could achieve."7 Turning Zionist did not mark an ideological conversion for him. Even after becoming an active member of the socialist Ahdut Ha'avoda (Labor Unity) party, Ahimeir continued expressing his admiration of the Bolshevik leader explicitly, declaring that "[o]ur teacher is not Herzl or Jabotinsky, but Lenin. We reject the doctrines and philosophies of Lenin and his followers, but they were correct in their practical path. This is the path of violence, blood, and personal sacrifice."8
Early signs of Ahimeir's transition from Bolshevism to fascism can be found in "A few ideas about fascism," an article he wrote for Ha'Toren (the Mast), a Hebrew monthly published in New York.9 Written in August 1923, a few months before immigrating to Palestine and three months before Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" was published, Ahimeir's article drew a clear line connecting the two authoritarian ideologies. According to Ahimeir, both fascists and Bolshevik revolutionaries should be admired for their heroism, readiness for self-sacrifice, embrace of violence, and unique psychological disposition:
From a psychological point of view, there is no difference between fascism and Bolshevism. There is a great distance between these two movements when it comes to their aspirations, but their living spirit is basically the same. There is an ideological distance, but not a psychological one. Both movements try to instill their opinions within society, and both stand out in their impatience toward other opinions; both hinder mutual understanding within their societies. These are the slaves of Losung [solutions] of our times. Results do not interest them: the man of action thinks only of the day; the man of thought is preoccupied with the future and the past. For the psychologists, the carriers of fascism and Bolshevism, as well as the masses supporting these two movements, belong to the same psychological type. And in the eyes of the historians of the future to come as well, there will be no big gap separating these two movements.10
Ahimeir's texts from the period provide a vivid illustration of Ze'ev Sternhell's famous thesis regarding the origins and essence of fascism. According to Sternhell, fascism was primarily a radical cultural revolt stemming from the ideological Left, attempting to offer non-materialist revisions of Marxism while sharing the Marxist vehement rejection of bourgeois, rationalistic, and procedural forms of politics. Soon enough, Sternhell suggested, fascists embraced a myth of violence, thereby transcending traditional ideological divisions and ending up in that liminal space of "ni droite, ni gauche" (neither "Left" nor "Right"). Essentially, this curious mix could be maintained only by visions of permanent struggle, the myth of violence, and constant revolution.11 Ahimeir saw Italian fascism as a revolutionary movement that took the élan and intrepid energy of the Bolsheviks, yet without the false Communist belief in internationalism and class struggle. Not surprisingly, Ahimeir was also taken by the way Bolsheviks and fascists alike preferred action over contemplation or what he called Losung—the German word for solution, which carried the meaning of a sophisticated theory and a mobilizing slogan. It was not a revolution derived from philosophical principles as a revolt of a spirit unbound.
Ahimeir's soon-to-be partners, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Joshua Yevin, followed a similar trajectory. Born in Eastern Galicia and Ukraine, respectively, both immigrated to Palestine in 1923–4, at the same time as Ahimeir. Like him, both were initially affiliated with the two Zionist socialist parties, Hapoel Hatzair and Ahdut Ha'avoda-Poale Zion, with Greenberg publishing his first poems in Davar, the Labor Party daily newspaper, and Yevin earning his living as a translator and teacher, working for the cultural committee of the Histadrut.12 A verbose virtuoso, Greenberg played a more significant role than Ahimeir and Yevin in shaping the political language and imagination of the Right. Like Ahimeir, Greenberg also admired Lenin, whom he eulogized in 1924 in Kuntras, the party's journal (prior to Davar), as the benefactor of "a bleeding Torah" (torah medamemet), a creator of "a dictatorship that a miracle accompanies, as well as glory."13 It did not take long for him to lose hope that the Labor Zionist ideologues and leaders would forge a local revolutionary avant-garde. His Hebrew poetry from those years—lush, excessive, expressionist—was already infused with messianic and irredentist language. In "Yerushalayim shel Matah" (earthly Jerusalem; 1924), written with what became his trademark prophetic tone, he envisioned a pregnant Jerusalem, carrying in its womb a future kingdom (malchut) that would stretch from El-Arish to Damascus.14
Although Greenberg had his moment of ideological conversion around the same time as Ahimeir and Yevin, and despite the fact the three shared a similar temperament, his background—a Galicianer with a strong Hassidic pedigree—set him somewhat apart. Unlike his Russian-Jewish peers who were intimate friends of key labor Zionists, Greenberg never enjoyed an "insider" status within Labor Zionist institutions or had any sentimental attitude toward the Russian-speaking Tolstoyian Halutzim (pioneers) that captured the imagination of the socialist Zionists at the time. Additionally, he had a far more fraught relationship with Europe and European culture. Two pre-immigration horrendous near-death experiences that scarred Greenberg intensely played a significant role: First was the sight of carnage he witnessed as a soldier on the battlefields of World War I, and, soon afterward, in November 1918, Greenberg barely survived the armistice day pogrom in Lwów (today's Lviv), during which Polish soldiers who celebrated their victory almost slaughtered him and his family. Dubbed "malkhes fun tseylem" ("the Kingdom of the Cross") in his early Yiddish poems, Europe was never mentioned by name and regarded as the place of great terror.15 Violence was not abstract or remote for him. It colored his expressionist poetry, depicting a godless world and the horrors of the tormenting, tortured human flesh. Furthermore, it was in the pages of Greenberg's poetry, not the newspaper columns, that the term "Malchut Yisrael" (Kingdom of Israel) first appeared.16 The question of whether Greenberg introduced the term to envisage a modern sovereign nation-state or a larger kingdom or empire remains open. What was clear was his open rejection of the mandatory regime, which was not described as a nucleolus of a future state but as a form of servitude. In the 1940s, the phrase would become a battle cry regularly used by anti-British insurgents.
The three men started drifting away from Labor Zionist circles after the spring of 1926 and officially joined Jabotinsky's movement in February 1928. They tended to describe their disenchantment with socialist and communist ideas using religious language, as tearing down false idols, and the Betar youth movement and the Revisionist circles provided them the alternative political home they were looking for. The radical potential came with the new association; on the one hand, it allowed them to fashion themselves as scions-followers of Jabotinsky, constantly quoting his blazing rhetoric of "In blood and fire Judah fell, in blood and fire Judah will rise!" On the other hand, at no stage did they become blind admirers of Jabotinsky, and they often felt frustrated for not being taken seriously enough by him. Ahimeir, for example, was highly skeptical of Jabotinsky's reliance on British protection and described him in a private letter as a Quixotic figure, a prisoner of his own naïve hallucinations.17 Their belligerent rhetoric became more violent in the wake of the 1929 riots.18
Having no access to concealed weapons, they remained preachers of the clenched fist. By adopting the name "Brit Habiryonim" in October 1931, they effectively made themselves a political faction within the Revisionist camp, challenging its leader from the Right. The name, chosen by Greenberg, was indicative of their self-fashioning and self-understanding: "Biryonim" was the name given by the authors of the Babylonian Talmud to Second Temple–era zealots, Jewish extremists who notoriously assassinated Romans and Jews who collaborated with the Romans or were considered their sympathizers.19 The trio conceived itself as an elite group of professional revolutionaries, modern heirs of the Second Temple's zealots. Relying on Second Temple imagery was a savvy move that provided a Jewish cover to what was largely a Leninist conception of a revolution. They were calling the youth to find the courage needed to fight a far stronger foreign empire and, not less importantly, to dismiss with scorn the authority of the rabbis. What the Zionist movement needs, Ahimeir argued in 1932, is not more Zionist congresses that would deliberate endlessly but a one decisive "Zimmerwald conference"—a reference to the 1915 Communist conference in which Lenin distanced his fraction from the reformist socialists and began building a committed, revolutionary party instead.
