Detailed
Description |
|
Record of the decisions and enactments of the eighth revisionist congress, held form 2-4 Tevet (December 8-10), 1934 in Tel Aviv. The Revisionist Zionists (Union of Zionists-Revisionists, ha-Zohar), under the leadership of Vladimir Jabotinsky was, from the later 1920s and in the 1930s the Revisionists became the principal Zionist opposition party to Chaim Weizmann's leadership and to the methods and policy of the World Zionist Organization and the elected Jewish leadership in Erez Israel. The initial nucleus of the Revisionist movement consisted of a group of Russian Zionists who had supported Jabotinsky during World War I in his campaign for the creation of a Jewish Legion. Their organ became the Russian-language Zionist weekly Razsvet published in Berlin (1922–24), later in Paris (1924–34). This group was joined by other Zionist circles and personalities, such as Richard Lichtheim, Robert Stricker, Jacob de Haas, the Hebrew poet Jacob Cohen, and others, who opposed Weizmann and his policy.
The Revisionists based their ideology on Theodor Herzl's concept of Zionism as essentially a political movement, defined by Jabotinsky as follows: "Ninety per cent of Zionism may consist of tangible settlement work, and only ten per cent of politics; but those ten percent are the precondition of success." The basic assumption was that as long as the mandatory regime in Palestine was essentially anti-Zionist, no piecemeal economic achievements could lead to the realization of Zionism, i.e., the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority in the entire territory of Palestine, "on both sides of the Jordan." During the Mandatory period, Revisionism did not attach political importance to the pioneering settlement activity and strategy adopted by the Labor Movement. It viewed collective settlement as an element that channeled to itself vast amounts of money from the capital, beyond the degree of its importance, which were thus wasted on superfluous collectivist experiments. Collective settlement was seen in the main as the great rival of the private economy and its victor over the monies of the limited resources of national capital. The advantage of the various forms of agricultural settlements was judged by the criterion of how many jobs they could ensure. On the political level, Revisionism believed that political facts should be determined by political negotiations, their commitments, and not by the creation of settlements. This inimical attitude softened after the Six-Day War, with Herut and the Likkud supporting, morally and politically, Jewish settlements and settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, and applying political and moral pressure on the government to guarantee their existence and expansion. This support stemmed mainly from recognition of the fact that in view of the Alignment government's preparedness for territorial compromise in Judea and Samaria, settlement in the territories was the most outstanding and concrete expression of the Israeli demand for sovereignty over them. The Gahal and Likkud manifestos declared that Jews have the right to settle in Judea and Samaria and demanded that the government increase the settlement momentum. The testing point of the Likkud after it came to power was in keeping the promises and fulfilling the expectations in all aspects of settlement. The Likkud Peace Plan did indeed ensure urban and rural settlement throughout Judea and Samaria, but political circumstances have caused a freeze on settlement activity. This was interpreted by those favoring settlement within the Likkud and its supporters within Gush Emunim and The Land of Israel Movement as an expression of the old tradition of Revisionism which had not valued pioneering settlement and had not accorded it any supreme political or Zionist value.
|
