The Founding Fathers of Zionism [Hardcover]

Benzion Netanyahu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2012

Before the state of Israel became a reality in 1948, a group of thinkers advanced the idea; five of these men would become icons of the Zionist movement, and today, renowned his- tory professor Benzion Netanyahu (himself a significant figure) has profiled The Founding Fathers of Zionism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A brilliant, elegantly written work, highly original and personalin its portrayal of five of the most important of Zionist theorists,from Pinsker to Jabotinsky. The author...was himself an activist in the Revisionist Zionist movement and an aide to one the founders about whom he writes....-Michael Curtis, Rutgers University

About the Author

Benzion Netanyahu was born in March 25, 1910. He is an historian and a professor emeritus at Cornell University. He served as secretary to Ze'ev Jabotinshy, and was a Revisionist leader of the Zionist Movement in the United States. He has three sons: Yonatan (killed at Entebbe), Benjamin (Israeli Prime Minister, 1996-99, 2009-present), and Iddo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Balfour Books (June 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933267151
• ISBN-13: 978-1933267159
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very enlightening book that reveals information many do not know June 29, 2012

By Israel Drazin TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Benzion Netanyahu is the perfect person to write this insightful book containing five scholarly essays on five of the most significant figures in the evolution of modern Zionism: Leo Pinsker, Theodore Herzl. Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill, and Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Netanyahu is the author of two other widely-acclaimed scholarly books about Jews and Spain: Don Isaac Abravenel and The Marranos of Spain. He is the father of two famous Zionist-oriented sons: Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu who commanded the Entebbe Rescue Force and lost his life in Entebbe on July 4, 1976, and Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu who is presently the Prime Minister of Israel. Gefen Publishing House, the joint publisher of this volume, has books by all three of these men. This volume was a joint publication with Balfour Books.

Netanyahu points out that modern Israel is built on the intellectual foundations of Zionism's founding fathers, just as the United States is built on the principles formulated by America's founding fathers. The ideas that these five men taught Jews changed Jewish history, just as those taught by American fathers changed their country. These ideas have withstood the test of time. The insights of both are not relevant to their country alone; these men taught ideas that are important for all nations and people.

One of the many lessons that the Israeli Zionists taught is that it may be impossible to cause anti-Semitism to disappear, but people must realize that a strong Jewish State would give Jews the power to defend themselves. This lesson has been expanded today to an understanding that a viable Israel will help secure America and its ideals....

Netanyahu introduces readers to each of these five men and describes the times they lived in, their difficulties, the difficulties of other Jews, the situation in their own and other countries, and what prompted them to encourage their people to establish a State of their own. For example, discussing the first of the five, Leo Pinsker (1821-1891), he reveals that other nations pushed for independence years before Pinsker spoke up. What, he asks, restrained the Jews from having a nationalistic idea earlier like the other nations, and what was different when the nationalistic idea finally arose among Jews?

Netanyahu shows that the founding fathers of Zionism were not religious Jews. What, then, he asks, was the basis of their thoughts and where did religion fit into it, if at all? How can an assimilated Jew, totally uninterested in the Jewish religion and culture become not only a Zionist but its leader? What role did Jewish history, anti-Semitism, pogroms, the Hebrew language, a Jewish environment, and a Jewish education play? "Perhaps the greatest riddle," Netanyahu writes, is "the mysterious phenomenon of (Theodor) Herzl...the unique admiration for him, which persists even today." Herzl (1860-1904) introduced the concept of Zionism to the world. But in the year he died there was much opposition to him among fellow Zionists. In fact, the aggravation of this opposition may have caused his early death.