As far as Jabotinsky was concerned, the three men proved to be an asset and a liability at the very same time. Though on the face of it they lacked real political muscle, the trio manifested shrewdness and remarkable sophistication in exploring and utilizing new media channels that helped them spread and amplify their message.20 Notably, a series of articles Ahimeir published in Doar Hayom under the title "From a Diary of a Fascist" attracted much attention. In between, the trio played a significant role outside Palestine in radicalizing Polish and Baltic members of the Betar youth movement. The Eastern European youth was intoxicated by the fiery self-described maximalists from Palestine who distinguished themselves from the all-too-obedient and impotent "Salon Revisionists."21 Realizing that he must ride the tiger or else be eaten by it, Jabotinsky was afraid to dismount. His August 1932 article warning against zeal and excessive youthful "adventurism" was a clear warning against the excessive ideas of the new Revisionist phalanx: Betar is not a "cellar underground" organization, but a youth movement instilling discipline and "training youth to control their fists, stand firm, and march in order."22 The article put the tension between the leader and his rebel children on display and revealed his limitations in restraining them. Sugarcoating what was, in fact, a disruptive, disobedient attempt to challenge Jabotinsky, the three explicitly called him to declare himself a dictator or simply Il Duce in 1932, thereby abandoning his outdated law-abiding beliefs in parliamentary politics and considerable Anglophile biases.
Startlingly, it was the assassination of Chaim Arlosoroff (June 1933) and its ensuing trial, after which the triumvirate dwindled in influence, that saved Jabotinsky's young movement from being hijacked from within.23 Though acquitted of the murder charge, Ahimeir was convicted of heading an illegal organization and sentenced to two years in prison, and the newspaper Doar Hayom was also shut down and ceased publication. Greenberg's fiery poetry gained its second political life during the 1940s, after Jabotinsky's death, mainly thanks to Avraham ("Yair") Stern and the members of the paramilitary group Lehi. In the context of an open, violent rebellion against the British authorities, Greenberg came to be revered as prophetic, inspirational, and exciting and was practically crowned as the poet laureate of the underground group. It was in this context that his poetic vocabulary acquired new meaning. Once it was contrasted with the specter of a future Lilliputian partitioned "state"—and not only with the preservation of colonial subjugation—a term like "Malchut Israel" was no longer an expressionist abstraction devoid of concrete political meaning. On the contrary, it resurfaced in the insurgents' writings and shaped their horizons of expectations. Still, in between these two phases, another discursive development became noticeable: the emergence of a vision of a Hebraic mare nostrum, modeled after the Italian fascist fantasy of the Mediterranean basin. Toward a Hebraic mare nostrum
The Italian ingredients of Revisionist Zionism remain under-researched. Jabotinsky's writings are famous for being rich in sympathetic allusions to Italian Risorgimento, which he considered the paradigmatic nineteenth-century romantic nationalism. The Italy of Mazzini and Garibaldi he admired was referred to him as his spiritual homeland, and "Altalena," the pen name he started using when he arrived in Rome to study Law at the Sapienza University (1898–1901), made this Italophilia part of Jabotinsky's public and intellectual persona.24 But was Mussolini's Italy the same? Jabotinsky's references to fascist Italy as more efficient, clean, and orderly in comparison to its predecessor state were abundant during the early 1930s, especially in light of a global economic meltdown. Numerous non-Revisionist Zionist activists, including Itamar Ben-Avi, Nahum Sokolow, Victor Jacobson, and even Chaim Weizmann, met with the Duce (including after the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933 and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia [Ethiopia] in 1935, but not after the passing of the Italian racial laws, in 1938). Jabotinsky was not alone in seeking, somewhat cautiously, stronger ties with Rome. These ambiguous contacts corresponded with Mussolini's Middle Eastern foreign policy, which sought to counterbalance French and British hegemony by forging ties with local forces that were equally unhappy with the mandates system. After all, Italian colonial Libya notwithstanding (acquired in 1911), it was clear that the distribution of post-Ottoman territories during the 1920s solidified British hegemony. This process was not only incompatible with Italy's own irredentist desires but made the fascist talk of a mare nostrum (Latin: "our sea")—the dream of making the Mediterranean basin into the beating heart of a new empire—into a laughingstock.25
It was in the context of the fascist mare nostrum policy that Mussolini gave his blessing to the opening of a naval training academy for Betar members in Civitavecchia, a port city northwest of Rome. Jabotinsky, careful and suspicious, accepted the generous offer but refused to accept money from the Italian government. Sarah I, the training vessel used in the new naval academy, was purchased with the funds donated by Yefim Kirshner, a Jewish fur merchant from Paris. In a letter dispatched to the cadets, Jabotinsky urged them to be respectful but remain politically neutral: "If you are to be asked about your political and social beliefs, answer: 'I am a Zionist, my heart craves from a Hebrew State in our country, and I oppose the war between the classes. That is all I believe.'"26 Many of the cadets ignored the leader's advice. Ideological radicalization and the consolidation of stronger ties with the fascist regime were accomplished at the rank-and-file level by a group of second-tier and somewhat forgotten intellectuals and activists such as Zvi Kolitz (1912–2002), Isacco (Yitzhak) Sciaky (1896–1979), Leone Carpi (1887–1964), and Yirmiyahu ("Irma") Halpern (1901–1962). They were the ones who provided the crucial personal and ideological bridges connecting Palestine's radicals with the Italian fascists.
