From a July 15 letter from Lenni Brenner, American historian, to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Brenner has circulated his letter widely, Jeff Blankfort gave it to me:
I must now question you re Jabotinsky’s most important writing, his 1923 article, “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs),” so that Americans can at least have a clearer perspective on the Zionist aspect of the Middle East’s politics. As I know you are busy, I’ll wait seven days for your reply, and then circulate this note and your reply over the internet. If you don’t reply, I’ll circulate this note and an English translation of The Iron Wall. In either case, Americans will have a clearer historical perspective re the Likud’s politics.
Jabotinsky defined Zionism as a colonizing movement. There are 14 usages of “colonisation,” “colonists,” “the Jewish colonist,” etc., in the article. He insisted that “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population –- behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not. What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that an outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.”
You frequently use Jabotinsky’s term, the iron wall. How do you, today
in 2011, evaluate Jabotinsky’s 1923 article? Is it still valid? In what
ways is it out of date? Was Zionism indeed a colonial movement in 1923?
Is it still a colonial movement?I look forward to your answers to these questions and your further
comments about Jabotinsky’s article.