This book will prove to be enlightening to many who will be fascinated by the facts that Netanyahu reveals. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very insightful July 20, 2012

By Vivian Lopez

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I enjoyed reading this book very much. These four men were truly amazing people. Their personal stories are so well written. You definitely walk with an appreciation for the sense of vision these founding fathers had.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Just Axe to Grind March 11, 2013

By igal zuravicky

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The book is written with a definite political agenda and a view point, but as such it fills a gaping hole in the story of Zionism which needed to be filled. Narrowing the founding fathers of Zionism to just five is a daunting task, and to include both Norau and Zangwill in this short list corrects an injustice caused by the left slant that has controlled the story telling and historiography of Zionism. To include especially Zangwill, given his almost complete absence in many other books on Zionism, is courageous. The documentation is scant to non-existing, but the fact that the book is based on work that dates back more than 50 years and judges the founding fathers in light of of the then contemporaneous events makes up for the lack of sources. This is a view of Zionism from the right side of the political spectrum, but it accomplishes some badly needed balancing of the prevailing left view point. It reads well and is worth reading.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The End of a Line August 13, 2012

By Omer Belsky VINE™ VOICE

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The late professor Benzion Netanyahu, father of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was well known as a scholar of Judaism in the Middle Ages, and as a hardline right wing zionist ideologue. This book, actually a collection of essays, most of which were written before the foundation of the state of Israel, offers a partial view on some key personalities in Zionism, and especially in Revisionist (Right Wing) Zionism. The title itself is misleading - surely no list which excludes Chaim Weitzman and David Ben Gurion can be an account of "the" founders of Zionism, no more than a list of America's founders can be complete with only Jefferson, Madison and Monroe and without Washington and Hamilton.

Zionism is the ideology that the Jews are a people who deserve their own national homeland, like all other peoples. Early on, Netanyahu argues that the Jews had their "national consciousness... developed to its maximum degree". But such mystical notions are hardly elaborated upon, and no evidence is brought forward to sustain them. More plausiblely, later chapters locate the root of the Zionist ideology in the rejection of Jews by European society: Europe's Jews tried to assimilate to the nationalism of their host nations (they key figure here in German denker Heine); Failing that, they tried to oppose all nationalism in name of universalism (a movement epitomized by Marx) and only when this dream failed, the Jews turned to their own nationalism (e.g. Herzl)....

The notion that Jews went through a deterministic, Holometabolistic process in the 19th century, turning from German, French and Russian Larva to full grown Zionist butterflys is of course far fetched; Some jews - like Arthur Koestler - developed in the opposite direction - and other Jews failed to "develop" at all. But it is likely that increased antiSemitism in the later 19th and early 20th century played a key role inconvincing Jews of the necessity of a Zionist solution to the "Jewish Problem".

This raises the question of whether Zionism is a parochial solution to a temporary problem. For well over a century, America's Jews have found US nationalism to be fully inviting; I'm no expert on Latin America, but as far as I know Jews do very well there, too. And in postwar Europe, while the situation of Jews is not ideal, there is no hint of the kind of persecution that Netanyahu's heroes warned about. Of course, what goes around comes around, and there is no guarantee that the situation of Jews would remain this way in the future, but there are great costs (both monetary and in terms of human life) to maintaining the Jewish state, and these costs have to be taken into account vis a vis the purely theoretical threat of renewed antiSemitic persecution.

I should stress that, even if the threat for Jews was purely temporary, the state of Israel is now an established fact, irrespective of the justifications for its original founding. Its citizens have as much of a right to live in their state as those of any other. Nonetheless, if the primal motivation for its establishment is over, the study of its Founders becomes a matter of purely historical value, as relevant to its current existence as the study of the Norman invasion is to British life today.

For the most part, Netanyahu's study focuses on the Zionist thought and action of his five protagonists. Their personal lives, and their work in the non-Jewish sphere, are sidelined. The major exception is Max Nordau (1849-1923), whose critiques of contemporary European culture, and in particular of the works of Fredreich Nietzsche, are extensively discussed. "Nordau alone realized the significence of Nietzsche's words. He saw them for what they were: destroying flames eating at the pillars of Civilization" (p. 126). Nordau and Netanyahu's reductionist view of Nietzsche is not only troubling in its implied denigration of free speech - if Nietzsche is responsible for the horrors of the twentieth century, surely his writings can and must be suppressed - but particularly because Netanyahu's heroes often sound like Nietzsche stooges.

Thus Theodore Herzl believed that Jews needed the "courage to rule... to dare and to demand from the world a Jewish state and the power to rule over that state" (p. 102). Jews needed to have, and here Netanyahu explicitly quotes Nietzsche, "The Will to Power" (p.99). Zionist Founder Israel Zangwill went further, adopting Nietzsche's view of "Chirstian Morality" (sneer quotes in the original) which he "always defined as 'organized hypocricity' since its essence was opposed to the fundamental laws of existence" (p. 171).