Like in the case of the Biryonim trio, the significance of the Civitavecchia team was not in its size but in the type of ideas it popularized and brought into circulation. Paying greater attention to the Mediterranean Sea as an arena where Revisionism could challenge British dominance was perhaps the most striking feature of this development. To be sure, this group was not the first to conceive of Zionism as a form of Mediterraneanism. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, a rediscovery of the sea and quasi-mythical notions of an ancient Hebrew-speaking Mediterranean culture that modern Jews should revive were already being explored at the time by thinkers like archaeologist and orientalist Nahum Slouschz or the poet Saul Tchernichovsky, who translated the Iliad and Odyssey into Hebrew.27 Writing to Mussolini in 1922, a short time after he became prime minister and established a dictatorship that dismantled Italy's democratic institutions, Jabotinsky found it crucial to mention his vision of a Mediterranean revival. Discussing the importance of language in the Mediterranean basin, Jabotinsky asserted that Italian was once widely spoken thanks to the influence of Jewish traders and encouraged the fascist leader to support Zionism rather than Arab nationalism because Jews, and not Arabs, are the best agents to spread culture and language and help bring about a new cultural renaissance.28
The Civitavecchia team took this erudite but quite abstract and bookish discourse to another level: They entertained the idea of a modern Jewish return to the Mediterranean not simply as a cultural aspiration but as a tangible geopolitical program that could be promoted through collaboration with a fascist Italy that sought to challenge the British control over "their" sea. Unlike the members of Brit Habiryonim, the political idioms they incorporated and developed did not rely on Leninist theories of revolution but were taken from an arsenal of Italian political imagery and the ideas of these early Hebraic culturalists. Crudely, this loose assembly could be subdivided into two branches: While the more cerebral members of the group translated terms and ideas taken directly from the writings of Benito Mussolini and his court philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, into Hebrew, the more adventurous and artistically inclined members of the group, mesmerized by the Mediterraneo-centric notion of mare nostrum, sought to develop a Hebraic variant of the same ideals.29
Zvi Kolitz, who published the first (and to this day, only) Hebrew biography of Mussolini, belongs to the first branch of thinkers. Born to an Orthodox Lithuanian family, Kolitz moved to Italy in the 1930s to study political science at the University of Florence and to attend the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia. During these formative Italian years, he realized the importance of decisive political leadership, arguing that fascism was the most significant ideology in Europe and that the Italian State was its concrete realization. Published in Tel Aviv in 1936, the biography he authored dissociated fascism from anti-Semitism, presenting the former as free of any Jew-hatred. Kolitz's depiction of Mussolini emphasized the "exceptional will-power [of] a man who knows what he wants and wants the favor and the future of Italy to the best of his belief. … An idea without a leader is like a corpse without a soul. … [Subsequently] strong ideas depend on strong personalities."30 Later, he joined the Irgun (aka the Etzel, the Revisionist's underground paramilitary organization) and was arrested by the British. He reinvented himself after World War II as a film producer and fiction author.
Isacco Sciaky was the leading theoretician and ideologue of Revisionism in Italy. A Sephardi Jew born in Salonica (Thessaloniki), Sciaky was the enfant terrible of Italian Zionism, known for his fiery temperament and radical ideas. Jabotinsky respected Sciaky. In a letter sent to Sciaky in 1932, Jabotinsky made his views explicit, calling upon the Revisionist Zionists to shift their "mental orientation" away from the "pro-Nordic" orientation toward "Mediterranean and Latin currents," reflecting his political frustration with Britain's policy in mandate Palestine.31 But Sciaky dove deeper. An enthusiastic follower of Giovanni Gentile's neo-Hegelian philosophy since his days as a philosophy student at La Sapienza, he drank the totalitarian philosophy straight from its source. In November 1922, soon after the fascist march in Rome, Sciaky wrote to Gentile to express his hope that the fascist cultural regeneration "will be better able to meet our eastern populations [nostre popolazioni orientali] at the time of the awakening of those countries" and that stronger contacts between Italians and Jews would provide the common framework of civilization in the East, spreading light and boasting pride in the "two immortal nations."32 Sciaky did not fear to challenge the socialist Zionist teachings of Enzo Sereni and mainstream Italian Zionists who preached agricultural life and sought to model Italy's Zionism after the Yishuv's labor movement.33 Instead, he formulated an authoritarian political theory of the "corporative state" that would replace the liberal and antisocial vision of a competitive economy with a planned economy that removes the egoistic interests of individual citizens, trade unions, or social classes for the unitary interest of the State that would synthesize and harmonize all the productive forces of the nation.34 Jabotinsky remained unimpressed.35 The highly abstract style of Sciaky's writings, infused with neo-Hegelian language defining the "true state" as an entity living "within the consciousness, or better the true state is the consciousness of citizens," might further suggest why much of this high talk fell on deaf ears.36 Sciaky viewed the passing of the racial laws in Italy as a betrayal, prompting his 1939 immigration to Palestine, where he began a second career as a professor of law and economics in Tel Aviv.
Leone Carpi, the natziv (commander) of Civitavecchia's Naval Academy, was less philosophically inclined. Older than most of his Betarist comrades, he was also the only Italian Jew by birth, a scion to one of Italy's most distinguished Jewish families. He took much pride in his family's patriotic pedigree: His grandfather—also called Leone—was a friend of Mazzini's, a supporter of the short-lived Roman Republic (1849), and the first Jew to be elected to the Italian Parliament by the city of Ferrara. Serving as an officer in the Italian army during World War I, he was decorated for his courage under fire, after which he obtained a law degree and began drifting toward Zionism. It did not take long for him to be revolted by what he saw: a pale, tiny movement, which he described as "completely bogged down, monopolized by few people and focused narrowly on economic problems and financial needs."37 Revisionism, seen by him as a brave revolt against this oligarchical group, reminded him of the romantic nationalism of 1848. He saw fascism as an organic continuation of the Risorgimento.
