Jabotinsky in Full

I am grateful to Hillel Halkin, Martin Kramer, and Rick Richman for their thoughtful and enlightening responses. That Ze’ev Jabotinsky is able to provoke such vibrant discussion more than 80 years after his death is testimony to the complexity and richness of his thought. I will try here to address my respondents both together and separately.

Hillel Halkin raises in his fascinating critique a question that every political biographer grapples with: when to take the subject’s statements at face value and when to understand them as reflections of political expedience rather than genuine commitment. Moreover, when a leader’s words or writings contradict his previous positions, when are they evidence of a significant change of heart, and when are they evidence of mere lip service to popular opinion?

This is, indeed, not a simple problem.