A Jabotinskyian Principle

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
16 January '11


Ze'ev Jabotinsky, in the mode of 19th century liberalism, believed in the ability of a multi-ethnic society to live in coexistence. His theme was the Helsingfors Conference. As explained:

It envisaged a liberalized, democratic Russia with wide, autonomous rights for its non-Russian peoples, including the Jewish nation, which, through a comprehensive organizational framework, would exercise its political rights and its cultural, educational, and, in certain respects, even administrative autonomy both in Hebrew and Yiddish.

And more specifically:

The political program included the following:

1. Full democratization of the regime according to the principles of parliamentary democracy, autonomy of the national territories and guaranteed legal rights for all minority peoples.
2. Full and unconditional (civil and national) rights to the Jewish population.
3. Representation of all national minorities in federal, regional and local elections that shall be conducted by secret ballot. The right to vote shall be extended to women.
4. Recognition of the Jewish people in Russia as a single political entity entitled to govern itself in matters of national culture.
5. A national assembly of Russian Jews shall be convened for the purpose of forming the basic structure of a national organization.
6. Jews shall have the right to use the national language (Hebrew) and the spoken language (Yiddish) in the schools, courts and public life.
7. Jews shall have the right to observe the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday. This right shall be guaranteed without regard to geographic location...

Source: Judische Runschau 22 (June 8, 1917) pp. 190-193. Trans. and excerpted by R. Weiss and P. Mendes-Flohr. Quoted in The Jew in the modern world: a documentary history, By Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, Oxford Univ Press 1995, pp 423-424.

But he was not blind.

Here is his 1923 political principle which can be called 'Don't Be Stupid':-

If I insist on this point, it is not because I want the Jews, too, to abandon the Helsingfors Programme as the basis of a future modus vivendi. On the contrary we - at least the writer of these lines – believe in this programme as much as we believe in our ability to give effect to it in political life, though all precedents have failed. But it would be useless now to the Arabs. They would not understand, and they would not place any trust in its principles: they would not be able to appreciate them.

And since it is useless, it must also be harmful. It is incredible what political simpletons Jews are. They shut their eyes to one of the most elementary rules of life, that you must not "meet halfway" those who do not want to meet you.

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