In contemporary Israel, as Avi Shilon points out in his thought-provoking essay in Mosaic, the name of the great Zionist leader and strategist Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) offers something for almost everyone. A “seminal figure in the history of the Israeli right,” the inspiration of today’s Likud party, and a prolific author, he left behind a huge corpus of quotable thoughts and ideas. These, however, are so rich in nuance that it’s easy for any two people to reach contradictory conclusions about what he really believed and meant.
More about: David Ben-Gurion, Israel & Zionism, Joseph Trumpeldor, Vladimir Jabotinsky