Editing Ze'ev Jabotinsky (section)

==Early activism and militancy==
===Zionist activism in Russia===
Prior to the [[Kishinev pogrom]] of 1903, Jabotinsky joined the [[Zionism|Zionist movement]], where he soon gained a reputation as a powerful speaker and an influential leader.<ref>[http://forward.com/articles/8544/kishinev--the-birth-of-a-century/ Kishinev 1903: The Birth of a Century], quoting from the memoirs of [[Simon Dubnow]]: "It was the night of April 7, 1903. Because of Russian Easter, the newspapers had not been issued for the previous two days so we remained without any news from the rest of the world. That night the Jewish audience assembled in the Beseda Club, to listen to the talk of a young Zionist, the Odessa 'wunderkind' V. Jabotinsky [….] The young agitator had great success with his audience. In a particularly moving manner, he drew on Pinsker's parable of the Jew as a shadow wandering through space and developed it further. As for my own impression, this one-sided treatment of our historical problem depressed me: Did he not scarcely stop short of inducing fear in our unstable Jewish youth of their own national shadow?… During the break, while pacing up and down in the neighboring room, I noticed sudden unrest in the audience: the news spread that fugitives had arrived in Odessa from nearby Kishinev and had reported a bloody pogrom in progress there."</ref> With more pogroms looming on the horizon, he established the Jewish Self-Defense Organization, a Jewish militant group, to safeguard Jewish communities throughout Russia. He became a source of great controversy in the Russian Jewish community as a result of these actions.

Around this time, he began learning [[modern Hebrew]], and took a Hebrew name: ''Vladimir'' became ''Ze'ev'' ("wolf"). During the pogroms, he organized self-defence units in [[Jewish]] communities across Russia and fought for the [[civil rights]] of the Jewish population as a whole. His slogan was, "Better to have a gun and not need it than to need it and not have it!" Another slogan was, "Jewish youth, learn to shoot!"

In 1903, he was elected as a Russian delegate to the [[Sixth Zionist Congress]] in Basel, Switzerland. After [[Theodor Herzl]]'s death in 1904, he became the leader of the right-wing Zionists. That year he moved to [[Saint Petersburg]] and became one of the co-editors for the Russophone magazine ''Yevreiskaya Zhyzn'' (Jewish Life), which after 1907 became the official publishing body of the Zionist movement in Russia. In the pages of the newspaper, Jabotinsky wrote fierce polemics against supporters of assimilation and the [[General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia|Bund]].

In 1905, he was one of the co-founders of the "Union for Rights Equality of Jewish People in Russia". The following year, he was one of the chief speakers at the 3rd All-Russian Conference of Zionists in [[Helsinki]], [[Grand Duchy of Finland|Finland]], which called upon the Jews of Europe to engage in ''Gegenwartsarbeit'' (work in the present) and to join together to demand autonomy for ethnic minorities in Russia.<ref name="liberal.org.il">{{cite web|url=http://www.liberal.org.il/the_man.htm |title=Jabotinsky Ze'ev. Liberal and Zionist Leader. Brief Biography |publisher=Liberal.org.il |access-date=22 September 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090620113613/http://www.liberal.org.il/the_man.htm |archive-date=20 June 2009 }}</ref> This liberal approach was later apparent in his position concerning the [[Arab citizens of Israel|Arab citizens of the future Jewish State]]: Jabotinsky asserted that "''Each one of the ethnic communities will be recognized as autonomous and equal in the eyes of the law''."<ref name="liberal.org.il" />

In 1909, he fiercely criticized leading members of the Russian Jewish community for participating in ceremonies marking the centennial of the Russian writer [[Nikolai Gogol]]. In light of Gogol's antisemitic views, Jabotinsky claimed it was unseemly for Russian Jews to take part in these ceremonies, as it showed they had no Jewish self-respect.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

===Representative of the ZO in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914===
In 1909, Sultan [[Abdulhamid II]] was deposed. The year before that, following the [[Young Turk Revolution]], the Berlin Executive office of the [[World Zionist Organization|Zionist Organization]] (ZO), sent Jabotinsky to the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] capital [[Constantinople]] where he became editor-in-chief of a new pro-[[Young Turks|Young-Turkish]] daily newspaper ''[[Le Jeune Turc]]'' (meaning [[Young Turk]]) which was founded and financed by Zionist officials like ZO president [[David Wolffsohn]] and his representative in Constantinople Victor Jacobson. The journalists writing for that paper included the famous [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|German Social democrat]] and Russian-Jewish revolutionary [[Alexander Parvus]], who lived in Constantinople from 1910 until 1914. The ''Jeune Turc'' was prohibited in 1915 by the pro-German [[1913 Ottoman coup d'état|Turkish military junta]]. Richard Lichtheim, who was to become Jabotinsky's representative in Germany in 1925, stayed in Constantinople as ZO representative and managed to keep the "[[Yishuv]]" (Jewish population of [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]]) out of trouble during the war years by constant diplomatic interventions with German, Turkish, and also American authorities, whose humanitarian support was crucial for the survival of the Jewish settlement project in Palestine during the war years.<ref>For references, see Richard Lichtheims autobiographical books in Hebrew and German (see the [[:he:%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7%93 %D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%98%D7%94%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D|Hebrew Wikipedia entry of Richard Lichtheim]])</ref>