THE JEWISH LION vs THE IRANIAN SNAKE...JABO WAS RIGHT!!!

Ze'ev Jabotinsky - wife - son

History does not always properly reward watershed events. It is the major political events that receive a great deal of our attention, but sometimes smaller events involving simple people have a much greater effect.

Exactly 100 years ago, on the 18th of Adar, Joseph Trumpeldor and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, both young, determined men with great aspirations, turned a dream into a formative document. This document, bearing 100 signatures, called for the establishment of a Jewish military unit which would help the British conquer the Land of Israel.

The Zion Mule Corps, which fought in Gallipoli, and later the Royal Fusiliers, led by Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky and their commander, John Peterson, may not be remembered as the most daring or effective fighting force, but this was the first time since the days of Bar Kochba that a Jewish fighting force was established to defend the Land of Israel. After 2,000 years of exile, the mighty lion had returned to defend its people.

A tangible example of the Jew ready to abandon the servitude of Exile and wield a sword in battle occurred on the 11th of Adar in 1921, the day of the battle at Tel Hai. Tel Hai is one of the important milestones in the history of Zionism and the struggle to create a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. The courage seen at Tel Hai was in many ways the result of the historic decision taken five years earlier at Gallipoli. The common thread connecting these two events was Trumpeldor.

 

It is somewhat surprising that to this day, Trumpeldor is considered one of the ultimate symbols of heroism and determination in the Jewish people’s struggle for statehood. After all, there were many others who fought and fell for the Zionist cause, some of them with greater success.

Joseph Trumpeldor

We can guess that Trumpeldor is a symbol not just because of how he fell, but primarily because of what he lived for. He is a symbol of the Zionist understanding that the Jewish right to the Land of Israel supersedes other rights, and that the struggle for statehood will be long and difficult. He understood that victory will belong to those who persist in defending their right, even at the cost of their lives.

We can see that for example in a letter he wrote to his brother: “If war will break out in the Land of Israel, I will certainly be appointed a commander even though I am quite ready to serve as a simple soldier. For there we will be in our home, not among strangers. I believe that the day will come when I, tired and exhausted, will gaze with happiness at my fields in my land, and no one will tell me: go away from here, you don’t belong in this land. And if someone will tell me that, I will defend my fields and my rights. If I fall in battle, I will know for what cause I have fallen.”  Trumpeldor did in fact fall in battle at Tel Hai, but his heritage became a milestone, or perhaps a warning sign.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

The fundamental strategy of Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky paved the way for the underground movements and later for the IDF. However, this fundamental Jewish understanding that “if I don’t protect myself, no one will do it for me” is being questioned today. Our right to the Land and right to national self-defense have been replaced by attempts to placate the enemy and by the childish thought that we can achieve peace by ceding territory to the Arab enemy that continues to seek our destruction.

Among the political Left there are those who in the name of Zionism choose to accept every international claim in the hope of living in peace. Trumpeldor could never have imagined that one day it would be fellow Zionists telling him, “You don’t belong in this land.”

One can say that the challenge of Jewish independence stands in opposition to the desire for existence.  Against the Iranian snake we must place the Jewish lion, determined and proud of his right to live in his entire land.  The heritage of Trumpeldor is to stand with pride even when facing a hostile president, and to protect the free world.  The heritage of Trumpeldor is to call for the millions of Jews in Europe and the United States to come home to the Land of Israel.

The heritage of Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky is to prepare a plan for the aliya of young and old from around the world, to conduct tours which encourage a love of the land, to create settlements and to educate toward a Zionist, national, liberal heritage, while maintaining the democratic principles which support the Jewish right to the Land of Israel.

In the face of external threats and internal confusion, we must plow the fields of Zionist awareness. In the great words of Trumpeldor, “In the place of the furthest furrow plowed by a Jewish plow – that is where the border will be.”

The author is an attorney and the head of Betar World Leadership.

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Tel Hai (Hebrew: תֵּל חַי, meaning "Hill of Life" in Hebrew; Tal-ha in Arabic) is a name of a former Jewish settlement in northern Israel, the site of an early battle in the Arab–Israeli conflict, and of a noted monument, tourist attraction, and a college. It is currently part of kibbutz Kfar Giladi.

The Battle of Tel Hai on 1 March 1920, which gave Tel Hai its long-enduring fame, was significant far beyond the small number of fighters involved on either side - mainly due to its influence on Israeli culture, both inspiring an enduring heroic story and profoundly influencing the military of the Yishuv and political strategies over several decades.

In retrospect, it can be regarded as the first military engagement between the New Yishuv (later to become Israel) and Arab rebels (of what was to become Syria), though at the time itself combatants on either side did not regard it in such terms.The Zionist pioneers in Tel Hai, headed by Joseph Trumpeldor were in fact neutral in this conflict - they wanted the area to be neither Arab-ruled nor French-ruled, but restored to British rule which they hoped would eventually lead to its becoming part of the future Jewish state (which indeed ultimately happened). However, as being newcomers to the area recently arrived from Europe, they were evidently suspected by the local Arabs of being pro-French, which ultimately led to armed clash.

On March 1, 1920, several hundred Shiite Arabs from Jabal Amil in southern Lebanon attacked Tel Hai. They first demanded to search Tel Hai, and while the Jews attempted to maintain neutrality, they signalled for reinforcements from the kibbutz Kfar Giladi. Joseph Trumpeldor and ten men attempted to drive the Shiites and roving village militias away.

At the end of a verbal dispute, an armed confrontation did break out, in which six of the Tel-Hai defenders were killed and the survivors found their position intenable and had no choice but to withdraw - whereupon the place was burned. The total number of killed was 8 Jews - 6 defenders and 2 unarmed villagers, and 5 Arabs.

A national monument in Upper Galilee, Israel commemorates the deaths of eight Jews, six men and two women, among them the one-armed Jewish fighter, a Russian Jew named Joseph Trumpeldor, who died in an engagement on 1 March 1920, with Bedouins, who had been attacking settlements in the area.The resolute actions of Trumpeldor and his colleagues against a much larger attacking force inspired the Jews of Jerusalem. The memorial is best known for an emblematic statue of a defiant lion representing Trumpeldor and his comrades. The city of Kiryat Shemona, literally Town of the Eight was named after them.