A Jewish “Liberal” in Istanbul: Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Young Turks and the Zionist Press Network, 1908–1911 pp 289–314
Before Jabotinsky, it was Theodor Herzl who initiated the diplomatic efforts to convince the Ottomans for the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Yet, despite multiple visits, his efforts bore no fruit due to the firm stance of the Ottoman sultan at the time, Abdülhamid II. After the 1908 revolution, the WZO officials saw this as an opportunity to rejuvenate the Zionist efforts in the Empire.
Jabotinsky, an ideal candidate for this renewed effort, had already published a series of articles in a Russian newspaper, sharing his observations on the Ottoman Empire with his Russian audience. In these writings, he advocated for supporting the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and fostering strong relations between Sephardi Jews and Turks.
Jabotinsky realized that the Ottoman Turks were unsympathetic to the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine, partly due to their limited understanding of the Zionist movement and their fears of potential Jewish separatism. However, he saw this as an opportunity. He believed that a Jewish population in the Arab region could benefit the Turkish leadership by diluting the Arab demographic, thereby weakening Arab dominance.
By the time Jabotinsky arrived in Istanbul, other Zionist leaders, such as Dr. Victor Jacobson, were already laying the groundwork for diplomatic efforts. Jacobson, the head of the Istanbul branch of the Anglo-Palestine Company—registered locally as the Anglo-Levantine Banking Company—had been working to establish the first Zionist office in the city. This office aimed to garner both governmental and widespread support for Zionism, particularly in areas with significant Jewish populations such as Salonica and Izmir.
At the August 1909 meeting of the WZO, a committee was formed to oversee Zionist press activities in the Ottoman Empire. On 4 August 1909, the newspaper Le Jeune Turc was established, financed by Zionist officials such as David Wolffsohn, the WZO’s second president, and Dr. Victor Jacobson.
The newspaper’s most prominent contributors included Jabotinsky, its editor-in-chief Celal Nuri Ileri, as well as notable figures like Ahmet Agaoglu and Moiz Cohen (later known as Munis Tekin Alp). From its inception, served not only as a press outlet but also as a meeting place for Turkish and Jewish intellectuals, where Jabotinsky prominently delivered speeches promoting Zionist propaganda.
In its early stages, the newspaper was successful. Some Ottoman intellectuals viewed Zionism as a peripheral movement and a reactionary force in the broader European order. For this reason, they supported Zionists in their conflict with the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which they saw as an agent of French imperialism. At that time, Zionism did not explicitly promote any European imperial identity.
Among the Ottoman Jewish community, however, the situation
was more complex. Chief Rabbi Naim Hahum opposed the Zionists, as they had
supported his rival, Rabbi Yaakov, during the 1909 Chief Rabbinate elections.
Nevertheless, several members of the Ottoman Parliament, including Emmanuel
Carasso, Nissim Mazliah, and Nissim Russo, were more sympathetic.
These parliamentarians worked to demonstrate that Zionism did not have separatist ambitions, portraying it instead as compatible with Ottoman patriotism. Munis Tekin Alp even spoke at the December 1909 Zionist Congress in Hamburg, emphasising the alignment between Zionism and Ottoman values.
However, Jabotinsky grew dissatisfied with the slow progress
of Zionist goals in the Empire, believing that the gradual approach obscured
the true objective—Jewish settlement in Palestine.
During 1906 Jabotinsky initiated his fight for the Hebrew language and for the establishment of a Jewish university in Eretz Israel. He found the problems of national minorities particularly interesting – a topic on which he wrote his academic thesis "Autonomy of a National Minority", which qualified him for a Law degree.
On October 27, 1907, Jabotinsky married Joanna (Anya) Galprin, whom he first met when he was 15 years old and she just 10 years old. Their only son, Eri, born in 1910, spoke with his father exclusively in Hebrew.
Jabotinsky travelled to Turkey as a journalist, reporting on the revolution of the Young Turks. The Zionist leadership hoped that revolutionary forces in the Turkish government, within the current liberal, democratic climate, would now demonstrate greater sympathy for Zionist aspirations in Eretz Israel. Influenced by Jabotinsky, a network of newspapers was founded in Turkey, sponsored by the Zionist Organization, among them the popular newspaper 'La Jeune Turk' (The Young Turk).
When Turkey entered the war, he saw an opportunity to act and declared that "our fate depends on liberation in Eretz Israel from Turkish rule, and, with this liberation, we must participate as a Jewish military unit." In Madrid he met with Max Nordau, leader of the political branch of the Zionist Organization, and raised the idea of establishing a Jewish force to fight alongside the Allies to free Eretz Israel from the Turkish yoke. Nordau objected and even wrote to Nahum Sokolov, a member of the Zionist leadership: "I definitely reject (Jabotinsky's) plan, which is both imaginary and undesirable." During this period the Turkish began a mass deportation of Jews from Eretz Israel to Egypt.
[2] David Ben-Gurion born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1
December 1973) was the primary national founder and first prime minister of the
State of Israel.
[3] Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (24 November 1884 – 23 April 1963; born
Izaak Shimshelevich) was a historian, ethnologist, Labor Zionist leader and the
longest-serving president of Israel.
[4] From Mavi Boncuk | December 16, 2006
(left) Jabotinsky (L) and Trumpeldor in uniform.
Vladimir Jabotinsky proposed that a Jewish legion be formed to join the British in liberating Palestine from the Turks during World War I, but the British resisted the idea of Jewish volunteers fighting on the Palestinian front and included the likes of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Israel's second president).
In December 1914, Zeev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor raised the idea of the formation of a Jewish unit that would participate in the British military effort to liberate the Land of Israel from the Ottoman Empire, and by the end of March 1915, 500 Jewish volunteers from the Jews in Egypt who had been deported there by the Turks had started training. For political reasons the British opposed the participation of Jewish volunteers on the Palestinian front. Instead, they suggested the Jews serve as a detachment for mule transport at another location along the Turkish front. Joseph Trumpeldor subsequently formed the 650-strong Zion Mule Corps, of whom 562 were sent to the Gallipoli front.
Ultimately, in August 1917, the formation of a Jewish regiment was officially announced. The soldiers of the 38th and 39th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, made up almost entirely of Jews from Britain, Russia, the United States and Canada and later, the 40th Battalion, composed of Jews from the Ottoman provinces of Palestine and other areas, served in the Jordan Valley and fought the Turks some 20 miles north of Jerusalem.
10,000 Jewish volunteers served in the British Army during World War One. From among the Jewish volunteers five battalions were formed. In the lists of soldiers in these five battalions, there are names of Jewish soldiers from England, the commonwealth, America, Argentine and Eretz Israel, and their file numbers in the archive at the Jewish Legions Museum in Moshav Avihayil.
(pictured) The Zion Mule Corps was formed in March 1915 and became the first organised Jewish fighting force for 2000 years. (Public domain)
The Zion Mule Corps (1915-1916) was comprised of Jewish volunteers who were deported by the Turks from Palestine to Egypt. They took part in the fighting at Galipoli.
38th Battalion of Royal Fusiliers - the "Tailors Battalion" of volunteers from England (1917)Formed at Plymouth from Jewish Volunteers on 20 Jan 1918. Went to Italy in Feb 1918.During September 1918, attached to Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division, in Palestine.Note:(in France the entire ANZAC corps was commanded by an Australian Jewish officer, Lieut. General Sir John Monash)
39th Battalion - the "American" Battalion 1918
40th Royal Fusiliers" Battalion - the "Palestinian" Battalion made up of volunteers from the Jewish population in Palestine.Formed at Plymouth from Jewish Volunteers in Jun 1918. Went to Egypt.
"The First Judeans" (1919) - The battalion established with the Menora symbol on its flag and with its soldiers and officers communicating in the Hebrew Language. This battalion took part in the defence of Tel-Aviv.
One of the terms that demonstrate that there's an identity between the Star of David and Zion is the "Daughter of Zion". Originally it refers to the Temple Mount which is the "daughter" of Mount Zion.
During World War I a poster for the recruitment to the Jewish Legion was published in American Jewish magazines. On it there was a big Star of David encircilng a woman (Daughter of Zion) and the words in Yiddish: "Daughter of Zion I want your Old New Land! Join the Jewish regiment. On the head of this Daughter of Zion there's a stripe with a small Star of David on its center. In this case Daughter of Zion represented the Jewish people.
See: The Zion Muleteers of Gallipoli
(March 1915 - May 1916)
By Martin Sugarman, BA (Hons.), Cert Ed., Assistant Archivist, Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women (AJEX) Jewish Military Museum
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Jabotinsky Museum is one of the most distinctive historical museums in Tel Aviv.
Yael Meshorer - Chief Instructor | Tel: +972-3-5286523, +972-3-5287320
[5] Excerpted from "Cheney Revives Parvus 'Permanent War' Madness," EIR, Sept. 23, 2005. PDF version of this article included in PDF of Netanyahu's Godfather: How British Imperialists Created the Fascist Jabotinsky.
British agent Vladimir Jabotinsky's career would cross that of another of the most important operatives of the Bolshevik revolutionary epoch, Alexander Israel Helphand (a.k.a. "Parvus"). Both Jabotinsky and Parvus edited publications of the British/Venetian-spawned Young Turk movement, which helped instigate London's Balkan Wars and the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire—without which, the entire Anglo-French Sykes-Picot colonial scheme would not have been possible.
Like Jabotinsky, Parvus [*](1867-1924)[6] came from an Odessa family steeped in the grain trade. By 1886, Helphand/Parvus had already become involved in the Okhrana-spawned Russian socialist scene, travelling to Switzerland to participate in the Emancipation of Labor group.
