Modern Zionism began primarily as a nationalistic movement to obtain political power in Palestine. But the 1967 war, when the Israelis took control of Jerusalem and the West Bank, sparked a type of secular messianism that had lingered just under the surface. It is a peculiar belief of messianism that is held by atheistic Jews who dominate the Israeli government even today. It is the belief that the Jewish people collectively are its own messiah.

Jewish opinion is divided on this subject. But this is the political view that has set the course of the modern Israeli state. This means simply that the people got tired of waiting for a savior to come and free them from the iron yoke that God had imposed upon them in the first century. They did not feel that they had to repent of rejecting the Messiah, and so they could not understand why God would allow this yoke to remain upon them for 1,900 years.

They finally concluded that God either did not exist, or, if He existed at all, expected them to be their own savior. Hence, certain Jewish leaders were able to revive the ancient spirit of revolt, overturning centuries of rabbinic teaching in Judaism that they must await the coming of the Messiah before returning to Palestine.

Non-Zionist Rabbis Speak Out

There are, even today, significant numbers of Jewish rabbis who are hotly anti-Zionist, but most Christians never hear their voices. For example, Dr. Israel Shahak, emeritus professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem until his death last year, had long been an advocate of human rights for Palestinian people. He was the founder of the Israeli League of Human Rights. He wrote a letter published by the London Times on Jan. 27, 1973 entitled, “A Jewish Duty or Jewish Apostasy?”

“I am a Jew living in Israel, and consider myself a law-abiding citizen. I serve in the army every year, in spite of being nearly forty years old. But I am not ‘devoted’ to the State of Israel or to any other state or human organization. I am devoted to my ideals. I believe in speaking the truth and in doing something for securing justice and equality for all human beings. . .

“But to be devoted to the State? I can well imagine Amos or Isaiah splitting their sides with laughter if somebody had demanded of them to be ‘devoted’ to the Kingdom of Israel or the Kingdom of Judah. ‘Hate evil and love good and establish judgment in the gate,’ says Amos (Chapter 5, verse 15), who does not spare a word of devotion to the great-warlike and successful Kingdom of Israel of his times.

“In fact, this new doctrine preached as a Jewish duty, is nothing but Jewish apostasy. All Jews used to believe and say it three times a day, that a Jew should be devoted to God, and God alone. A small minority still believes it. But it seems to me that the majority of my people has left God, and has substituted an idol in its place, exactly as happened when they were so devoted to the Golden Calf in the desert that they gave away their gold to make it. The name of this modern idol is the State of Israel.”

Other rabbis are just as outspoken as Dr. Shahak. Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandel wrote an article May 26, 2000 [http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/tenquestions.html],

“. . . We should avoid the untenable position of the robber who prays for Divine help in carrying out his crime. We should pray that Zionism and its fruits vanish from the Earth, and that we be redeemed by the Messiah with dispatch.

“A prisoner is released only when he has served his time, or if he is pardoned by the President for good behavior. If he attempts escape and is apprehended, his term is lengthened, besides the beating he receives when he is caught.

“. . . We have been sentenced to exile by the King of Kings because of our sins. The eternal, blessed be he, has decreed that we accept the exile with humble gratitude until the time comes, or until we merit His pardon through repentance. If we seek to end the exile with force, God will catch us, as our sages have forewarned, and our sentence becomes longer and more difficult.

“Many times in the past have segments of our people been defrauded by false messiahs—but none of the false messiahs has been as fallacious and delusory as the lie of Zionism. . . . If we wish our exile-sentence commuted, we must appeal through repentance . . . Let it be clearly understood that never in Jewish history (even in the time of Jeroboam or Achav) have such hostile atheists stood at the helm of the Jewish people as today.”

