THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Daniel Ellsberg as the source of The Pen-
tagon Papers "leak" and he's been fired
more than once — but you can see he's
loved the battle, scars and all. He was a
reporter for the New York Post, The New
York Times, started his own magazine,.
Scanlan's Monthly, has won numerous
awards and has been praised by the New
York Times as "The guerilla warrier of
journalism." He's got wild, wonderful
stories to tell about his colorful career
as a reporter, and provocative opinions
on everything from the Supreme Court
("they're destroying the First Amend-
ment") to Ariel Sharon ("he'd make a
helluva prime minister").
Right now he's pacing around his book-
lined West Side apartment in Manhattan,
railing against the people he loves most —
his fellow Jews. "They're so shreklich, so
afraid," he" says. "That fear in them is
always there. Always. It's terrible. They
worry about anti-Semitism. They worry
about what the goyim will think of them.
Maybe Jews really believe they're not as
good as the next guy. But I sure as hell
don't feel that way. Jews shouldn't be
scared anymore. Never scared. They
should be mad."
Zion is mad that during the recent
Presidential campaign American Jews
didn't raise as much of a stink about men
like Secretary of Defense Caspar Wein-
berger and Senator Jesse Helms as they
did about Jesse Jackson. (Not that he's a
fan of Rev. Jackson, whom he calls "dirt
under my feet.") But Zion is convinced
that Jews are afraid to start up with the
powers that be. "We're still satisfied with
being patted on the back. We never call in
our cards. We never get tough. Why?
Because we want to make sure we'll get in-
vited back to the White House.
"In the main," he says, "we always vote
against our own best interests."
All of this is said with passion and force,
but without rancor That's just the way it
is, Zion seems to say. He has about him
a sense of wonder mixed in with his cyn-
icism, and that combination keeps him
youthful and open-minded. It also keeps
him honing in on the truth, doggedly and
relentlessly, never mind the consequences.
It's led him to criticize sacred cows like
Mike Burke, who enjoyed a fabulous press
as president of the New York Yankees and
Madison Square Garden until Zion ex-
posed him as "the Inspector Clouseau of
the sports world." And Zion took on the
music industry for allegedly keeping
"good music" off the market to promote
rock and roll. He was also virtually the
only American journalist to assert that
there now exists a Palestinian state, that
it has been a nation since 1948, and that
it is called Jordan.
But more often than not Zion's quest for
the truth has found him championing the
underbelly of almost any issue or per-
sonality. His writings include warm re-

membrances of Jewish gangsters and he
has defended such unpopular figures as:
• mobster Meyer Lansky for all he did,
quietly, for the fledgling Jewish state;
• Patty Hearst, who "would've never been
in that bank" if she hadn't been kid-
napped;
• the much-maligned New York Yankee
owner George Steinbrenner, who "wants
only to win" and who "made the Yank-
ees great again;"
• the perhaps even more-maligned Oak-
land A's owner Charlie Finley — "If
everyone who hated Charlie Finley hated
each other, there would be World War
III" — for demanding excellence of his
employees; and, of course,
• Menachem Begin, for having "led the
first Hebrew revolution in 2,000 years"
and "holding his own against the pre-
mier statesmen of the century."

Zion asserts that
Israel gained
statehood not
because of the
United Nations,
Harry Truman or
world guilt, but
because of the
revolutionary war
fought against the
British by Begin and
the Irgun.

Zion wrote passionately about Begin
and his cause often during Begin's tenure
as prime minister. He is an unabashed ad-
mirer of the Irgun, the underground army
that Begin took command of in 1943, and
an outspoken critic of Ben-Gurion and
Golda Meir and their followers.
When Begin was elected to Israel's
highest office in 1977, Zion wrote in a col-
umn for the Soho Weekly News; "Leave
it to my Jews. They make a revolution and
29 years later the leader of the revolution
comes to power. First the collaborators,
then the revolutionaries. The Hebrews
don't just learn it backwards, they do it
backwards."
In July 1981, when Israel destroyed an
Iraqi nuclear reactor and bombed Beirut,
the press blasted Israel in what Zion calls
"a media carpet bombing." He responded
with a piece for the New. York Times Op-
Ed page called "Genesis, Rewritten,"
which began, "The Middle East memory
bank is empty again." Zion pointed out

Friday, April 26, 1985

how the world's selective memory chooses
to remember only Israeli military actions
while ignoring far more serious Arab ones.
"When more than 90,000 Arabs die by
Arab guns and bombs, it's just one of
those crazy things," he wrote. "When 300
Arabs died by Israeli fire, it's a Holocaust
committed by a Jewish Mad Bomber.
Begin. It begins with Begin. Read the
papers, watch the television."
One of Zion's most popular pieces was
his "political obit" of Begin, which ap-
peared in the November 1983 issue of
Harper's, shortly after Begin resigned. It
was a tribute to Begin as a microcosm of
the Jew in the 20th century, an outcast
but, above all, a survivor. In the article,
Zion asserts that Israel gained statehood
not because of the United Nations, Harry
Truman or world guilt but because of the
revolutionary war fought against the
British by the Irgun. "That this is news,
even to most Israelis, is in its way as
astonishing as the rebirth of the Jewish
state itself. Has any other nation denied
its revolution?"
Zion says that' "the Hebrew revolution
`never happened' because the 'wrong peo-
ple' fought and won it." His only disap-
pointment with Begin is that when he
finally came to power, almost three dec-
ades later, he did not "revise the official
history to the actual truth."
But as for charges of Begin the fanatic,
Begin the zealot, Zion wrote: "I look at
it this way: when a man who has lived
through the seasons of Menachem Begin
can still love his people so much that he
will relinquish his power just because he's
tired and sad — well, nobody better tell me
such a man is a fascist. I never knew a
statesman to walk gentle into the night.
Have you?"
Zion lists Begin, journalist-playwright
Ben Hecht and Peter Bergson, Revi-
sionists all, among his bona fide heroes.
"Most of my heroes, the Irgun guys, never
made it to power," he says.
Zion never made it to Israel until after
the Six Day War when he decided he had
to see for himself. "My heart had been
there but I'd never been, and I'd never
written about Israel," he says. "Being
there didn't change my views, it just made
me more committed and more excited."
Though passionately committed to
Israel, Zion would prefer to see an Israeli
nation rather than a Jewish state, with the
vast majority of the citizens Jewish and
with Judaism playing the pervasive role
Christianity does in America. "But keep
the religious parties out of politics. It's
bad for the religion and bad for the state,"
he says, noting that he prefers to criticize
Israel internally — as in an interview with
a Jewish magazine — rather than in the
general press because "Israel has enough
enemies."
Those who criticize Israel for not being
"a light unto the nations" are themselves

15

