Terror

This chapter details Betar's activities in the twilight years of the Second Polish Republic. With Hitler's rise to power, a surge in anti-Jewish riots across Poland, and the escalating conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in Mandate Palestine, numerous Betar leaders were calling for Zionist youth, no matter their location, to turn to acts of revolutionary violence to defend Jews from attack. Some of them wondered aloud whether their potential targets could include their Jewish rivals. The chapter follows Betar's overlapping conversations about their use of violence in Poland and in Palestine. Ultimately, it reveals how right-wing Zionist debates about violence in Poland and elsewhere in Europe helped lay the groundwork for justifying acts of terrorism during the Arab Revolt in Mandate Palestine (1936–1939).