Labor Party Agonizes Over Platform to Avoid Split Between Doves Hawk

,

By YITZHAK SHARGIL
and DAVID LANDAU
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The
Labor Party's central com-
mittee met for a crucial in-
ternal debate Wednesday eve-
ning — nine hours after it
was originally scheduled to
begin to give the party lead-
ers time to reach a concen-
sus on a new political plat-
form.
The far-reaching Labor
Party debate, unprecedented
on the eve of a general elec-
tion when normally the ap-
pearance of unity is main-
tained at all costs, was de-
manded by Premier Meir her-
self.
Addressing a Labor Align
ment group here last week,
Mrs. Meir was tense and
visibly angered by mounting
criticism of her government
in party circles.
If a serious—possibly dis-
astrous—split is to be avoid-
ed, the draft document must
reconcile the views of hard-
liners such as Defense Mini-
ster Moshe Dayan and Mini-
ster Without Portfolio Israel
Galili with those of doves and
moderates, whose ranks in-
clude Finance Minister Pin-
•as Sapir and Foreign Mini-
ster Abba Eban.

Dayan, Sapir and Eban
were members of the 10-
member ad hoc drafting com-
mittee, which also included
transport Minister Shimon
Peres, Commerce Minister
Haim Barley, Tel Aviv Mayor
Yehoshua Rabinowitz and
Haim Zadok, chairman of
the Knesset foreign affairs
and defense committee. The
members represent the three
factions that merged nearly
six years ago to form the
Labor Party—Mapal, Ahdut
Avoda and Rafi.
Heated interfactional meet-
ings that began Monday and
continued through most of
Tuesday showed that the
party doves who were thought
to have been discredited by
the Yom Kippur War had
more strength than was ex-
pected.
They refused to relent in
their attacks on Defense
Minister Dayan and the so-
called Galili Document on
defense and foreign policy
which, at Dayan's insistence,
was incorporated into the
party's election platform
months before the war.
It was pressure from the
doves and moderates, back-
ed by the party's powerful
"Gush" bloc of ex-Mapai

members that resulted in the
last-minute effort to draft
a new platform plan to re-
place the Galili document.
But the hawks were not
giving ground either. Dayan,
addressing colleagues of the
former Rafi faction, lashed
out at the doves and "mini-
malists." He declared that
he had no intention of re-
signing unless the judicial
committee investigating the
Yom Kippur War finds fault
with his conduct.
He reiterated his view, ex-
pressed on several occasions
during the past week, that
unless Israel retains sub-
stantial portions of the ad-
ministered Arab territories
captured in the Six-Day-War,
its very survival was in
jeopardy.
The extent of the schism
between doves and hawks
was evident from the re-
marks by Foreign Minister
Eban in Jerusalem Tuesday
night to 74 visiting American
Jewish leaders representing
the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish
Organizations.
Eban leveled a thinly veil-
ed attack on the Dayan poli-
cies when he declared flatly
that Israel's prewar "securi-

Purely Commentary

(Continued from Page 2)
berger to Israel and his talks with the
American ambassador, Walworth Barbour.
Sulzberger reports from one interview with
Barbour:
"Wally said U.S. policy is to get peace
to the area. We have carefully avoided,
however, any thought of having a 'U.S.
plan' that would link our name and prestige
to a certain set of conditions. But there is
certainly no chance of imposing a Four-
Power solution as the French have often
suggested. The Four Powers don't agree at
all among themselves.

"Wally says it is absolutely untrue that
President Kennedy promised Israel we
would support it with the Sixth Fleet, if in
exchange, Israel foreswore the manufacture
of atomic weapons. He doesn' think they are
making such weapons.
"In May 1967 enormous casualties were
anticipated. All big hotels outside Tel Aviv
were set up as huge hospitals and Jewish
organizations recruited volunteer doctors
everywhere in the world.
" 'What should U.S. policy be?' I asked.
Wally said: 'It's very simple. The only way
we can get into real trouble is if America
is forced to fight Russia to defend Israel's
existence. We would only get in trouble if
it became apparent Israel was going to lose.
Therefore, we have to keep Israel strong
enough to look after itself. One can worry
about the possibility of 100 million Arabs
some day fighting 4 million Jews. But num-
bers are not necessarily an asset . . . and
the Arabs just won't unite."
Talks with Hussein, with Faisal, as well
as with the Egyptians, add to the totality
of a well-covered Mideast situation.
There is an interesting note from Jeru-
salem, July 19, 1968—important because it
was only a year after the Six-Day War:
"Chat this afternoon with Teddy Kollek,
mayor of Jerusalem, in his apartment. Ted-
dy pointed out this is a most peaceful city
despite the recent war. He has no police at
his door. He drives his own car. He goes
without guards into the Arab city.

