Zionist Revisionists drew on Sinn Fein, Polish, and Italian national movements as models

Evidence

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Revisionists looked at different national movements for inspiration. Achimeir, for example, wrote in 1930 that the Zionist movement must follow Sinn Fein’s fundamental principle that a national movement cannot rely on the kindness of other nations, but only on its own power and resources. The Revisionists also identified with Polish nationalism and its long struggle against Poland’s oppressors. Jabotinsky even suggested in a 1935 speech before Beitar members in Kraków that soil from Trumpeldor’s grave in Palestine be brought to Jozef Pilsudski’s grave as a symbol of the two national movements’ close relations. But it was Italy that would serve as the ultimate national model for the Zionist Revisionist movement. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 568

Categorization

• QUESTION: The soil-from-Trumpeldor’s-grave-to-Pilsudski’s-grave gesture is striking — worth chasing how Beitar and Polish nationalism entwined ideologically.
• SHARE: The Jabotinsky-Pilsudski grave-soil gesture is the kind of specific detail a person into early Zionism or interwar nationalism would appreciate.