The founding editor of the Revisionist newspaper L'Idea Sionistica (The Zionist Idea, 1930–1938), Carpi made himself the ideal bridge figure between the Revisionist Zionist movement and Italy's fascist regime. The translation of Jabotinsky's history of the Jewish Legion into Italian first appeared in the newspaper, alongside many other translations of Revisionist Zionist texts. Carpi's own articles and editorials depicted the Revisionist leader as a superhuman figure combining the qualities of the revolutionary theorist Mazzini and the diplomat Cavour or as the "Jewish Garibaldi."38Advocating a spiritual affinity between Italians and Revisionists, his articles emphasized that "in Jabotinsky's words, we often find references, reminiscences, and associations inspired to the Italian artistic and political atmosphere of that time."39 Yet, if Carpi made himself instrumental in the establishment of the Naval Academy, it was to a large degree thanks to his ability to add a considerable dose of Realpolitik to this enthusiastic idealism. When he approached Mussolini during the early 1930s, he put forward the argument that the establishment of a Jewish National Homeland would be in the interest of Italy's Mediterranean aspirations. When he contacted Admiral Paolo Camillo Thaon, the commander of the Royal Italian Navy, Carpi stressed the reciprocal advantages both fascism and Revisionism would draw from the training facility. The Academy, he brazenly added, was much more than a training facility: "because we want our youth to learn and later promote fascist culture and Italian language, to facilitate the penetration of the fascist civilization into the Near East."40
Jabotinsky feared that a Frankenstein's monster was emerging. During the fifth World Revisionist Conference in Vienna (1932), Carpi sided with Ahimeir and the Palestinian maximalists who demanded stronger leadership and gave the fascist salute before delivering his speech on "the affinities between fascism and Revisionism." Jabotinsky, he believed, had to make himself a Jewish Duce:
Gentlemen, we have a leader who has what it takes to be a dictator. … It is necessary to let him choose the right moment and the right way to act for the protection of the movement, for the salvation of Herzl's original idea, and the redemption of the Jewish State.41
Undoubtedly, if there was a person who personified the zeal for the Mediterranean more than anyone else, it was the free-spirited and dashing captain Yirmiyahu ("Irma") Halperin. Halperin had acquired a reputation as one of the legendary leaders of Betar. Born in Smolensk, but growing up in Palestine, he was the commander of Betar's 41st Battalion in Tel Aviv and founded Betar's school of instructors before being invited by Jabotinsky to Poland (1928), where he established a national school for Betar leaders and oversaw the activities of Betar camps in Austria and Latvia. Like Carpi, Halperin also took pride in his family lineage, as the son of Michael Halpern, a member of the anti-Tsarist underground Narodnaya Volya who became a legendary pioneer in Palestine, supported the Young Turks after 1908, and inspired the founders of Hashomer, Palestine's first Jewish defense organization.42 "Irma" proved unruly from the very beginning of his involvement, accusing Betar's leadership of deficient enthusiasm and petite-bourgeoisie. Stories about Yirmiyahu Halperin's fearlessness during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and the 1929 riots further helped to build a myth around the man. Though he had no formal military training or real battle experience, he was idolized, and he pushed his cadets to replace the reigning defensive ethos with a sterner, offensive attitude.
Halperin served as a sailor in Hechalutz, the first ship acquired by the Yishuv in 1919, established the Jewish Maritime League in 1933 and began publishing pamphlets in Russian and Hebrew, describing the future benefits the Jews of Palestine would gain from sailing, trade, and economy in the Mediterranean. He arrived at Civitavecchia accompanied by his close ally Arieh Bayevski (born Gleb Baklavskii), an eccentric ex-officer in the Russian Imperial Navy who fled Russia during the Civil War and ended up living in Palestine. Bayevski was among the founders of the "The Zebulon Naval Association" in Tel Aviv, an organization seeking to promote marine training and development, and in Civitavecchia, he served as Halperin's deputy.
For both men, Betar's Italian initiative was the necessary vehicle to accomplish their dream of "kibush ha-yam" ("conquest of the sea"), a slogan that surfaced in Halperin's publications from the early 1930s. The suggestion that aquaculture should also be part of Palestine's economic development did not originate with the Revisionist movement. Yet early attempts to promote such initiatives, including by creating a special "water committee," either died out quickly or lacked the necessary funding. Halperin brought much of the needed energy to help promote such initiatives, but he also charged the project with a new political meaning. To be sure, the catchphrase "kibush ha-yam" was, first and foremost, a tool in intra-Zionist ideological struggles. It allowed the Revisionists to counterbalance the labor Zionists' emphasis on "kibush ha-adama" ("conquest of the land") through agriculture. Halperin explicitly blamed the labor Zionists for suppressing any initiative to invest in Hebrew seafaring, instead focusing myopically on fostering the kibbutz movement, which was not viable economically. The conquest of the sea went hand in hand with an open challenge to British hegemony in the region and land and what the hawkish Revisionists described as a British as well as Zionist policy of appeasing the Palestinian population. "Those who saw the struggle for the rebirth of an independent Hebrew state as a provocation to British rule and the status of the Arabs … and were careful to avoid taking steps that might be interpreted as 'provocation,'" Halperin wrote, were also the ones who "deterred from aspiring to revive the Hebrew seamanship and to cultivate the merchant fleet, the Hebrew Navy and a Hebrew fishing fleet."43
Third, and probably most significant, was the term "Hebrew Seafaring" (yamaut 'ivrit) itself. This term, popularized by the journalist Itamar Ben-Avi (son of the lexicographer Eliezer Ben Yehuda), rested on an original claim of nativity according to which a significant number of the ancient Israelite tribes were, in fact, seafaring tribes. Based on a somewhat whimsical interpretation of biblical stories, it looked at the ancient Israelites as an ancient nation that lived by the sea and from the sea.44 Zebulon, the tribe that occupied a territory that bordered the Mediterranean and whose symbol was a ship, gave its name to the association dedicated to promoting naval training "and deepening of marine consciousness" that was practically hijacked by these new hawkish Betarists. This discursive innovation armed the Revisionist ideology with a powerful primordial claim, making the modern return-to-the-sea a project of reconnecting with an autochthonic, pre-Rabbinical mode of living. It competed with Ben-Gurion's efforts to read socialist Zionists back into the ancient Jewish prophets, which he insisted on describing as the heralds of calls for social justice and equality in modern times. It collided most sharply with Chaim Weizmann's favorable allegory, which compared the institutions of higher learning that the Jews established in Palestine, in Jerusalem, and, in particular, in Rehovot, to Yavneh, the famous Yeshiva established by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai after the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Roman Legions.
Turning to the sea was also about creating a new political language anchored in historical phantasm. Revisionist Mediterraneanism underscored a romantic desire to reconnect with a fantastic Hebraic, pre-exilic past. Similarly, the irredentist potential of these fables was evident. The less domesticated versions of the Hebraic Mediterranean discourse went as far as suggesting that ancient Hebrew-speaking tribes ruled the Mediterranean basin, that the Carthaginians originated in the Land of Canaan, and that there was good reason to suggest that Hannibal spoke Hebrew. The parable mirrored the Italian fascist "mare nostrum" vision, which presented Mussolini's expansionist politics as part of a trans-historical, monumental project of reconnecting with the Roman past. At the very same time, the Hebraic fleet was not about to join the neo-Roman empire. The new "Judaea Navalis" was to be the substitute and the answer to "Judaea Capta" (Judea Conquered), the humiliating term inscribed on the coins issued by the Roman Emperor to celebrate the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple.
A vast gap separated Halperin's boastful statements and his modest results. In October 1935, Sarah A, with twenty Betar cadets in military uniform, embarked on its first long voyage to Spain and Algeria. The journey was interrupted soon when, on the way to Seville, the ship almost sank after water penetrated it. When they docked in Algiers, the appearance of Jews in uniform created a riot, leading the local Italian consulate to intervene and warn against further provocations. At first, the summer 1937 cruise seemed to be a success. The non-socialist Hebrew press in Palestine followed Halperin and his men as they visited Genoa, Livorno, and Cyprus before arriving in Haifa and organizing a military parade in Tel Aviv. From there, they continued to Rhodes, Salonica, and Malta and even stopped in Tunisia, where they were welcomed warmly by the local Jewish community. On the island of Corsica, a fierce storm hit the ship, and it got stranded and had to be evacuated. Halpern was the last to abandon ship, which was dragged later by an Italian hauler. The rescue operation cost a fortune, and the vessel was decommissioned. With the passing of Italy's racial laws and the closing of the academy, the entire Hebrew Mediterranean scheme evaporated. With characteristic pathos and melodrama, Halperin insisted in later years that the Civitavecchia was the place where the future Israeli Navy was born. His proposal to convert the vessel into a "floating exhibition" that would display the achievements of the Yishuv failed as well.
