JULY/AUGUST 2008

In Memoriam: Senator Jesse Helms

Beginning in 1984 Jesse Helms became one of Israel’s staunchest supporters. In 1986 he spoke at AFSI’s national convention. Helms called Israel the only reliable ally of the United States in the Middle East and initiated a letter to President Reagan dated March 6, 1985 (signed by 19 Senators and Congressmen) in which he urged permanent Israeli control of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

A sharp critic of State Department policy, Helms urged a defense agreement with Israel to include air strips, joint research and development and cooperation in other fields.

AFSI is proud of a letter we received from Senator Helms dated February 25, 1987 in which he said “AFSI has become an invaluable source of information on Middle East issues for my staff and me.”

A CLIMATE FOR TERROR Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR Rael Jean Isaac

ENGLISH ANTI-SEMITISM Robert S. Wistrich

A LEADERSHIP UNWORTHY OF ITS PEOPLE David Isaac

A TRIBUTE TO SHMUEL KATZ Rael Jean Isaac

THE LEGACY OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITSM Ruth King

A DAY OF INFAMY Naomi Ragen

OUTPOST
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

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Herbert Zweibon

The rampage by an Arab bulldozer driver first along Sarei Israel Boulevard and then along the Jaffa Road which wound up killing three, including the mother of a five month old baby girl, and injuring dozens—like the murder of eight teenage boys at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva a few months ago by the driver of an Arab owned transport company licensed to drive school children—was the product of two profoundly disturbing inter-connected developments: the permissiveness of the Israeli authorities toward lawless Arab behavior and the draconian measures against Jews who act in self-defense or the defense of other Jews.

As Caroline Glick reports, when it comes to Arabs, “the police simply refuse to enforce the law….As a consequence of police inaction, thieves, smugglers, terror solicitors and other dangerous criminals are allowed to operate in the open. Fearing the wrath of human rights groups on the one hand and Arab rioters on the other, the police simply do not enforce Israeli law in the Arab sector.”

But if anything goes where Arabs are concerned, the authorities are ruthless in their suppression of Israeli citizens who interfere with that policy. For example, Danny and Itzik Halamish, brothers who live in Gush Etzion, were recently sentenced to 7 and 8 months in prison respectively for warding off an Arab mob of 20 who surrounded them and threatened them with large rocks and poles. No one was hurt; one of the Halamish brothers apparently gave a warning shot into the air. The Israeli judges said they were putting them in jail to “serve as a lesson to others.”

Israelis have learned the lesson. As a result, with the police ever more passive and flaccid, it takes a person with exceptional Zionist faith to act in times of emergency. In both the Jaffa Road and Mercaz Harav terror attacks, it was such an individual who prevented even worse slaughter. In the case of the slaughter of the yeshiva boys, it was furloughed paratrooper Captain David Shapira who killed the murderer. There was a police officer at the scene but even as he heard the cries of the teenagers being murdered he stood outside and did nothing. And on the Jaffa Road, eye witnesses report that unarmed 20 year old Moshe Plesser climbed onto the bulldozer, seizing the gun of a security guard to finally stop the careening driver by shooting him three times in the head. And the police? Caroline Glick reports that a policeman had also climbed onto the bulldozer but instead of shooting, merely tried to restrain the driver. Glick writes that the Arab killed 33 year old Batsheva Unterman (the mother of the baby who miraculously survived) while the policeman was standing next to him in the bulldozer’s cab!

As for the courageous and quick-thinking Moshe Plesser, he is a religious soldier in the Givati brigade and a student at the Yeshiva of Kiryat Arba. whose educational values, he says, inspired his actions. Nor is the fact that he is the brother-in-law of David Shapira, the hero of Mercaz Harav, as extraordinary a coincidence as it would appear: Plesser says he was inspired by the valiant actions of his brother-in-law. Ironically Plesser had to petition the army for two years to be permitted to serve. The Israeli authorities regarded him as a security risk because, when he was 17, he took part in a demonstration against the destruction of the Jewish communities in Gaza. Photographing a protest in Ramat Gan, he was beaten unconscious by police who were anxious to keep him from documenting their behavior. Arrested and released several days later, he was left with a police record that made the IDF refuse to take him.

If those in power in Israel are incapable of deterring internal foes and instead turn on the finest and bravest of their own young people, what possible chance do they have to prevail against powerful external enemies like Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah?

Rael Jean Isaac

Halkin on the Golan

Has Hillel Halkin finally found an Israeli retreat he did not like? On superficial reading, his column in the New York Sun of May 27 makes it appear so. He starts by saying “I can’t remember how many columns I have written in The New York Sun and other places, against the idea of returning the entire Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a largely worthless peace treaty.” (The reference to many columns suggests Halkin has become sensitive to the charge—richly deserved—that he is a champion of the flip-flop.) Yet the key to the next flip-flop is right there in the phrase “the entire Golan Heights.” And it is reinforced near the end of the article where Halkin says that the Olmert government policy will mean “keeping the Golan or hoping eventually to settle with the Syrians for part of it, will be made that much more difficult.”

So Halkin leaves a door open wide enough for a camel to walk through for what will surely (if past is prologue) be his next position—that if Israel gets a statement saying this or that from the United States, then giving up the Golan (and you can bet the farm Syria won’t be content with part of it) is a wonderful move in the interest of Israel’s security and international standing. And yes, once the Golan is gone (shades of Halkin’s Gaza somersaults), we can expect more columns on what a bad idea it was after all. We repeat again, how can it be that this baffled and baffling pundit is the best both the New York Sun and Commentary can offer?

Christians in Iraq

As Robin Harris notes in National Review Online, the surge is working “but at the same time the Iraqi Christian community is dying…In former times, the violent persecution of Christians in a country effectively under the rule of a Western, Christian power would have been unthinkable. But not, it seems, in the enlightened 21st century.”

It is even worse than what Harris describes. In the enlightened 21st century, the Christian community of Iraq has been forced to finance its own destruction. For years Mosul Archbishop Paulos Faraj Raho (as reported in The New York Times of June 26) was forced to pay protection money (gathered from alms at Sunday mass and from funds donated by Christians abroad to help Iraqi fellow Christians) to the terrorist insurgency. When security improved in 2007 he stopped paying. But security had not improved enough —the Archbishop was kidnapped and his body found in a shallow grave outside Mosul.

The Archbishop’s payments were only the tip of the iceberg. The Times reports that Christian households in Mosul, the seat of Iraqi Christianity, were forced to pay hundreds of dollars a month for each male member of the household (the insurgents brazenly called this protection money jizya, the name for the tax on Christians and Jews under Islamic law). The terrorists collected further funds from Christians by kidnapping priests and forcing congregations to pay ransoms as high as $150,000. Author Rosie Malek-Yonan, at a Congressional hearing in 2006, accused the U.S. army of failing to protect Christians out of concern that special attention to their plight would play into the hands of insurgent propagandists.

U.S. catering to Moslem “sensitivities” has turned craven. A U.S. marine in Fallujah handed out what The Washington Post described as “only a few coins” inscribed in Arabic with two lines from the New Testament. As Diana West points out, it is the army’s reaction that is shocking. The Army suspended the Marine and the U.S. military spokesman in the area declared “This incident doesn’t represent the morals of the Marines.” Writes West: “Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion doesn’t represent the morals of the Marines?”

The numbers tell the story. The Christian population is half what it was when the U.S. forces took over Iraq and of the remaining 400,000, 100,000 have been internally displaced. Soon the Christian community of Iraq may become like the once proud Jewish community of Iraq – a tiny remnant.

Loony Livni

Tzipi Livni is emerging as contender for the role of Israel’s chief fool. For could even Simple Shimon top this? “The demand of the Palestinians for a home of their own is the very thing which causes our demand for a Jewish homeland to be legitimate.” (quoted in The Jerusalem Post, June 23)

Three thousand five hundred years of Jewish history don’t exist for Livni. As Shmuel Katz wrote in Battleground: “The Jews were never a people without a homeland. Having been robbed of their land, Jews never ceased to give expression to their anguish at their deprivation and to pray for and demand its return. Throughout the nearly two millennia of dispersion, Palestine remained the focus of the national culture. Every single day in all those seventy generations, devout Jews gave voice to their attachment to Zion.”

As for the Arabs of Palestine, they never saw themselves as a nation. The “Palestinians” as we pointed out in a thirty year old pamphlet by that name constitute “a political masquerade,” an “’anti-nation,’ one that derives its entire meaning and purpose from the desire to destroy another nation.” Theirs is a “nationalism which has developed through, lives in, and depends on opposition to Zionism and Israel.”

And it is in fulfilling this perverted nationalism that Tzipi Livni sees the source of Israel’s legitimacy? Heaven help us, this ignoramus is bruited as a possible future Prime Minister.

Blood on Their Hands

When the pattern of wildly imbalanced prisoner “exchanges” began in 1983 (Israel exchanged 4,700 Arabs for six captured Israeli soldiers), Israeli government leaders promised that there would be no release of those “with blood on their hands.” Like most promises of Israeli governments, that fizzled and the most recent “exchange” releases a Lebanese terrorist with the most bloody hands imaginable, Samir Kuntar, who invaded an apartment in Nahariya in 1979.

Here is a description of what happened by the woman who lost her husband and two small children at his hands: “Outside we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. ‘This is just like what happened to my mother,’ I thought.

“As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar. By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her…”

Now in his early 40s, an unrepentant Kuntar promises to return to murdering Israelis on his release. And for what is the Israeli government releasing Kuntar as well as other terrorists into the jubilant arms of Hezbollah? In the craziest (and most dishonorable) “exchange” yet, it is for the dead bodies of two Israeli soldiers, so the families will have “closure.”

As Steven Plaut points out, Netanyahu and the Likud as well as the National Union party have been silent about this disgraceful “exchange.”

Outpost has frequently pointed out that a state is not a family, and cannot act as a family might, sacrificing everything to bring home a loved one. In this case, even a family should find the price for visiting a tombstone too high.

Robert S. Wistrich

Editor’s Note: This is excerpted from an interview with Professor Wistrich conducted by Manfred Gerstenfeld, published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 70, July 1, 2008.

"One characteristic of English anti-Semitism has been its often understated nature, in keeping with British tradition. That makes it more effective because one does not become aware of it so easily. One example among many is the British journalist Richard Ingrams, who was editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye for twenty-three years starting in the 1960s. He once wrote in The Observer that he threw away unread all correspondence he received from people with Jewish names regarding the Middle East because, he thought, they must be biased on the subject. If someone were to tell him he is an anti-Semite he would, of course, reject that. But would he publicly write the same thing about Arab correspondents?

"Anti-Semitism in Great Britain has been around for almost a thousand years of recorded history. In the Middle Ages, England pioneered the blood libel. The Norwich case in 1144 marked the first time Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children for their Passover matzot.

"From the Norman Conquest of 1066 onward there was a steady process--particularly during the thirteenth century--of persecution, forced conversion, extortion, and expropriation of Jews. This culminated in the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 under Edward I. It was the first ejection of a major Jewish community in Europe. It is important to bear this in mind because it is not widely known, least of all in England. I grew up there and went to grammar school and to Cambridge University and do not recall that this was ever mentioned. On the contrary, we were taught at school about the chivalry of Richard the Lionheart, not the massacres of Jews by Crusader kings.

"Britain was not only the first country in medieval Europe to expel Jews but also one of the last to take them back. It took slightly more than 350 years for this to happen. The return of the Jews to the British Isles began very quietly and informally in 1656 under Oliver Cromwell. This was the beginning--drop by drop--of the formation a new community that over time would contribute a great deal to British society.

