Farewell To A King O -0 U 0 C) _0 0 0 ERIC SILVER Israel Correspondent between, Israelis knew that this was a warm" peace from a former enemy. Praise fOr the Arab ruler came from throughout Israel. Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who visited Hussein in the Mayo Clinic in Milwaukee six months ago, celebrated him this week as "a hero of heroes." The Jewish sages, he explained, defined a hero of heroes as "he who makes his enemy into his beloved." Eitan Haber, Rabin's adviser, speechwriter and confidant, recalled his first private con- versation with Hussein. The Israeli told the king about friends killed in bat- tle by Jordanian troops. Hussein's answer: "The Israelis also killed us, many of us." Then Haber discussed the number of casualties. The king poignantly responded, "People are not numbers. Every dead person is 100 percent dead for his family. Every one dead is one too many." In mourning Hussein as one of its own, Israel may have crossed a Middle Eastern Rubicon, wrote Chemi Shalev of the Mdariv news- paper. "There are cynical people among us," he wrote, who are impatient with the collective sadness that has descended upon us, but ... the public in Israel never loved an Arab leader as it loved Hussein, and never felt so close to its neighbors as it will feel today. It is an emotional and psychologi- cal experience which, in the future, might seem like a turning point, maybe even a momentous one." So perhaps that explains why a vast Israeli delegation, which included President Ezer Weizman, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even the head of the Mossad secret service, mingled with Arab and world " Jerusalem srael mourned King Hussein this week as one of its own. The government ordered flags flown at half-staff on all public buildings. The "flower children," last seen after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, lit memorial candles in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square. In a conscious echo of Bill Clinton's vale- diction to Rabin, the two mass-circulation daily papers headlined their lead stories "Shalom, Friend" and "Shalom, King. Perhaps most remark- able was the response of Ruhama Cohen, whose daughter was one of seven Belt Shemesh schoolgirls shot dead two years ago by a Jordanian soldier during a trip to the "border of peace." She gave birth to another daughter on Saturday just as Hussein was losing his last battle. In the king's honor, she has named her baby "Jordan. "He was a good man," Cohen told reporters from her bed in Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital. "I remember how he came to our house after the tragedy, knelt and wept. He helped us, our families, and also the peace. Even when he was ill, he kept in touch with us." Indeed, that moving visit of con- dolence and contrition convinced Israelis that the peace with Jordan was for real. A crowned monarch went from house to house, knelt beside mothers and fathers sitting shiva on shabby mattresses. And he movingly begged forgiveness for the "shame" brought on his nation by one of its soldiers. Precisely because Jordan's army had fought against Israel in the 1948 and 1967 wars, and sundry skirmishes in Israel mourns King Hussein as no other Arab leader. 2/12 1999 14 Detroit Jewish News Jordan's Crown Prince Abdullah stands in front of a portrait of his father, King Hussein, before being sworn in as king, at the Parliament building in Amman, Jordan, on Sunday. leaders at Hussein's funeral. And no one marveled. The transformation had become routine. Eike A Brother The king's death united Israelis in a way reminiscent of the mourning that engulfed the nation following the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. As Kinneret Elhanani, a tour guide, said while lighting a candle for the king on Sunday: "For me, he was like a brother. We have always liked him, even when he was considered our enemy. Diplomats, politicians and army officials recalled Hussein's personal, human touch. Shimon Shamir, Israel's first ambassador to Jordan, said that dur- ing their first meeting, Hussein gave him his private telephone number and urged Shamir to call whenever he deemed it necessary. They met together five or six times in informal "