A Jewish Sinn Féin: Constructing a Culture of Anticolonial Martyrdom
It was on June 29, 1938, at precisely the same time the Revisionists had begun to dismantle their Italian project, that the British sentenced to death a twenty-five-year-old Irgun member named Shlomo Ben-Yosef (né Tabachnik). Ben-Yosef was caught carrying ammunition and discharging firearms a short time after shooting and throwing a hand grenade at an Arab bus near Safad. Though his attempted ambush flopped miserably, once put on trial before the Haifa Military Court, the Irgun press seized the opportunity to turn his trial and execution into a media propaganda event. Ben-Yosef's denied request to wear his Betar uniform on his death row walkthrough did not prevent him from singing the Betar hymn and the Tikvah, calling "Long live Jabotinsky!" before the rope closed on his neck.
The execution inaugurated a new and far more violent phase in the history of the Revisionist movement. The new strand of Jewish militants who joined the Irgun and later on the Lehi (an acronym for Lohamei Herut Yisrael; lit. fighters for the freedom of Israel, established August 1940) saw themselves as anonymous soldiers in a war of national liberation against a foreign and hostile colonial foreign rule. Ben-Yosef's hanging, which was the first in a series of executions that would continue into the late 1940s, played a vital role in the new political mythology that emerged during the war years and its immediate aftermath, weaving a legend around "the martyrs of the gallows."45 In the hands of underground newspapers and pamphlet writers, the trial and execution stories were converted into heroic stories of courage in the face of the oppressor, surpassing even the bravery of the soldier dying in battle. The hangings triggered retaliation and revenge attacks and were used as a recruitment tool for new fighters. The cycle of violence followed a vicious new logic that used terror as a tactic.
Significantly, the new climate necessitated a new action model, and Ireland provided a new source of inspiration. This was a significant shift, indicative of the radicalization: In 1916, while working as a correspondent for the Russian newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti, Jabotinsky reported about the Easter Rising, and although he expressed empathy for the Irish cause, he refused to endorse the methods of struggle employed by the rebels who chose the path of an armed insurrection. It was pointless to declare a war of liberation, Jabotinsky argued, which only leads to the senseless sacrifice of many.46 This cautious expression of solidarity with the Irish comes as a small surprise given the vertical alliances Jabotinsky sought to strengthen between the Zionist movement and Great Britain. By 1939, however, he had changed his mind, stressing the affinity between the two movements. He befriended Robert Briscoe, a Jewish-Irish politician and perhaps the only Jew in the IRA, who was charmed by the leader of Betar. Jabotinsky told Briscoe that the aim of his visit was to learn about the methods used in training young fighters to revolt against England, stressing the similarity between Betar and Fianna Éireann, the Irish nationalist youth movement. Briscoe was flattered. He boastfully recalled in his memoir how he appointed himself "to a full professorship with the Chair of Subversive Activity against England," explaining to the Zionist leader what were the British military weaknesses and what were the most effective ways of orchestrating a revolt against them. The signs of change were also apparent during the winter of 1940, when HaMashkif, the Revisionist party's Hebrew daily newspaper, published a series of three articles portraying Éamon de Valera and the 1916 Easter Rising in a highly positive light.47
Parallel to these developments, a small Irgun delegation, which included Eri Jabotinsky (Jabotinsky's son) and Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson), toured the United States. Using letters of introduction from Jabotinsky and Briscoe, they met with Irish Americans in New York who might support their campaign to permit the formation of a Jewish army in Palestine.48 Paul O'Dwyer (1907–1998), the prominent Irish-born lawyer, political activist, and the younger brother of New York City's Mayor William O'Dwyer, was certainly convinced. He supported the American League for a Free Palestine, the Irgun's fundraising arm in the United States, and was probably involved in drafting the public statement that made the Zionist-Irish analogy explicit, declaring: "It is not the first time that oppressed and subjugated people of a foreign land have appealed to America for help … Free Czechoslovakia and Free Ireland are living examples of our response."49 As O'Dwyer later explained:
While you're engaged in a war of revolution, you don't question the ideology … of your compatriots. … [W]hen it's all over and the victory is won, you can make your decision whether you bring back the kin of David and make them kings of Israel or you want a workers' republic. … But while there's a common enemy and while you don't have your freedom you can't enjoy the luxury of an internal fight.
The Irish cause provided an opportunity to endorse the more hawkish stance of Ahimeir and his maximalist peers, which came with a radical reinterpretation of Zionism itself. Ahimeir published articles expressing support of Irish militancy as early as 1927, going as far as to suggest that the very term "Sinn Féin," literally meaning "We Ourselves," was a direct equivalent of Hillel the Elder's famous Hebrew proverb, "Im ein ani li, mi li?" ("If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?").50 Ahimeir's original interpretation of Hillel's saying was meant to tie the Irish Republican passion with the Jewish national movement. For Hillel's famous dictum was used as the motto for Leon Pinsker's famous proto-Zionist manifesto, "Autoemancipation!" (1882). In 1930, Ahimeir published a series of pro-Irish articles written in response to the Passfield White Paper, which sought to restrict Jewish settlement.51 His comrade, Yehoshua Heshel Yevin, went even further: "Akko [Acre] could be a second Cork if only the Jewish People knew what all other nations know: how to eradicate internal treason!"52
Unsurprisingly, references to the Irish struggle increased in frequency after Jabotinsky's unexpected death (August 4, 1940), especially within the circles of the Lehi. Avraham Stern (1907–1942), a classics student who switched careers and became the founder of the underground group, came to the Irish analogy at a very late stage in his short but dramatic life. In 1941, not long before he was caught and killed by the British police, Stern began translating into Hebrew Patrick Sarsfield O'Hegarty's book, The Victory of Sinn Féin: How It Won It and How It Used It, telling the story of the 1916 Easter Rising. The opening chapter was published in Ba-mahteret (in the underground), Lehi's newspaper.53 The main point of the chapter was that although the Easter Rising failed to accomplish its declared mission, the Irish struggle gained new martyrs whose memory perpetuated the rebellion. Stern's early death prevented him from further developing the Irish analogy. Symbolically, the underground name chosen by the commander who replaced him, Yitzhak Shamir (born Yitzhak Yezernitsky), was "Michael," after Irish Republican revolutionary leader Michael Collins. The assassination of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Moyne, planned by Shamir and executed by his men, was a copycat murder inspired by the IRA.
