Abba Ahimeir - Ideology

Ideology

Ahimeir regarding Zionism as a secular, territorial phenomenon. He was the first to speak of "revolutionary Zionism," and call for a revolt against the British administration in Palestine. His worldview generally placed the contemporary political situation into the context of Jewish history, specifically the Second Temple Period, often casting himself and his friends as anti-imperialist freedom fighters, the British administration as a modern incarnation of ancient Rome and the official Zionist leadership as Jewish collaborators. Ahimeir's views had a profound influence on the ideology of the Irgun and Lehi undergrounds who later initiated an urban guerrilla war against the British.

Although Ahimeir described himself as a fascist during the late 1920s and early 1930s, and wrote a series of eight articles in the Hebrew Doar HaYom newspaper in 1928 entitled "From the Notebook of a Fascist," few of his contemporaries took these leanings seriously. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who consistently maintained that there was no room for Fascism within his Revisionist movement, dismissed Ahimeir’s rhetoric and argued that he and his Maximalist followers were merely playacting to make a point and were not serious in their professed Fascist beliefs.

In the October 7, 1932 edition of "Hazit Ha’am", Jabotinsky wrote:

Such men, even in the Maximalist and activist factions, number no more than two or three, and even with those two or three – pardon my frankness – it is mere phraseology, not a worldview. Even Mr. Ahimeir gives me the impression of a man who will show flexibility for the sake of educational goals… to this end he has borrowed some currently fashionable (and quite unnecessary) phrases, in which this daring idea clothes itself in several foreign cities."

Ahimeir’s fascist image during the 1920s was seized upon by author Christopher Hitchens in a 1998 article titled "The Iron Wall" to argue that fascism was the ideology guiding Benzion Netanyahu, a disciple of Ahimeir, and consequently his son, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In an April 16, 2010 interview with the Jerusalem Post, Ahimeir’s son Yossi defended his father against accusations of Fascism, saying:

"Hitchens is a known anti-Israel writer who takes my father’s writing completely out of context. Fascism in 1928 can’t be viewed in the context of the 1930s. Of course he would not be a fascist in view of how it developed."