"The long absence of Jews from the shores of the British Isles did not mean that anti-Semitism disappeared. This is an instructive early example of how society does not need the physical presence of Jews for the potency of anti-Jewish stereotypes to penetrate the culture.

"I grew up on English literature. When I was sixteen we had to prepare for the advanced-level certificate. In our syllabus were several of the classic English works. They included Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from the late fourteenth century; Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta from the late sixteenth century; and William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice of the same period, which until today has remained one of the most popular plays of the English theater. Shylock has come to embody an image of the vengeful, tribal, and bloodthirsty Jew, who will never give up his pound of flesh. Those who talk about how humanistic, universal and empathetic his portrait is, are ignoring not only how it was perceived at the time, but its historical consequences.

"English literature and culture are drenched in anti-Jewish images. One cannot understand attitudes toward Jews in Britain today without taking into account the anti-Semitism embedded in the national culture. Many well-educated and well-meaning people fail to understand the long-term impact of such a cultural factor on their society, and are not even aware of their own latent prejudices. That was my experience during the thirty years I lived in Britain and it has got much worse because of anti-Israeli sentiment."

During the nineteenth century, matters evolved favorably for English Jews. Says Wistrich: "The British Empire reached its pinnacle of power and influence. England had become a relatively liberal society. Jews could feel proud and self-confident in proclaiming that they were British citizens. In the Middle East, Britain was even considered a protector of the Jews. It was more tolerant than most of its rivals and more open to intervening and trying to correct the disabilities of Jews in other parts of the world. So this was a kind of ‘golden age.'

"Yet here, too, the picture is more ambivalent than is often assumed. This was particularly so in the late nineteenth century with the immigration of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe into Britain. At that time there was strong xenophobia. There was a conservative anti-Semitism resistant to the Jew as an alien who could never be fully English. The Aliens Bill of 1905, directed at halting the immigration of Russian Jews, was a case in point.

"In the twentieth century, after the Russian Revolution, a linkage between Jews and communism that was intertwined with anti-Semitism became a pronounced theme in British public discourse. There was considerable publicity around the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This ended when Philip Graves, a London Times correspondent, exposed it as a forgery. Until then, one could read editorials in The Times that were based on the belief that Britain had spilled much blood in the First World War only to fall into the hands of a world Jewish conspiracy—a Pax Judaica!

"Similar accusations had been made before that, during the Boer War in South Africa. There were insinuations that a small clique of cosmopolitan Jewish financiers had dragged the British Empire into a futile, useless, expensive, and wholly destructive war for their own narrow financial interests. Such claims could also be heard from leading figures in the emerging British Labour Party and trade unions, which were promoting an anti-war sentiment resonant with anti-Semitism.

"In the literature around 1900, one often finds examples of a full-fledged left-wing conspiracy theory in which British imperialism is being manipulated and controlled by ‘Anglo-Hebraic' financiers. The entire issue was connected to the discovery of gold in South Africa. This theory was promoted by distinguished English intellectuals, enlightened journalists and writers, as well as the prominent liberal economist John Hobson. The entire episode shows striking similarities with trends in left-wing political circles in recent years. The radical Left asserts that former prime minister Tony Blair was led by the nose into a disastrous, neo-imperialist war in Iraq by a clique of rich British and American Jews.

“The theme of ‘warmongering Jews' became especially popular in the 1930s with the rise of British fascism under its aristocratic leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, who came originally from the Left. British fascism was stopped by active mobilization against it. Contrary to what would happen a few years later, the communists were among the most militant antifascists in the East End. The Jewish community, which included many working-class Jews, had a kind of unwritten alliance with the Left to stop fascism. That tradition unfortunately seems to be dead and buried today.

"In the Second World War, Britain was not willing to attempt to rescue the Jews of Europe in any meaningful way. It was not only imperial Realpolitik that made the British close the gates of Palestine. We know that officials in the Colonial and Foreign offices and people in the administration in Palestine were far from immune to anti-Semitic sentiment.

"During the war the British government was obsessed by the fear that their fight against Hitler could be construed as a war on behalf of the Jews. To avoid ‘fighting a Jewish war' became a kind of alibi for the British authorities to do almost nothing for the Jews. Britain's solemn commitment to create a Jewish National Home in Palestine was in fact betrayed in the hour of greatest need for European Jewry. This is a serious stain on the British record, which until then had many positive sides.

"After 1945—in the three years before the creation of the state of Israel--relations between Britain and the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, reached their lowest point. For example, in 1947 the commander of British Forces in Palestine, Lt. Gen. Evelyn Barker, ordered his men to avoid fraternization with Palestinian Jews and to ‘punish the Jews in the manner this race dislikes as much as any, by hitting them in the pocket, which will demonstrate our disgust for them.'

"After the Mandatory Government in Palestine executed members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground organization, the latter reacted by hanging two British sergeants. This led to anti-Jewish riots in 1947 in a number of British cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and London. No lives were lost, but it was a very nasty time.

Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary in the Labour government of Clement Attlee, was convinced that a Jewish conspiracy existed, supposedly in alliance with the Soviet Union. A commonly held view, both in London and Washington at that time, was that ‘the Jews' were determined to bring down the British Empire. The empire did indeed crumble, though it was not due to any Jewish conspiracy but to more mundane economic and political factors. The war against Hitler had sapped British strength.

"Bevin made a number of anti-Semitic statements. He made remarks about Jews trying to jump to the head of the queue even after Auschwitz and the Holocaust. His attitude was also recorded by people who knew him well. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who was close to Bevin, emphasized that he was ‘obsessed by the Jews' and wanted to teach them a lesson they would never forget.

"Winston Churchill's record on Zionism was, of course, far more positive. But it was not as unequivocal as we often assume. There is a discrepancy between his wonderful rhetoric and what Churchill--as a lifelong Zionist--actually did for the Jews when he was in power. The gates of Palestine were kept shut under his premiership. His wartime actions regarding the Jews were no better than those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is to say, unimpressive. Nor, after becoming prime minister again in 1951, was Churchill's record on Israel particularly brilliant, though he had the historical vision to understand that Israel's re-creation was a major event in modern history. In expressing its meaning Churchill was at his best.

"It is important to remember that in the 1940s the ‘Zionism is Nazism' libel was rather popular among highly placed Englishmen. True, the Nazi-Zionist equation was predominantly a Soviet contribution to postwar anti-Semitism. But it did not originate there. Indeed, a number of Britishers can claim first-class honors in this field. An example is Sir John Glubb Pasha, who was commander of the Arab Jordanian Legion fighting against Israel in 1948. He was an upper-class conservative Englishman and a lifelong Arabophile, with a special love for desert Arabs.

"Glubb was obsessed with the idea that Jews had anticipated Hitler's master race theory. Nazism, in his view, was a pale copy of the Hebrew original as revealed in Old Testament sources. In memos he sent to London he branded Jews as Nazis who combined their East European fanaticism with a narrow Hebraic cast of mind, based on biblical vengeance and hatred. Glubb was not alone. One can find in British documents similar statements from high-ranking officials in the Palestine administration.

"In the 1950s and 1960s Arnold Toynbee, the renowned British philosopher of history, was immensely popular. He came to shockingly anti-Zionist conclusions presented in the grand style of historical generalization. As an Englishman he felt superior to the German Gentile barbarians who had infamously inflicted the Holocaust on the Jews. But he also claimed that the Jews were worse than the Nazis because they had knowingly imitated their evil deeds and become ruthless persecutors. Today, a disturbingly large number of English people--misguided, intoxicated, and half-brainwashed by parts of the media--would probably agree with Toynbee.

"Toynbee ranted on about the ‘expulsion' of the Palestinians, which he considered a crime of a greater order than that committed by the German Nazis! Israeli ambassador Yaacov Herzog demolished his arguments in a debate in the early 1960s in Montreal. But the mud stuck. After all Toynbee was an elite figure of the British establishment.

"In the 1970s, I was actively involved in such debates when I wrote my doctorate at University College, London. The campus war had heated up and was at full blast in 1975 after the UN ‘Zionism is racism' resolution. There were efforts to ban all Jewish societies on British campuses. This was stopped by a militant and determined campaign. The time was not yet ripe for the brazen anti-Semitism of the kind we find today in Britain and much of Europe, but it was certainly there beneath the surface.

"In the 1970s, the anti-Zionists in Britain--some of them Jews and expatriate Israelis—were already vilifying Israel as an ‘ethnic cleansing' and ‘racist' state. Even then there were claims that Zionism equals apartheid. Among the most extreme demagogues were Jewish Trotskyites, who were the most vitriolic in their loathing for Zionism.

"It is a curious fact that Trotskyites have been influential in left-wing circles in the UK--at least in comparison to other European countries. Only in France does one find anything equivalent. In their concept of the world, Zionism has for decades been inextricably linked with global capitalism and American imperialism. These were also the hackneyed phrases of Soviet propaganda. The communist empire has collapsed, of course, but the Trotskyites are still running with the ball. Their numbers are small but they have tenacity, ideological discipline, and use clever tactics of infiltration. Trotskyites infiltrated the Labour Party and the trade unions in the pre-Blair era. We see the bitter fruits in boycott actions today against Israel, sparked by people who went through this anti-Zionist indoctrination and have passed it on.

"Trotskyites are organized in the Socialist Workers Party, which was very active in the 1970s. It has become a larger political factor in recent decades. I watched the huge antiwar demonstration in London in February 2003. The two main organizers were the Muslim Association of Britain--close to the Muslim Brotherhood--and the Socialist Workers Party. They formed a Marxist-Islamist alliance against the war in Iraq and on the issue of Palestine, which was a major unifying factor.

“The protest came at a time when the ‘cabal' theory that the Jews had seized control of American and British foreign policy was being widely advanced. It was crudely asserted in Britain, Europe, the Middle East--and to a lesser degree in the United States--that Bush's war in Iraq was being fought on Israel's behalf. This echoes the anti-Semitic notions of the late 1930s about ‘warmongering Jews' pushing the West into an unnecessary conflict with Nazism."

"There is also a relatively new party called Respect led by MP George Galloway from Scotland. He was on the left of the Labour Party before he went independent. Galloway at one time received generous assistance from Saddam Hussein and defended him regularly on British television. Galloway is an intellectual lightweight and rabble-rouser. He sees a revolutionary potential in the Muslim immigrants in Britain, a kind of ‘substitute proletariat' that could help revive the lost dreams of international socialism.

“Then there is the more general Muslim contribution to anti-Semitism in Britain, which has become a significant factor. There is no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK. Although anti-Semitism is not the determining factor in this extremism, it plays a role. The exploration of Muslim attitudes in the UK is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, it appears that close to half of British Muslims believe in a Jewish conspiracy that dominates UK media and politics. The percentage of Muslim perpetrators of violent anti-Semitic acts is nearly ten times greater than the Muslim percentage of the general population. Muslims from Britain have been involved in a series of high-profile cases. One leading terrorist was Omar Sheikh, an Anglo-Pakistani born and bred in Britain and educated at the London School of Economics and the alleged mastermind of the beheading of the American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi. The horrific video emphasized Pearl's Jewish origins.

"At the other extreme, the far-Right British National Party sees a climate emerging where it might do better than in the past. The fascists would frankly like to see a Britain without Muslims. On the other hand, they also see eye to eye with many Muslim extremists on issues concerning Israel and the Jews. These British fascists admire Osama bin Laden.

“Another pioneering role of the UK, especially in the area of anti-Israelism, is the longstanding bias in BBC reporting and commentary about the Jewish world and Israel in particular. The BBC plays a special role owing to its long-established prestige as a news source widely considered to be objective.

