Abba Ahimeir was a Jewish journalist, historian and political activist. One of the ideologues of Revisionist Zionism

Revisionist Zionism

Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...

, he was the founder of the Revisionist Maximalist

Revisionist Maximalism

Revisionist Maximalism was a Jewish fascist ideology which was part of the Brit HaBirionim faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement created by Abba Ahimeir. Revisionist Maximalists strongly supported the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and wanted the creation of an Israel based on...

 faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement

Revisionist Zionism

Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...

 (ZRM) and of the clandestine Brit HaBirionim

Brit HaBirionim

Brit HaBirionim was a clandestine, self-declared fascist faction of the Revisionist Zionist Movement in the British Mandate of Palestine, active between 1930 and 1933. It was founded by the trio of Abba Ahimeir, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Dr...

.

Biography

Ahimeir was born Abba Shaul Geisinovich in 1897 in the Dolgi village near the city of Babruysk

Babruysk

Babruysk or Bobruysk is a city in the Mahilyow Voblast of Belarus on the Berezina river. It is a large city in Belarus with a population of approximately 227,000 people . The name Babruysk probably originates from the Belarusian word babyor , many of which used to inhabit the Berezina...

 in the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 (today in Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

). From 1912-1914, he attended the Herzliya Gymnasium high school in Tel Aviv. While with his family in Babruysk for summer vacation in 1914, World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 broke out and he was forced to complete his studies in Russia. In 1917, he participated in the Russian Zionist Conference in Petrograd and underwent agricultural training as part of Joseph Trumpeldor

Joseph Trumpeldor

Joseph Trumpeldor , was an early Zionist activist. He helped organize the Zion Mule Corps and bring Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel. Trumpeldor died defending the settlement of Tel Hai in 1920 and subsequently became a Zionist national hero...

’s HeHalutz

Hehalutz

Hechalutz was an association of Jewish youth whose aim was to train its members to settle in the Land of Israel, which became an umbrella organization of the pioneering Zionist youth movements....

 movement in Batum, Caucasia

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

 to prepare him for a life as a pioneer in the Land of Israel

Land of Israel

The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...

. In 1920, he left Russia and changed his name from Gaisinovich to Ahimeir (in Hebrew: Meir’s brother) in memory of his brother Meir who had fallen in battle that year fighting against Poles during a pogrom.

Ahimeir studied philosophy at the Liège

Liège

Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....

 University in Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 and at the University of Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, completing his PhD thesis on Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...

's The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West , or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918...

in 1924 just before immigrating to the British Mandate of Palestine. Upon his arrival in the country, Ahimeir became active in the Labor Zionist movements Ahdut HaAvoda

Ahdut HaAvoda

Ahdut HaAvoda was the name used by a sequence of political parties that existed firstly during Mandate Palestine and later in Israel. Its original version, led by David Ben-Gurion, is one of the main ancestors of the modern-day Israeli Labor Party....

 and Hapoel Hatzair

Hapoel Hatzair

Hapoel Hatzair is a Zionist group which was active in Palestine from 1905 until 1930. They were founded by A.D. Gordon, Yosef Ahronowitz, Yosef Sprinzak and followed a non-Marxist, Zionist, socialist agenda. In accordance with A.D...

. For four years, he served as librarian for the cultural committee of the General Workers Organization in Zikhron Ya'akov and as a teacher in Nahalal

Nahalal

-External links:** UNESCO* Jewish Agency for Israel*, "Jews made a garden" - aerial photo of Nahalal , and a girl from Girls' Agricultural Training Farm , at Google Books....

 and Kibutz Geva

Geva

-External links:*...

. During these years he regularly published articles in Haaretz

Haaretz

Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

 and Davar

Davar

Davar was a Hebrew-language daily newspaper published in the Mandate Palestine and Israel between 1925 and May 1996.-History:Davar was established by Moshe Beilinson and Berl Katznelson, with Katznelson as its first editor. The first edition was published on 1 June 1925 under the name Davar - Iton...

, where he began to criticize the political situation in Palestine and of Zionism, as well as of the workers’ movement to which he belonged.

In 1928, Ahimeir, along with Yehoshua Yevin and famed Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg

Uri Zvi Greenberg

Uri Zvi Grinberg was an acclaimed Israeli poet and journalist who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.-Biography:Uri Zvi Grinberg was born in Bialikamin, Galicia, then Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg . Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published...

, became disillusioned with what they viewed to be the passivity of Labor Zionism and founded the Revisionist Labor Bloc as part of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist Movement. Ahimeir and his group were regarded by Revisionist Movement leaders as an implant from the Left whose political Maximalism and revolutionary brand of nationalism often made the Revisionist old guard uncomfortable.

In 1930, Ahimeir and his friends established the underground movement Brit HaBirionim

Brit HaBirionim

Brit HaBirionim was a clandestine, self-declared fascist faction of the Revisionist Zionist Movement in the British Mandate of Palestine, active between 1930 and 1933. It was founded by the trio of Abba Ahimeir, Uri Zvi Greenberg and Dr...

 (The Union of Zionist Rebels) named for the Jewish anti-Roman underground during the first Jewish-Roman War

First Jewish-Roman War

The First Jewish–Roman War , sometimes called The Great Revolt , was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews of Judaea Province , against the Roman Empire...

.

Brit HaBirionim was the first Jewish organization to call the British authorities in Palestine a “foreign regime” and refer to the British Mandate over Palestine as “an occupation.” The group initiated a series of protest activities against British rule, the first of these took place on October 9, 1930 and was directed against the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Drummond Shiels, when he was on a visit to Tel-Aviv. This was the first sign of rebellion in Palestine’s Jewish community against the British and the first time that Ahimeir was arrested in the country.

