Jewish History

Jan Zouplna (Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences)

The genealogy of the Israeli right wing is very complex indeed. From the 1920s to the 1940s the right wing was a loosely defined alliance ranging from intellectuals who were demanding the democratization of public life all the way to paramilitary units that included political terrorism in their programme. The ideas of the right wing included plans for the full integration of the Jewish national homeland in the British Empire and also appeals for the expulsion of the British from the Palestine. In this lecture, Jan Zouplna considers the reasons for such radical antagonisms within the movement, and the extent to which the situation after May 1945 reflected conflicts before the Second World War. He asks to what extent one may legitimately talk about continuity within the Zionist and the Israeli right wing, and he examines the differences between the recent scholarship and the established historiography on this question.