The Irish analogy found its way into the circles of the Irgun as well, especially after Menachem Begin assumed its leadership (December 1943). The authors of the Irgun's announcement about an open "rebellion against British rule," printed on banners that were posted on billboards and wall houses on the night of February 1–2, 1944, used the Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Ireland from April 1916 as their template.54 Under Begin, who wanted a paramilitary organization free of political shackles, the formal ties with the Revisionist party were finally cut. Therefore, the new recruits who joined the underground were not necessarily drawn from Betar; nor did they have to subscribe to the precise ideological stance advocated by Jabotinsky. In that respect, the Irgun fighters, despite their intense political commitment, were not partisans in the German, Carl Schmittian sense, or in the Leninist sense, for they were dissociated from a specific Partei [political party] and were not necessarily Parteigänger [party adherent]. Both the Irgun and the Lehi took much pride in their ability to recruit and integrate into their fighting force a growing number of non-Ashkenazi youth, including from the margins of society.55 Tellingly, of the dozen Jewish insurgents executed by the British, six were non-Ashkenazi and six were native-born.
At this stage of "party-free" and "gloves-off" struggle, intricate ideological sophistry was less relevant. For Menachem Begin, folktales of Irish resistance, endurance, and martyrdom were much better tools. When Avshalom Haviv, an Irgun fighter captured by the British during the Acre Prison break, the affidavit he presented before the British judges spoke of "the sons of Ireland" who rose against the British rule, making the analogy explicit:
When the Irish underground waged a war of liberation, you tried to drown the rebellion against tyranny in streams of blood. You erected gallows, you murdered innocent people in the streets, you deported patriots into a God-forsaken wilderness, you tortured the people and looted their homes and you believed, in your stupidity, that by doing so you would break the spirit of resistance of the Irish people. That spirit, which is a God given gift to every man created in His image. You failed. The Irish rebellion went from strength to strength. The blood of the fighters and the blood of the tortured united the whole nation around the flag of liberation until you were forced to retreat, leaving behind a bloody trail and memories that will never be forgotten. Ireland rose to freedom and you were left with eternal shame.56
"Olei Hagardom" (literally, "those who rose to the gallows") became the collective name most frequently used during the 1940s to describe the Jewish insurgents executed by the British. Begin began referring to them as "Harugei Malchut."57 The term, taken from elegies read during Yom Kippur and Tishah B'Av services, traditionally referred to the ten Jewish sages who were killed by the Romans in the second century CE. Begin's renaming drew once more a direct line connecting the British control in mandatory Palestine with ancient Roman subjugation while also Judaizing the language of revolt, equating the modern insurgent with the ancient martyr.
In the context of Jewish anti-British radicalism, Judaizing the language of anticolonial revolt exposed the inherent tension between two incompatible conceptions and political visions. The first was a conception of yehudiyut (Jewishness), which tied the modern violent struggle to a lachrymose narrative of continuous Jewish suffering and brave spiritual standing in the face of oppression. The other was the proto-Canaanite vision of 'ivriyut (Hebraism), which read the anticolonial conflict as a daring attempt to reconnect with the pre-Rabbinic, primordial, and Indigenous "Semitic" past. It was not by coincidence that the poetry and teachings of Yonatan Ratosh (born Uriel Halprin, 1909–1981), the founder of the Committee for the Formation of the Jewish Youth (1943) and the mainspring behind the neo-Hebraic idea, were highly popular among the underground fighters. Eventually, Ratosh and other followers of the Canaanite idea alienated themselves from their Revisionist Right-Wing colleagues and set on separate paths.58
Epilogue
Both radicalization and systems of oppression depend on political language and semiotics of violence. Political language and poetic imagination of the kind described in this article were a means to an end. They were applied to generate a cognitive map and a script for political action. The three languages of radicalism examined herewith—the Leninist-revolutionary language, the maritime Italo-fascist language, and the Irish-inspired language or rebellion—were the products of the politics of a comparative gaze, manufactured thanks to constant comparison, borrowing, and appropriation. Of the three languages, the turn to the sea was the least violent but the most radical. This somewhat naïve naval fancy had more to do with a conscious effort of intellectuals to forge a new political language and historical imagination than with the actual, technical practices of recreating a new seafaring Jewish subject. There is, no doubt, a profound irony in the way in which a neo-Roman fascist fancy inspired the neo-Zealot Jewish radicals to restore Jewish pride and reverse "Judaea Capta." Here, however, lies their radicalism in the literal sense: This was not simply an eccentric rebelliousness but an attempt to go to radix (Latin for root), to unearth the stems and roots of Jewish existence and reconnect with an imagined pre-Rabbinical and monumental Hebraic past.
This imaginative process was not unique to radical flanks of Revisionist Zionism, but it is rather shared by numerous contemporaneous nationalist movements. It was the Jewish hyper-nationalist equivalent of the Wagnerian Teutonic mythologies that allowed German nationalists to imagine themselves as reconnecting with a pure, pre-Christian age. Uncoincidentally, it paralleled the phenomenon of "Phoenicianism" we find among Maronite intellectuals in Lebanon of the 1920s, who cultivated dubious myths of origin reconnecting them with the monumental maritime culture that roamed the seas since the second millennium BC, prior to the Arab conquest of the region.59 Similarly, it bears a resemblance to the invocations of an ancient Celtic past that were put in service of racist mythologies of pan-European, pre-Christian, and non-Roman origin.60 The common denominator of these phantasms remains their reliance on modern archeology and philology and their naturalization of political communities that were prescribed a primordial monumental past. In the Middle East, French and British archeology in the Ottoman Empire and Ernst Renan's musing about Semitism and Phoenicianism play a major role in providing the foundations for these intellectual fashions. These mythical conceptions of the past often supplemented a deep suspicion or contempt toward the liberal, bourgeois, and "artificial" order, a bold attempt to surpass a narrow Christian-classical canon, and an eagerness to fuel new empire-building imaginativeness. Contra to an ideology of Jewish exceptionalism and separateness of a people dwelling alone, studying Jewish radicals suggests their integration into broader intellectual and political fashions of the day and their active participation in it.
The three languages of radicalization surveyed here were not the sole sources of inspiration for these Jewish radicals. Multiple references to authoritarian Poland and the autocratic methods of Kemalist Turkey, for example, lived side by side next to ideological imports from Russia, France, and Ireland. What matters is the logic of continuous eclectic borrowing and remixing. This logic was summarized by Ahimeir in 1920: "If our national disease does not have a national remedy, we will take it from the treasures of our neighbors."61 Nor would it be accurate to suggest that at each phase of this evolution, a new language replaced the former. Rather, like scales of onion, they formed new layers on top of previous layers, forming a composite.
The only place where these radicals revealed astonishing flexibility is in their categories of thought. Men who prided themselves on their rigid stubbornness and iron consistency were, in fact, constantly evolving and changing their language, adapting it to changing conditions like a chameleon. Even the semiotics of violence, apparently, cannot escape the logic of mimicry.
