Revolutionary Zionism

12 Adar Alef 5774

British Edom killed Avraham Stern and American Edom killed Rav Meir Kahane and his son Binyamin Ze'ev, but they can't kill "The Idea"  they gave their lives for. The Idea - The Jewish Idea - that the People of Israel are a chosen people, a holy nation, set apart to serve Almighty G-d in a chosen and holy land - Eretz Yisrael - in accordance with the laws set down in a holy book of instruction received from the Creator Himself.

I think this basic "Idea" was the foundation for what Zev Golan calls "Revolutionary Zionism." Differentiating it from the other forms, he writes: 

"...In the 1940s, Lehi claimed to speak not for victims of European or German persecution but in the name of all the victims of all the Exiles as well as those Jews who would be persecuted in Eretz Yisrael, too, in the future, if they did not succeed in establishing the Hebrew kingdom they sought. ...They described what they wanted as redemption."

One of the first actions of the Lehi was to blow the shofar at the Western Wall in violation of British law which restricted Jewish worship there. They tore down Nazi flags flying from the German consulate in Jerusalem.  Can you imagine that?  A Nazi flag flying in Jerusalem? But, then I have to ask: Is the flag of 'Palestine' really any different?

Come to think of it, how is the ruling regime practically any different today than the British were in Stern's own time?  Granted, we have unfettered access to the Western Wall, but Jews do not have religious rights on Har Habayit.  They are not allowed to arm themselves at will or to fight back ("price tags"=terrorism) or to settle wherever they please in the Land of Israel and they are still looking to the Edomites of the day for permission before making any moves.  The Zionist dream of Israel as a refuge for Jews where Jewish culture would flourish has become the worst kind of nightmare as antisemitism and assimilation within the Jewish state only grows worse.    

You see, everything is constantly in motion.  There is no such thing as standing still.  If we're not moving forward, we're losing ground.  We lost the vision (or never had one) of the rebuilt Third Temple on Har Habayit and of the Land of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile.  And that's why today we are about to lose Yehuda v'Shomron and the Kotel itself as well as once again being threatened with foreign occupation (UN or NATO troops).  

The Messiah has not yet come.  It's not yet time to sit back and enjoy the fruit of our labors. We've been like our forefather Ya'aqov, who wanted to settle down in Shechem and trouble came in the form of Dinah's kidnapping and the resulting slaughter of the people of Shechem. 

Stern and his group understood the cost of their dream, but they were prepared and more than willing to pay it.  Had they not taken on the British Empire against all odds and with tremendous self-sacrifice, who knows how much longer England would have held onto their rule here.  

Stern's dream should be our dream as well - nothing less than the complete liberation of ALL the Land of Israel from ALL the enemies of the Jewish people, and the establishment of the Hebrew kingdom - a descendant of David Hamelech on the throne - nothing less than the complete redemption.  Revolutionary Zionism's time has come again.

To be continued...