Jabotinsky, Vladimir Ze'ev

(1880-1940)

   Born in Odessa, Russia, Jabotinsky was the founder of the World Union of Zionist Revisionists in 1925, which later branched off into the New Zionist Organization. The union advocated the establishment of a Jewish state, increased Jewish immigration (see ALIYA), and militant opposition to the British mandatory authorities in Palestine. Jabotin-sky's philosophy provided the ideological basis for the Herut Party. He studied law in Bern and Rome but became interested in the Zionist cause with the growth of pogroms in Russia. After the beginning of World War I, Jabotinsky promoted the idea of a Jewish Legion as a component of the British army that liberated Palestine from the Turks, and he later joined it. In March 1921, he joined the Zionist executive but resigned in January 1923 to protest the perceived lack of resistance on the part of the Zionist leadership to British Middle East policy, specifically the unilateral secession of Transjordan from the Palestine mandate in 1922.

   In 1923, Jabotinsky founded Brit Trumpeldor (BETAR), and in 1925, the World Union of Zionists-Revisionists was formed in Paris, and he became president. Jabotinsky later seceded from the World Zionist Organization and founded (in Vienna in 1935) the New Zionist Organization, of which he became president. He campaigned against the British plans for the partition of Palestine and advocated and promoted illegal Jewish immigration (see ALIYA BET) to Palestine. He died in New York, and his remains were transferred to Israel and reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in July 1964. His influence on Israel's history and politics is substantial as indicated by his role as the ideological forebear of the Herut and Likud political parties and especially in the influence of his ideas on the thinking and policies of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Benjamin Netanyahu.