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The Iron Wall is an essay written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923. It was originally published in Russian, as he was born in Russia as Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky and wrote for the Russian press.[1]
Written in 1923, by Ze'ev Jacobintsky, in the same year as The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, which was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic.
He wrote the essay after the British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill prohibited Zionist settlement on the east bank of the Jordan River, and formed the Zionist Revisionist party after writing it.[2]
Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinian Arabs would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that "Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he argued, would be for Jews to first establish a strong Jewish state, which would eventually prompt the Arabs to "drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is ‘never!’ and pass the leadership to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions."
A week following the publication of this essay, Jabotinsky followed with "The Ethics of the Iron Wall," in which he argued that morality comes before everything else, and that Zionism is "moral and just," since it subscribes to "national self-determination" as a "sacred principle," which Arabs may also enjoy
The Iron Wall.
Full essay
https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf
I recommend my readers to read it, it is a short read, 8 minutes or 10...
In what follows I make my own comments on the meaning of this essays and it's impact upon the shituation in Palestine.
"The Iron Wall
Original in Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923
Colonisation of Palestine
Agreement with Arabs Impossible at present
Zionism Must Go Forward
"It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important point. But this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction, and, moreover, with a personal introduction.
I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.
Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference.
Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles.
First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority.
And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme, the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State.
In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews , but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.
I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.
This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.
But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means.
For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism."
----
In this last paragraph in this section Jacobintsky lays all the responsibility for any difficulties the Zionists might face squarely upon the Palestinian people and their resistance to being colonised. The Zionists are innocent.
He then states the following.
----
Voluntary Agreement Not Possible
"Voluntary Agreement Not Possible.
There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs.
Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists.
I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.
My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries.
I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.
The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage."
----
Jabotinsky admits that Colonialism always generates a fierce resistance amongst the people who lands are to colonised. We all know that Colonialism is inherently an evil process, a cruel and bloody one.
As he processes into this essay he makes it quite clear what the true stance of Zionism is, all the time seeking to absolve the Zionist project of any culpability.
The phrase 'the most moral army in the world' is drawn from this essay. Read on to see it’s roots, and the soil in which that false flag is planted.
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Colonisation.
"It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's.
Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.
Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.
The Iron Wall
We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism."
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Two State Solution as a strategic weapon of hopeless hope.
The Two State solution was always dead in the water. It was never at the centre of Zionist aspirations, from the get-go, and the aspirations of the Two State Solution promoted to Western Audiences was always a strategic tactic, designed to enable the colonisation to move ahead, protected by Hope. The Hope of The Western audiences.
Zionists, and importantly, the Ruling Class in the West fully understood this strategic tactic and played along, delaying the necessary awakening amongst the western electorates, to buy the Zionists time to 'change the facts on the ground' through mass immigration of Jewish people, and settlement, and then by conquest and occupation, and now by total destruction of Palestinian civil and social and economic and political infrastructure.
---
Jabotisnky proceeds.
Here Jabotinsky sets ups the claim that Zionism is inherently Moral, and that outside forces should back it all the way.
——
The Iron Wall
"Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population.
Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not.
What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate?
Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.
And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.
In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians".
Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British.
We all demand that there should be an iron wall.
Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest.”
Zionism Moral and Just
“Two brief remarks:
In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true: either Zionism is moral and just ,or it is immoral and unjust.
But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.
We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.
There is no other morality."
----
This then lays out the coffin of Palestinian self determination, the sarcophagus of their human rights, the entombment of their land tenure and polity, the grave that is the erasure of their culture and their peoples from those lands, and ultimately the denial of their natural right to live peacefully on the land they have lived on for thousands of years, long before the advent os Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
The question then becomes how many nails must be used to ensure that the coffin lid is firmly shut, and cannot be re-opened.
The assault on Gaza is one of those nails.
The settlements across the West Bank are another bag of nails.
USUK unconditional support for their pet colonial project is another. That support is strategic in that it is designed to enrage, divide and destabilise the entire Arab polity.
The lack of detailed understanding of the history, the genesis of the so-called Israel -Palestine 'conflict' amongst the voters of the Western Christian Colonial States is another nail.
My task here is to describe those nails, to describe the hammer striking those nails.
The hammer is the collective Euro-Centric commercial interests, operating under the false flag of race superiority. Blair's odious 'clash of civilisations' articulated this in blatant terms, albeit misunderstood by Western audiences, as intended.
Our task as a democratic peace loving population is to ensure our Governments do not facilitate the hammer, that the nails already hammered in are removed, gently and with care, such that the Zionists (and all colonialists and Neo-colonialists) are isolated from our collective legislatures where they wield undue influence and that they are eventually placed where they cannot harm the Palestinian people or any other people, for that matter.
Free Palestine!
Free Western Democracy!
Free us all from the abject, venal and cruel Ruling Class Establishment who have operated the colonial process for centuries.
The two are inextricably linked.
Corneilius
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