"Within the distorted BBC system, the reporting of Israeli civilian fatalities and Palestinian suicide attacks made them seem no more than minor pinpricks compared to the retaliations by Israel, the definitive ‘rogue state.' The BBC invariably disconnects jihadi terrorism from any notion that it is part of a hate culture and the result of ideological indoctrination. The explanation is that these murderous deeds are driven by the relentless, ‘racist actions' of the Israeli government. Terrorism is mentioned without connection to an ideology and the issue of anti-Semitism in the Arab or Islamic world is virtually nonexistent.

“Another favorite topic of the British media is the power of the Jewish lobby. One well-publicized example occurred when the veteran Labour MP Tom Dalyell said in a 2003 interview in Vanity Fair that Tony Blair was surrounded by a ‘cabal' of Jewish advisers. Of the three people he mentioned, only one was Jewish, Lord Levy. A second exemplar, Peter Mandelson, did have a Jewish ancestor but never claimed to be a Jew; while the third was Foreign Minister Jack Straw, whom many Jews consider anti-Israel. Straw, it turned out, did have a Jewish grandfather but had never advertised the fact. Dalyell claimed these people were linked up with the neocons in Washington in a pro-Israeli Jewish world conspiracy. Many others on the British Left have held virulently anti-Israeli views, including former minister Claire Short who, at one point, blamed the Jewish state for global warming!

"There are exceptions to the anti-Israeli attitude. The most important was former prime minister Tony Blair, who was as sympathetic to Israel as one can reasonably be under the circumstances. The paradox is that, while Blair and his successor Gordon Brown have been pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish, Britain is still one of the leaders of current European anti-Semitism. Blair and Brown fit into a line of statesmen who came out of the British Christian tradition, which has a historic affinity with Zionism. These leaders include Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, and Margaret Thatcher--individuals of vision and great political talent.

“Britain can also pride itself on the publication of the Report of the All-Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, which did a fair and thorough--though not perfect--job of investigating the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK.

"Among those who have contributed to the current hostile mood is Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London until May 2008. In the 1970s, he knocked on my door to ask for my vote in a local North London election. It turned out he was a passionate admirer of Leon Trotsky and was enthused to learn that I had just written a book on the Bolshevik leader--the kind of Jew he could empathize with--a radical leftist, an international socialist, and an ‘anti-Zionist.'
"A few years later he became a co-editor of the Labour Herald, the Labour Party's paper in London. In 1982, during the First Lebanon War it published on its front page a caricature of then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in full SS uniform with the skull-and-bones insignia on his head. He was standing atop a mountain of skulls. The caption was in big, black Gothic script: ‘The Final Solution.' This cartoon could have come straight out of Pravda.

"On two occasions Livingstone gave red-carpet treatment to Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi whom he invited to London. This Egyptian sheikh lives in Qatar and has supported suicide bombings as being consistent with Islam. He was presented by Livingstone as a ‘progressive' and the kind of moderate who could positively influence British Muslims.

“What is interesting is that in Britain, as in much of Europe, the proclaimed antiracism of the left-wing variety often feeds the new anti-Semitism—which is primarily directed against Israel. Of course, if one suggests that such leftists are anti-Semites in disguise, they are likely to become enraged and retort that one is ‘playing the anti-Semitic card.' This has become a codeword for saying, as it were, ‘You are a dishonest, deceitful, manipulative Jew' or a ‘lover of Jews.' Zionists supposedly use the ‘accusation of anti-Semitism' to distort and silence the fully justified criticism of Israel and its human rights abuses. The word ‘criticism' in this context is misplaced. It is a euphemism or license for the demonization of Israel. And that in turn is a major form of anti-Semitism in our time."

Robert Wistrich holds the Neuberger Chair for Modern European and Jewish History at Hebrew University.

David Isaac

People get the government they deserve. This oft-quoted remark, attributed to everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Mark Twain, but generally traced to 18th century politician Joseph de Maistre, is another way of saying, “You get what you deserve.” It puts the onus of the excesses, stupidity and corruption of elected leaders on those who elected them.

In Israel, the opposite seems to be true. Israelis get the governments they don’t deserve. The plain men and women of the state demonstrate time and again exceptional character even as their leadership demonstrates the basest. In Israel, it’s not cream, but another protein-rich substance, that rises to the top.

Aryeh Stav, editor of the Israel magazine Nativ, pilloried Israel’s leadership well in a recent issue. For those familiar with the Passover Haggadah, his summation reads like a Had Gadyah from hell. From Menachem Begin, who laid the foundations for a Palestinian state to Yitzhak Rabin, who shook hands with Yasser Arafat to Ariel Sharon, who ethnically cleansed the Gaza Strip of its Jews. They, and those that came between, not only betrayed the Jewish people but their own principles as well.

Contrast this with the stories of courage and sacrifice of Israelis coping with the carnage that the Knesset’s “Big Men” have wrought and you get the feeling that there is a profound disconnect between what goes in the voting booth and what comes out at the other end.

One example is 16-year-old Maayan Roth, the younger sister of Roi Roth, one of eight students killed in the Merkaz HaRav shooting in March. On her own initiative, she visits schools to talk about her brother.

At one school in Petah Tikvah, she said, “At the moment that Roi was taken, a holy person like my brother, I said to myself, ‘No, I won’t let this remain a private sorrow, one of our family alone, so even before the 30 days [of mourning] were finished, I decided to go out and have conversations with young people so that they will know my brother and will continue in his way.”

Maayan painted a portrait of a remarkable young man, deeply committed to Torah, who prayed with a special intensity and who loved the Land of Israel, whose length and breadth he hiked. “He would return to the same place a thousand times and be amazed each time as if it were new,” she said.

She described the heart-rending moment she heard of Roi’s death. “Suddenly, I heard crying. I ran and opened the door and I saw my whole school there and I realized that the terrible had happened. I started to cry and I collapsed onto the floor.”

Clearly still reeling from the loss of Roi, she yet concluded with a call to arms: “This is what I want to request from you. That you will do. You will go out. You will go on. That you will fight for this Land. Because if we don’t fight there will be none to fight.”

Another instance of a citizen who deserves better from his government is the Hesder yeshiva boy on leave from the army who killed the Arab who drove a bulldozer on a rampage through Jerusalem, killing three. Known simply as “Mem,” the young man leapt onto the bulldozer, took a gun from a security guard and shot the driver dead. (The scene was actually caught on tape and can be viewed on YouTube.)

It turns out that this same boy was beaten unconscious by police while photographing a road-blocking protest in Ramat Gan in May 2005. Though he was standing on the side of the road, the police didn’t like him documenting their behavior. Though his case was closed for lack of evidence, it left him with a police record. It took two years of arguing with the IDF before he was allowed to join an elite army unit.

Coincidentally, it was his brother-in-law who shot the terrorist in the Merkaz Harav shooting. In their reports, Israel’s media studiously avoided going into detail about either of these men as they both are a product of the religious Zionist camp, a group that has become a convenient scapegoat for those in Israel who don’t have the courage to face the stubborn facts motivating Arab violence.

As these citizens perform heroic deeds on the streets, the government sinks to new lows, the latest being the release of terrorists in lopsided prison swaps which only create incentives for terrorists to kidnap more Israelis.

Shalom Rahum, whose 16-year-old son Ophir was lured to Ramallah by a female terrorist and then killed by her two associates in January 2001, explained it simply. “If you give a wolf a lamb thinking he’ll leave the flock alone, you’re making a mistake. Next time he’ll ask for two.” He added, pointing an accusing finger at the camera: “You [the media] are supposed to guard democracy. You are supposed to give a voice to me, the little guy.”

We hope the little guy in Israel will find his voice. It will have a clear and simple ring, like the voice of Maayan and Shalom and those shots Mem fired into a terrorist's head.

David Isaac is a writer in Los Angeles.

Rael Jean Isaac

Editors note: This tribute was given at a memorial for Shmuel Katz at Temple Emanuel in New York City on June 18th. Other speakers were Herbert Zweibon, Gerald Strober, and Joel Gilbert.

My husband Erich and I first met Shmuel in 1969. Erich was teaching for a year at Tel Aviv University and I was working on a doctoral thesis on the opposing movements that had burgeoned in Israel in response to those amazing six days in June 1967 in which Israel had suddenly become over five times as large. On one side was the Land of Israel Movement, which said Israel should keep the territories it had won in battle; on the other was the peace movement, which said Israel should relinquish them.

Studying these movements involved interviewing their leaders and Shmuel, naturally, was active in the Land of Israel Movement. Of all the people we interviewed we became closest to Shmuel. He was friendly, approachable, a wonderful story-teller and, a huge bonus for me, spoke impeccable English. It may be hard to imagine today, as Israel sinks ever deeper into retreat, demoralization and political decline, but 1969 was a heady time. There were tectonic changes in the political landscape. For Shmuel much of the Land of Israel Movement’s excitement and joy was in bringing together former enemies. The word “enemies” is not an overstatement. The gulf was enormous between Labor activists and former members of the underground—and Shmuel had been a member of the high command of the Irgun. For years, in Knesset debates, Ben Gurion would not even use Menachem Begin’s name—he would refer to him as “the person sitting on the right hand of Professor Bader” or use similar circumlocutions.

Shmuel told us of an incident that dramatized the transformed climate. Shortly before the war he had been invited to a kibbutz high school to present the Irgun’s version of the Altalena incident, in which a ship bearing arms for the nascent state of Israel was destroyed on Ben Gurion’s orders. The kibbutz had invited Benny Marshak, who had been a political officer in the left-wing Palmach when the Altalena was sunk, to present Labor’s version. Marshak refused to debate on the ground he would not enter the same room as Katz. Yet a few months later they would be sitting amicably together on the executive of the Land of Israel Movement. To many in the Israeli public, all too familiar with the long internecine conflicts, it was stunning that leaders from the far left Mapam, from the Kibbutz Hameuchad movement, from Labor, would unite in a common platform with people like Katz, not to mention ultra-orthodox rabbis—this was every bit as astonishing as an agreement with the Arabs would have been.

Shmuel, never interested in putting himself forward, his eyes always on the cause, told us he was anxious that the Land of Israel movement maintain its image as primarily composed of converts from the left. He told us, and I quote: “I came into the Movement with some reluctance because of my background, and I told others to stay away. I just came to see that the movement stuck to the point. And on the whole there has been no need.”

Although I’m here to talk about Shmuel, not about these movements, I can’t resist pointing out that the Land of Israel Movement was united while the opposing peace movement was splintered into lots of disputatious grouplets. The peace movement was divided not only about how much of the territory to give up (all of it? all but Jerusalem? all but the Golan?) but was also divided about what, if anything, to demand in return and who would get the territory. There is virtual unanimity today among peace processors that a Palestinian state is the solution but in 1969 many in the Israeli peace movement sharply rejected this idea. Why? Some felt it wouldn’t work but others felt it would be morally wrong—it would be a species of Israeli “imperialism” to dictate to the Palestinian Arabs how to shape their future.

My husband and Shmuel agreed on the importance of spreading the ideas of the Land of Israel Movement in the United States, emphasizing that a strong Israel in defensible borders was not only in Israel’s interest but in the interests of the United States, this at a time when the Soviet Union was establishing client states in the region. At that time the always left-leaning Jewish community here was firmly attached to the notion that whatever the Israeli Labor government did was right, and Israel’s lightning victory in 1967 did nothing to change that conviction. This was the case even though the government’s position at the time produced paralysis. The government of Israel’s line was that it was prepared to give up almost all the territories—for peace. The Arab states had responded with the three nos of Khartoum, no recognition, no negotiations, no peace. So the government’s position was simply to hold the territories in limbo, waiting for an Arab change of heart.

