72 Friday, September 30, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Menahem Begin's Resignation Ends an Historic Era By VICTOR BIENSTOCK As fate would have it, it was a youthful civil servant, Dan Meridor, the prime minister's spokesman whose face has become familiar to Israelis from countless television news- casts, who delivered the message to President Chaim Herzog that marked the end of an era in Zionist and Israeli history. The day of the charisma- tic great in the Zionist movement comes to an end as Menahem Begin leaves the prime minister's office and fades into history. Begin was the last in a rare series of passionate, dedi- cated men with the power to strike fire in the hearts of the Jewish people and to kindle the Zionist fervor without which Israel would never have been born and without which Israel could not have survived all these critical years. Herzl, a magnetic per- sonality with his dreams and unquenchable hopes; Weizmann, the - scientist- statesman who prevailed on the British government to promise a Jewish National Home in Palestine; Jabotinsky, the poet, dreamer and activist who held steadfast to the concept of a Jewish state in all of Palestine and who refused to compromise that ideal; Ben-Gurion, the orator who could galvanize the masses, the politician who could win over the wealthy skeptics and the realist who seized the moment to proclaim Jewish statehood; Golda Meir, whose overriding in- terest and concern was the well-being of the Jewish people everywhere; and Be- gin, disciple of Jabotinsky, utterly dedicated to fulfill- ment of the biblical promise of a reborn Jewish state oc- cupying all of the Holy Land. These were the leaders in the era of greatness which ended with Begin's resignation. Weizmann, with all his human frailties, was one of the handful of men I met in 50 years of journalism who wore the aura of greatness. Jabotinsky I loved as a warm and friendly human being although I could never reconcile myself to his politics and to some of his associates. Golda Meir was a nation's mother, a womah who could be warm and friendly and loving and yet be ruthless and as hard as steel. I ad- mired her greatly in those World War II days when she had to battle the Mandate Government for everything the Yishuv needed — even tires for the Egged busses. I could never establish a personal. relationship with Ben-Gurion. I met him for the first- time in 1943 when, as a war correspondent in U.S. Army uniform, I vis- ited him in his apartment in Tel Aviv. He immediately upbraided me for being in a U.S. Army unform instead of being a soldier in the Hagana. Over the years in which I covered his activities, I found him dictatorial, into- lerant of criticism and al- most savage in his treat- ment of his political oppo- nents. Compared to the cos- mopolitan Weizmann, who walked in the cor- ridors of the great with assurance and aplomb, Ben-Gurion always struck me as provincial, operating comfortably MENAHEM BEGIN • THEODOR HERZL only on a different level. Despite all the time he had spent in America, for example, he never really understood the country or the people. At our first meeting, he harangued me about "the pogrom in Boston" (of which I knew nothing) and ad- monished me to remember that "the day will come when you American Jews will get on your knees and thank God there is a Jewish National Home where you can take eefuge." As soon as I left him, I ca- bled my office to ask about the Boston pogroms. The answer was: the usual gang fights in Scollay Square. Reuters had apparently put a racial connotation on the street gangs' frequent fights for control of the turf. scribes him as having been arrogant and self-centered, disliked by most of his classmates. L never had more than the most cursory contact with Begin and cannot speak of him from firsthand know- ledge. But there is a man in Florida, a former Israeli en- gineer who went to school with him in Poland, who de- On the other hand, there is the experience of my old friend, Richard Scott Mowrer, a war cor- respondent who was se- verely injured in Begin"s bombing of. British milit- ary headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Begin, he recounted in an article published some 30 years later when Begin be- came prime minister, sent emissaries to the hospital to make certain that he was comfortable and had every- thing he wanted. When Dick was released from the hospital, Begin, then in hid- ing with a reward on his head, risked exposure to have Dick escorted to his hideaway so that he could make his apologies person- ally. Dick was impressed by his Old World courtliness. I always regarded Begin as something of an anomaly in the heated atmosphere of the Middle East. I have holding today's Germany never seen a photograph of responsible for the crimes of him at a Knesset session or the Nazi regime. The Ger- public meeting at which he man press has even specu- was not fully attired, jacket lated that Begin's an- and all, when the accepted nouncement of his resigna- attire was an open-neck tion came when it did, on shirt. Even the impeccable the eve of Chancellor Hel- diplomat, Abba Eban, cast mut Kohl's scheduled visit off his jacket and necktie to Israel, so that Begin when he took to the hust- would not have to welcome ings for the first time to Kohl. Kohl's scheduled arrival, campaign for a Knesset seat. Begin adhered to a according to the Zeitung of European code of courtli- Stuttgart, "was not the real reason for Begin's leaving ness. now almost obsolete. office but it probably had an Begin took office after emotional influence on the nearly .30 years of Labor timing. Begin who for a long Party rule during which . time has been an implaca- young hopes, idealism, ble enemy of things German energy and drive were for all the well-known gradually overcome by reasons which have their stagnation and bureauc- roots in his personal fate, is racy. His accession to power incapable of drawing a line marked the first shift in the under the darkest chapter of upper levels of government German history." since