Exactly one hundred years of the battle of Tel Hai, and what then occurred under the leadership of the settlement, is always relevant to the analysis of election results and the decline of the Zionist left.

In the days before the battle there was a fierce debate over whether to abandon or stay. In an article published in Haaretz newspaper ten days before the battle, Ze'ev Jabotinsky recommended abandoning Tel Hai. In analyzing the strategic conditions, the struggle seems to him futile: the people will be killed in vain. "What is the purpose?" Ask, "Defense or demonstration? ... Defend the positions impossible, because we do not have enough power." In today's terms, he described the settlers who insist on clinging to the place as a group of hilltop youth. Ben-Gurion, by the way, ruled that there should be a stay.

But Berl Katznelson led the main trend for staying, and in addressing the issue, he actually shaped the starting point for the pioneering workers' policy on two basic issues: the imperative of dedication to the defense and the fight over every settlement point on the one hand, and on the other, strategic decision making under risk conditions.

"We are honest people and not demonstrators," Katznelson replied, "No commanders send us, and losing a friend is not easy in our eyes ... We want life and know what is expected of us as we go ... and we go because our mission is fulfilling. Because not the question of a plot of land and some Jewish property here, but the question of Eretz Yisrael, that the departure and the withdrawal are the exemplary cuts on our relaxation and neglect, and that the only proof of our right to our country, the unity of Rosh Pina and Metulla, is in standing up and desperate, without looking backwards". This is where the struggle for grip on the land was born, recognizing the contribution of each settlement point to controlling space to the limit.

Even during the Wall and the Tower of Jabotinsky, how can some isolated and scattered settlement points lead to his conquest in Jewish presence? Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky disagreed about the benchmark for presence in space. Jabotinsky believed that the significant criterion was the number of localities and the spatial continuity between them, while Ben-Gurion referred to the network of connections forming in space, and the momentum dynamically shaped it.

On the proper logic for making the risk-free decision, Katznelson explained: "Indeed, in any strategy, it is easy to prove a discriminatory retroactive and difficult to secure victory ... We are probably standing here in an old argument, an argument that makes no logical argument. And there are other actions that insist on standing up to the last minute. Then the impossible is made possible, "he wrote (Reporters 1, p. 202).

Faced with Jabotinsky’s claims, based on rational strategic analysis, Berl Katznelson mobilized the power of faith. With the insistence, he thought, the impossible could also be made possible. Not that Katzenelson's stand was irrational. vice versa. However, his pioneering view also of the power of faith has a role in decision making. In today's atmosphere, such a statement would probably be presented as "messianic", a complete detachment from a sober view of reality.

After a century, the controversy between the two approaches continues to be at the center of the Israeli experience. However, the leadership of the Zionist left in its treatment of the Land of Israel grew distant from the path and vision of Katznelson and the pioneers of Tel Hai. Here lies a significant element in understanding the damping of the left, and here lies the starting point for clarifying the Zionist path of the State of Israel in the face of the challenges of the hour.