We weren’t surprised when Shmuel showed up not long after our return to the United States, to prod us into doing something, and AFSI was born. My husband was chairman until the task was taken over by Herbert Zweibon, the only person I know as dedicated and as selfless as Shmuel. Shmuel would come to the states repeatedly in the following years, full of plans and ideas, meeting with a great many people. I remember a running argument with Shmuel in those years. Shmuel would insist that AFSI could do more and I would say that it was tough to be more Catholic than the Pope. I would contend that until Israel’s government adopted a policy assertive of Jewish rights, it was an uphill battle here to persuade the Jewish community and the political elite, however supportive of Israel they might like to be. Shmuel did not want to hear this, insisting that our efforts in showing that a strong Israel was in U.S. interests were quite independent of what went on in Israel. In the end Shmuel would pound the table, and that would end our chicken and egg discussion—at least until his next visit.

In 1977 it looked like such arguments would be a thing of the past. Like Shmuel we were filled with hope when the seemingly permanent hegemony of the Labor Party finally crumbled. We were especially encouraged when Shmuel himself arrived as the advance representative of the new government. It was his task to reassure a Jewish establishment-in-shock and defuse a media that ran headlines like Begin rhymes with Fagin. It was precisely because of Shmuel’s earlier single-handed, independent efforts in the United States that Begin reached out to his long-ago associate in the Irgun.

What Shmuel wanted, and he would have been absolutely ideal for the task, was to reshape and reinvigorate Israel’s information programs abroad, hasbara, as it is called in Israel. These were in woeful shape, and remain so today. But although he promised Shmuel a cabinet level post to do this, Begin backed down when Moshe Dayan, his miserable appointment as Foreign Minister, objected, insisting that hasbara remain under his control in the Foreign Ministry. To be sure, even if Shmuel had won control of information policy and performed brilliantly, his tenure would have been short. There is no way Shmuel would have presided over an information policy promoting a policy of retreat and defeat. This became Begin’s policy as he turned over the Sinai to Sadat, destroyed the Jewish communities in northern Sinai and paved the way, in the Camp David accords, for Judea and Samaria to go to the Arabs.

Deeply disappointed with Begin, Shmuel returned to private life, writing op-eds and most important, working on the definitive biography of his hero and mentor, Zeev Jabotinsky. Shmuel was convinced that it was vital that the heroes and pioneers of the Zionist enterprise not be forgotten, that their lives and sacrifices and ideas inspire new generations. And so he turned his attention to those outside the dominant narrative who had played a vital role in the creation of Israel—people vilified and sidelined by the mainstream in their own lifetime, but subsequently proven right. After Jabotinsky, he turned to the saga of Aaron and Sarah Aaronsohn, who ran the Nili spy ring, which played an important role in the British victory over the Turks in Palestine. They too had been harassed and vilified by the local Jewish community.

Despite his humor and good nature, Shmuel is often thought of as an unbending ideologue. As a result many of those who agreed with his views felt it was impossible for him to have been a political leader. In fact Shmuel was unbending only on issues having to do with Israel’s security. His first break with Begin came on the issue of inclusiveness: when Shmuel was a member of the first Knesset on the Herut list he felt it was important for the party to cease being an Irgun club and open itself up to attract Labor members. Personally ascetic, living in the most Spartan way, Shmuel was willing to make concessions on economic issues—I never spoke to him on these matters but I would be surprised if he were not suspicious of huge prosperity in Israel, fearing it would undercut the qualities of discipline and self-sacrifice the population needed if Israel were to survive.

Shmuel had the characteristics of which Israel was most in need in a Prime Minister. He had vision, optimism, high intelligence, political understanding, determination, his own firm road map, the ability to inspire and lead. He was incorruptible. Can anyone imagine Shmuel agreeing to Oslo? To the destruction of the Jewish communities in Gaza? Can anyone imagine Shmuel even considering giving the Golan to Syria? Or taking wads of cash for favors granted? It is Israel’s tragedy that it did not bring Shmuel Katz to the helm and instead has installed in the Prime Minister’s office an ever more dispiriting collection of political drifters and self-servers.

Shmuel’s unfailing optimism was sorely tested in recent years. He understood, none better, where the country was heading. And so it was a blessing that something wonderful happened to him near the end of his life: he discovered a son he did not know existed; they became close; and his life was greatly enriched.

Shmuel led a life full of adventure, physical adventure in the first part of his life, when he was an underground leader, intellectual adventure thereafter. Shmuel wrote by far the best book on the Irgun, Days of Fire, as gripping a read today as when it was written over forty years ago. In Battleground Shmuel provided the definitive work on Jewish rights in the context of the Arab-Israel conflict. There remains today no better single source to counter the lies of Arab propaganda. Then there are the collected essays in The Hollow Peace and Battletruth and the major biographies, of Jabotinsky and the Aaronsohns. We hope that a way will be found to perpetuate Shmuel’s legacy for a new generation.

Ruth King

Sultry summer days are perfect for reading. I’ve spent the first part of the season finishing a delightful memoir by Rosanne Klass entitled Land of the High Flags: Afghanistan When the Going Was Good” —and when it was good, none captured this once exotic nation better than Klass who traveled and lived there.

I also read a memoir by Amos Oz (yes, he of the anti-Israel screeds) entitled A Tale of Love and Darkness which is almost free of the bias of the anti-Israel land of Oz. It is an evocative retelling of his childhood and the dedication and love of the land that propelled the Jewish pioneers, among them his parents and grandparents, to reclaim and build Israel. Get a used copy.

There is one book that I have not read in its entirety, that I don’t recommend for the beach because it weighs more than a small sack of potatoes, and that one must never read at an airport where it might set off bells. It is a book I return to often, reading long passages and even chapters at a time. It is a book that has entirely upended my opinions with respect to the unrelenting war the Arabs and their Moslem cheerleaders have waged on Israel and indeed on all Jews since the time of the prophet Mohammed. It is Andrew Bostom’s The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism-From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.

This remarkable anthology on the theme of Moslem anti-Semitism relies on obscure texts, Koranic scripture, diaries, ancient and modern documents. The research is so extensive that even a bizarre letter to the editor published in the Arabic newspaper Akhir Sa’a in Egypt in 1948 is quoted. The author, a light skinned Egyptian Muslim complains: “It would seem that most people in Egypt are unaware of the fact that among Egyptian Muslims there are some who have white skin. Every time I board a tram I see people pointing at me saying, ‘Jew, Jew!’ I have been beaten more than once because of this. For that reason I humbly beg that my picture (enclosed) be published with an explanation that I am not Jewish and that my name is Adham Mustafa Galeb.”

I confess that Andrew Bostom, M.D. the book's author, is my friend and guru and under his tutelage I have learned about Jihad…..its origins in the Koran, its history, its goals and its role in the frenzied hatred of all “infidels” that drives Islamic terrorists.

Because of Dr. Bostom, I am also familiar with the prophetic writings of Bat Ye’or and Professor Saul Friedman and those other scholars whose research debunked the notions that a “golden era” of comity existed between Jews and the Arabs and that anti-Semitism was an import from Europe to the Middle East. That rosy and false retelling of the lives of Jewish minorities among Moslem Arabs blinded Israel into accepting false promises, truces, agreements and road maps which have weakened the state and dispirited its citizens as each time they led to more terror, more war and more demands.

The book has been praised by a wide spectrum of respected journalists and scholars. However, most indebted to Andrew Bostom are all those who care about a safe Israel.

The Zionist prophets such as Herzl and Jabotinsky and even AFSI’s beloved Shmuel Katz did not write about the faith driven raison d’etre of Israel’s enemies, namely, to recreate a Caliphate throughout the Arab Middle East in which the few surviving Jews could exist only as dhimmis.

Their failure--and the failure more recently of so many others--is understandable. The Arab world went through a series of upheavals and spawned ideologies that drew attention from the menace of Islam. There was Pan-Arabism, a movement to unite the entire Arab world; there were Arab attempts at “socialism”; there was pan-Arab socialism; and of course, there was the constant cold war threat of Soviet expansion in the Middle East.

There was also the myth of a nascent, independent Third World in which Israel could serve as a bridge between Western democracy and emerging nations in Africa and Asia. Many of these countries were Moslem but took part in trade, educational and agricultural exchanges with Israel -- which almost all of them dropped immediately after the 1967 War.

The battles fought and won by Israel were seen within those contexts. As an ally of the United States on whose aid and support Israel became increasingly dependent, Israel promoted its role as a defense bulwark against Soviet ambitions.

When pressing Israel's case in the face of the blood curdling calls for Allah’s help in its destruction which were repeated in Arab sermons, in the media, on broadcasts, and at the United Nations, Israel and too many of its supporters (I include myself) did not identify the religious aspect of Jew hatred which is endemic in Islamic history.

Even in a post 9/11 world, Israel, willfully blind to the reality of enemy goals, embarks on one foolhardy concession after another.

But fortunately, in a post 9/11 world, a physician in Rhode Island was stirred to study and confront the roots of terrorism and Jihad in Islam and his interest and support for Israel further propelled him to produce this absolutely essential text.

Outpost readers and all who want a safe Israel should buy two copies and give one to local schools or libraries. Many copies would be even better.

Naomi Ragen

I was a new oleh when the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine and two Germans hijacked a plane full of Israelis to Entebbe. I remember well those nail-biting days, the moral dilemma of freeing dangerous terrorists for live hostages; the idea that negotiations would just lead to more hijackings. But what other choice did we have? After all, they were in Uganda, so far away. We found a way.

I will never forget the morning of July 4, 1976, waking up to the news. Our soldiers had gone in, at great personal risk. They had saved almost everyone, and killed the terrorists. We were not helpless victims anymore, the Jews. No, we were clever, and resourceful and courageous. We showed the world how to behave. We led the way.

I wake up this morning of July 16, 2008 with quite another feeling. Our soldiers, kidnapped on our own land, not across any international border, are brought back to us in caskets after two years of sadistic playfulness with the hearts of their families by Hezbollah terrorists, who led us to believe they were alive. And in exchange for dead bodies, we turn over a despicable baby-killer, Sami Kuntar. Oh, you will hear the boosters of the Israeli government sigh. What can we do? We are civilized and they are not. We care about our soldiers and their families.

No, I'm afraid you do not. If you cared, then you would have a death penalty for people like Kuntar, so that they too can be released in caskets. And if you cared, you would be intelligent enough, seeing our soldiers brought back to us dead, to have put a bullet through Kuntar and then turned him over to his friends.

Civilized is a euphemism for weak and helpless. Civilized is not a moral value, because we all know what Western civilization is capable of. Concentration camps. Civilian round-ups, the gassing of children. All this under the banner of laws and policemen and governments. On the other hand, the moral thing to do to a convicted murderer like Kuntar is to spill his blood, because he has spilled the blood of others. That may not fit in with current civilized niceties, but let no one say it is immoral. When it comes to immoral, to release Kuntar to a hero's welcome and the opportunity to murder others is on the top of the scale.

My government, the Israeli government, arranged this. They let it happen. They oversaw it and implemented it. I am deeply ashamed to be an Israeli today. And I'm not very proud of being a Jew either, if this is how a Jewish country behaves. To lead the world in ever more despicable acts of appeasement is nothing to be proud of. The torch we always carried, the "light unto the nations" has been blown out by the hot air of our politicians.

If we cared about our soldiers, we would not be showing our enemies that kidnapping and terrorism pay. We would not be setting the stage for the next murderous terrorist raid and hostage standoff. We would be passing laws with a mandatory death penalty for convicted terrorists with blood on their hands. We would be making these laws retroactive. Then, we would be cutting off all water and electricity to Gaza until Gilad Shalit is released. If that didn't work, we'd begin executions within one week, increasing the number of convicted terrorists facing firing squads with each passing day until Gilad is returned to us safe and sound.

And if that didn't work, we would begin daily bombings of Gaza, with the same number and frequency of attacks that our own city Sderot has suffered over the past three years from the Gazans.

Not civilized? Perhaps. But moral. Extremely moral. My fantasy is that Israelis will rise up and overturn the political system which has left them with the dregs of their nation as leaders—a bunch of self-serving crooks and sycophants who will do anything to stay in office; an electoral system in which a party like Kadima, with its collection of felons and moral imbeciles, who got only 23% of the vote, is allowed to rule us into the ground. We have Mr. Olmert, and Ms. Livni, and Mr. Peres, and Mr. Ramon (a convicted sex offender, who is now in line to take over from Olmert) and many, many others to thank, for creating this day of infamy.

Naomi Ragen is a novelist and essayist. This was published on her website.

THIS ISSUE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF SHMUEL KATZ

PLEASE READ THE TRIBUTES BY:

HERBERT ZWEIBON: THE LAST GREAT ZIONIST

DOUGLAS FEITH: STEADFAST ZIONISM, HUMOROUS CHARM

A ZIONIST ICON: WILLIAM VAN CLEAVE

SHMUEL: HIS VERY SELF AND VOICE: EDWARD ALEXANDER

MY FRIENDSHIP WITH SHMUEL: YISRAEL MEDAD

THE ESSENTIAL SHMUEL: WILLIAM MEHLMAN

ISRAEL'S WINSTON CHURCHILL: JOEL GILBERT

JABOTINSKY'S HEIR: RUTH KING

AND THE FOLLOWING PRESCIENT WRITING BY SHMUEL KATZ:

MR. PRESIDENT : DO NOT ABANDON THE GOLAN
EXCEPRTS FROM DAYS OF FIRE
EXCERPT FROM BATTLEGROUND

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

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HERBERT ZWEIBON

This issue of Outpost pays tribute to Shmuel Katz, the last great Zionist of Israel’s founding generation, who died on May 9 at 93. Like no one since Zeev Jabotinsky (for whom he acted for a time as secretary), Katz served the Jewish people with selfless political integrity, indifferent to personal advantage. Americans for a Safe Israel is especially in his debt for he inspired its founding thirty-seven years ago.

For me, meeting Shmuel Katz was a life-transforming experience. I had been active in my synagogue, a buyer of Israel Bonds, typical of the vast majority of Jews who supported Israel and were comfortable in their confidence that Israel’s government knew and did what was best for the country’s future. Katz made me recognize that this was not the case, that the (then) Labor government was profoundly wrong in looking upon the territories Israel had taken in the Six Day War as bargaining chips for “peace” and that United States policy, wedded to the same false idea, had to be challenged.

And so my life has been immeasurably enriched, as I have taken my part, at Shmuel’s side, in seeking to bring to pass what Israel Eldad called The Jewish Revolution, “the salvation of the Jewish people in its homeland.” It has been a great adventure, bringing me in contact with a range of people I would never have dreamed I would come to know – from the true heroes of Israel, the much maligned “settlers,” particularly those dedicated people living in places like Hebron, to Knesset members; from U.S. Congressmen to evangelical Christian leaders. Above all I have been privileged to meet AFSI members from every walk of life who believe that the Land of Israel is the birthright of the Jewish people.

Succeed or fail, this has been an enormously satisfying and important enterprise. The high hopes we once shared with Shmuel and the Land of Israel Movement, of which he was a member, have been frustrated. That Movement arose following the Six Day War of 1967 to emphasize that Israel could be a geopolitical factor in the region, with the historic heartland of Judea and Samaria restored to the Jewish people, strategic depth and oil from the Sinai, the high ground on the Golan Heights a deterrent to Syria – and that unless Israel was such a regional power, it would be in mortal danger. Especially since the 1993 Oslo agreement, we have been appalled as successive blind and feckless governments, with the United States as determined cheerleader, have pursued the chimera of a New Middle East.

Katz never changed his principles and never lost his unerring ability to analyze events. When he was only 22, Jabotinsky said of his articles: “I must very earnestly congratulate you on the perfect clarity, the forcible simplicity, the sachlichkeit [matter of fact, to the point] with which you present the most complicated situations.” This was as true of Katz at 93 as at 22, as his essays continued to lay out, with the same perfect clarity, the situation confronting Israel, the consequences of the actions her leaders were taking and the alternative policies they should pursue. We present in this Outpost an example of his recent columns as well as brief excerpts from two of his books.

Like prophets generally, Katz has been sidelined, dismissed, ignored by those who most needed to listen. I, personally, am proud to have been a disciple. While AFSI may not have grown to the size and had the impact on policy Katz would have liked, I know he was satisfied that we have kept our message and our focus: a strong Israel, in defensible borders that include its historic heartland of Judea and Samaria, is vital for the preservation of the state, the welfare of Jews throughout the world, and for United States interests in the region, deeply threatened by the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.

DOUGLAS FEITH

When Shmuel Katz talked about politics and current events, he did so less as a politician than as a prophet. His interest was not so much the art of the possible, but large and basic truths.

Shmuel was a thorough-going Zionist. In his marrow he felt the necessity for the Jewish people to have a sovereign and secure state in their ancient homeland. He defended the Jews’ right to their state, a right rooted in law and history.

He knew a great deal of history – of the Jews, of Palestine, of the Middle East, and of the diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He had studied all this with scholarly attention to facts and analysis and argumentation. He was a passionate advocate for the Zionist cause, but he did not argue as a mere polemicist; he backed up his views with documentation and lucid reasoning.

He was a stickler for historically precise terminology. He referred to Judea-Samaria, not the West Bank. He spoke of Palestinian Arabs, not simply Palestinians – the Jews are Palestinians too, he observed, and the Jews called themselves Palestinians when the Arabs of Palestine made a point of calling themselves Arabs rather than Palestinians. He rejected expressions – “occupied territories” and “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” – that he saw as incorrect or misleading. Shmuel would sometimes be told that his persnickety approach to terminology grated on his interlocutors; people can get irritated, after all, when their conventional phrases are challenged. But for Shmuel, the issue was truthfulness and accuracy, not sparing the sensibilities of the wayward.

Despite his prophet-like intensity and doggedness, Shmuel had a boisterous sense of humor. He commanded a vast store of funny Jewish stories. (The old Jew, newly arrived in Palestine, walks in a gorgeous grove and comes upon Rothschild’s impressive tomb. “That’s living!” he proclaims.) He deployed them aptly and laughed at them himself with infectious heartiness.

Shmuel liked to highlight Jabotinsky’s sense of humor, especially when he talked about his personal contacts with his hero. Shmuel conveyed a vivid picture of a well-rounded Jabotinsky, a humane renaissance man of action and affairs. Jabotinsky had many brilliant facets – as a journalist, orator, political organizer, philosopher, visionary, linguist, translator of Poe and Dante – and Shmuel reveled in all of them.

Shmuel’s two-volume work on Jabotinsky’s life, Lone Wolf, is a masterpiece of biography and an invaluable contribution to the history of Zionism. On a somewhat smaller scale, so too is Shmuel’s biography of Aharon Aaronsohn. It was the last of Shmuel’s books, the full set of which are a monument to Zionist inspiration, energy and idealism. Special praise is due his best-selling Battleground, a handbook for Israel-lovers who want to counter the standard falsehoods by which Israel’s enemies have impugned the Jewish state’s legitimacy and reputation.

Shmuel was a rock. He was principled and reliable. His convictions were deeply rooted in his immense learning and he upheld them fiercely. As befits a prophet, there was nothing soft, apologetic or trendy about Shmuel, but there was much about him that was lovable as well as admirable.

My family and I spent a great deal of time with him over many years. We saw him last a few months ago in Israel. He had a terrible problem with his lower legs. When I called him to arrange a get together, I asked how he was doing. “Beseder gamoor,” he replied, laughing: “Down to my knees, I’m beseder; below that, I’m gamoor.” We loved him and we miss him. We’re happy we have his books.

Douglas J. Feith, a friend of Shmuel Katz for thirty years, served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration.

Editors Note: This article, which appeared in The Jerusalem Post of August 8, 2007, is particularly salient today, as Prime Minister Olmert seems prepared to further eviscerate his country.

Whatever one may say about the Syrian President Bashar Assad he does not beat about the bush. In his recent speech in parliament he made it clear that peace with Israel is not his immediate concern. In evident response to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer to give him the Golan in exchange for peace, his haughty reply was that the Golan must be returned to Syria free, gratis and for nothing.

Then, with that achieved, he might, or he might not, be prepared to talk. This of course is in tune with the Pan-Arab policy of "phases" in the projected destruction of Israel. It was first propounded by president Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia in the 1950s, well before the Six Day War when Israel was locked into the 9-mile wide boundary of the 1949 Armistice Agreement. In more recent years, it became the mantra of the moderate Arab who will tell you gently over a cup of coffee, that a Palestinian state in the "occupied" territories will of course be only an interim step before they take the rest of the land.

Arafat consecrated this idea as the core of Arab strategy: take what you can, by diplomacy, by war, by whatever, and that will serve as a base for the next phase.

Assad is doing no more than recalling this principle and reminding us once more that handing over territory to the Arabs has never brought and will never bring peace. It would only accelerate and facilitate the coming of the final assault on the Jewish state.

In announcing his willingness to hand over the Golan to Syria, Olmert defies the national interest. It was only after Syria had launched three wars and one terror campaign against Israel that the Israeli government decided to incorporate the Golan into the state. Implementation of Olmert's proposal would not only be a severe blow to Israeli security, but would undermine Israel's right, as a victim of that repeated aggression, to take and keep the Golan. Here is a most relevant precedent: In World War II Nazi Germany's armies had penetrated deep into Soviet Russia as far as Stalingrad; and there began their long retreat.

The Soviets re-conquered the ravaged territory, and in the British House of Commons in February 1944 Prime Minister Winston Churchill, when asked what would be the future of the territories now in the hands of Britain's Soviet allies, he replied: "Twice in our lifetime Russia has been violently assaulted. Many millions of Russians have been slain and vast tracts of Russian soil devastated as a result of repeated German aggression. Russia has the right of reassurance against future attacks from the West, and we are going all the way with her to see that she gets it." (The Soviets retained the territory. A part of it was originally Poland, and for that the Poles were subsequently compensated by territory from Germany).

What more precise historic parallel for Israel could Olmert need? Should he need parallels at all?

Here is a record of Syria's three aggressions. No more than three years after the Syrians gained their own independence from French trusteeship, Syria in 1948 freely entered into the alliance with six other members of the Arab League to prevent by force of war the birth of the State of Israel. The towering Golan Heights were a first-class natural base for Syria's onslaught. This was in 1948.

Miraculously, Israel survived against tremendous odds and suffering heavy casualties, but Syria retained the Golan; and then during the following 19 years, despite the armistice of 1949, playfully used the Heights as a launching-pad for lobbing shells down onto the Galilee.

It is a part of Israeli folklore that in those 19 years children in Galilee did much of their schooling in underground bunkers for protection from those shells. Partaking as targets for those attacks were also the fishermen of the Lake of Galilee.

Then in 1967, in company with Egypt and Jordan, Syria joined in a new assault on Israel. This was advertised well in advance, by Egyptian president Nasser, to be a "war of annihilation." Heavily buttressed, the Golan naturally played its part in the attack. This time however, Israel decisively won the war and was able to say "enough is enough." This time the Israeli Defense Force climbed and captured the Heights.

Israel, however, was given little respite. Six years later, and that on Yom Kippur, Syria, again in company with Egypt, made war on Israel. In hard fighting Syria failed to win back the Golan Heights and, indeed, lost an additional slice of territory to the east. Negotiations followed and, under pressure from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Israel returned that slice, and a border was delineated between Israel and Syria.

That border, incidentally with Damascus in its sights, has ever since 1974 assured Israel of peaceful relations, such as they are, with Syria.

That border emphasizes the truth, for which a heavy price in blood has been paid, that only with the Golan in Israel's hands can peace be maintained. (In Europe, 60 years after Germany was defeated, has anybody dared, would anybody dare, to suggest that Polish territory be returned to Germany?)

It is not irrelevant to add that the Golan was never before a "Syrian" territory. It was historically Jewish, northern Galilee. It has a special history. It housed a thriving Jewish community for perhaps three centuries after the destruction of the Temple and contains many Talmudic memories.

It was naturally originally included in the territory of the British Mandate of 1922 for establishing the Jewish National Home in Palestine. In a very dubious "deal" with France in 1923, Britain was given lands from the Mosul area in France's mandated territory of Syria. These lands were "moved" on the map into the British mandated territory of Iraq. In return Britain rewarded France with 25% of her oil interests in Iraq— with the Jewish Golan as a bonus.

But beyond those external implications however far-reaching, Olmert's irresponsible proposal to reward Syria by giving it the Golan must be placed in a yet wider context, high in the scale of blunders committed and disasters generated by the prime minister in the past two years—first as adjunct to his mentor Ariel Sharon and then on his own account.

They are inexplicably linked one to the other, from the Gaza "disengagement" which was about to usher in the age of peace (remember Olmert's messianic promise of such a "new morning" to a New York audience) down to the relaxed unpreparedness and then the amateurish handling of the Second Lebanon War.

Thus one is able to reach an understanding of the state of disorientation in the nation. That is where Israel is today.

Immediately striking in this latest stage is the fact that neither in Olmert's Golan proposal, nor in the supporting acclaim of his supporters in the media, has there been mention, not a hint, that giving up the Golan to Syria would involve the expulsion from their homes of some 20,000 men, women and children.

One must assume from Olmert's callous behavior toward the expellees of Gush Katif, and since their expulsion, that he believes that the success of the operation at Gush Katif would be repeated on the Golan, that he will give the order to the army, and they will do the job. A few protests, a little violence here and there and nothing more.
He should be warned. He is dead wrong. The 20,000 will not "go quietly." There will be many more "Ya'alons" in the army to oppose such an evil move. Many, many more soldiers will refuse to accept the role of bullying the people into the victimhood of expulsion. Too many of the people bulldozed into supporting the Gaza adventure have realized how mistaken they were.

It is most unlikely that Olmert will succeed. Even the financial cost of such an operation, which must amount to tens of billions would be prohibitive. Who would pay the cost? The Israeli taxpayer? The US? Not a chance.

Nevertheless, even if only as a protection of Israel's self-respect as a sane nation, Olmert should be pressed, especially by the people who cheered him on in Gaza, not to try again. It is they who should be the first to tell him "hands off the Golan!"

Editors Note: This is excerpted from Days Of Fire: The Secret Story of the Making of Israel, published in 1968 by W. H. Allen, London (pp 109-111). It had been published in Hebrew in Israel two years earlier.

I spent many hours with Begin in the little room in the Oppenheimer apartment [where Begin lived concealed from the British authorities hunting him down]. I told him of what I had seen and heard and done in Europe, of the repercussions and undertones in London after the Rome attack [on the British embassy in Rome, a blow against the center of British operations against immigration].

Together we examined and analyzed the show of British power and its weaknesses. These were becoming more sharply defined. Our task was clear: to intensify the struggle, increase its scope. It was essential to bring home to the British people the strength of our purpose, to expose the growing and ultimately crippling price they would have to pay, in prestige, in material, and in human resources for their continued alien presence in Palestine. The struggle for them was senseless. The fiercer our onslaught, the faster would this understanding be achieved.

To the threats of martial law we published and broadcast a laconic response:

“We have a simple reply to the threats of the British terrorists. You will not frighten us…Even in the most difficult circumstances we shall find ways of hitting at the enemy.”

These words were backed by the knowledge of the plans even then being made to broaden the immediate scope of operations. They sprang from the constant weighing of the contending forces in the struggle and from the concepts central to the Irgun’s strategy from the outset: that the ending of British rule was within our power, that the British could be forced to leave Palestine.

Of course the British could physically crush the Jewish population of Palestine. But we knew something far more important: that there were limits of oppression beyond which the British government dared not go. She could not apply the full force of her power against us. Palestine was not a remote hill village in Afghanistan which could be bombed into submission. Palestine was a glass house watched with intent interest by the rest of the world. The British Government had discovered in 1945 that their behavior toward the Jews was an important factor in American attitudes and policies. American good will and American economic aid were vital to Britain’s hopes and plans for revival from the ravages of the war and for the social reforms of the Labor Government.

The countries of Europe, still reeking of the gas chambers, were also a potential restraining influence. Europe, beginning to recover from the nightmare of German Occupation, would see excesses against the Jews as a British resumption of Hitler’s work. Such a hostility might be of little practical significance; but it could not be disregarded by the British Government.

Less obvious but of a certain and, as we saw it, ultimately decisive force, was the climate of opinion in Britain itself. Only a deep and violent hatred could tolerate the kind of war their government would have to wage in order to crush the Jews. No such hatred existed.

The British had not been outraged by their government’s efforts to liquidate Zionism and to subject the Jews of Palestine to its will. Foreign policy altogether was an area in which it was generally assumed that the government of the day knew best what it was about. If they had been convinced that it was a vital national interest they might even have tolerated and accepted, with distaste and some protest, severe military measures in Palestine. But they had no such conviction. On the contrary: for a generation they had been told that Britain’s task in Palestine was one of mediation and supervision, that she was fulfilling an altruistic role: ensuring justice, holding the peace, keeping Jews and Arabs from each other’s throats. The elimination of the Jews “for the benefit of the Arabs,” in a military campaign which could not be brief and which no censorship could conceal, was not a policy which could appeal to the British people.

The Irgun was now concentrating on attacking British military transport. It forced the suspension of railway traffic. Day after day roads were mined; jeeps, trucks and armored cars were blown up. A new type of mine and a flame-thrower, both the products of the ingenious brain of the Chief of Operations, Amihai Paglin (“Giddy”), were used with great effect.

In those January days the difference between our outlook and that of the Jewish Agency was clear. The Weizmann school of frank defeatism had indeed been rejected at the Zionist Congress, and Dr. Weizmann had been forced into retirement. Weizmann honestly believed that to fight Britain was inconceivable; Ben-Gurion spoke of “resistance” but believed it was impossible, we were too weak, the British too strong. His view, expressed at the Zionist Congress in December, was that “we must not overestimate our strength.”

Editors note: this is excerpted from Chapter 4 of Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine published by Bantam Books, 1973.

The emergence and the progressive intensification of Jewish national identification in the Soviet Union has seemed miraculous even to many historically minded people. It is, in fact, merely an expression sharpened, deepened, and concentrated by the circumstances of the central fact of 3,500 years of Jewish history: the passion of the Jewish people for the land of Israel. The circumstances in which the Jewish people, its independence crushed nineteen centuries ago and large numbers of its sons driven into exile, maintained and preserved its connection with the land are among the most remarkable facts in the story of mankind. For eighteen centuries the Zionist passion—the longing for Zion, the dream of the restoration, and the ordering of Jewish life and thought to prepare for the return—pulsed in the Jewish people. The passion finally gave birth to the practical and political organizations which, amid the storms of the twentieth century, launched the mass movement for the return to Zion and for restored Jewish national independence.

The Jews were never a people without a homeland. Having been robbed of their land, Jews never ceased to give expression to their anguish at their deprivation and to pray for and demand its return. Throughout the nearly two millennia of dispersion, Palestine remained the focus of the national culture. Every single day in all those seventy generations, devout Jews gave voice to their attachment to Zion.

The consciousness of the Jew that Palestine was his country was not a theoretical exercise or an article of theology or a sophisticated political outlook. It was in a sense all of these -- and it was a pervasive and inextricable element in the very warp and woof of his daily life. Jewish prayers, Jewish literature, are saturated with the love and the longing for and the sense of belonging to Palestine. Except for religion and the love between the sexes, there is no theme so pervasive in the literature of any other nation, no theme has yielded so much thought and feeling and expression, as the relationship of the Jew to Palestine in Jewish literature and philosophy. And in his home on family occasions, in his daily customs on weekdays and Shabbat, when he said grace over meals, when he got married, when he built his house, when he said words of comfort to mourners, the context was always his exile, his hope and belief in the return to Zion, and the reconstruction of his homeland. So intense was this sense of affinity that, if in the vicissitudes of exile he could not envisage that restoration during his lifetime, it was a matter of faith that with the coming of the Messiah and the Resurrection he would be brought back to the land after his death.

Over the centuries, through the pressures of Persecution—of social and economic discrimination, of periodic death and destruction—the area of exile widened. Hounded and oppressed, the Jews moved from country to country. They carried Eretz Israel with them wherever they went. Jewish festivals remained tuned to the circumstances and conditions of the Jewish homeland. Whether they remained in warm Italy or Spain, whether they found homes in cold Eastern Europe, whether they found their way to North America or came to live in the southern hemisphere where the seasons are reversed, the Jews celebrated the Palestinian spring and its autumn and winter. They prayed for dew in May and for rain in October. On Passover they ceremonially celebrated the liberation from Egyptian bondage, the original national establishment in the Promised Land—and they conjured up the vision of a new liberation.

Never in the periods of greatest persecution did the Jews as a people renounce that faith. Never in the periods of greatest peril to their very existence physically, and the seeming impossibility of their ever regaining the land of Israel, did they seek a substitute for the homeland. Time after time throughout the centuries, there arose bold spirits who believed, or claimed, they had a plan, or a divine vision, for the restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine. Time after time a wave of hope surged through the ghettos of Europe at the news of some new would-be Messiah. The Jews' hopes were dashed and the dream faded, but never for a day did they relinquish their bond with their country.

There were Jews who fell by the wayside. Given a choice under torture, or during periods of civic equality and material prosperity, they forsook their religion or turned their backs on their historic country. But the people, the Land—as it was called for all those centuries: simply Ha’aretz, the Land -- remained the one and only homeland, unchanging and irreplaceable. If ever a right has been maintained by unrelenting insistence on the claim, it was the Jewish right to Palestine.

Widely unknown, its significance certainly long ungrasped, is the no less awesome fact that throughout the eighteen centuries between the fall of the Second Jewish Commonwealth and the beginnings of the Third, in our time, the tenacity of Jewish attachment to the land of Israel found continuous expression in the country itself. It was long believed -- and still is -- even in some presumably knowledgeable quarters, that throughout those centuries there were no Jews in Palestine. The popular conception has been that all the Jews who survived the Destruction of 70 C.E. went into exile and that their descendants began coming back only 1,800 years later. This is not a fact. One of the most astonishing elements in the history of the Jewish people—and of Palestine—is the continuity, in the face of the circumstances, of Jewish life in the country.

WILLIAM VAN CLEAVE

It is very difficult to write a few hundred words about such a great and multifaceted man, Shmuel Katz, whom I have long admired and loved. I am not going to try to summarize his lifetime of activity and accomplishment. I only wish to give a partial feeling for the kind of man he was. He was a man of principle, one of fierce integrity, of selfless dedication -- a leader and a fighter. Jabotinsky once exclaimed tongue in cheek to him, "Katz, why is it that you can never stay out of trouble?" He was a teacher, mentor, historian, keen analyst of political realities, and unsurpassed writer. His books are timeless and should inform generations. His writings covered a broad range. The man who could conduct meticulous research to produce the scholarly, two volume Lone Wolf, could also write a short piece entitled "Middle East History for Dummies."

Shmuel Katz was first and foremost a Zionist —perhaps the last of the great ones—going back to the age of 15 at least. The Jerusalem Post recently called him a "Zionist icon." He not only believed strongly in the justice of a State of Israel, he also believed—along with Jabotinsky—in an unpartitioned and strong Eretz Yisrael. The opening lines of Jabotinsky's poem, "The Song of Betar," read : "From the pit of rot and dust, A nation shall arise, Proud and generous and hard."

All the same, the attributes that have greatly impressed me about Shmuel, but are not sufficiently mentioned, were his modesty, his generosity, his capacity for love and friendship, and his constant sense of humor. A few examples and anecdotes:

In all of the many photos in the two volume Lone Wolf, Shmuel included only one of himself, and that with his back to the camera.

His possessions were never too precious to share with or give to friends, as when he gave me his own—and only— original copy of The Story of the Jewish Legion, nearly falling apart with age.

A few years ago I married a German Professor. For a honeymoon I took her to Israel, as much to meet Shmuel as to sightsee. Shmuel came shuffling into the lobby of the Wizo Parents Home with a smile. I said, "Shmuel I would like you to meet my wife." As he extended his hand, his first words were, "Tell me, my dear, how does it feel to be married to a Zionist?" They spent the next couple of days in deep conversation.

And when occasionally speaking about money, which Shmuel really did not care about, his favorite line was: "There is no shame in being poor. Of course, it is no great honor either."

I will miss this unique man terribly. I apply to Katz what he once said in an interview about Jabotinsky: "I tried to look for major faults. I really did. The problem was that I couldn't find any."

Dr. William R. Van Cleave is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Defense & Strategic Studies at Missouri State University.

EDWARD ALEXANDER

The loss of Shmuel Katz, whose forceful, articulate, and witty voice remained powerful up until the end, is irreparable. Few such voices as Shmuel's are sounding today, either in Israel or the Diaspora. He was that rare example of a learned polemicist, one who did not dilute what he knew in order to make it easily swallowable by people too lazy to think or to read. He was as much at home in the archives of research libraries and public record offices as in the combat arena of journalism.

I was privileged to know Shmuel from 1977 onwards, and especially during the eighties when I taught at Tel-Aviv University and Leah and I lived in Jerusalem, where he would visit us whenever he came to town. He was, as everyone knows, a great raconteur, who could regale you with anecdotes for as long as you were willing to listen. And you always felt that here was a man who not only knew things and people that nobody else did but also epitomized a time when Jews had a culture and an inner world of their own. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Hillel Halkin that appeared in The Forward (under the editorship of Lipsky, of course) in March 1996: "I was sent [in autumn 1937] from Palestine by the Irgun to speak to Jabotinsky about problems in the organization's leadership. I found him in a Warsaw hotel room, sitting next to a Polish count...who was throwing Jabo's socks into a valise. It seemed he had to catch a train to Lodz, where he was supposed to speak. 'Are you doing anything special in the next few days?' he asked me. 'No,' I answered. 'Then come with me,' he said. We took the train together to Lodz, and that night he spoke at a local cinema. Jabotinsky had only one message in those days for the Jews of Europe--'Get out any way you can, because there is a catastrophe coming.' On the way into the cinema, he was greeted by a crowd of howling hecklers, Communists, Bundists, and left-wing Zionists. The police escorted him in but left me behind, and when I tried to follow, a Polish policeman punched me in the chest and sent me flying. ...Jabo stood on a stool to see over the crowd and when he spotted me still sitting in a daze on the sidewalk, he walked over with a big grin and said, 'Katz, why is it that you can never stay out of trouble.?'"

We would occasionally visit Shmuel in his Dizengoff apartment. Such visits were experienced on the pulse as well as in the mind because of the physical effort involved: climbing up five flights of stairs and then not being able to sit down until Shmuel had cleared away the piles of books and magazines that concealed most of his furniture. He lived simply, if not quite ascetically. On more than one occasion, when he was at work on his Jabotinsky biography, I left his apartment carrying not only my briefcase but terrifically heavy shopping bags filled with hundreds of manuscript pages of the book in progress.

I would also from time to time bump into Shmuel on the non-stop Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem bus, and the 50-minute trip changed from an ordeal into a pleasure. Unlike other Israeli "eminentoes," I should add, he stood his place in the queue and did not claim special privileges as a former Knesset member.

He was the most loyal of friends. If you were sick, you could be certain that Shmuel would call nearly every night to see how you were doing; he checked on you more frequently than a nurse in a hospital.

It was said of Voltaire, whose letters alone now fill about forty volumes, that nobody ever discarded a letter from him. I think the same might be said of Shmuel, and I should like to offer some representative excerpts.

He could spot journalistic fraud at a distance of fifty miles, as in this instance from November 1986: "A characteristic [David Shipler] item in the NYT was the description of an Arab civilian addressing a Jewish soldier as adoni which, Shipler explained, means 'my lord'--demonstrating how Israelis demand groveling and subservience from the oppressed Arabs. Shipler was here for several years and knew that adoni is used a hundred times a day for 'mister,' 'hey you there,' or for 'waiter'....In short, Shipler is a deliberate malicious faker."

Many of Shmuel's letters convey the intellectual excitement and emotional immediacy of his great study of Jabotinsky. Again from November 1986: "...I'm dealing with a not unexpectedly complicated year--1919, at first glance triumphant, and so regarded for a long time...but in fact a tragic year, seminally disastrous. Many things were happening simultaneously, including already the retreat from the Balfour Declaration; and I have moral and structural problems because I am not dealing with a single-dimensional Jabotinsky. I intended putting him in the framework of his time and circumstances (British treachery, Weizmann's weakness much earlier than was thought)....When you come I'll be happy to tell you more." "I am still in thrall to Jabotinsky," he wrote me in October 1990, "but have to complete the writing more or less on time....By dint of working on the book every day I have reached 1937. You know what those three last years of his life meant--and did--to Jabo and to the Jewish people--and I have to relive them."

For those who had no personal experience of Shmuel's ineffable charm, his reputation will rest on the decades-long tenacity with which he demonstrated that the Diaspora strategy of accommodation had taken its deadliest form in Zion itself, in the Chelm-like policy of yielding contiguous territory to enemies dedicated to Israel's destruction--in hopes of placating them.

Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington.

YISRAEL MEDAD

Probably like most people, I "met" Shmuel Katz for the first time through one of his books. I was on a year's program in Israel in 1966 when Days of Fire was published in its original Hebrew edition. Unlike some other Irgun memoirs, this book offered much more than a personal perspective on historic events. While gripping reading, Days of Fire was on an additional level entirely--history written in the fashion of the best academics, with a broad perspective and meticulous attention to detail.

Dr. Rafael Medoff of the Wyman Institute has noted that Days of Fire was the first book to expose the Allies' failure to bomb the Auschwitz death camp. Using documents from British and Zionist archives and a map, Katz recounted how Jewish Agency leaders were rebuffed by British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden in July 1944 when they requested an Allied air attack on Auschwitz and its rail lines. "It was fifty-seven days, September 1, before the British Foreign Office sent its reply, a period during which the majority of the Jews of Hungary were exterminated," Katz wrote. At that same time, air drops to the Polish Home Army forces were undertaken by British planes, flying from the Foggia air base in Allied-occupied Iraly. "The death camp at Auschwitz was 200 miles nearer than Warsaw to the base at Foggia," Katz pointed out.

With the publication of Battleground in 1973, "Moekie" Katz's position as the foremost disciple of Ze'ev Jabotinsky was cemented. Shortly thereafter, I made contact with him. Upon my return from a two-year stint working with Betar in England, we discussed my working with him. (During those two years in England I had traveled to Paris with Barbara Oberman to join Moekie for the launching of the French edition of Battleground—my first meeting with Michel Gurfinkiel, who organized the book launch off the Champs Elysee.) At this time Moekie was expecting that Menachem Begin, newly elected as Prime Minister, would appoint him Minister for Public Diplomacy and that we would set aright the chronic failings of Israel's Hasbara (information services). But it was not to be. Moshe Dayan, whom Begin took from the Labor Party to be his Foreign Minister, sabotaged the project.

I had been working for Geula Cohen at her Academy for National Studies in Tel Aviv and returned there when employment with Moekie failed to pan out. When I found myself occasionally stranded in Tel Aviv, Moekie offered me the couch at his Dizengoff apartment. Until he moved to the WIZO home for seniors a few years ago, I estimate I had made use of that couch hundreds of times. And every time, before going to bed and just before leaving, Moekie and I would discuss the political events of the day.

Moekie was invited to family events which he attended with relish. He always made a point to inquire how I was doing. He found ways to supplement my salary for which I was grateful despite my protestations that doing work for him was payment enough for me.

After leaving his position as Begin's advisor in early 1978, Moekie began publishing op-eds in Ma'ariv and The Jerusalem Post. In 1981, he asked me to edit what became Battletruth, which appeared in 1983. Battletruth collected just over 100 of Katz's op-eds spanning two and a half years. Divided into 15 sections, the articles showed chronologically how the developments Moekie foresaw, with almost prophetic vision, came about. The book highlighted his irrefutable logic, political erudition, political grasp and sense of history.

After Battletruth came Lone Wolf, his monumental biography of Jabotinsky, for which he turned me into a research assistant. During that period I would never ask him how he was feeling (he always suffered from a circulatory problem in his feet) but would ask "What year are you in?” referring to his progress in the book. From then on, several times a year, either for a book, an article or some other project, a call would come from Moekie and I’d be off to the Zionist Archives, Knesset newspaper archives or another library. For example, last year I was engaged in seeking out documents on the French-British arrangement which lost Israel the Golan in 1923 when the British traded the region for Mosul. Moekie was following up on another British betrayal.

These last few years, I can attest, sorely tried Moekie's natural optimism. Whereas he criticized the entire Oslo process for being built upon false expectations, he viewed the last half-dozen years of Sharon and Olmert as grounded in simple corruption and betrayal of national goals for personal advantage. He told me that beyond the political stupidity of our leaders, especially in their relations with the United States, and their ineptitude in conducting negotiations with Israel's Arab enemies, was a failure of personal character--both on the Left and Right. The country, he believed, was being sacrificed for private objectives. The Zionist vision was being left in the lurch.

Over the last few months I was attempting to collect his articles for a sequel to Battletruth, which he was eager to see published. He also felt it important that Chapter Four of Battleground be reprinted for mass distribution among students. He was concerned that he would not be leaving behind a body of thought that represented his last 30 years of political analysis.

We agreed that the anthology would follow the pattern I had proposed 25 years earlier: the articles on a specific subject would follow in a chronological pattern to show how Moekie had been correct in his analysis. I supplemented my own files with archive material made available through Elliot Jager from The Jerusalem Post. The total number of articles from which we were to make our selection grew to be over 400. But I succeeded in transferring to him only the titles and my idea that the section headings should be more generalized. I had come up with a name, Battlesense, but that, too, came too late. My hope is that the book will yet be published.

I was especially proud to be part of the tribute paid to Moekie on the occasion of his 90th birthday which we celebrated at the Begin Center. The last great occasion was the launching of Moekie's last book The Aaronsohn Saga, on the NILI spy ring during World War I, held on February 29th of this year. Sir Martin Gilbert spoke and praised Moekie and Moekie, in his wheelchair and despite his frailty, responded for some 20 minutes. His last public appearance was a fortnight later, at a gathering of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel when he was honored once more.

My last visit to Moekie was two weeks or so before Passover. He had just come out of the hospital where they had amputated his lower left leg. He repeated what he had been saying for a few years, that he was satisfied that, at the least, everything above his neck was in perfect condition. And that was true. Until his last hospital stay, he read two newspapers daily and we talked once a week or so. There was always the complete grasp of events--and jokes--along with a withering critique of Israel's leadership. What was obvious to us both was that it pained him to be as pessimistic as he was and I am sure that contributed to the final physical breakdown of his body.

There is the public persona and in that role, Moekie was towering. As an unofficial diplomat, as a participant in academic colloquia, an advisor, commentator and author, he was undefeatable in argument and indefatigable. Rarely did I observe him become angry but he could do that, too, and his words and tone would become slashing. But he was kind, gentle and considerate and, as he sometimes admitted to me, all he wanted to be was a Yiddishe mensch, a good Jewish person.

Yisrael Medad directs Educational Programming and Information Resources at the Begin Heritage Center.

WILLIAM MEHLMAN

The "two-state solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict is old snake oil in a new bottle. As Shmuel Katz, then media advisor to newly minted prime minister Menachem Begin made clear in an illuminating exchange with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's foreign policy guru, at a 1977 White House luncheon, it was no more palatable then than it is now.

"Why shouldn't you agree to a plan [for a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria] that will guarantee your security without the Arab problem?" Katz reported Brzezinski as remarking (The Hollow Peace, 1981, p. 124): "The Jordan River can serve as a security border and your army will be positioned there and the zone will be demilitarized."

Katz: "First of all, I do not believe the Arabs would concur in any arrangement of that kind. From their point of view, it is 'without honor...' If they do agree, it would be with the intention of reversing the situation within a year or two. And, of course, arms would be brought into the region from the very first moment...."

Brzezinski: "But you would always be able to go back in."

Katz: "And you would be the first to demand our withdrawal from the 'Arab sovereign territory.' You would give us 24 hours to get out. You or whoever replaces you... And the whole world would side with you..."

It is this remarkable clarity of vision that will be most sorely missed with the passing of Shmuel Katz. While he proved overly optimistic in believing the arming of Israel's implacable enemies would at least have to wait upon their acquisition of statehood, who in 1977 could have foreseen an Israeli political leadership standing in silent witness to and in some cases outright complicity with this process?

In respect to that leadership, Katz minced no words. He regarded Ehud Olment as "totally unprincipled" and challenged the prime minister, President Bush and their respective foreign ministers to "provide a smidgen of evidence to suggest that a Palestinian state will not be a terror state." Evidential truth was the hallmark of all his writings. Nothing before or since his classic Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine has come near matching the effectiveness of his assault on "the fog of fantasy and dissimulation" surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict—not least the hoax of forced Arab displacement in 1948 at the hands of the fledgling Jewish state. It is with no small sense of pride that AFSI's representatives in Israel have seen to it that every new media correspondent arriving in the country is furnished with a copy of this landmark work. While its influence may be only rarely detectable in their reporting, it is difficult to imagine any new journalist trying to make sense of events in Israel without Battleground as context.

Unlike some historians, Shmuel Katz never cushioned the truth, even when the truth hurt. For all his devotion to his leader and mentor Ze'ev Jabotinsky, there is not a hagiographic note intruding on the 1,800 pages of Lone Wolf, his definitive two-volume account of the life and times of Zionism's towering visionary. He resisted what must surely have been the temptation to marginalize the ramifications of Jabotinsky's inexplicable rejection of the presidency of the World Zionist Organization when it was literally handed to him by Chaim Weizmann, following the latter's defeat in a no-confidence vote by delegates to the 17th Zionist Congress in 1931. Katz spared himself an editorial verdict on Jabo's fateful decision, but his wonderment at the course Zionism and the history of Israel might have taken had Jabotinsky grasped the challenge can hardly be doubted.

Shmuel Katz never lost the philosophical twinkle in his eye or his fascination with the bizarre turns history can take, even in the final months of his growing physical infirmity. Among the most amazing of these reminiscences was his account of a confrontation with Henry Kissinger sometime after the Yom Kippur War. Katz had only a nodding acquaintanceship with Richard Nixon's and Gerald Ford's secretary of state, but Kissinger was apparently well aware of Katz's underground activities in behalf of the pre-Israel Irgun Zvai Leumi. He must also have been sensitive to allegations that he had deliberately delayed American resupply of munitions and military spare parts to Israel during the first critical week of the war. When a rumor -- totally unfounded -- began circulating that Shmuel had put out a contract on his life, Kissinger reportedly went into a frenzy.

Shmuel, informed of what had transpired and anxious to put the rumor to rest, arranged a face-to-face meeting with Kissinger at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. "From the moment I entered his suite until I left three minutes later," Katz related to a small circle of friends in Tel Aviv, "he did not stop shouting at me. He never gave me a chance to refute the rumor. In fact I never got a chance to say a word. Finally, I just turned around and walked out."
Whatever debt Henry Kissinger may or may not have felt he owed his conscience, he must surely have learned by now that it wasn't Shmuel Katz who had come to collect.

William Mehlman represents AFSI in Israel and is co-editor of the Internet magazine Zionnet.net.



.

JOEL GILBERT

In the history of modern Zionism, Shmuel Katz was a giant. His clear and
concise logic made him unique amongst Jewish political thinkers.

I met Shmuel when I was a student in Israel at the age of 18. It was the
beginning of a lifelong friendship. Only a year later, I began studying at
the University of London. I was honored when Shmuel asked me to be his
London researcher for his planned two volume work on Vladimir Zeev
Jabotinsky, Lone Wolf (or just "Jabo" in Hebrew).

Shmuel had told me many stories of his affection for Zeev Jabotinsky, and
the time he spent with him in Europe prior to World War II as his traveling
secretary. Shmuel attended speech after speech, as Jabotinsky encouraged
Jewish immigration to Palestine, while warning of impending disaster for
European Jewry. Shmuel also told me of his time in London, as editor and
publisher of the Revisionist Zionist Weekly in the late 1930's (at
Jabotinsky's request), and of observing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's
appeasement of Hitler, which within 24 months resulted in bombs falling in
the streets of London where Shmuel was living.

Over the next three years, I dug deep into the historic files of the British
Mandatory authority in Palestine which were housed at the British Public
Record Office in Kew Gardens. Many of the files I examined had only
recently been released by the British government, after being sealed for 40
years. I extracted for Shmuel a number of letters between Jabotinsky and
the British authorities, as well as numerous documents illustrating British
policy to suppress Jewish immigration during Hitler's romp through Europe.
Hand written notes by British officials on the margins of documents revealed
anti-Semitic attitudes as a force in British thinking. Shmuel wrote for
seven years until "Jabo" was finally completed - an epic 2 volume, 1,000
page document.

After Menachem Begin's death, I recall in 1983 asking Tzachi Hanegbi, then
foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir, "Why doesn't
the Likud turn to Shmuel Katz for leadership?" Hanegbi, later the subject
of several ethical probes, answered, "Shmuel Katz could never be Prime
Minister, because he would never compromise on his principles."

Indeed, Shmuel had resigned from the Herut Knesset list in the early 1950's,
then once again as Menachem Begin's advisor in 1977 for reasons of
abandonment of principle. Shmuel often reminded me that Jabotinsky did not
like Menachem Begin, and didn't think he would make a good leader.
Jabotinsky likened Begin's speeches to the sound of a creaking old door.

Central to Shmuel's writings over the past 30 years was what he described as
the tragic void of leadership in Israeli politics and a political system
which simply recycled its failed leaders over and over. Moshe Dayan, Shmuel
wrote, was a total failure. As chief of staff of the IDF, Dayan had opposed
pre-empting the war in 1967 against Egypt and Syria, and along with Golda
Meir had acquiesced to Henry Kissinger's demand that Israel not pre-empt the
1973 attack by Egypt and Syria, despite their pre-knowledge. The later
episode so unnerved Dayan, Shmuel wrote, that Dayan broke down and cried,
and called for Israel to surrender to Egypt! When Menachem Begin pulled
Dayan from these depths to appoint him as his foreign minister to negotiate
"peace" with Egypt, Shmuel knew great things were not in the offing.
Meanwhile, Begin's Defense Minister, Ezer Weizmann, Shmuel told me, acted in
effect as a spy for Egypt. Weizmann would meet with the Egyptian delegation
and tell them how to deal with each of the persons in the Israeli
negotiating teams, and how to overcome their positions.

Just as with Moshe Dayan, Shmuel pointed out, Israel's recycling of failed
leadership continued. Rabin was reelected as Prime Minister after a
previous failure, only to help rescue the exiled and defeated PLO as Israel's
"partners for peace." Prime Minister Ehud Barak implemented the unilateral
withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, without any security arrangements, leading
to the Hizbullah takeover of the area and the Second Lebanon War. Today
Ehud Barak is the Israeli Defense Minister, charged with negotiating a truce
with HAMAS! Shimon Peres engineered the disastrous Oslo Accords - yet Peres
was elevated to President!

Like Winston Churchill prior to World War II, Shmuel Katz was Israel's voice
of clarity, unheeded. With a child-like laugh and a youthful twinkle in
his eye, Shmuel had the charisma, integrity, and vision to be Israel's
greatest leader. Sadly, Israel never elevated the principled and visionary
Shmuel Katz to political leadership. Instead, a cadre of weak, naïve, or
ego driven individuals, from the power hungry to the felonious, rose and
clung to office.

A writer of many epic works, including Days of Fire and Battleground, Shmuel
had the ability to explain the realities of history, while others simply
accepted simplistic concepts echoed in the media or invented by Israel's
enemies. I once paid Shmuel what he said was the biggest compliment he ever
got, "Shmuel, I used to think you were a genius, but now I realize that all
you write about is really just common sense."

Joel Gilbert is the writer and director of Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and
The Revolt of Islam

RUTH KING

The first book I read when I found my Zionist home in Americans for a Safe Israel was “Battleground” written by Shmuel Katz, one of the founders of the organization. It was and remains the definitive text on the history and context of the Arab/Israel wars.

In 1977, shortly after the election of Menachem Begin, David Bar Illan, the late journalist and world class pianist, and his wife Beverly invited me to their home to meet Katz who had accompanied Begin as adviser on his first State visit to the United States. Thanks to the unequalled kindness, devotion to AFSI, and hospitality of Beverly Bar-Illan, Shmuel became a frequent and favored lodger there and I was to see him many times in the ensuing years.

I appreciated Shmuel’s association with Zeev Jabotinsky, the great prophet and Zionist who persuaded my parents to immigrate to Bolivia. Because of my father’s predilection for the legacy of Betar and the Irgun I was also very familiar with the struggle to liberate Palestine.

Shmuel was in many ways the natural heir to Jabotinsky as historian, essayist and political thinker, and selfless and principled Zionist. In some ways he surpassed Jabotinsky who had a rather rosy view of a future reconciliation between Jews and Arabs.

Katz understood the faith driven historic hatred of Islam for Jews and its unalterable determination to extirpate the Jewish state from their Middle East Caliphate. When I once remarked that I was pleasantly startled by seeing Sadat emerge from a plane and shake hands with all assembled Israelis, Shmuel exploded and explained that a “hudna”…Arabic for a temporary and strategic and non binding truce…was all that was achieved. He reminded me of the jihadist calls to war against Israel by so called secularists such as Assad and Nasser and the long and painful legacy of Arab/Moslem anti-Semitism.

He was enraged that Israelis and their American supporters did not denounce Sadat, an ag