46 Friday, March 21, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS NEWS The Herut Fiasco: Life After Begin BY ZE'EV CHAFETS le//en CC THE ULTIMATE IN WOMEN'S ACCESSORIES La Mirage • 356-8870 Hours: Monday - Saturday 10 am - 6 pm • Thursday 'til 8 pm ANNE KLEIN For your Espradille needs reg. $42 O • White • Navy • Chino • All with Gold trim I/ ANNE KLEIN For your Sneaker needs reg. $30 ANNE KLEIN Nusrala's Shoes Hunters Square Orchard Lake Rd. & 14 Mile 855-2050 Farmington Hills "I don't belong to any organ- ized political party. I'm a Democrat," Will Rogers once said. The Cowboy Philosopher would have felt right at home at last week's Herut Party na- tional convention. For three days, more than two thousand delegates milled around the Con- vention Center while the leaders of two warring factions — Yitz- hak Shamir and Moshe Arens on one side, David Levy and Ariel Sharon on the other — maneuvered behind the scenes. Finally, on the fourth night, with the convention hopelessly deadlocked, the meeting broke up in a clenched-fist fiasco. The' acrimony between the two camps was obvious from the beginning and grew as the convention proceeded. Shamir, the party's nominal leader, called Levy's supporters "crim- inals" and accused Levy himself of megalomania. Levy respond- ed by intimating — on national television — that Shamir isn't worthy to serve as Prime Minister, a position he is scheduled W assume, under the Rotation Agreement, this com- ing fall. Many outside observers were puzzled by the harsh confronta- tion. Thersearched, in vain, for any ideological or policy dif- ferences between the two camps. • In fact, both groups are or- thodox Beginites, committed to retaining the West Bank, to a hard line against Arab adver- saries and to populist social and economic programs. Through- out the convention, no one even bothered to pretend that the clash was about issues. What took place at the Herut Convention was a naked strug- gle for power between insiders and outsiders. David Levy represents the tens of thousands of new Herutniks, most of them Oriental Jews, who have joined the party in the last ten years, and now want their share of the action; Shamir leads the old time, mostly Ashkenazi Herut establishment. The struggle was made pos- sible, necessary and probably in- evitable by the absence of Menachem Begin, the party's founder, leader and great organ- izing principle. Ever since Begin's amazing withdrawl from public life, Herut had hoped for a comeback. But when the former Prime Minister declined to drive the few miles from his Jerusalem home to the Binyanai Ha'umah convention hall to attend opening cere- monies, his absence sounded'the bell for round one in the fight for his inheritance. • Begin didn't come, but he sent a message — support Yitzhak Shamir. The message was read to the assembled delegates who responded by applauding polite- ly. In the old days, such a sug- gestion from Begin would have been enough, but not anymore. "Mr. Begin, you have an heir," thundered David Levy in his speech that same night. Levy was clearly referring to HIM- SELF, and the declaration was one of revolt. What about Begin's explicit endorsement of Shamir? "Begin is still our father," a Levy delegate said later, "but you can be mad at your father." Two days later, the Shamir forces brought out their biggest gun, Dr. Benyamin Ze'ev Begin, son of the leader. Benny Begin, the very symbol of Herut legitimacy, challenged Levy's al- ly Ariel Sharon for the. chair- manship of the convention's Mandate Committee. Party pros were certain that Benny would win, but when the votes were counted, Sharon, who joined Herut less than a decade ago (previous parties: Shlomzion, Liberal, Labor) beat the found- er's son, by 561 to 444. It was the first time that a Begin had ever lost a vote in Herut; and it was also the moment that the Old Guard; led by Shamir and Arens, realized that the party had spun out of control, that the Begin magic no longer works. At that point, the convention totally broke down. The two camps were split almost evenly, and the party found it had no means of breaking the stale- mate. Under Begin, Herut became a vital, open party, unlike its Labor rival, which is still largely controlled by a few insiders. This openness was a source of vitality and political strength — as long as Begin himself was around to keep it from getting out of hand. But, with Begin gone, the delegates found a vacuum where the decision-making apparatus should have been. They could only scream at each other in frustrated rage, charge the and generally make a spectacle of themselves in front of an ap- palled nation. A few years ago, someone asked Herut veteran Yohanan Bader who would succeed Menachem Begin. "That's easy," Bader replied, "David Wolfson." David Wolfson is the name of the man who succeeded Theodor Herzl as head of the Zionist Movement. The Zionists sur- vived Herzl's departure; but as Hertit's Wolfsons square off, it remains to be seen if, for the party, there is life after Begin. In another development, after the Herut convention's collapse Shamir and Levy may be inch- ing toward a rapprochement in what many observers see as a last-chance effort to keep the rotation of power agreement with the Labor Party alive. The would-be peaCemaker and the man who may have' in the long run outmaneuvered both Levy and Shamir is Sharon, Herut's most outspoken hard- liner who allied his forces with