This worship of power is telling; The most surprising element of Netanyahu's book, at least for me, was his description of Herzl's Zionist program. Netanyahu's Herzl was masterminding what can only be called a Zionist Imperialist conspiracy against the unsuspecting Arab inhabitants of the Holy land.

Unlike his Zionist contemporaries, Herzl recognized that Israel was not "A Land without a People" waiting for a "People without a land". Herzl saw that the inhabitants of Israel, like the "residents of any country" would inevitably oppose foreign immigration. And Herzl opposed the attempts by contemprary Zionist leaders to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel; Premature immigration would cost the Zionists their great advantage: the element of surprise.

Rather, Herzl wanted immigration to Palestine to start only after achieving international recognition form the world's powers. What kind of recognition? When Herzl had to draw a Charter for the Jewish immigrants to Palestine, he told his lawyer to base it upon "the regulation of the charter corporation of Rhodes... the German corporation in East Africa... that is, according to the laws of settlement of the greatest colonial powers" (p. 85). Even cursery knowledge of these colonial enterprises is enough to freeze anyone's blood, and although, to be fair, the worst abuses of the colonial endeavors have not yet occurred when he wrote these words, Herzl clearly saw that the diplomatic effort would have to be supplanted by force - another key point in Herzl's program was that once the recognition arrived, Jews would immigrate to Israel en masse. En masse, and with an army.

If the implication of Herzl's colonialist-Zionist dream were hidden, perhaps even from the man himself, and if he also held more tender views towards the Arab population he was conspiring against, Herzl's Revisionist successors had no such lofty ideals. Israel Zangwill's agenda was explicit in its solution to the "Arab problem". Ethnic Cleansing, if possible; Subjugation, if not: "A minority will rule the majoirty" was his cri de coeur (p. 176). Zabotinsky went further in his assessment of the Arabs. If Herzl saw their opposition as the inevitable, natural response to the Zionist project, Zabotinsky felt that the opposition was the fault of "those whose policy entices - or more than that - compells those who have a primitive mentality to believe that [voilence] will be treated indulgently". So with Zabotinsky, the revisionist Zionist agenda becomes a racist one.

The only justification for this ideology is the sense of urgency that these men, precient about the fate of European Jewry, had for saving the doomed Civilization. Nordau put it elegantly "Zionism must succed - for otherwise we shall die". Whatever the suffering the Zionist project brought to the land of Palestine, hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews were saved from the horrors of Pogroms, persecution, and inihalation.

This brings us full circle. Whatever the circumstances of its birth, Israel today is a living fact; Undoing the Zionist project is impossible, and would cause great suffering if attempted. Yet the successors of Netanyahu and his heroes still desire for the same solutions to take place in all of the land of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza. But in a world that is not nearly as hostile to Jewry as that of 20th century Europe, and with a Jewish state in the pre-1967 borders quite able to sustain and save Jews from any unexpected, unlikely catastrophe, I fail to see how the Revisionist agenda can be justified, even in their own terms, in the 21st century.

Religious Zionists may talk of a divine promise for the Greater Israel, but absent such Deus Ex Machina, revisionist Zionism has come to an end. Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars It helps to educate one's self May 11, 2013

By kiwitech

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I found this book to be illuminating. I have always watched the various history programs on the founding of the Israel after the British left. This book has given me more depth on some of the people of strength and courage from that time.

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading January 27, 2013

By G. Weinstein

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you are interested in the history of Zionism, this is an absolute must read. It mixes a bit of biography with a healthy dose of the ideology and work of five of the most influential of the founders of political Zionism: Pinsker, Herzl, Nordau, Zangwill, and Zabotinsky. Most fascinating for me was to see the same divide we see today between advocates of a more moderate accommodating approach, and the advocates of a forceful determined approach, both seeking more or less the same or similar goals. Interesting that some figures moved from the former to the latter as their influence increased, while today we mostly see Zionist political leaders move from the latter to the former. Finally, while the former approach often laid the groundwork, the goals were only realized through the latter approach. Lessons of History! Benzion Netanyahu is the late father of the current PM of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu.