WI: Revisionist Zionist Israel?

I would like to note that this thread is not meant to be purposely inflammatory or anything like that.

I've been recently playing around with the idea of a Fascist Israel timeline and wanted to ask the forum about whether or not the Fascist faction (Lehi?) within the Revisionist Zionist movement could've come to power in Israel after World War II.
 
Given the political leanings of most of the Jews in Israel and coming to Israel, and the mere tag "fascist" is totally toxic for Jews in post WWII time frame....
 
Given the political leanings of most of the Jews in Israel and coming to Israel, and the mere tag "fascist" is totally toxic for Jews in post WWII time frame....
I mean they obviously wouldn't want to officially adopt the label "Fascist" but I was thinking more so having that same faction come to power.
 
I'm aware of this but I was asking about the Lehi faction coming to power during the late 1940s.

Well, one problem is the subject is "Revisionist Zionist Israel" and Revisionism was of course much more than the Lehi. Even so, Herut, the Revisionists' main party, only got 11.5 percent of the vote in the first Knesset election in 1949 and the Fighters List of former Lehi fighters got another 1.2% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Israeli_legislative_election So it is hard to see a Revisionist Israel in the late 1940's, let alone a Lehi one.
 
Well, one problem is the subject is "Revisionist Zionist Israel" and Revisionism was of course much more than the Lehi. Even so, Herut, the Revisionists' main party, only got 11.5 percent of the vote in the first Knesset election in 1949 and the Fighters List of former Lehi fighters got another 1.2% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Israeli_legislative_election So it is hard to see a Revisionist Israel in the late 1940's, let alone a Lehi one.
If my memory serves correct, Revisionism wasn't even a unified faction but a bloc that consisted of various ones with many differing ideologies - if the Revisionists had been unified under an ideology like Italian Fascism, could there then be a chance of the Revisionists coming to power by 1948?
 
Bump. Is there a way that Lehi's aim of establishing a "new totalitarian Hebrew Republic" could occur if/when the Revisionists take power?
 
One possible scenario: Axis wins WW2, Nazis want to deport and not kill Jews (Madagascar option), Italy and Germany prop up Lehi and create a small Jewish state in and around Tel Aviv post-WW2, as part of divide-and-conquer strategy.
 
If my memory serves correct, Revisionism wasn't even a unified faction but a bloc that consisted of various ones with many differing ideologies - if the Revisionists had been unified under an ideology like Italian Fascism, could there then be a chance of the Revisionists coming to power by 1948?

Not really. The Revisionist movement was a minority movement even before statehood, and Ben-Gurion and Mapai (and Labor Zionism) held a very strong hold on Yishuv politics. I mean, if Jabotinsky lives rather than die in 1940, you might see a stronger Revisionist movement but it would be far less radical and militant (and more willing to work with Mapai/Alignment/Labor). The funny thing is even though Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky weren't crazy about each other, they were both interested in rapprochement in the 1930s and made a serious effort at it.

You might not get a Revisionist Israel, but you would get a stronger Revisionist movement (and a stronger center-right/right) non-Labor Zionism rather than it coming around in the 1977 election.
 
Not really. The Revisionist movement was a minority movement even before statehood, and Ben-Gurion and Mapai (and Labor Zionism) held a very strong hold on Yishuv politics. I mean, if Jabotinsky lives rather than die in 1940, you might see a stronger Revisionist movement but it would be far less radical and militant (and more willing to work with Mapai/Alignment/Labor). The funny thing is even though Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky weren't crazy about each other, they were both interested in rapprochement in the 1930s and made a serious effort at it.

You might not get a Revisionist Israel, but you would get a stronger Revisionist movement (and a stronger center-right/right) non-Labor Zionism rather than it coming around in the 1977 election.

I agree as a person who has read Jabotinsky (who was, by the way, an extremely good poet) and Ben-Gurion, from Ben-Gurion and his associates' name calling Jabotinsky as a Fascist was a sound political move but Jabotinsky was no Fascist, for example, he was a firm believer in democracy.
 
A more revisionist-influenced Israel would still be a liberal democracy, but less domestically socialist and more expansionist than OTL. Jabotinsky advocated a close British-Zionist alliance and tried to gain British support for Israeli independence by pitching the future state as beneficial for the British Empire.

That could have turned into anything from a close UK-Israeli relationship to an Israeli dominion within the Commonwealth. If Israel's leadership was less dominated by democratic socialists, there might have been less Soviet support for Israel in the '40s and '50s. Jabotinsky was an economic liberal, but I don't know how much that would translate into policy.
 
