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278
 Avi Shlaim
 The Likud In Power: The Historiography of Revisionist Zionism
 Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream: Power, Politics and Ideology from Begin to Netanyahu
by Colin Shindler Tauris,
324
pp.,
1995
Summing Up: An Autobiography
by Yitzhak ShamirWeidenfeld and Nicholson,
276
pp.,
1994
 Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis between the U.S. and Israel
by Moshe ArensSimon and Schuster,
320
pp.,
1995
 A Zionist Stand
by Ze‘ev B. BeginFrank Cass,
173
pp.,
1993
 Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and InternationalTerrorism
by Benjamin NetanyahuFarrar Straus Giroux,
152
pp.,
1995
O
N
 
17
M
 AY 
 
1977
, M
ENACHEM
B
EGIN
and his Likud union of national-ist and liberal parties won their
W
rst electoral victory. This election repre-sented a major landmark in Israel’s history. It brought to an end threedecades of Labor rule and ushered in a new era which was to last 
W
fteen
 
 The Likud in Power•
279
 years, during which the right-wing Likud dominated Israeli politics. WhenLikud came to power, the literature on it was very sparse; by the time it fellfrom power, in June
1992
, this literature had expanded considerably.Colin Shindler’s book,
 Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream
, represents a valuable addition to this literature on a number of countrs. First, whereasmost of the existing books deal with speci
W
c issues such as the peace withEgypt, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, or the war in Lebanon,Shindler tries to explain the Likud phenomenon as a whole. Second, inorder to explain what makes the Likud tick, Shindler explores in some depthits historical and ideological background, and particularly the legacy of thefounder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, Ze‘ev Vladimir Jabotinsky.Shindler also traces the in
X
uence of Pilsudski’s Poland, Mussolini’s Italy,and the Irish struggle against Britain in moulding the outlook of MenachemBegin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir. Third, while the subject matter of this book lends itself all too easily to partisanship and polemics, Shindlerremains remarkably balanced and fair-minded throughout. He picks his way carefully through the tangled history of this
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ercely ideological and rumbustious movement and manages to avoid the twin pitfalls of hagiog-raphy and blind hostility. The
1977
election signi
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ed much more than a change of government. It represented the triumph of Revisionist Zionism after half a century of bitterstruggle against mainstream Labor Zionism. The two movements wereanimated by di
V 
erent aims, di
V 
erent values, and di
V 
erent symbols. In hisacceptance speech in May 
1977
, Menachem Begin referred to “the titanicstruggle of ideas stretching back to
1931
,” a reference that must have puzzled most of his listeners. At the
17
th Zionist Congress in
1931
, Ze‘ev Jabotinsky launched afrontal attack on Chaim Weizmann and forced him to tender his resignationas president of the World Zionist Organization. Weizmann typi
W
ed theZionist establishment’s piecemeal approach to acquiring land, buildingsettlements, and working in cooperation with the British mandatory au-thorities toward the
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nal goal of statehood. Jabotinsky’s Zionism wasprimarily a political movement, not an agency for economic development and settlement on the land. He denounced Weizmann’s “Fabian tactics” and insisted on a forthright statement that the aim of the movement was aJewish state on both sides of the river Jordan. Weizmann was appalled by the utter lack of realism, by the romantic melodrama, and by the myopicmilitancy of Jabotinsky and his followers. The battle lines were thus
W
rmly drawn between territorial minimalism and territorial maximalism, betweenpractical Zionism and political Zionism, between a gradualist approach to
 
280
•
israel studies, volume 1, number 2
statehood and militant declarations calling for instantaneous solutions. In
1935
, the Revisionists seceded from the World Zionist Organization, inprotest against its continuing refusal to declare a Jewish state as its immedi-ate aim, and formed their own New Zionist Organization, which elected Jabotinsky as its president.Jabotinsky regarded Arab opposition to Zionism as inevitable, and hebelieved that e
V 
orts aimed at reconciliation were doomed to failure fromthe start. It was utterly impossible, he argued, to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs to the conversion of Palestine from an Arabcountry into a country with a Jewish majority. Nor would he settle for thepartition of Palestine into two states. His version of the Zionism dreamdemanded a Jewish state over the whole of 
 Eretz Yisrael
, the Land of Israel.Britain had established the Emirate of Transjordan on the eastern part of thePalestine mandate in the early 
1920
s. Jabotinsky bitterly denounced this“original sin” and remained uncompromisingly opposed to the partition of the Western part of the Land of Israel. Partition, he observed, was unaccept-able not only from the point of view of the Revisionist Zionists, but alsofrom that of the Arabs, because both sides claimed the whole country forthemselves. Only superior military power, he concluded, could eventually compel the Arabs to accept the reality of a Jewish state. And only an “iron wall” of Jewish military power could protect the Jewish state against con-tinuing Arab hostility. Disdain for diplomacy and a reliance on military power in dealing with the Palestine Arabs thus characterized Revisionist Zionism from the very beginning. The Revisionist movement had its own para-military force, the Na-tional Military Organization [the Irgun], which was commanded by Jabo-tinsky until his death in
1940
and by Menachem Begin from
1943
until itsdissolution in June
1948
. In
1939
the Irgun called o
V 
its campaign against the British mandatory authorities for the duration of the Second World War. Some of the more militant members of the Irgun, led by AvrahamStern, broke away to form a small underground movement known as “TheFighters for the Freedom of Israel,” better known as the Stern Gang. Sternsaw Zionism as a national liberation movement, and he advocated an armed struggle as a means of independence. Since he saw the British as foreignconquerors, he was unwilling to wait until the war against Nazi Germany  was over before initiating the military revolt against the British occupationof Palestine. On the contrary, he made approaches to Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy in the belief that “the enemy of our British enemy must beour friend.” Stern’s successors, a triumvirate consisting of Israel Eldad,Natan Yellin-Mor, and Yitzhak Shamir, continued to resort to terrorist 
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