Personality Assessments
Continued from Page 2
reveals the hatred for Weizmann as
follows:
Illegal immigration was one
of two arms of the Yishuv's great
struggle. The second was armed
battle within Palestine. The
Palmach attacked police sta-
tions guarding the coast, blew
up radar stations on Givat Olga
and Mount Carmel, which were
used to locate ships of illegals,
and instigated diversionary
clashes with the British army to
enable illegals aboard the
Wingate and other ships to get
ashore. The British army
responded with frequent ex-
haustive searches for Haganah
fighters and weapons, imposing
a series of curfews on the large
cities. June 29, 1946 — known as
Black Saturday — marked one
of the peaks of that struggle: the
British carried out searches and
arrests throughout Palestine
and besieged dozens of set-
tlements. Five Jews were killed,
dozens wounded, and some
three thousand arrested and in-
terned in detention camps. Fur-
thermore, in a surprise opera-
tion, JAE members, including
Maimon, Sharett, Itzhak Gruen-
baum, and Dov Joseph, were
arrested.
Ben-Gurion, who was in
Paris at the time, led the strug-
gle from there as he prepared
for the Zionist Congress, which
opened in Basel on December 9,
1946. He won a great triumph
when the Congress endorsed his
political line, owing in no small
measure to the backing of the
Hadassah representatives. This
Congress did not elect a presi-
dent or an Executive, but left
that to the Actions Committee,
which on December 29 re-
elected the outgoing Executive,
with Ben-Gurion as chairman.
He also received the newly
created defense portfolio.
The Actions Committee
resolved not to elect a president
of the World Zionist Organiza-
tion, which meant, theoretically
and actually, the dismissal of
Weizmann. When the state was
established, Ben-Gurion, rejec-
ting a nearly unanimous de-
mand, refused to allow Weiz-
mann to add his signature to the
Declaration of Independence,
which Ben-Gurion had compos-
ed, insisting on the technical
argument that Weizmann was
abroad when it was signed.
With Weizmann out of the
way, Ben-Gurion, as the sole
leader of Mapai, remained alone
at the Zionist summit. As both
captain and helmsman of the
struggle, he was publicly
recognized as indispensable. At
this point, it seems, one Ben-
Gurion ended and another was
born — at the age of sixty-one —
a Zionist leader, with neither
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partner nor rival to match him,
who fearlessly and single-
handedly led the struggle
against the British until he
could declare the State of Israel
established and become its first
prime minister and minister of
defense.
Menachem Begin also differed with
Weizmann, but there wasn't that avow-
ed hatred. There is only one reference
to Begin in the Teveth biography — the
assassination of Chaim Arlazaroff. It is
undoubtedly because the Teveth
biography is only up to 1948 and the an-
tagonisms were thereafter. But B-G's
hate was vociferous. Here the reviewer
must go to the Begin biography in
which Perlmutter lists the insults hurl-
ed at his political opponent, one of
which is described by Perlmutter as
follows:
Ben-Gurion treated Begin
with such undisguised contempt
that in all the time Begin served
in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion
referred to him "as that member
of the Knesset sitting next to
M.K. Bader" (Begin's deputy in
the Knesset). This was Ben-
Gurion's pointed way of totally
dismissing Begin's importance
as a politician.
Ben-Gurion seemed almost
to loathe Begin, but Begin
secretly admired Ben-Gurion.
He saw Ben-Gurion's
achievements as milestones to
be surpassed. Ben-Gurion was
indeed the founder of the state;
Begin, as prime minister, would
go further and bring the peace
to s- Isarel; he would achieve
Israel's final security and
reclaim Eretz Israel.
Yet the two men could never
be compared. Begin was
something new in Israeli history
and politics. Ben-Gurion, and
those who came after him, were
of the generation that emigrated
to Palestine in the early 1900s.
They were pioneers who literal-
ly forged the country with their
hands, whose dominant roots
were in Palestine, not Europe.
Amos Perlmutter was not, certain-
ly could not be, a strict endorser of
Begin's political views. Yet he
recognizes his genius. He pays him the
honor he merits. He defines his genius
by drawing comparisons with his
predecessors in Israeli and world
Zionist leaderships.
