This week it was Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the great Jewish nationalist and founder of Zionist Revisionism, a movement that unabashedly stood for the immediate establishment of a Jewish state. In a ceremony marking the 69th anniversary of his death, Peres said that perhaps Jabotinsky's dream of a Jewish state that existed on both sides of the Jordan river was, "Too big."
"...his dream was too big for him, and most certainly too big for us. Maybe great leaders are destined to make great mistakes."
The dream of a strong Jewish homeland too big? Forget the both sides of the Jordan issue. Jabotinsky's dream was that of a renewed Jewish state that was built on Jewish nationalism, that was prepared to stand against the hate and evil that he had witnessed, and knew was coming.
On the 9th of Av, just shy of a year before the Nazi invasion of Poland, Jabotinsky addressed the Jews of Poland, in what was to be one of his last, and perhaps most stirring pleas to them:
"... it is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of world Jewry. I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer. I became gray and old in these years, my heart bleeds, that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all consuming lava. I know that you are not seeing this because you are immersed in your daily worries. Today, however, I demand your trust. You were convinced already that my p rognoses have already proven to be right. If you think differently then drive me out from your midst.
"However, if you do believe me, then listen to me in this 11th hour: In the name of G-d, Let anyone of you save himself as long as there is still time. And time there is very little.
"... and what else I would like to say to you in this day on Tisha B'Av: whoever of you will escape from the catastrophe, he or she will live to see the exalted moment of a great Jewish wedding: the rebirth and the rise of a Jewish state. I don't know if I will be privileged to see it; my son will. I believe in this as I am sure that tomorrow morning the sun will rise."
Jabotinsky's dream was too big?
His efforts at mass evacuation of European Jews to British Mandate Palestine (illegal in the face of the British blocking of Jewish refugees; there is no telling how many millions might have been saved had the British not shut the door to what they had declared would be a Jewish homeland) saved the lives of more than 100,000 people.
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His dream was manifested in the organizations that are his legacy: Betar, the nationalist youth movement based in the understanding that the best way for Jews to stop being victims of persecution is a kind of pride, a chivalry about one's Judaism, and being prepared to fight the persecutors; the New Zionist Organization (NZO), which helped facilitate the immigration of Jews while continuing to advocate for the establishment of the Jewish state; and the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (IZL) which helped organize and mobilize armed resistance in British Mandate
Palestine. Tnuat HaHerut, founded by Menachem Begin in 1948, was the political legacy of Revisionist Zionism, whose legacy is the Likud party, which is at the center of the coalition behind Israel's current government.
Peres' statement is nothing less than a cheap shot at Likud, and the roots of Israel's existence. The unrepentant peacenik who helped bring us the Oslo fiasco and all other worthless and weakening peace gestures since, now seeks to diminish the man without whom there might not be an Israel today, and the numbers of Nazi victims would certainly be higher.
The dream was too big? No Shimon, your vision is too small. It's too small to see that you have been attempting to get Israel to capitulate to the very types of forces that Jabotinsky warned world Jewry about; the types of forces that made his philosophies necessary to help insure the survival of the State in its earliest days, and now.
Every time Peres opens his mouth I am prepared to hear yet another worthless spew. The dream of Jabotinsky was not too big, Shimon. What is too big is the mental block you seem to possess that prevents you from believing in the Zionist vision; that Am Yisrael is entitled to live free and strong in its ancestral home, the right of every other nation on earth. And your vision is too small to accept the fact that Am Yisrael is the only nation from whom the world wishes to wrest that right.
His comments elicited this response from a reader at Arutz 7:
Peres is a disgusting, insane moron. To hear him criticise the great prophet Jabotinsky who tried to tell the Jews to flee Europe (only very few listened and fewer followed up on doing what was required to save themselves), is disgusting. Peres is a raving slobbering madman and he is a shame to all Jews and Israel.
Some of you might think that I wrote that, but I swear I didn't. If I had I probably would have left out the words "disgusting," and slobbering madman," and replaced them with "senile old douchebag." Is he a shame to all Jews? I don't think I'd go that far either. What he is is harmful.
Like the worn out notion of "land for peace" that you still think is the answer, Mr. Peres, you need to be retired.
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