The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir

by Lenni Brenner

FROM THE BACK 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.

Genres: Israel

224 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Lenni Brenner is an American Trotskyist writer. In the 1960s, Brenner was a prominent civil rights activist and a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War
Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He developed an interest in history from reading Hendrik Willem van Loon's The Story of Mankind which his brother had received as a bar mitzvah present. He became an atheist at age 10 or 12 and a Marxist at age 15. Brenner's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement began when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s. He also worked with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" march on Washington.

Reviews

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

zendeginameye menakhim begin!

[Jamul · Rating 5 out of 5]

man ouuuff....

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brenner is unabashedly Marxist and semi- anti-Zionist and this informs much of this book, to its detriment. The early section of the book on the life and career of Jabotinsky and Zionist Revisionism and its maximalist tendencies has much of interest, though Brenner is consistent in lambasting Jab and others which detracts from the scholarliness of the work. He makes much of the uses to which Jab and co. put anti-Semitism to use in their formulations for increasing emigration to Palestine prior to 1948, the facists tendencies of groups such as the Irgun and Betarim and the brief flirtation of rightist elements within these groups to come to some sort of accommodation with Nazi Germany to increase immigration to Palestine. Brenner, however, gets bogged down in his scathing accusations. Once he moves to Begin and Shamir, the book becomes a laundry list of Marxist-fed incongruities within Israeli society. A useful introduction to Jab's thought, but weak in the long run.