"There are 206,000 Jews and 70,000
Arabs living in combined Jerusalem as
equals (although I doubt if the Arabs arc
citizens). This is comparable to Montreal.
It isn't a U.S.-type melting pot. There is no
desire for the Arabs to become Jews. It
is only hoped that all will dwell together
peacefully. This is the only place in the
world where Jews and Arabs meet together
en masse."
The roles of Presidents Kennedy and
Eisenhower assume special significance in

48 Friday, Nov. 30, 1973

—

some of the material to be gleaned from
Sulzberger. Ben-Gurion provided opinions
that arouse special interest. Sulzberger re-
ports on one of the interviews with Ben-
Gurion:
"I asked about his correspondence with
Kennedy. He said: 'You know, I met Ken-
nedy three times. First he came here, be-
fore he was president, with Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Jr. He didn't make much of an
impression: Then, in 1960, I met him in
Washington even before he was nominated
as his party's nresidential candidate. He
was so young-looking that I couldn't seri-
ously think he stood a chance of being nom-
inated, much less elected. Then I met Ken-
nedy the last time in 1961 in New York.
He said to me: 'You know, I was elected
by the Jews of New York and I would like
to do something for the Jewish people.' I
was shocked. Why should he say such a
thing to a foreigner?

"I could see by then that he was a great
man, but I also have always remembered
that Eisenhower, as a human, was more
likable. Ensenhower is a very lovely per-
son. I was deeply impressed by him. I have
never forgotten that just after Germany's
defeat I had nointed out to Eisenhower,
then commanding the occupation, that there
were no Hebrew books or teachers left in
Germany and none of the thousands of
Jewish displaced persons had the material
to learn. Right away he arranged to do
something. He sent a plane every week to
pick up books and teachers here to work
for the DPs."
Sulzberger, in his July 11, 1967, conver-
sations with Eisenhower, recorded the late
President's comment on his stand in 1957
when he stymied the British-French-Israeli
combine against Egypt, and his comments
on Israel's 1967 victory. Sulzberger re-
ports:
"The old general-statesman made some
rather striking observations on a subse-
quent conflict, the Six-Day War of 1967. 'I
don't know what they (the Israelis) could
have done,' he said, 'except that, with all
those Arab armies on their borders and
Nasser talking of a total war to drive Israel
into the sea . . . Try and make an analogy
for this country. Supposing I had been pres-
ident and some combination of enemies,
much bigger than us, had been gathered on
the seas and in Canada and Mexico promis-
ing our extinction. If I hadn't attacked first
while I had the chance I would have been
tried for treason . . .
" 'But I will tell you that as a profes-
sional military man I am amazed that the
Egyptians could be caught that way after

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

ty doctrine" had failed and
that all policy assumptions
that had rested on it now
had to be revised.
The security doctrine prov-
ed invalid, Eban said, be-
cause Israel's assessment of
the results of the Six-Day
War was "not an authentic
or permanent reflection of
the real military balance."
The upshot was overconfi-
dence. "The national style
and rhetoric became overly
strident. Domestic rivalries
led to the proliferation of
maximalist statement s,"
Eban said.

Among the "illusions" Is-
raelis fell prey to, he said,
were "that the cease fire
could exist indefinitely in a
political vacuum; that
1,000,000 Arabs would be
kept under Israeli control
forever, provided their eco-
nomic and social welfare
were impressively advanced;
that Zionism forbade a shar-
ing of national sovereignty
between two nations in Pal-
estine."

While some elements of
the Labor Party have de-
manded the resignation of
the entire leadership team
headed by Premier Meir, it

is Dayan who has emerged
as the focus of dissatisfac-
tion and is blamed directly
for the army's state of un-
preparedness when Egypt
and Syria attacked on Oct. 6.
The powerful "Gush" fac-
tion of the Labor Party,
headed by the Tel Aviv
Mayor Yehoshua Rabinowitz
and other ex-Mapai stalwarts
held a meeting Monday night
at which it was stressed that
the party must give Mrs.
Meir its full backing.

But the participants also
stressed that a new security
platform must be presented
to the party and the voters,
and that changes must be
made in the makeup of the
new cabinet after the Dec.
31 elections. While no names
were mentioned, it was clear
that those present considered
Dayan the most likely can-
didate for replacement.

Earlier, President Ephraim
Katzir said that "We are all
to blame" for the many
military and political mis-
takes made in connection
with the Yom Kippur War
and urged that the investiga-
tion of those mistakes not be
aimed at "punishing one an-
other."

Katzir, interview,
dio, was referring to
judicial inquiry into the way
due to begin. He said it
should be aimed at learning
lessons which might deter-
mine the fate of the Jewish
people. "We wanted to live
in a utopian world which is
not exactly identical to the
real world in which we live,"
he said.
Two judges, two former
chiefs of staff and the state
comptroller will comprise the
inquiry commission which will
examine what went wrong
before the Yom Kippur
The commission's mei
ship was announced by ou-
preme Court President Shi-
mon Agranat, who appointed
himself chairman of the com-
mision. The other judge is
Supreme Court member Mo-
she Landau.
The two former chiefs of
staff are Haim Laskov and
Yigael Yadin is the famous
Masada archeologis, and Las-
kov is at present the army's
ombudsman responsible for
soldiers' complaints against
their officers.
The fifth member is Dr.
Yitzhak Nebenzahl, who has
been state comptroller for
more than a decade.