Acknowledgments
This article originates in a workshop on radical Jewish politics which took place at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in spring 2017, as well as long years of conversation with my former student, Matteo Quadrifoglio, who helped tracking down the Italian sources and make them available for me. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Amir Goldstein and Nathaniel Deutsch for their invaluable feedback and insightful contributions on earlier drafts of this article alongside the anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments. All opinions, omissions, and errors remain my own.
Notes
1. Jewish Legion was the popular shorthand given to three Battalions (numbered 38th, 39th and 40th) of the Royal Fusiliers (infantry regiment) of the British Army during World War I.
2. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Harvard University Press, 1979), 164.
3. Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, "D'Annunzio, Fiume and Zara [in Hebrew]," Hadshot Haaretz, November 25, 1919, 2. The translations were included in Jabotinsky Shirim [Poems] (Eri Jabotinsky, 1947).
4. Jabotinsky, "O zheleznoi stene (mi i araby)." Razsvet, vol 42/43 (November 4, 1923). For English translation see Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)." In Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, edited by Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz (University Press of New England, 2007), 41–43.
5. Vladimir Jabotinsky, "Lah.as. [Hebrew: Pressure]," in Ha-Derekh El Ha-Revizyonizm Ha-Tsiyoni: Kovets Maamarim Be-"Razsvyet" La-Shanim 1923–1924 [Hebrew: The Road to Zionist Revisionism], ed. Joseph Nedava (Mekhon Z'abotinski be-Yisrael, 1984), 64–75. For further details, see Arie M. Dubnov, "On Vertical Alliances, 'Perfidious Albion' and the Security Paradigm," European Judaism 52, no. 1 (2019): 67–110.
6. Avraham Heller, "ha-historiosof," in Abba Ahimer: Ha-Ish Shehita Et Ha-Zerem [Hebrew: Abba Ahimeir: The Man Who Turned the Tide], ed. Joseph Nedava (The Association for the Dissemination of National Consciousness, 1987), 187. For a fuller, authoritative intellectual biography, see Peter Bergamin, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (I. B. Tauris, 2020).
7. Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (I. B. Tauris, 2010), 156.
8. Quoted in Colin Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 90.
9. Established in 1913, Ha'Toren was the organ of the Hebraist society Achieber, promoting Hebrew in the United States.
10. Abba Ahimeir, "Ra'ayonot Bodedim al Ha'fashism [Hebrew: A Few Ideas about Fascism]," Ha'Toren 4–5 (1923): 150–55 on 154 (unless stated otherwise, all translations in this article are by the author).
11. Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, trans. David Maisel (Princeton University Press, 1996); Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, and Maia Ashéri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, trans. David Maisel (Princeton University Press, 1996).
12. Hapoel Hatzair [The Young Worker] was a socialist Zionist party, formed in 1905.
13. Uri Zvi [Greenberg], "el 'ever moskva"' [Towards Moscow], Kuntras 8, 15 (January 25, 1924), 3.
14. Uri Zvi Greenberg, "Yerushalayim shel matah," in Eimah gedolah veyareah, 57. The poem was originally published in Hapoel Hatzair, April 18, 1924.
15. Glenda Abramson. "The Wound of Memory: Uri Zevi Greenberg's 'from the Book of the Wars of the Gentiles'." Shofar 29, no. 1 (2010): 1–21.
16. The first appearance of the term can be found in his 1924 poem "Yerushalayim shel matah" (translated as "Jerusalem" by Charles A. Cowen in 1939).
17. Abba Ahimeir, letter to Berl Katznelson, June 30, 1925, as quoted in Anita Shapira, Berl [Hebrew Version], 389–90.
18. A series of week-long demonstrations and violent clashes between Jews and Arabs in Palestine resulting in 133 Jews and 116 Arabs killed.
19. For example, tractate Gittin 56a speaks of Abba Sikkara as the leader of the zealots [biryonei] of Jerusalem.
20. These included Sadan (a short-lived literary journal founded, edited, and, to a large extent, also written by Greenberg, 1924–7); Doar Hayom (a daily founded by Itamar Ben-Avi and edited for a brief but significant period, 1928–1931, by Jabotinsky); and Hazit ha-Am (lit. "The People's Front," January 1932–June 1934). Founded by Yevin and Ahimeir, Hazit ha-Am was considered the organ of Brit Habiryonim and was known for its combative style and firm tone.
21. Daniel K. Heller, Jabotinsky's Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism (Princeton University Press, 2017), chap. 3.
22. Vladimir Jabotinsky, "muvan ha-avanturism [the Meaning of Adventurism]," Hazit ha-Am, August 5, 1932, 1. The article was translated from the Russian, with the original dated July 24, 1932, JIA, A 1–7/144.
23. Chaim (Victor) Arlosoroff was the head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and one of the leaders of Mapai. He was assassinated in June 1933 in Tel Aviv. The main suspicion fell on activists affiliated with the Revisionist movement, leading to the arrest of Ahimeir and others, who campaigned against Arlosoroff.
24. See in particular Jabotinsky, Vladimir [Ze'ev]. "Garibaldi," in Feullitons, JIA, F1912/501/FR. For discussion, see Svetlana Natkovich, Ben 'Anene Zohar: Yetsirato Shel Vladimir (Zeev) Z'abotinski Ba-Heksher Ha-Hevrati [Hebrew: Among Radiant Clouds: The Literature of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky in Its Social Context] (Magnes Press, 2015).
25. For additional information, see Nir Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933–40 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) as well as Daniel Carpi, "Weizmann's Political Activity in Italy in 1923–1934 [in Hebrew]," Zionism—Studies in the History of the Zionist Movement and of the Jewish Community in Palestine B (1971): 169–208.
26. Vladmir Jabotinsky, Letter to students of the Betar Naval School in Civitavecchia, November 20, 1934. JIA, A 1–2/ 24/3, letter 2414.
27. Arie M. Dubnov, "Nahum Slouschz and the Birth of Hebraic Mediterraneità," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 49, no. 2 (2023): 296–324.
28. Jabotinsky to Benito Mussolini, July 16, 1922, JIA, A 1–2/12. The letter is reprinted in the anthology Verso Lo Stato; Scritti E Discorsi Di Politica Sionistica, ed. Leone Carpi (Milano: L'idea sionistica, 1960), 27–31. Jabotinsky's attitude toward Mussolini's Italy is discussed in Dan Tamir, Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922–1942 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
29. Gentile served as Mussolini's Ministry of Education (1922–1924).
30. Zvi Kolitz, mussolini: ishiyuto ve'torato [Hebrew: Mussolini: His Personality and Teachings] (Tevel, 1936), 5–82. For additional information, see Dan Tamir, Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922–1942 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
31. Vladimir Jabotinsky to Isacco Sciaky, February 26, 1932, JIA, A1–2/41.
32. Isacco Sciaky to Giovanni Gentile, November 8, 1922, in Archivio della Fondazione Giovanni Gentile, Rome, fascicule "Sciaky."
