Ben Offerman

“The Whole Package Jabotinsky Government” (Or Why “The Iron Wall” Provides the Blueprint for Israel’s Next Government) Jabotinsky is enjoying a renewed popularity these days among parties of Israel’s “Change Bloc,” which are drawing on his far-reaching vision of joint Jewish-Arab government to justify a Jewish-Arab coalition and government. Yet in doing so, they conveniently skip over the Iron Wall required to make that vision of equality and partnership possible. After all, Jabotinsky made clear that such cooperation could not exist “as long as the Arabs have even a glimmer of hope of getting rid of us,” and that the only way to extinguish every last glimmer of such hope is through sustained strength, until “not a single crack is visible in the Iron Wall.” The purpose of the Iron Wall was to bring the enemies of Zionism to the point where they understand that there is no longer even the slightest chance of defeating it. It turns out, then, that every side of Israeli politics has the part of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” that it likes, and the part it conveniently forgets. The right clearly loves the Iron Wall itself, the insight that the Arabs will not willingly reconcile themselves to Jewish sovereignty, and that as long as they retain the hope of defeating Zionism, they will continue trying. But there is also a tendency, at times, on the right to stop there and retreat into a kind of fatalistic helplessness that says, “That’s just how it is” and “That’s just how they are,” turning the Iron Wall from a means into an end. But the Iron Wall was indeed a means, not an end. On the other side of the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky envisioned a Jewish state in which every citizen enjoyed equal rights. On the left and in the Change Bloc, there is a tendency, rightly so, to celebrate the Jabotinsky who championed individual rights, civic equality, and human dignity, and who imagined a government in which the prime minister would alternately be Jewish with an Arab deputy, and vice versa. But wrongly, they tend to skip over the fundamental condition Jabotinsky placed on all of this: the Iron Wall that would extinguish every Arab hope of ending Jewish sovereignty. I am a great believer in Jewish-Arab cooperation, but like Jabotinsky, I believe that such cooperation can only be real after full and final recognition, without the slightest crack or glimmer of hope, that the Jewish state can ever be eliminated. In the book "Peace Not Now", I gave this the somewhat provocative name “Arab Zionism.” But it is simply another, and arguably more positive, way of saying that Arabs have finally come to terms with Zionism and no longer follow antizionism and its deceptive promises. Indeed, precisely those who advocate political cooperation and shared government between Jews and Arabs, whether Jews or Arab themselves, should be ardent Zionists, uncompromising in their support for Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and for the fulfillment of the Zionist vision. This, for the simple reason that in every Arab country where Jews lived, once that country was no longer ruled by European powers and became sovereign, the prospect of Jewish citizens enjoying equal political standing was met with persecution, pogroms, confiscation of property, and ultimately the ethnic cleansing of Jews from those countries. Therefore, Israel’s next government should be a Full Jabotinsky Government, the whole package. It should bring together all parties that insist on an Iron Wall against antizionism, including within the State of Israel itself. The Arab parties should be required not merely to recognize Israel fully as the nation-state of the Jewish people, but to give that recognition concrete expression. When they present a vision of peace based on “two states,” they must make clear that one of those two states is the Jewish state, and that Arabs in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon have no “right of return” into Israel and are not “fifth-generation refugees.” This is the clearest indication that they have fully come to terms with Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and are willing to give that acceptance its full expression. The Iron Wall, therefore, is not merely a security doctrine directed outward. It must also become the foundation of a renewed Zionist consensus within Israel itself: state-provided Zionist education in Hebrew for all Israeli citizens, including Arabic speakers and the ultra-Orthodox, and military service in support of national missions, equally required of everyone (without all the dishonest schemes of “community service” that would simply become another way of funneling billions into autonomous communities hostile to the state). These are not merely mechanisms for sharing the burden. They are the means by which a common civic ethos is built, one in which every citizen knows that they belong to the state, enjoy its rights, and bear responsibility for its defense and continued existence. Jabotinsky himself would have scorned the notion that, in the sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel, some would refuse to take part in the defense of the Jewish state in the name of preserving a diasporic way of life. Nor would he have excluded Arab citizens from this shared ethos. The idea is that one can be ultra-Orthodox and Zionist, and one can be Arab and Zionist. There is no need to give up one's religion, language, culture, or identity in order to be a partner in the Jewish state. But there is a need to accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty and the shared responsibility to defend it. What Israel needs now is a government that stops picking only the half of Jabotinsky’s doctrine that suits it. A broad, mainstream Zionist government that places Jewish sovereignty, civic equality, shared education, and universal service at the foundation of the Israeli social contract. The time has come for Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall Government. The whole package.