The World Situation vis-a-vis Jewry with Emphasis
on Middle East as Reported by Cyrus L. Sulzberger

-

By Philip
Slomovitz

bragging so much about what they were
going to do. I was surnrised that they could
be caught tactically like that with their
planes parked all together on airfields and
not even any revetments. But that sure was
some harvest the Israelis got. I never had
a harvest like that in World War II-340
planes in one night.' "
Scores of other incidents, viewpoints, at-
titudes of the statesmen of our time, are
worth studying in this revealing work.
Sulzberger's "An Age of Mediocrity" does
not denigrate genius, even if it does not

measure up to the greatness of those in
the Roosevelt-Churchill era. But this period
does possess Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Kis-
singer, and many others.
It is not the greatness of the personal-
ities but their attitudes and actions, their
views on world situations as they affect all
peoples everywhere, which emerge in their
significance from the NYTimes reporter's
memoirs. They are eminently worth study-
ing and they will serve for many years to
come as reference details in the study of
the history of this century.

Ben-Gurion on 'Death'

that there is.) When I asked about post-
humous arrangements, Ben-Gurion only
said: "I have ordered that my remains
should stay here at Sde Boker beside my
wife."
Konrad Adenauer, a wise and philosoph-
ically simple man, offered this comment on
death (July 22, 1963) : "No human knows
that answer. If I could tell you that—but no
one can. It is perhaps a gift of God that I
myself have little if any fear. I think of
death with equanimity.
"I cannot imagine that the soul, which
is our life, could fade to nothing when death
comes. Somehow it must continue to exist.
Man is not permitted to know how—but it
must. Because the origin of life, life itself,
is as much a mystery as death and we are
unable to explain either phenomenon. The
highest commandment has always been that
which others hand on to us—to do one's
duty."
How fascinating to compare the essP ,,,e
of what three old men said on this sul
Tito, the Slavic communist, "If you –....e.
done something useful it will survive you;"
Ben-Gurion, the Jew, "People should be
just and decent and loving;" and the de-
voutly Catholic Adenauer, "Do one's duty."_
The biblical Hebrews whom Ben-Gurion
resembled were deeply conscious of their -
mediocre role in the concept of infinity.
Consequently, they cherished harsh respect
for death which they knew to be synon-
ymous with eternity. In the gospel that be-
came Ecclesiastes they warned that out
of nothing came man and thence he would
return:
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preach-
er, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What
profit hath a man of all his labor which
he taketh under the sun? One genera-
tion passeth away, and another genera-
tion cometh: but the earth abideth for-
ever . . . (Man and beast), All go unto
one place; all are of the dust, and all
turn to dust again.
Such is the ultimate for the giant, the
dwarf, and the mediocre: all unto one
place, dust.

Cyrus L. Sulzberger had interviewed
David Ben-Gurion on several occasions. In
his memoirs ("An Age of Mediocrity"), the
New York Times correspondent has a chap-
ter titled "Of Pride, Prejudice, Heroes,
Saints and Death." In it he reports on a
conversation with Ben-Gurion on the ques-
tion of death. The interview took place in
September 1967. How timely now to know
the B-G attitude. Sulzberger recorded that
interview as follows:

"I discussed death with the even older
Ben-Gurion. He was already in retirement,
leading a life of heartbreaking simplicity
on a kibutz in the barren Negev desert.
Yet, somewhat like Tito who aged amid
Roman imperial splendor, Israel's creator
said: "The purpose of life is to enjoy it, tc
make it pleasanter for every human being.
We don't know of another world so we must
concentrate on this one.
"People," he continued, fingering the
twin horns of thistledown hair thrusting
thinly from his skull, "should be just and
decent and loving. There is no mention in
our Bible (the Old Testament) of an after-
life. Death is what it seems to be. But I
don't know. Nobody knows.
"Once I talked about this to Einstein and
he said: 'The more we progress in science,
the more we realize what we don't know.
Our ignorance increases; the riddle grows.'
I asked him: 'Is there life after death?' He
said: 'I wish I knew.' But remember, in
his will he left orders that his body should
be burned. He didn't think he would come
back again. Remember, there is no word
in the Torah that concerns any other life."
Turning to considerations of style in
dying, I recalled what deGaulle had told
me of his funeral plans after returning
from the Churchill service in London. "I
was there." Ben-Gurion blurted. Very well,
I inquired, had he prepared his own funeral
instructions?
He said he had but that, as with de-
Gaulle, there would be no spectacle. (I
suspect his grateful countrymen will insure