Though many rabbis warned the people against the errors of Zionism, the idea of returning to the land proved to be too tantalizing for a great many Jews. It awakened a hope within them long nurtured by Judaism, and Zionism offered them an immediate reward without awaiting for a divine Messiah. Zionism would give them a land without the need for repentance, for they would be their own messiah. They would “redeem” the land themselves by transferring it to Jewish ownership. This would be done at first by purchasing land peacefully; but ultimately, if Arabs refused to sell the land, it would be appropriated by the Land Acquisition Act of 1953, legalizing all seizures of Arab land. The rest of the land would be conquered by military force whenever possible.

Arab Reaction to Zionism

The Jewish Agency was an organization that attempted to work primarily to bring about the conquest of Palestine by political means—that is, by immigration. The Arabs objected to the Zionist objective of establishing a Jewish State, citing earlier British promises that, if anything, there should be an independent Palestinian State. But since Transjordan had already been given statehood, the British gave them assurances that Palestine would be turned into a Palestinian State in which Jews would be allowed to live as equal citizens.

Many Arabs, however, were far-sighted enough to see that the Zionists would never content themselves by living as equals. Zionist literature showed clearly their intent to establish a Jewish state.

The mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, religious leader of Jerusalem, was outspokenly militant and periodically urged the Arabs to kill Jews that he believed were taking over their land and threatening even their holy places. In 1920 more than 130 Jews and close to 100 Arabs were killed in the fighting around Jerusalem, Hebron, Haifa, Safed, and other Jewish settlements. The mufti was not far-sighted enough to see that his actions merely legitimized the Zionists, who could then demonize the Arabs and garner world sympathy. Blinded by hatred and vengeance, he forsook the moral high ground and soon expended any world sympathy for Palestinian rights that the world may have had. Taking justice into their own hands, they made it more difficult for the British to defend them in their legitimate grievances.

The British government was caught in the cross-fire of their own making. By this time they knew that they had created a monster that they could not control. Resenting the Jewish insistence upon unlimited immigration rights, the British defended the Jewish Zionists only half-heartedly. They attempted to limit the Jewish immigration to the number that the land could reasonably absorb, but came under fire from the Zionists. It was obvious that they intended to establish a Jewish state and would never be content for a mere “homeland.”

Arabs, too, soon saw that Britain had no intention of granting them independence. They observed the Zionists putting pressure upon Britain to turn Palestine into a Jewish state with a majority Jewish population with the intent to have Jewish rule over a Palestinian minority. Having felt betrayed by the British already, many Arabs had no confidence in the British government’s will to resist the published Zionist intention of establishing a Jewish state.

With each Arab retaliation against Jewish immigrants, and seeing that the British were reluctant or unable to defend them against the Arabs, the Zionists took more and more responsibility for their self-defense. And as time passed, the people became more militant. After all, once they had accepted the basic premise of Zionism and had moved to Palestine, so now they had no choice but to defend themselves.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, Father of Jewish Terrorism

By the mid-1930’s the situation was ripe for the next level of violence. The perfect man for the job was a man named Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky had been the first commander of the Haganah, the Jewish defense organization founded in 1919 by the World Zionist Organization. In 1923 he founded Betar, named after the fortress where Bar Kokba made his last stand in his revolt against Rome in 135 A.D. (See FFI #161.) Bar Kokba’s messianic revolt was the reason Rome banned all Jews from setting foot in Jerusalem. Bar Kokba, a false messiah, was Jabotinsky’s role model and the hero of all the Jewish terrorists in the 1940’s.

Jabotinsky is the father of Jewish terrorism, which sought to continue the messianic nationalism of the past, whose military messiahs always found sympathy among the Jews. In 1935 he left the mainstream Zionist movement and established the radical Zionist Revisionist Organization in opposition to the World Zionist Organization, headed by Chaim Weizmann. Jabotinsky was, in fact, the embodiment of the “bloody city” principle of the old Jerusalem.

