Ted Belman
The other day, I met with MK Arieh Eldad to learn from his perspective what was going on, how the forces are lining up for the upcoming elections and how we can keep Judea and Samaria.
Before ending the meeting he graciously gave me a book, The Jewish Revolution, written by his father, Dr Israel Eldad and published last year by Gefen Publishing House.
Israel Eldad is described on the book flap as follows,
Scholar, writer and active Zionist revolutionary Israel Eldad was born in Galicia in 1910. After graduating from the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish Studies at the Vilna Teachers’ Seminary. Invited by Menachem Begin, he joined the Warsaw leadership of B’rit Trumpeldor – “Betar” – the youth section of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist Party. In 1938 he first met Avraham Stern, founder of the underground Zionist movement Lohamei Heirut Israel, “The Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi” (the Stern Group). Arriving in Palestine in 1941, he joined the underground as a member of Lehi Headquarters Staff. During the crucial years of World War II, when the British Mandatory Government was attempting to appease the Arabs by conducting a policy of repression against Palestine’s Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited the Wall Newspaper – “illegal” bulletins pasted on the walls at night – since compiled in book form as Let the Walls Speak.
I have always been fascinated by the struggle of the Jews to rid themselves of antisemitism since the French Revolution and particularly in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Israel Eldad covers this period with great insight as one of the leaders at the time.
In his first chapter, An Existence of Nonconformity, he takes pride in Jewish exceptionalism rather than be embarrassed by it. He points out that starting with Abraham and then Moses, Jews have always been nonconformists or revolutionaries if you will. This idea he writes is captured in the Bible when Abraham hear’s G-d tell him, “Get thee out of thy country, and from they kindred,and from they father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee.” This tendancy to revolt against what is for independence and something better was exemplified by the Maccabees and then by the Jewish Wars against Rome. Jews have never given up to fight to be free Jews.
In his second chapter, The Fall of the Bastille, he points out that the fall “laid the foundation for the gas ovens at Auschwitz”. This will surprise you as it did me. He argues that the “emancipation” of the Jews brought about by the French Revolution created the “Jewish Problem”. That is because, so long as the Jews were separated in a whole host of ways, they were no problem, they knew their place. But once they were released to enter into mainstream society they became a problem because they out shone and out preformed the gentiles way beyond their numbers. It was the same with the Spanish Inquisition. It wasn’t the steadfast Jews who were being burnt at the stake but the Jewish conversos who were succeeding too much in gentile society and so had to be put down. Fascinating.
Once when I was returning to Canada from the UK, I sat beside a prominent broker who was drinking a full bottle of wine on his own and expounding on the Jews. After noting the fabulous success in Canada of the Bronfmans, the Belzbergs and the Reichmans, he said “In every generation, the Jews climb up the ladder of success, but we are always there to knock the ladder out from underneath them.” They just have to keep the Jew boys down.
Gefen Publishing summarizes the book.
With The Jewish Revolution classical Zionism has found its true interpretation. In the highest tradition of the soldier-statesman, Dr. Israel Eldad advocates a form of Zionism that is unpopular in conventional society. He condemns “establishmentarian,” “social-club” Zionism as a belittling of Jewish history and a threat to Jewish lives. In its place, he calls for a revolutionary creed – one that dares assert its right to the Jewish homeland; not as defined by diplomats, politicians and Security Council Resolutions, but in biblical, historical terms.
He boldly declares that Jewish “diplomacy” failed to save millions of European Jews, and he accuses world leaders of inviting new Holocausts by denying history’s lessons and ignoring its imperatives. He warns the Jewish people that it can rely only on its own forces, and he offers a solution to the Arab problem in the Middle East.
The Jewish Revolution combines the passion of the patriot, the logic of the scholar and the sweep of the historian.
Israel Eldad, when he arrived in Israel in ‘41, joined the Fighters for Freedom of Israel (FFI) which was an offshoot of Jabotinsky’s youth movement Betar. They introduced a whole new concept. Rather then setting up a defence against attacks or restrictions, they went on offense to liberate their own land. Who were the British to tell them otherwise. They believed that the land belonged to them and must be taken by force and not sufferance. The Jewish establishment finally came around to the view that the Jews must fight for what is rightly theirs but it was still conflicted as evidenced by its choice of name for the Israel army, Zahal, the Jewish Defense Force.
Sadly the current government has forgot the lessons of the past and is consummed by defense. Where is Jabotinsky or Eldad when we need them now. Arieh Eldad is certainly cut from the same cloth and there are many others. Lets hope they can make a difference and put us back on offense, as liberators of our land.
This book is essential reading for any Zionist. The inspiration it provides can’t help but lead to action.
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