Revisionist Zionism at work

By Jeremy Brigham

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On the back page of the Nov. 27 Gazette was a picture of a hooded Palestinian holding a rock during a protest against an expansion of a Jewish settlement. The idea behind the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories is embedded in revisionist Zionism, an ideology that began to develop more than 80 years ago.

The background: British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour, in a move to help Britain win World War I, issued the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 in a letter to Baron Rothschild, a Jewish leader and prominent banker in England. In it, he promised the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine without prejudice to the religious rights of the people already there. Britain wanted the financial support Rothschild and the international Jewish community could offer.

When Britain gained the mandate from the League of Nations in the early 1920s to govern Palestine, the territory included the east and west side of the Jordan River. British officials divided the territory into two, the east side becoming Jordan, the west side Palestine. This limited the Jewish homeland to the west side, which the revisionists were unwilling to accept.

They also were not content with the majority Zionists who determined to build up the Jewish community in Palestine gradually and peacefully. Revisionists believed the land needed to be taken militarily and at once. Revisionists leaders were Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir.

In Palestine in the 1940s, Begin was a leader of the Irgun, a Jewish nationalist military group, and Shamir a leader in the Lehi. The British labeled both as terrorist groups. Both leaders became prime ministers - Begin from 1977-1983 and Shamir from 1983-1984 and 1986-1992.

When the Likud Party gained power in Israel in 1977, the revisionist ideology of militaristic expansionism guided it. The means of carrying out its ideology was to create settlements and infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza, defended by the Israel Defense Forces. Benjamin Netanyahu, current prime minister, is an ideological descendant of Jabotinsky and Begin, believing in the right of the Jewish state to expand and to use military means to secure territory. This is precisely what is happening.

If there is to be peace in the region, and if the United States is to be broker for peace, the U.S. government must recognize the roots of the ideology guiding the Israeli leaders, and develop a policy that addresses the inequities that result from such an ideology.

Jeremy Brigham has taught a course on the Middle East at Kirkwood Community College since 2003. Comments: brighamjeremy@q.com