Former Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, wrote about Jabotinsky in his book, The Revolt, p. 40,

“The revolt sprang from the earth. . . The renewed strength which came to us, and especially to our youth, from contact with the soil of our ancient land, is no legend but a fact. The officials of the British Foreign Office had no conception of this when they made their plans. . . They could not gauge the character of the Jews who came to Eretz Israel. They assumed that in Eretz Israel, too, the Jews would continue to be timid suppliants for protection. . . But those unseen forces, which have ever saved the Jewish people from obliteration, demolished the British assumption. Vladimir Jabotinsky appeared, educating a whole generation to resist, to be ready for sacrifice, for revolt and for war. David Raziel appeared, the greatest Jewish military mind of our generation, to carry out the decisive act; the first attack by Jewish arms.”

Mr. Begin later became the head of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the most important and effective Jewish terrorist organization in the 1940’s.

Another former Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, lauds him enthusiastically as well on page 9 of his book, Summing Up,

“Without doubt, Jabotinsky was the most dynamic and controversial of the many gifted men who left their mark on the Zionist movement and, subsequently, on the State of Israel. . . . For ever the target of strong feelings, he was at once hated, worshipped, feared and admired; accepted as a supreme leader by some, he was rejected by others as a dangerous extremist whose concepts and supporters, if allowed to prevail, would degrade and destroy the essence of the Zionist cause. . .

“Today Jabotinsky’s name and spirit are kept alive mostly through the Likud Party, which, to a significant degree, represents and articulates his basic philosophy and is, so to speak, executor of his political testament.”

Later, on page 11 he sums up by saying of him,

“Essentially, Jabotinsky’s vision of Zionism achieved can be compressed into one sentence: a Jewish majority in a Jewish state in the whole of the biblical Land of Israel.”

Mr. Shamir was the second most important Jewish terrorist leader in the 1940’s, heading the Lehi (also called the Stern Gang). Jabotinsky was the spiritual inspiration behind the Jewish terrorism waged against the British by both Mr. Begin and Mr. Shamir during the 1940’s.

The Rise of Jewish Terrorism

In 1936 the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, called for a general strike among the Arabs. They vowed to close down the economy, but only succeeded in vacating jobs that were quickly filled by new Jewish immigrants, who were in need of employment. Enraged by the failure of the strike, they turned to more violent measures, and Palestine exploded in violence once again. The mufti was short on wisdom and long on hatred.

In this context, the Revisionist movement gave birth first to the Irgun Zvai Leumi (“National Military Organization”) in April 1937 and, shortly afterward, the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, called F. F. I, or Lehi, the acronym for its Hebrew name, Lohamei Herut Yisrael. Named also after its founder, Avraham Stern, it is also known by their friends as the Stern Group and by their adversaries as the Stern Gang.

Jabotinsky himself died in New York in 1940. As for Avraham Stern, he was soon found by British police and immediately executed without trial in 1942. Both Shamir and Begin decried this execution as a “murder.” Perhaps it was. But in more recent years, the Israeli government has executed many Arab terrorists in similar fashion without trial. The Arabs also call this murder. The Israelis, however, operate on a double standard and do not consider the execution of Arab terrorists to be murder. It is only murder if the terrorist is a Jew.

From 1943 to 1948 the Irgun terrorists were led by Menachem Begin, the man who became the Likud Party’s first Prime Minister of Israel in 1977.

Jewish Pawns in their Leaders’ Hands

During the British Mandate government in Palestine (1922-1948), the average Jew was caught in the middle, for he was being used as a pawn in a bigger game than he realized. In 1941 and 1942 the German Gestapo offered to transport all Jews to Spain for $1,000 for each family, on condition that these Jews not move to Palestine. The Jewish Agency declined the offer—they must move to Palestine or suffer in their own countries.

In 1944 a similar offer was made in regard to Hungarian Jews. Again, the Jewish Agency declined the offer—they must move to Palestine or suffer in their own countries to put propaganda pressure upon the European governments. Germany and Britain, during World War II, even agreed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe and resettle them in British colonies. It was the Jewish Agency that refused the offer—they must move to Palestine or suffer in their own countries.

The British government granted to 300 rabbis and their families visas to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage through Turkey. The Jewish Agency stopped this plan, too, saying that the 300 rabbis and their families ought to be “gassed” for their disloyalty to Zionism. Presumably it was more acceptable to the Jewish Agency that their Jewish pawns be “gassed” to put more pressure on Britain.