I agree as a person who has read Jabotinsky (who was, by the way, an extremely good poet) and Ben-Gurion, from Ben-Gurion and his associates' name calling Jabotinsky as a Fascist was a sound political move but Jabotinsky was no Fascist, for example, he was a firm believer in democracy.

I always thought it was hilarious that the British exiled Jabotinsky to de-fang the Revisionists. He would never have permitted the Sergeants Plot or the King David bombing, for example, and probably could have exerted enough influence to prevent it.

So, is it implausible for a de-facto Fascist Israel to arise in the late 1940s?
Implausible but not impossible. The big thing, I htink, is that you would need a foreign sponsor. But who? The best I can come up with is that the USSR provides lots of support to the more radical wings of Labour Zionism and the US sponsors a Revisionist coup to counter it, but that's stretching.
 
..
A more revisionist-influenced Israel would still be a liberal democracy, but less domestically socialist and more expansionist than OTL. Jabotinsky advocated a close British-Zionist alliance and tried to gain British support for Israeli independence by pitching the future state as beneficial for the British Empire.

That could have turned into anything from a close UK-Israeli relationship to an Israeli dominion within the Commonwealth. If Israel's leadership was less dominated by democratic socialists, there might have been less Soviet support for Israel in the '40s and '50s. Jabotinsky was an economic liberal, but I don't know how much that would translate into policy.

I doubt after the sense of betrayal that both Jews and Arabs felt after WW2 of the British that anything like close UK-Israeli relations would occur plus as Britain is getting more irrelevant both in the region and worldwide it would be seen as useless exercise as what would Britain offer Israel that she needed weapons, arms, markets, political support, etc? Finally, in the post ww2 era, World Jewry was heavily influenced by the US.


I always thought it was hilarious that the British exiled Jabotinsky to de-fang the Revisionists. He would never have permitted the Sergeants Plot or the King David bombing, for example, and probably could have exerted enough influence to prevent it.

Too late then.

From the Israeli and I think the world view, Britain was seen as the bad guy. Depending on your view the British had either lied to the locals with the mandate or they had broken their word with the mandate. The Jews felt that the British had betrayed them by blocking Jews from running away from Hitler when they really needed a place plus when the Jews were being driven out the Arab countries the British were doing nothing but blocking them again. Both these acts you mentioned were seen by the Israelis as retaliation for illegal and immoral British actions plus the revisionist strongly thought that Zionism was running out of time to establish a state and that they had to drive the British out quickly before the British did more irreparable damage and the Jews in Europe and the Arab countries resettled.

Implausible but not impossible. The big thing, I htink, is that you would need a foreign sponsor. But who? The best I can come up with is that the USSR provides lots of support to the more radical wings of Labour Zionism and the US sponsors a Revisionist coup to counter it, but that's stretching.

Yes, plus any fascist state would antagonise American Jewry.

So, is it implausible for a de-facto Fascist Israel to arise in the late 1940s?

Not by a definition, you would consider fascist
 
If the idea is a far right nationalist Israel then just ask in the future history forum and it becomes much easier. Of course if the idea is to have the far right take power in the 20th century you are gonna need the socialist leaning factions of israeli nationalis, the ones that were hegemonic in the first decades of the state, to decay sooner and to radicalice the antipalestinian sentiment far sooner among the israelis. Maybe israel gets the full mandate of palestine (so it gets jordania) and there is no nakba or expultions of jews from algeria, yemen, etc. so now you have a lot more arab population in israel and far less jewish emigrants (who are gonna arrive slower if at all). A more demographically complicated internal front could move israel towards a more explicit apartheid.
 
Well, Revisionist Zionism had a big issue in its territorial ambitions, which were implausible. They patches worn on the arms of Irgun members showed an Israel in control of all of Transjordan. This wasn't going to happen.

The War of Independence was a near run thing as it was in many ways. Israel benefitted from the armed kibbutzim (often with Molotov Cocktails and small arms only) in the Galilee slowing down attacks from the north and east, which could have been really dangerous had they gotten going into the Arab Triangle and allowed the Syrian assault to hook up with the Iraqi force before approaching the coastal plain. And had Transjordan really put its back into the effort, it might have been able to drive into West Jerusalem. I don't think the Arabs would have won the war, but the final boundaries were a stroke of luck for Israel considering the initial situation. They had won the Civil War with the Palestinians pretty easily, but the Independence War against the Arab intervention was significantly harder.

Revisionist Zionism would later revise its territorial ambitions, and then do so again, etc, to the point now where one of the Revisionist Parties currently running for Knesset has as part of its diplomatic platform a sort of exchange with a future Palestinian state including a part of land currently in Israel proper in exchange for blocs of inhabitants in Judea and Samaria, largely on the basis of demographic representivity.

