Zionist Activism
During his studies, Netanyahu became active in Revisionist Zionists circles, and a close friend to Abba Ahimeir. He was coeditor of Betar a Hebrew monthly (1933–1934), then editor of the Revisionist Zionist daily newspaper Ha-Yarden in Jerusalem (1934–1935). The British Mandate authorities ordered that paper to close. He was editor at the Zionist Political Library, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, 1935–1940. He traveled to New York and became the secretary to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the father of the Revisionist Zionism movement. Shortly thereafter, when Jabotinsky died, Netanyahu remained in New York and continued his Revisionist activities. He was executive director New Zionist Organization of America in New York 1940–1948, the political rival of the mainstream Zionist Organization of America.
During World War II, he was one of the Revisionist movement's leaders in the U.S. At the same time he pursued his PhD at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, writing his dissertation on Isaac Abrabanel.
Netanyahu believed in Greater Israel. When the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was published (November 29, 1947), he joined others who signed the petition against the plan that was published in the New York Times. During that time, he was active in engaging with Congress members in Washington, D.C.. He returned to Palestine (now the newly-established State of Israel) in 1949, where he tried to start a political career but failed.
Relentlessly hawkish, he also believed that the "vast majority of Israeli Arabs would choose to exterminate us if they had the option to do so". In his younger days, he had been strongly in favour of the idea of Arab transfer out of Palestine.
In 2009 he told Maariv "The tendency to conflict is the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won't allow him to compromise. It doesn't matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war."
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