How Vladimir Jabotinsky Foresaw Israel’s Current Predicament

In his 1923 essay “The Iron Wall,” the Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky—whose Revisionist Zionist movement was the predecessor of the Likud—argued that conflict with the Palestinian Arabs was inevitable and that only by acquiring significant military power would a Jewish state be able to coexist with its Arab neighbors. Yossi Klein Halevi discusses the many ways in which this essay proved prescient, what it got wrong, and its author’s surprising—but characteristic—sympathy with Arab national pride. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 50 minutes.)