Perlmutter's evaluative com-
parisons with the most eminent Jewish
personalities are among the most
valuable contributions to an understan-
ding and appreciation of the historic
developments in Jewish history. It has
led the prominent thereby to pay the
following compliments to Menachem
Begin:
Always, he has been a man
of controversy. To many, he in-
carnated the best and the worst
of Israel. No one, whether Jew,
Gentile or Arab, has managed to
remain indifferent to him. He
has been likened to a sphinx,
called "a windbag" by David
Ben-Gurion, a champion of
peace by Sadat, a threat to
peace by Carter.
More than anything,
however, he appears as the great
man pushed to the edge of
tragedy and despair. There is
almost something biblical about
his life and career, as if he were
some ancient prophet tested
time and again by a capricious
and stern God. The ancient
biblical heroes and prophets of
the Old Testament endured and
sometimes triumphed, but often
died unfulfilled, their dreams
unconstructed. Begin evokes
them with his rhetoric, his de-
fiance, his acute and eloquent
description of Jewish suffering,
which he often personalized and
took upon himself as a mantle of
justification.
Tragedy and a curious un-
fulfillment lie at the core of most
of the great men of Zionism, who
died just as Zionism became
engaged in a fratricidal internal
struggle that threatened to
destroy it. Herzl died as the
Zionist movement was threaten-
ed by the Uganda controversy.
Chaim Weizmann, the long-time
president of the World Zionist
Organization, an urbane man
who was at home in the
diplomatic corridors of Europe
and a guiding force behind the
Balfour Declaration, which
formed the spurious basis for
the creation of a Jewish Palesti-
nian homeland, died an isolated
man, his latter years marked by
a bitter struggle for power with
Ben-Gurion. His dogged and
unflinching faith in British
honor and power left him
discredited and powerless.
Jabotinsky, too, died as Revi-
sionism, Betar, and Etzel were
being torn asunder by strife.
Ben-Gurion, the man
generally given credit for being
the founder and father of
modern Israel, faded from the
scene in semidisgrace after be-
ing shunted aside in the wake of
a bitter political battle in the
early 1960s, a political outcast
from the party he helped to
create.
So it goes. The list is long,
full of flawed and great men
reaching peaks of fame and
glory, undone by fate and by
their own hubris.
One must await the anticipated
follow-up Teveth volume for some miss-
ing facts. The Ben-Gurion biography
not only omits the valuable Begin data.
It misses out on such basic facts about
the Revisionists and Herut as the
Altalena case. It was the ship fitted out
with munitions to be provided for the
Herut elements in the new State of
Israel. It was destroyed on B-G's orders.
Perlmutter emphasizes that Begin
himself did not aim by way of the ship,
which was given the Begin name
Altalena by its American Revisionist
initiators, to assume power over the
newborn State of Israel. This is one of
the significant chapters in the struggle
between the new government and the
Irgun.
The two biographies under con-
sideration are replete with names of
personalities who dominated Jewish
life in the latter part of the last and in
the first eight decades of the present
centuries. The Teveth and Perlmutter
books could well serve as textbooks for
extensive Jewish and Zionist studies. A
review compels limitations in tackling
all the issues and the entire case to
characters in a great dramatic
performance.
Shabtai Teveth subtitled the Ben-
Gurion biography "The Burning
Ground?' It becomes apparent in the
very last paragraph in the 967-page
book. Teveth concluded the immensely
researched biography thus, briefly:
Much was made of the ar-
my's heroism and of Ben-Gurion
as its courageous, visionary
leader. However true that is, it
must be remembered that the
state was truly won by the Jews
who had powered the strength
of adversity with their death in
the crematoriums and gas
chambers, giving rise to the
determination, embodied in
Ben-Gurion, to guarantee that
never again would the ground
burn beneath the Jews and
never would there be another
Holocaust.
Actually, both biographies, Perlmut-
ter's Menachem Begin and Teveth's Ben-
Gurion can be defined "Burning
Ground." The themes in both are too
solid, too powerful, not to be treated
together.
Autobiographies
Autobiographies often measure up
to the biographical in the publishing ex-
periences. There are some currently
under consideration.
Special interest attaches to the
autobiography of Larry Adler, the world
famous master of the harmonica. It has
been published by Grove Press under
the title It Ain't Necessarily So. The
disputes in which he became involved
lends significance to the life story he
relates about himself.
Another autobiography is an
especially heavy one. Under the title
Graenum — Autobiography by Graenum
Berger (KTAV), this is an exciting story
about a rich life of an immigrant who
has made a great success of his life. It
is as a distinguished communal worker
who founded the American Association
for Ethiopian Jews that he attained
great success.
Graenum as a book and first name
of author Berger is an immensity. The