You also have to take into account that Revisionist Zionist was not popular with the core of who settled the early state compared to Labour Zionism, as the population had not yet taken in large numbers of Mizrahi Jews more sympathetic to Revisionist Zionism (if not ideologically, than at least as a matter of the enemy of my enemy being my friend). There are a variety of reasons for this: the Second Aliyah was almost entirely a Labour Zionist endeavor, for one thing, and it was they who created most of the prestate institutions. In addition, the Revisionist cause was strongest proportionally in Poland (through the Betar movement), who saw their Jewish populations suffer almost the worst proportionally in the Holocaust (the same reason why Labour Bundism largely died after WW2; in addition to being utterly and completely discredited by the experience of the Holocaust, it was strongest in Poland). In addition, the Jewish population of Hungary was probably the most right leaning of all the prewar Jewish populations in Europe, and while not Revisionist, would have likely been more likely to support Revisionism upon postwar Aliyah. However, Hungary's Jews were massacred almost at or exceeding Polish rates during 1944 and as a result, were not well represented among the postwar Aliyah.

Its also worth mentioning that Revisionist Ideology was not all that well developed. I don't think it would be fair to call it Totalitarian, for example. There were Totalitarians, however, such as Avraham Stern.

Menachem Begin was really the one who formed it as an ideology, and he did this mostly as a lonely opposition figure. Jabotinsky may have been referenced frequently, but the Revisionist Cause in Israel increasingly became dominated by Begin's populist approach. Revisionism was based around middle class Jewish politics so it leaned to the right of Labour Zionism, but it wasn't necessarily liberal initially, having a social democratic strand (Jabotinsky largely agreed with Roosevelt's four freedoms concept). It was explicitly nationalist, and made alliances with the General Zionists, who were Liberals, and as a result, Israel is one of the few countries that has a National Liberal political ideology that has obtained power (in the form of Herut, and later on Likud, which is economically liberal in some regards and populist in others).
 
Going by how Israel has kept moving right and right, you won't see a *fascist* israel but we could see a situation where the major parties in israel are all hard right with the revisionist zionists being what remains of a left in israel in 20-30 years OTO.
 
Going by how Israel has kept moving right and right, you won't see a *fascist* israel but we could see a situation where the major parties in israel are all hard right with the revisionist zionists being what remains of a left in israel in 20-30 years OTO.
Well, maybe on security and diplomatic issues, where yes, the left in Israel has been pretty discredited, but you will find that the UltraOrthodox parties lean quite left on economic issues (in many cases, to the left of Labour), and they are likely going to being growing in representation because of demographic changes.

Israel's high tech driven economic growth of the last few years has put the wind in the sails of economic liberals in both the right (the New Right Party and the governing Likud Party) as well as parts of the centre (the Yesh Atid faction of the Kahol Lavan Party). But there is some dissent from this growing liberal consensus in the form of some parties on the right (the factions that make up the Union of Right Wing Parties & the Russian immigrant led Yisrael Beiteinu Party), as well as centrist to centre left parties like Kulanu, Gesher, and Labour.

So I wouldn't be so sure of this. The definitions of the political spectrum change. It would be pretty hard to be in Israeli politics right now and be calling for the return of the days of stringent currency controls and a nationalized telephone monopoly and mandatory black and white TV (this last point held for a decade after color TV was possible because, and I kid you not, Mapai thought color TV was not egalitarian), just as it would be pretty hard to decide on doing another round of diplomatic concessions to Fatah or dismantling the security fence, after a decade of relatively low amounts of terror and an end to the large scale suicide bombings. So the centre of political gravity has shifted without a doubt. But whose to say that the issues of today will be the issues of tomorrow? I imagine further political polarization among religious/secular lines and perhaps a slowdown in tech driven liberal growth that comes at the same time as rise in cost of living will reorient things again. And the makeup of Likud and Labor's voting base, on socioeconomic lines, indicates that perhaps they might one day flip on some of these questions.

Big centrist conglomeration parties tend not to last very long, driven asunder by internal problems, and I think this will prove the case for Kahol Lavan, even if they are able to form a government in the upcoming elections. But the disparate factions have a tendency to reorient themselves either on the right wing of Labor or the left wing of Likud or as part of whatever anti-religious centrist party pops up, so you never know.
 
I didn't say free market, I just said rightist. Going by what I've heard about the ultraorthodox living off of welfare to do torah study I'm unsurprised at the religious parties being more economically left.
 
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