Zev Jabotinsky

A simple but impressive dark black marble tombstone covers the graves of Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, and his wife, Yohana, reinterred to the soil of Mount Herzl Jerusalem, overlooking the Yad Vashem Complex, as if forcing those who come to reconsider Jabotinsky's warnings in the 1930's about the approaching catastrophe about to destroy the House of Israel in Europe.

Jabotinsky, whose 57th death anniversary will be commemorated on August 3rd this year, corresponding to the 29th of Tamuz on the Hebrew calendar, was reburied in Israel only in 1964. Israel's first Prime Minister, and bitter personal rival, David Ben-Gurion, refused to fulfill Jabotinsky's will which stipulated that only on the order of a future Jewish government in Israel could he be removed from his temporary resting-place in New York where he died in 1940 after attending a Betar youth camp weekend in Hunter, in upstate New York.

Born in 1880 in Odessa, Russia, Jabotinsky was a language prodigy, becoming a journalist for Russian papers in Italy and Switzerland at the age of 17. He graduated university in Rome and in 1908 completed his Master's Degree in Austria.

He became deeply involved in Zionism, especially following the 1903 anti- Jewish pogroms. He was active in self-defense groups, translated Bialik's poetry, wrote poetry and prose himself and became the most famous of Russia's Zionist orators.

He founded the British-sponsored Jewish Legion to fight in then-Palestine in the First World War, organized Jewish defense in Jerusalem against Arab rioters in 1920 for which he was sentenced to a jail term, later quashed, and became a member of the World Zionist Executive.

Disillusioned with Chaim Weizmann's policies, he resigned in 1923, established the Revisionist Zionists in 1925 and sponsored a more assertive and non-socialist approach to the rebuilding of the Jewish homeland.

Organizations that were prominent in his efforts to more speedily obtain Jewish liberation included the Betar youth, the Irgun underground, the New Zionist Organization and the Brit HeChayil former soldiers association plus many more.

He encouraged illegal immigration, expressions of pride such as the demonstration at the Western Wall in 1929 and was deeply effected when the first gallows' martyr in modern times, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, was hanged by the British in 1938 for attacking Arab transport during the Arab riots of 1936-39.

He died in the US while attempting to revive the Jewish fighting units to participate alongside the Allies in World War Two.

Jabotinsky on the Web

Writings by Jabotinsky

Books by Zev Jabotinsky (English)

Books about Zev Jabotinsky (English)