Ze'ev Jabotinsky[a][b] MBE (born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky;[c] 17 October 1880[1]  – 3 August 1940)[4] was a Russian-born[d] author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa.

Vladimir Yevgenyevich (Yevnovich) Zhabotinsky[11] was born in Odessa,[2] Kherson Governorate (modern Ukraine) into an assimilated Jewish family.

[15] From the autumn of 1898 onward, Jabotinsky was registered for three years as a law student at the Sapienza University of Rome,[16] but hardly attended any classes and did not graduate, leading a bohemian lifestyle instead.

[17] After returning as a news reporter to Odessa, he was arrested in April 1902 for writing feuilletons in an anti-establishment tone, as well as contributing to a radical Italian journal.

He was held isolated in a prison cell in the city for two months, where he communicated with other inmates through shouting and passing written notes.

[19] Prior to the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist movement, where he soon gained a reputation as a powerful speaker and an influential leader.

That year he moved to Saint Petersburg and became one of the co-editors for the Russophone magazine Yevreiskaya Zhyzn (Jewish Life), which after 1907 became the official publishing body of the Zionist movement in Russia.

The following year, he was one of the chief speakers at the 3rd All-Russian Conference of Zionists in Helsinki, Finland, which called upon the Jews of Europe to engage in Gegenwartsarbeit (work in the present) and to join together to demand autonomy for ethnic minorities in Russia.

[21] This liberal approach was later apparent in his position concerning the Arab citizens of the future Jewish State: Jabotinsky asserted that "Each one of the ethnic communities will be recognized as autonomous and equal in the eyes of the law.

In light of Gogol's antisemitic views, Jabotinsky claimed it was unseemly for Russian Jews to take part in these ceremonies, as it showed they had no Jewish self-respect.

The year before that, following the Young Turk Revolution, the Berlin Executive office of the Zionist Organization (ZO), sent Jabotinsky to the Ottoman capital Constantinople where he became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper Le Jeune Turc (meaning Young Turk) which was founded and financed by Zionist officials like ZO president David Wolffsohn and his representative in Constantinople Victor Jacobson.

The journalists writing for that paper included the famous German Social democrat and Russian-Jewish revolutionary Alexander Parvus, who lived in Constantinople from 1910 until 1914.

Richard Lichtheim, who was to become Jabotinsky's representative in Germany in 1925, stayed in Constantinople as ZO representative and managed to keep the "Yishuv" (Jewish population of Palestine) out of trouble during the war years by constant diplomatic interventions with German, Turkish, and also American authorities, whose humanitarian support was crucial for the survival of the Jewish settlement project in Palestine during the war years.

In 1915, together with Joseph Trumpeldor, a one-armed veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, he created the Zion Mule Corps, which consisted of several hundred Jewish men, mainly Russians who had been exiled from Palestine by the Ottoman Empire and had settled in Egypt.

When the Zion Mule Corps was disbanded, Jabotinsky traveled to London, where he continued his efforts to establish Jewish units to fight in Palestine as part of the British Army.

[24] He was demobilised in September 1919,[25] soon after he complained to Field Marshal Allenby about the British Army's attitude towards Zionism and the reduction of the Jewish Legion to just one battalion.

On 6 April 1920, during the 1920 Palestine riots the British searched the offices and apartments of the Zionist leadership for arms, including the home of Chaim Weizmann, and in a building used by Jabotinsky's defense forces they found three rifles, two pistols, and 250 rounds of ammunition.

The court blamed "Bolshevism" claiming that it "flowed in Zionism's inner heart", and ironically identified the fiercely anti-socialist Jabotinsky with the socialist-aligned Poalei Zion ('Zionist Workers') party, which it called 'a definite Bolshevist institution.

His main goal was to establish, with the help of the British Empire, a modern Jewish state in which equality of rights for its Arab minority were upheld.

[34][better source needed] His philosophy contrasted with that of the socialist-oriented Labor Zionists, in that it focused its economic and social policy on the ideals of the Jewish middle class in Europe.

Another area of major support for Jabotinsky was Latvia, where his speeches in Russian made an impression on the largely Russian-speaking Latvian Jewish community.

As an economic liberal, he supported a free market with minimal government intervention, but also believed that the "'elementary necessities' of the average person...: food, shelter, clothing, the opportunity to educate his children, and medical aid in case of illness" should be supplied by the state.

[40] From the early 1930s onwards Jabotinsky believed that the United Kingdom could no longer be trusted to advance the Zionist cause and that Italy, as a growing power capable of challenging Britain for dominance in the region, was a natural ally.

The plan gained the approval of all three governments but caused considerable controversy within the Jewish community of Poland, on the grounds that it played into the hands of antisemites.

[44][45] Two years later, in 1938, Jabotinsky allegedly stated in a speech that Polish Jews were "living on the edge of the volcano" and warned that the situation in Poland could drastically worsen sometime in the near future.

[51][52] On 12 May 1940, Jabotinsky offered Winston Churchill the support of a 130,000 strong Jewish volunteer corps to fight the Nazis; he also proposed Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion the creation of a united front for policy and relief.

Jabotinsky died of a heart attack shortly before midnight on 3 August 1940, while he was visiting a Jewish self-defense camp run by Betar in Hunter, New York.

[62] By order of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and in accordance with a second clause of his will, the remains of Jabotinsky and his wife were reburied at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem in 1964.

The Yid likes to hide with bated breath from the eyes of strangers; the Hebrew, with brazenness and greatness, should march ahead to the entire world, look them straight and deep in their eyes and hoist them his banner: “I am a Hebrew!”[70][71]His views were adopted by some Zionist publications, including Cahiers du Bétar, a monthly in Tunisia.

[72] In his study of the formative leaders of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel, Zeev Tzahor describes Jabotinsky as "a dazzling intellectual, an exceptional writer and a brilliant statesman...A charming man fluent in many languages, sensitive to cultural nuances, and profoundly knowledgeable in a broad array of subjects."