Jewish Self Criticism Candor Schechtman

Fighter and Prophet: The Last Years, by Joseph B. Schechtman, Adolph Gourevitch (Afterword).

Violence: Jews Against Jews. Politics of Assassinations. Candid Jewish Self-Criticism

This book contains seldom-mentioned information. For example:

POGROMS: JEWS AGAINST JEWS

The author has an interesting commentary on Jew-on-Jew violence. When Jabotinsky spoke, he often faced well-planned Jewish Communist and Jewish Socialist heckling and disruption. Jabotinsky used “self-defense” units, comprising Barissia and later Betar, to beat up the disrupters. (p. 36; 110-111; 190-191). Sometimes the Revisionist youth instigated violence against Jewish leftists. (p. 462).

But we never hear about any of this. All we hear is about occasional Polish violence against Jews.

ANOTHER POLITICIZED ASSASSINATION

The assassination of Poland’s President Gabriel Narutowicz has long been politicized. The Communists used it as proof of the rottenness of pre-Communist Poland. It is still used as a club, by LEWAKS and certain Jews, as an indictment of Poland’s Catholic culture in general and the Endeks in particular. However, making political hay out of an assassination is so easy to make.

A Revisionist (Stavsky) was accused of the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff in Tel Aviv in 1933. Arlosoroff had been anti-Revisionist. Jewish leftists and other anti-Revisionists raised a hue and cry, trying to associate all Revisionists with the crime. Jabotinsky pointed out that, ironically, blaming an entire community for the actions of one of its individuals had been a poison weapon of anti-Semites. (p. 186). The strong attack against the accused assassin, Stavsky, before he had been convicted of the crime amounted, in Jabotinsky’s words, to a “…shameful pogrom and blood libel campaign conducted by Jews against Jews.” (p. 187). Some Jews vowed to kill Revisionists to avenge Arlosoroff’s blood but, while this did not happen, there were violent attempts against Jabotinsky. (pp. 189-190). [In time, Stavsky was acquitted and the crime was never solved.]

JABOTINSKY WAS NO JEWISH FASCIST, AS CHARGED BY HIS DETRACTORS

Jabotinsky opposed the totalitarianism of both fascism and Communism. (p. 270). He opposed socialism, and saw in the old teachings of the Bible the remedy for social injustice. (pp. 242-243).

CONFRONTATION OF THE JEWISH SENSE OF SUPERIORITY OVER NON-JEWS

Instead of seeing only Poles as being wrong to Jews, Jabotinsky was candid about prejudices emanating from the Jewish side. He commented: “`The main difficulty lies in the attitude of the Zionist leaders toward the non-Jewish world…Theirs is a typical ghetto mentality, which regards all non-Jews as GOYIM, as enemies. With such a mentality nothing can be achieved. It is time that the Jewish people began to have confidence in the GOYIM. The GOYIM have not produced only Hamans; they have also produced great idealists who have given their blood for the cause of humanity.'” (p. 71; see also p. 349 for similar views by pioneer Zionist Teodor Herzl).

DYNAMICS OF JABOTINSKY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE POLES

Many Jewish groups opposed Jabotinsky’s dealings with the Polish government, seeing them as a pandering to Polish anti-Semitic dreams of getting rid of most of Poland’s Jews. Years later, one of Jabotinsky’s detractors, the famous Yiddish novelist Sholom Asch, expressed deep regret for having opposed Jabotinsky’s evacuation plan. (p. 341).

At least some of the Polish friendship towards Jabotinsky was sincere. For instance, the author, Schechtman, personally witnessed the close friendship of Polish Count Lubienski and Jabotinsky. (p. 354). The high regard was reciprocated. Years later, long after the overpopulation of Jews in Poland had become moot, the delayed news of Jabotinsky’s 1940 death reached the Lukishki Prison in Soviet-occupied Wilno (Vilnius). Eighteen inmate gentile Poles–professors from Wilno and Krakow universities–spontaneously joined the Jewish inmates in saying Kaddish. (p. 399).