statehood. His milit- History will judge Begin ant course galvanized a and appraise his contribu- people out of its lethargy tions, the greatest of which and created a new was probably the estab- dynamism. lishment of peace with Menahem Begin was Egypt, against what may truly a product of the have been his most tragic Holocaust and he never error, the failure to control escaped — or wanted to Gen. Ariel Sharon and limit escape — its bonds. His the invasion of Lebanon last biographer, Frank Ger-• year to its original an- vasi, wrote that Begin re- nounced goal, the line 40 fused to speak Polish be- kilometers north of the in- cause he remembered the ternational boundary. Polish ghetto and refused Begin leaves office by to speak German because all accounts a very sick he remembered the and dispirited man, Holocaust. The overwhelmed by the Holocaust was his most enormous cost in Israeli powerful motivation in lives of the Lebanese trying to make Israel an campaign and unable to invulnerable fortress to see a way out of the make certain that a Lebanese morass. tragedy like the His one consolation is Holocaust could never that his efforts to settle the recur. West Bank have proceeded Many Germans, recalling so far that they can never be Begin's savage attacks on undone and that a good part former Chancellor Helmut of the West Bank, if not all Schmidt, believe that Begin of it, will remain forever a was never able to cease part of Israel. Conscientious Objectors in Israel Form Small But Vocal Minority By CARL ALPERT One of the first was 19- HAIFA — Small but ar- year-old Amnon Zichroni ticulate groups in Israel who in 1954 refused to serve continue to object to the in the army since he ob- campaign in Lebanon and to jected to the "very existence continued presence there of of the institution of armies Israeli soldiers. Protest vig- in Israel and the world as a ils have for months been whole." He was sentenced to held outside the home of prison by a military court Menahem Begin or at the for insubordination, deser- Knesset, and occasional tion and refusal to carry public demonstrations have arms. been organized. * * * Since Jews have a highly Davis Case developed conscience and was Notorious moral sense, and are fre- quently found as leaders in Even more notorious liberal, leftist, and ex- was the case of Uri Davis, tremist groups, it is not sur- not long thereafter. prising that we have the ex- Davis, too, was a con- tremists here as well. In- scientious objector, and deed, they are not new, and served time in a military the previous Labor govern- jail. He went on to be- ments had their share of come a leading spokes- problems with them. man for Arab rights, and 0 frequently tangled with the authorities when his activities led him into vio- lations of law or security. By 1970, his pacifist prog- ram included a call for sabotage of Israel's rail- ways and military plants. Davis left the country to take up an academic post in London, where he served as an active anti-Israeli agitator. In the spring of 1979, interviewed on radio, he stated that Israel had no right to exist and that its government was not "like" Nazism, but actual Nazism. He foresaw, with evident pleasure, a prospective de- feat of Israel on the battlefield. Most of the present crop of objectors to the Peace for Galilee operation who re- fuse to do military service in Lebanon are undoubtedly sincere, but the situation was aggravated by the alac- rity with which the political opposition to the Likud gov- ernment seized upon the re- fusals and exploited them to whip up anti-governemt feelings. Communications media, unfriendly to the Likud government in any event, gave ample and encourag- ing publicity to every man- ifestation of the anti-war feelings. Something like 90 Israeli civilians, called up for their military reserve duty, have refused to serve in Lebanon and have been sentenced to various short terms in prison. One of them, Shuki Kook, writing to the press from jail, expressed his disappointment that there were not more. He called upon all who felt as he did to implement their views in their personal lives so that he would not get the feeling that his own sacrifice was a waste of time. Small groups which cal- led themselves "There's a Limit" or the "Committee Against the War in Leba- non," drawing members from the Peace Now move- ment, found frequent new publicity gimmicks to ex- press their hostility to the Likud government, but few indeed felt 'strongly enough to do what Shuki Kook did, or Amnon Zichroni in his day. * * * Democratic Rights and Obligations Since Israel is a democra- tic state they are free to de- monstrate, though any at- tempt to keep them within normal bounds of public order is at once met with howls that they are being denied freedom of speech. It was Mark Gefen, an ac- cepted spokesman of left- wing Zionism, when com- menting on the Uri Davis situation, who said that those who cry for freedom of speech don't know what the word freedom means. There is not such thing as absolute freedom; there must always be some restrictions when the welfare of the whole is concerned. The alternative, he implied, is anarchy. Of late, a contrary movement has been formed, consisting of patriotic youth who vol- unteer, in the nation's in- terest, to serve in Leba- non if necessary in place of the objectors. A recent issue of Yachad, journal of the kibutz move- ment, quotes one Mike Jaffe, a 31-year-old kibutz member who had been cal- led up for his military re- serve duty. "Refusal to serve as ordered under- mines the army which as- sures our survival," he said. "If I refuse to serve in Leba- non, I abrogate my right to fight for my views in a democratic fashion because I have excluded myself from society." The opponents of the war continue to object that though they may be a small minority, the majority has no right to impose its will on them — which leads to a strange definition of democ- racy! There is no doubt that the vast majority of the pub- lic in Israel disavows the ob- jectors, looking upon them, at best, as naive.