33. On Sereni and the socialist Italian Zionists, see Shira Klein, Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), chap. 6.
34. Many of these ideas were summarized in a lecture he prepared for a conference held in Tel Aviv in January 1935. See Sciaky, "Le Corporativisme Fasciste," JIA, P307, 1/3.
35. See Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Isacco Sciaky. Stato E Libertà: Il Carteggio Jabotinsky-Sciaky: 1924–1939 [Italian: State & Liberty: The Jabotinsky-Sciaky Exchange, 1924–39], ed. Vincenzo Pinto (Soveria Mannelli [Catanzaro]: Rubbettino, 2002).
36. Isacco Sciaky, "Recensione di 'La libertà nello Stato Moderno' di Harold J. Laski," in La Nuova Italia, III.2 (February 20, 1932): 64–5.
37. Leone Carpi, "Il Revisionismo in Italia," L'Idea Sionistica 2, No. 10/11 (November–December, 1932), 10–14 at 10.
38. Leone Carpi, "Il Sionismo Nazionale di Zeev Jabotinsky," in Jabotinsky, Verso lo Stato, XIV
39. Leone Carpi, "Il Revisionismo in Italia," L'Idea Sionistica 2, No. 10/11 (February–March 1932), 10–12.
40. Carpi to Tahon di Revel, October 28, 1934, Central Zionist Archives, A73/35 (Scuola Marittina di Civitavecchia).
41. Leone Carpi, "Discorso, Vienna 1935" [handwritten notes], JIA, P189/4.
42. See Yermiyahu ["Yirma"] Halperin, Avi, Mikhael Halperin [Hebrew: My Father, Michael Halperin] (Hadar, 1964).
43. Yermiyahu Halperin, Tehi'yat Ha'yamaut Ha'ivrit [Hebrew: The Revival of the Hebrew Seamanship] (Hadar, 1961), 10–11.
44. Itamar Ben-Avi, Ha-Yama! [Hebrew: Into the Sea] (Zebulon, 1936).
45. Amir Goldstein, "The Roots of the Gallows Myth in the Revisionist Movement during the 1930s," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 1 (2019): 127–48.
46. Vladimir Jabotinsky, "???????? (?? ?????? ??????????????) [Russian: Ireland (from Our Correspondent)]," Russkiye Vedomosti, May 15, 1916, in JIA, ; Vladimir Jabotinsky, "?????? [Russian: Dublin]," Russkiye Vedomosti, July 24, 1916, in JIA, and Vladimir Jabotinsky, "O ????? ???????? [Russian: About New Ireland]," Russkiye Vedomosti, August 19, 1916 in JIA, . See also Joseph Heller, "Jabotinsky's Use of National Myths in Political Struggles," Studies in Contemporary Jewry 12 (1996): 185–201, at 190.
47. Aba Ahimeir, "Devalira—manhiga u'meshahrera shel ayer [Hebrew: De Valera—Éire's Leader and Liberator]," HaMashkif, February 2, 1940 (Part I), February 23, 1940 (Part II), February 3, 1940 (Part III).
48. Monty Noam Penkower, "Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, Hillel Kook-Peter Bergson, and the Campaign for a Jewish Army," Modern Judaism 31, no. 3 (2011): 332–74.
49. Paul O'Dwyer, Counsel for the Defense (Simon and Schuster, 1979), 152.
50. Abba Ahimeir, "Im Ein Ani Li, Mi Li? [Hebrew: If I Am Not for Myself, Then Who Will Be for Me?"], Ha'aretz, November 15, 1927.
51. Aba Ahimeir, "Shin Fein [Hebrew: Sinn Féin]," Doar Hayom, October 28, 1930.
52. Quoted in Yosef Heller, Lehi: Ideologiyah u-folitikah 1940–1949 [Hebrew: Lehi: Ideology and Politics 1940–1949] (Shazar Center, 1989), 63.
53. P. S. O'Hegarty, "ha'hitkomemut bi-shnat 1916 [The 1916 Uprising, Excerpt from 'The Victory of Sinn Féin: How It Won It and How It Used It']," Ba-mahteret, No. 5 (1941): 53–6.
54. As reported by Yohanan (Jan) Bader (1901–1994) who was close to Menachem Begin and joined the Etzel short time after moving from Poland to Palestine in 1943: Yohanan Bader, Darki Le-Tsiyon, 1901–1948: O?obiyografyah [My Way to Zion, 1901–1948: An Autobiography] (Mekhon Z'abot.insk.i; ha-Sifriyah ha-Tsiyonit, 1999), 361–2.
55. See Markovitzky, Jacob, ed. Hamordim: Ma'avak Etzel B'britim 1944–1948: Diyun Mechudash [Hebrew: The Rebels: Etzel's Struggle against the British, 1944–1948] (Merkaz Moreshet Menachem Begin, 2008), 180–96; Abigail Jacobson, and Moshe Naor. Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Brandeis University Press, 2016), 174; Begin, ha-Mered, 118–19; Amir Goldstein, Gevurah Ve-Hadarah: 'Olei Ha-Gardom Veha-Zikaron Ha-Yisreeli [Hebrew: Heroism and Exclusion] (Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 2011), 157–8.
56. "Statement by Absalom [sic.] Habib," The Answer, August 1, 1947. JIA . Reprinted, alongside additional letters in Avshalom Haviv, Arba'Ah Tse'Adim La-Mavet: Avshalom Haviv U-Mikhtavav Mi-Tsinok Ha-Gardom [Hebrew: Four Steps to the Gallows: Avshalom Haviv's Deathrow Letters], ed. Aryeh Eshel (Misrad ha-bitahon, 1997). The statement was most likely not written by Haviv himself but by his supreme commander, Menachem Begin.
57. Goldstein, Gevurah Ve-Hadarah, 132–43.
58. Yehoshua Porath, Shela? ?e-?e? Be-Yado: Sipur ?aya? Shel Uri'el Shela? (Yonatan Ra?osh) [Hebrew: Weapon and Pen in His Hand: The Life of Uriel Shelah] (Ma?berot le-sifrut, 1989); Elliott Rabin, "'Hebrew' Culture: The Shared Foundations of Ratosh's Ideology and Poetry," Modern Judaism 19, no. 2 (1999): 119–32.
59. Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004); Sarah Griswold, "Allies in Eastern Trenches: Archaeological Salvage Operations in the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon," Journal of Levantine Studies 8 (2018): 121–44.
60. Michael Dietler, "'Our Ancestors the Gauls': Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe," American Anthropologist, 96, no. 3 (1994): 584–605.
61. In the original Hebrew: . Aba Ahimeir, 'En Ha-Kore: Sofrim U-Sefarim, 'Itonaim Ve-'Itonim [Hebrew: Authors and Books, Journalists and Newspapers] (ha-Va'ad le-hotsaat kitve Ahimeir, 2003), 163. The article appeared originally on October 8, 1920.