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Jabotinsky predicted the Start-Up Nation nearly a century ago: 
Man was Israel lucky to have some founding fathers who weren’t socialists.
An amazing factoid about Ben-Gurion’s pettiness and egotism was that Jabotinsky wasn’t buried in Israel until after Ben-Gurion’s premiership. He was buried on Long Island! Jewish Legion vets used to pilgrimage to his grave every year.
Ben-Gurion’s wife tried to get the Old Man to let bygones be bygones and put the unity of the Jewish people at a precarious moment first. No dice. Levi Eshkol finally righted a historical wrong.
Leftist Jewish groups also tried to blackball Jabotinsky and his colleagues in the leadup to the Holocaust. Jabo wanted Jewish brigades and an alliance with Churchill. Labor Zionists were having none of it. We know how that story ends!
After WWI Jabo wanted to use the success of the Jewish Legion—they helped Allenby take Palestine—to keep a British-aligned Jewish militia. Labor Zionists refused, wanted any militia under their control not British. So it didn’t happen. Then the pogroms came and no one stopped it.
Countless Jewish lives are owed to Jabotinsky. But how many more could have been saved if not for Ben-Gurion’s partisanship and control freak leadership? What’s important is that long-term the Jabotinskyites prevailed. For that the Jewish world should be unreservedly grateful.
