David Isaac

From The Story of the Jewish Legion, pp. 181-2

"For the Balfour Declaration we have to thank Herzl and Rothschild and Pinsker and Moses Hess; still more, the Bilu and those who followed them, the colonists, workers and teachers, from Ruchama in the south to Metullah in the north. Not to mention that which, more than anything else, helped to establish our claim: the Book which is holy to them as to us. Perhaps nine whole steps toward the goal, perhaps ninety-nine, were made before the war, and only the final step during the war. But that final step was a great one...I say with the deep and cold conviction of an observer--speaking only of the short war-period: half the Balfour Declaration belongs to the Legion.
For the world is not an irresponsible organism; Balfour Declarations are not given to individuals. They can be given only to Movements. And how could the Zionist Movement express itself in those war years? It was broken and paralyzed, and was, by its nature, completely outside the narrow horizons of a warring world with its war governments. Only one manifestation of the Zionist will was able to break through on to this horizon, to show that Zionism was alive and prepared for sacrifice; to compel ministers, ambassadors and--most important of all--journalists, to treat the striving of the Jewish people for its country as a matter of urgent reality, as something which could not be postponed, which had to be given an immediate yes or no--and that was the Legion Movement."

Vladimir Jabotinsky’s book The Story of the Jewish Legion (Bernard Ackerman, 1945) is an inspiring tale of the great Revisionist leader’s struggle to create a Jewish fighting force in World War I to help liberate Palestine from the Turks and strengthen the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel.

The Jewish Legion was officially established in August, 1917 and had a major influence on the passage of the Balfour Declaration three months later. It’s worth remembering the story during the month marking the fifty-ninth anniversary of Israel’s independence.

It’s easy to draw parallels between the story of the Jewish Legion and the troubles, mostly self-inflicted, facing Israel today. Of no surprise to Outpost readers, the main opposition to the Jewish Legion came from the Jews.

As Col. John Henry Patterson, the Legion’s non-Jewish commander, relates in the book’s introduction, “The British officials were well aware of the widespread opposition to the Legion idea in Jewry itself, all the way from the Zionist headquarters to the poor Jewish masses of Whitechapel and the rich Jewish notables in the city.”

Indeed, Patterson writes that the London War Office was favorable to the idea of a Jewish Legion. The gallantry of the Zion Mule Corps in Gallipoli had become legendary. Were it not for the interference of the “Old Men of Zion,” a Jewish Army of 100,000 would have been formed, he says.

The idea for a Jewish Legion first came to Jabotinsky in the fifth month of the war when he was visiting Bordeaux as a Russian correspondent. He read a poster announcing Turkey’s entrance to the war on the side of the Central Powers. He writes: “I must confess: until that morning, in Bordeaux as everywhere else, I had been a mere observer, without any particular reasons for wishing full triumph to one side and crushing disaster to the other. My desire at this time was stalemate, and peace as soon as possible. Turkey’s move transformed me in one short morning into a fanatical believer in war until victory; Turkey’s move made this war ‘my war.’”

Jabotinsky believed even earlier that if Turkey and England were ever to go to war, the Jews should form a regiment to help conquer Palestine. He claims this idea would occur to any normal person. “I claim the title of a fully normal person. In Jewish colloquial parlance this title is sometimes translated by the expression goyisher kop; if it is true – so much the worse for us.” Jabotinsky would often say that he had a goyisher kop, that he thought like a gentile.

Jabotinsky visited Max Nordau in Spain and ran his idea by him. Nordau’s reaction demonstrates that he understood Jews all too well. “The old sage replied to my question with a profound saying: it wasn’t until much later that I came to realize how profound it was,” Jabotinsky writes. “He shook his wise head and said, ‘This, my young friend, is logic; but logic is a Greek art, and Jews can’t stand it. The Jew learns not by way of reason but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky; he waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia – then he makes up his mind.’”

The motivations of Jabotinsky’s opponents varied. The assimilationists didn’t want England’s Jews to stand out as Jews. They feared this would affect their own status as Englishmen. The Zionist organizations wanted the Jews to remain neutral, worried what fighting for England might mean for the already-imperiled Jewish community of Turkish-ruled Palestine.

The masses in the Jewish center of Whitechapel, many of them recent Russian immigrants, were simply indifferent. Jabotinsky describes them as “a separate isle inside England.” Young, well-fed Jewish men went to movies, theatres and cafes as England’s youth died in trenches. This created a growing resentment among the English. “Not only was it impossible to make them realize the true situation; it was impossible even to trouble their placidity,” Jabotinsky wrote.

This indifference strikes a chord for those who watched Israelis sunning themselves on the beaches in Tel Aviv as their fellow Jews were ousted from their homes in Gaza. At least the Polish or Russian Jews in England could say, “Why should we do anything? We are not true Englishmen.” One wonders what excuse Tel Aviv’s sun worshippers have.

It was the threat that Britain might turn them over for conscription by the Russian Army that finally shook these Jews from their indifference. A choice between serving in a Jewish Legion to liberate Palestine or in the Russian army was an easy one to make.

The Jewish Legion went on to serve gallantly and play an important role in the conquest of Palestine. Jabotinsky went with them as a Lieutenant. One who did not go with them was Joseph Trumpeldor, though he helped to create the Legion. His one arm and his foreign status were the excuses given by Britain’s bureaucrats. Next to Jabotinsky he’s the most admirable man in The Story of the Jewish Legion.

The Russian officer who would later perish at Tel-Hai was already famous for his courage. Jabotinsky describes him warmly. “In Hebrew his favorite expression was en davar (never mind); and they say it was with these words on his lips that he died, five years later, at Tel-Hai. There was a complete philosophy contained in this en davar; do not exaggerate; do not see danger where none exists; do not regard a man who does his duty as a hero – for history is long, the Jewish people everlasting, and truth is sacred, but everything else, trouble and care and pain and death, en davar.

Col. Patterson, too, is a noble character. A famous lion hunter who hunted with Theodore Roosevelt, his favorite toast was, “Here’s to troubles,” for without them the world wouldn’t progress. Reading the book one can't help wishing there were more like these men today.

Jabotinsky himself comes across as a modest man. He doesn’t dwell on the troubles his political enemies caused him. His straightforward observations remain true today. ”You cannot believe in anything in the world, if you admit even once that perhaps your opponents are right, and not you. This is not the way to do things. There is but one truth in the world, and it is all yours. If you are not sure of it, stay at home; but if you are sure, don’t look back, and it will be your way.”

Virtually everything Israel’s governments have done since Oslo has been the antithesis of the principle set out above. Every new concession is another admission of wrong. Israel’s strategy, if one can call it that, is a continuing stream of mea culpas. But were he alive today, this wouldn’t discourage Jabotinsky from pressing onward. He would likely say, emulating Trumpeldor, “En davar.”

(The English version of “The Story of the Jewish Legion” is wonderfully translated from the Yiddish by Shmuel Katz -- a translation he made in his teenage years. David Isaac is a writer living in Los Angeles.)