The Iron Wall Revisited: Utopian Paradigms in Jabotinsky's Conception of Zionism, Circa 1923

ABSTRACT: Jabotinsky's two Iron Wall essays of 1923–24 offered solutions to all sorts of problems: conflict with the Arabs of Palestine, refocusing Britain's government on attaining the goals in the Balfour Declaration (at least as Jaobtinsky understood them), and energizing the pace of Jewish emigration. Above all, after the violence in 1920 and 1921, Jabotinsky articulated a way to achieve peace. Although the most people perceive the essays as a prediction of the future—only naked violence will work—I believe the essays have their main importance as windows onto Jabotinsky's present and especially on his past, i.e. his political development since the Helsingfors Conference in 1906. This is because Jabotinsky changed, having fashioned himself from a subaltern representative of a small minority in the Russian Empire into a leader of an independent political grouping with specific needs to gain popularity in the present.