Once "Bloody Sunday" unleashed the revolutionary destabilizations in St. Petersburg, Parvus appeared on the scene, as a leading collaborator of Leon Trotsky and other leaders of the Petersburg Soviet. Parvus and Trotsky bought a liberal newspaper, Russkaya Gazeta, to rival the Bolshevik publication. It soon had a circulation of 500,000. Parvus and Trotsky turned the newspaper into a radical provocateur organ, much to the delight of the Okhrana, which would soon launch a police crackdown on the entire social democracy.
When the entire leadership of the Petersburg Soviet—including Trotsky—was rounded up and jailed in December 1905, Parvus escaped the police clutches, and next turned up, via Germany, in Constantinople, as a "journalist" covering the Young Turk rebellion against the Ottomans, a crucial prelude to the British-manipulated second Balkan War. It would be at this moment that Parvus's ties to the leading European "Venetian Party" factions—especially to British intelligence—would be publicly shown.
The Young Turks
In 1908, the Committee for Union and Progress, otherwise known as the Young Turks, carried out a military coup, overthrowing the Sultan and seizing power over the Ottoman Empire. Launching ethnic cleansing campaigns against all non-Turkic peoples, including Armenians, Greeks, and Bulgarians, the Young Turk regime played a pivotal role in provoking the 1912-13 Balkan Wars, through its brutality towards the minorities. By their own accounts, the Young Turks based their revolution on a version of Pan-Turkism that had been devised by an advisor to the Sultan in the 1860s who was, in fact, an agent of Britain's Lord Palmerston. The Young Turks also preached a rabid anti-Russian ideology, which was inspired by Wilfred Blunt, a top British Intelligence official, whose own ideas about playing an "Islamic card" to destroy Russia predated those of Britain's Bernard Lewis by a full century.
The actual founder of the Young Turk movement was an Italian Freemason and grain trader named Emmanuel Carasso. Jewish by birth, Carasso had been a leading member of the Italian Masonic lodge in Salonika, called the Macedonia Risorta Lodge. Virtually all of the members of the Young Turk leadership were lodge members. The forerunner of the Macedonia Risorta Lodge was founded by a follower of another Palmerston agent and revolutionary provocateur, Giuseppi Mazzini.
Carasso was a leading financier of the entire Young Turk insurrection, and during the Balkan Wars, he was not only the head of Balkan intelligence operations for the Young Turks; he was in charge of all food supplies for the Ottomans during World War I, a lucrative business which he shared with Parvus.
Carasso also financed a number of newspapers and other propaganda outlets for the Young Turks, among them, the newspaper The Young Turk, which was edited by none other than Vladimir Jabotinsky. Another of Carasso's "business" associates, Parvus, became economics editor of another Young Turk journal, The Turkish Homeland.
The Young Turk operation was headed, from London, by Aubrey Herbert, a grandson of one of Mazzini's controllers, who himself died while leading revolutionary mobs in Italy in 1848. Aubrey Herbert headed all British Intelligence operations in the Middle East during the period of World War I, and no less a figure than Lawrence of Arabia identified Herbert as the actual head of the Young Turk insurrection.
Emmanuel Carasso's pivotal role in the Young Turk movement and the resulting Balkan Wars of 1912-13, is of significance from one additional standpoint. Carasso was a protégé and business partner of Volpi di Misurata, the leading Venetian banker of the early 20th Century, who not only sponsored the Young Turk insurrection, but also promoted the Black Shirt takeover of Rome and went on to run the Mussolini Fascist regime from his various posts as Minister of Finance (1925-28), member of the Grand Council of Fascism, president of the Fascist Confederation of Industrialists, and, most important, as the chief public representative of a group of aristocrats around Count Piero Foscari, of the ancient Venetian dogal family.
The Venetian banker Volpi was closely allied with City of
London financiers throughout. And the Young Turks, once they took power, made
no secret of their London ties. In 1909 the Ottoman Navy was put under the
command of a British admiral; the British Royal Family's own banker, Ernst
Cassel, established and managed the National Bank of Turkey; and British
officials advised the Ministry of Finance, the Interior Ministry, and the
Ministry of Justice. The Young Turks also denounced and blocked further construction
of the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad.
[*]
Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (8 September 1867 – 12 December 1924) and sometimes called Helphand in the literature on the Russian Revolution, was a Marxist theoretician, publicist, and controversial activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
In October 1905, Parvus returned to St Petersburg, where he helped Trotsky take control of the daily paper, Russkaya Gazeta, and cofounded with Trotsky and Julius Martov the daily Nachalo (The Start). Arrested in April 1906, he was visited by Rosa Luxemburg in the Peter and Paul Fortress[17] Sentenced to three years' exile in Siberia, Parvus escaped and emigrated to Germany, where he published a book about his experiences called In the Russian Bastille during the Revolution.
During his Istanbul period, Parvus also cooperated with the pro-CUP Zionist newspaper Le Jeune Turc, whose editor-in-chief was Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
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