. . . Ze’ev Jabotinsky continued

It is almost impossible to discuss the founding of Israel and the Zionist movement without mentioning Jabotinsky. This right-wing Zionist leader was a man of many paradoxes and contradictions. He was a celebrated Russian journalist, a first-rate novelist, and an ardent Zionist and political thinker. Jabotinsky was proficient in many languages, but his writings were mostly in Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish.

Early in his career, Jabotinsky founded Betar, which, in addition to being social and cultural, was a forerunner of Zionist thought and training. This was also the organization that trained and inspired Menachem Begin as a young man. Begin was an ardent follower and devotee of Betar and its more militaristic goals.

Jabotinsky always felt that the right to all Palestine belonged to the Jewish people. He was a man of contradictions, a military leader who formed a Jewish legion in the 1930s, a brilliant orator, and a great predictor of Jewish struggles and success, but a less than successful politician. He never stopped believing in total Zionism and the Jewish state, and never stopped fighting for that goal, right to the end.