The Saga of Raziel and Stern

At the beginning of 1938, Jabotinsky told his followers that the Great Powers would not desert Czechoslovakia. A few weeks later Hitler marched unopposed into Austria. In an unpublished article, Jabotinsky noted how easy it was for a small country such as Austria to be swallowed up and to disappear from history in a matter of hours. The Anschluss convinced Jabotinsky that it was important ‘to stand fast’ and ‘to weather the storm’. Remaining neutral was not an option, and he was convinced in 1938 that ‘the Jews are going to pay’. The appeasement of Britain and France was anathema to his philosophy:

We are living in a world of universal cowardice. Its worst feature is that the gangsters are also cowards and would never have attempted any of their exploits, had there been the slightest chance of trouble.

Yet in his public pronouncements, Jabotinsky proclaimed that his hopes still resided in ‘the conscience of the world’. His opponents were not so sure. As early as 1936, in his poem, ‘To the British Empire’, Uri Zvi Greenberg had predicted the flight of ‘Amalek eagles over Westminster’ – a foresight of the Battle of Britain. As war loomed, many of Jabotinsky's youthful followers began to question his public pronouncements. In Palestine they viewed him as an outsider abroad and considered his approach similar to that of Ben-Gurion.

Avraham Stern articulated this dissent and was one of Jabotinsky's harshest critics. He went further and was also critical of Ahimeir and Ratosh, who were closer to him ideologically. The emergence of a separate organisation, the Irgun B'Yisrael (the Irgun in Israel), therefore was viewed as an act of political purification. Stern's central tenet of faith was the use of force – and against the British.

The arrest of David Raziel in the early summer of 1939 meant that Stern was effectively left in control of the Irgun. He thereby determined its military path, and this meant initially an invigorated confrontation with British. He also put forward his programme ‘Principles and Conclusion’ in the summer of 1939. Yet within three months, Stern too was apprehended by the British authorities. Stern's incarceration coincided with the outbreak of war and led to a widening ideological gap between himself and Raziel.