%0 Journal Article
%T Mecuda as an Ideological Stronghold of Betar Movement
%A Ratajczyk, Maciej
%J Media Research Issues
%V 2024
%R 10.4467/22996362PZ.24.019.19802
%N Volume 67, Issue 2 (258)
%P 151-169
%K Mecuda, revisionism, Betar, fascism, party press, Jewish press, Hebrew press, Mandatory Palestine
%@ 0555-0025
%D 2024
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/zeszyty-prasoznawcze/article/czasopismo-mecuda-jako-ideologiczna-twierdza-betaru
%X The magazine Mecuda/Metzuda (“Central Forum of the World Betar”) was published in Paris and Warsaw, and then in London and Warsaw. Between December 1935 and June 1938, 10 issues of this periodical were published. The editor-in-chief was Ajzik Remba (1907–1969), and the deputy editor-in-chief was Yaakov Simcha Peker (1906–1979). Among those who published in Mecuda were Zeev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin and Josef Klausner. The aim of the study is to understand what discourses (party propaganda) dominated in the magazine. The corpus of selected texts was examined using the discourse analysis method. Fiction and poetry were omitted in favor of journalism. The following auxiliary questions were formulated: 1) Who was considered the main opponent (with whom was the propaganda mainly polemicized and targeted)? 2) What charges – and how – were defended against? It has been hypothesized that the main target of the attacks was the Jewish left in Palestine and the Diaspora, and that the charges of fascism (often made by opponents of Betar) were mainly countered. While the second part of the hypothesis was completely confirmed, the first had to be partially verified, for the fight was mainly against the Zionist left in Palestine, to a lesser extent against Arabs and the pacifist Brit Shalom milieu, and opponents in the Diaspora (such as the Bund) were hardly mentioned. This leads to a broader observation about the strong connection of Mecuda with the context of Eretz Israel, which creates the impression that the reader is dealing with a magazine published somewhere in the Mandate of Palestine, and not in Europe. So far, researchers have paid little attention to the periodical discussed here, mentioning it only in a few sentences or using it as a source for the history of revisionism.