Zionist Revisionists positioned Italy as a third-way alternative to both Orient and Occident

Evidence

The Revisionists, who rejected both the romantic fascination with the East and the decaying West, sought an alternative cultural model that both cultivated man’s authentic urges and embraced modern technology. Italy, caught between the primitive East and the decadent West, offered the Revisionists a viable political and historical model of a glorious Mediterranean civilization that, like the ancient Israeli kingdom, had been crushed by foreign powers, but was ready to reclaim its hegemony through the affirmation of manhood and national pride. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 527

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the historical attempt to construct a modern national identity by triangulating against both a romanticized East and a decadent West — parallels later pan-Mediterranean and fascist-era ideology more broadly.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone interested in the intellectual roots of the Italian far right’s Mediterraneanism or in Jabotinsky’s intellectual formation.