In 1933, Brit HaBirionim turned its activities against Nazi Germany. In May of that year, Ahimeir led his followers in a campaign to remove swastikas from the flagpoles of the German consulates in Jerusalem and Jaffa. Brit HaBirionim also organized a boycott of German goods. Brit Habirionim became fierce critics of the Haavara Agreement

Haavara Agreement

The Haavara Agreement was signed on 25 August 1933 after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany , the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany...

 and of its chief negotiator, Haim Arlosoroff. When Arlosoroff was killed in on a Tel-Aviv beach in June 1933, Ahimeir and two friends were arrested and charged with inciting the murder. Ahimeir was cleared of the charge before the trial even began but remained in prison and began a hunger strike that continued for four days. He was convicted of organizing an illegal clandestine organization and remained incarcerated in the Jerusalem Central Prison until August 1935. His imprisonment put an end to Brit HaBirionim.

Upon his release, Ahimeir married Sonia née Astrachan and devoted himself to literary work and scholarship. His articles in the newspaper Hayarden led to his re-arrest at the end of 1937 and three months in the Acre Prison

Acre Prison

In the time of the British Mandate the citadel in the old city of Acre was used as a prison in which many Arabs were imprisoned as criminals or for participating in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine...

 together with members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi and other prominent Revisionist activists.

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Ahimeir became a member of the editorial board of the Herut

Herut

Herut was the major right-wing political party in Israel from the 1940s until its formal merger into Likud in 1988, and an adherent of Revisionist Zionism.-History:...

 party daily in Tel-Aviv, as well as a member of the editorial board of the Hebrew Encyclopedia  in Jerusalem where he published (under the initials A. AH.) scores of important academic articles, mostly in the fields of history and Russian literature. Ahimeir died at the age of 65 of a sudden heart attack on the eve of June 6, 1962). His sons, Ya'akov

Ya'akov Ahimeir

Ya'akov Ahimeir , is a senior Israeli journalist, and a television and radio personality.-Biography:Ahimeir was born in Ramat Gan in 1938, the son of the Revisionist Zionist leader Abba Ahimeir...

 and Yosef

Yosef Ahimeir

Yosef "Yossi" Ahimeir is an Israeli journalist and former politician, chief editor of the Hebrew ideological quarterly - "Ha-Umma". Since April 2005 he is also the director-general of the Jabotinsky Institute in Israel...

, both went on to become journalists.

Ideology

Abba Ahimeir was the first to coin the term Revolutionary Zionism and the first Jew in Palestine to call for an uprising against the British administration. His worldview generally placed the contemporary political situation into the context of Jewish history, specifically the Second Temple Period

Second Temple period

The Second Temple period , in Jewish history, is the period between 530 BCE and 70 CE, when the Second Temple of Jerusalem existed. It ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Temple's destruction....

, often casting himself and his friends as anti-imperialist freedom fighters, the British administration as a modern incarnation of ancient Rome and the official Zionist leadership as Jewish collaborators.
Ahimeir's views had a profound influence on the ideology of the Irgun

Irgun

The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...

 and Lehi

Lehi (group)

Lehi , commonly referred to in English as the Stern Group or Stern Gang, was a militant Zionist group founded by Avraham Stern in the British Mandate of Palestine...

 undergrounds who later initiated an urban guerrilla war against the British.

Relationship with Fascism

Although Abba Ahimeir branded himself as a fascist during the late 1920s and early 1930s, even writing a series of eight articles in the Hebrew Doar HaYom newspaper in 1928 titled "From the Notebook of a Fascist," few of his contemporaries took his Fascist leanings seriously. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who consistently maintained that there was no room for Fascism within his Revisionist movement, dismissed Ahimeir’s rhetoric and argued that he and his Maximalist followers were merely playacting to make a point and were not serious in their professed Fascist beliefs.

In the October 7, 1932 edition of "Hazit Ha’am", Jabotinsky wrote:

Such men, even in the Maximalist and activist factions, number no more than two or three, and even with those two or three – pardon my frankness – it is mere phraseology, not a worldview. Even Mr. Ahimeir gives me the impression of a man who will show flexibility for the sake of educational goals… to this end he has borrowed some currently fashionable (and quite unnecessary) phrases, in which this daring idea clothes itself in several foreign cities."

Ahimeir’s fascist image during the 1920s was seized upon by author Christopher Hitchens in a 1998 article titled "The Iron Wall" to argue that fascism was the ideology guiding Benzion Netanyahu

Benzion Netanyahu

Benzion Netanyahu is an Israeli historian and a professor emeritus at Cornell University. He is a specialist in the golden age of Jewish History in Spain, and is known for his opus, the Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain...

, a disciple of Ahimeir, and consequently his son, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In an April 16, 2010 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Ahimeir’s son Yossi defended his father against accusations of Fascism, saying:

"Hitchens is a known anti-Israel writer who takes my father’s writing completely out of context. Fascism in 1928 can’t be viewed in the context of the 1930s. Of course he would not be a fascist in view of how it developed."

External links

• "Dr.Aba Ahimeir: The man who turned the tide" Beit Aba Museum in Israel
• "The iron wall", Christopher Hitchens
  Christopher Hitchens
  Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
  
   on Ahimeir's relationship with the Netanyahu family
  Netanyahu
  Netanyahu is a surname, and may refer to the following members of the Netanyahu family in Israel.First generation:* Benzion Netanyahu , scholar of Jewish history, Zionist activist, professor emeritus of Cornell University, author of The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain and...
  
  
• "Abba Ahimeir" Save Israel website featuring English translations of articles of anti-British Jewish underground fighters