Throughout the early 1900’s, thousands of Jews were convinced to move to Palestine illegally in order to force a change in British policy. When stopped at the border (or harbor), then the game turned bloody and grim. Jewish author, Alfred Lilienthal writes on page 359 of his book, The Zionist Connection II,

“Violence was often used against their own, as on November 25, 1940, when the S.S. Patria was blown up in the Haifa harbor, killing 276 illegal Jewish immigrant passengers. At the time of the incident these deaths were attributed to the British, and it was not until ten years later that the responsibility for this disaster was placed at the door of the Zionists. David Flinker, Israeli correspondent of the Jewish Morning Journal (the largest Yiddish daily) described what had happened:

“. . . ‘It was then that the Haganah General Staff took a decision at which their leaders shuddered. The decision was not to permit the Patria to leave Jaffa. The English must be given to understand that Jews could not be driven away from their own country. The Patria must be blown up. . . . The number of victims was officially placed at 276. The survivors were permitted by the High Commissioner to land.’

“Fifteen months later the S.S. Struma exploded in the Black Sea, killing 769 illegal Jewish immigrants. The Jewish Agency described it as an act of ‘mass-protest and mass-suicide,’ and the U.S. media once more placed the responsibility for these deaths at the door of the British and their Palestinian immigration policy.”

The Haganah (“Defense”) was the official defense organization of the Jewish Agency in Palestine. Though it operated as an underground military group, the British allowed it to operate somewhat freely, as long as it did not attack British targets. It is apparent from the blowing up of the Patria (and perhaps the Struma as well) that the Haganah was fully capable and prepared to sacrifice its own people to put pressure upon the British government to allow more immigration. The Jewish Agency called it “mass-protest and mass-suicide.” It is more accurate to view it as “assisted suicide.”

Menachem Begin writes about the sinking of the Patria on pages 35 and 36 of his book, The Revolt, saying,

“The Patria never sailed. Jewish ‘terrorists’ placed a bomb to prevent its departure. The bomb exploded and more than two hundred Jews were killed or drowned. The British authorities noted the fact that this was not an Irgun Zvai Leumi operation; it was the Haganah which had placed the bomb.”

Obviously, the Jewish Agency, headed by David Ben-Gurion, believed that the end justified the means. Even the great Arch-terrorist Menachem Begin would not have deliberately murdered hundreds of Jews to achieve his goal of a Jewish State, though his bombing of the King David Hotel did kill 17 Jews out of a total of 91. But the Jewish Agency needed another “British” atrocity in order to help their cause. The British were apparently not sufficiently ruthless, so the Haganah had to help with the murder of 276 Jews and then blame the British for the atrocity.

But with a Haganah mindset like that, we cannot help but wonder how many other Jews the Haganah murdered in order to generate sympathy and further its cause.

The bombing of the Stuma had another consequence. Yitshak Shamir, who was later to become one of Israel’s Prime Ministers, was at this time a leading Jewish terrorist in the Lehi. In his biography, Summing Up, pages 41 and 52 describe the sinking of the Struma and how it affected Lehi’s decision to assassinate Britain’s Lord Moyne.

Toronto’s The Globe and Mail newspaper for Aug. 6, 1994 carried a review of Shamir’s Summing Up, stating:

“Shamir took part in the decision to kill Lord Moyne, and he helped plan the bold and complex operation. The experience was to serve him well later. During his years with the Mossad, Israel’s security and intelligence service, he reportedly directed a squad of assassins. Shamir says he also ordered the execution of a Lehi member, a fanatic who threatened to disrupt the organization. How many other killings he ordered, he does not say. Shamir insists he has no regrets about his actions.”

Newspapers seldom mention the fact that the Israeli state was founded by Jewish terrorists. The Israelis did not oppose terrorism until after they pardoned themselves and became the statesmen of their newly-created Jewish State.