The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir

FROM THE BACK COVER: The Iron Wall is a comprehensive and documented history of Revisionism which is now the dominant ideological tendency in present-day Zionism. Starting with the pre-Revisionist period of Vladimir Jabotinsky's life, this book traces the origins and course of what used to be regarded as the lunatic fringe of Zionism, but which has, since 1977, dominated the Likud Administrations of Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir. Lenni Brenner gives his readers an account of Revisionism that is indispensable to any understanding of the Israel¡ Government's policies on the West Bank and in the Middle East as a whole. Jabotinsky, the movement's founder, laid down ideological guidelines not merely for his own tendency within Zionism, but, indeed, increasingly for Zionism as a whole. He was explicit in his racism, his colonialism, and the pro-capitalist nature of his movement. Arguing that no compromise with the Palestinians was possible, his stance led the Revisionists into close connections with Mussolini as well as terrorism against the Arabs. Begin saw himself explicitly as his mentor's successor, with results since 1977 that are there for al¡ to see. And the subsequent Likud Prime Minister, Shamir, was himself the last of the Revisionist leaders. He created the Stern Gang that proposed a war-time alliance with Adolf Hitler and the establishment of a totalitarian Jewish state. As Lenni Brenner shows in this deeply disturbing book, Shamir's Revisionist legacy makes it likely that he will further curtail the rights of Israel's Jews as well as subject the Palestinians to yet more repression and militarist aggression, as Zionism spirals ever further to the Right.