Excerpts from Amotz Asael's Piece on the Begin Revolution

Middle Israel: The degeneration of the Begin revolution

Apr. 12, 2007

On the face of it, the scandals involving our defense minister, finance minister and president...all are products of a revolution that dawned three decades ago, then degenerated and is now ending. It was the Menachem Begin revolution.

The spring of 1977 first became memorable thanks to...Labor's ouster by Begin after 29 years as opposition leader...Rabin's resignation symbolized Labor's moral deterioration, as it followed a slew of corruption revelations, most notably Bank of Israel governor-designate Asher Yadlin's embezzlement verdict.

Begin's victory, however, represented much more than a backlash to this or that scandal, or the fading of ancient acrimony. It was a revolution.

THE BEGIN revolution was first of all social, as it embraced all those Labor had marginalized, from the haredim, who became pivotal coalition partners, to the non-Ashkenazi masses, whose representatives increasingly populated all corridors of power, from municipalities, consulates and religious councils to ministries, utilities and state-company boards, not to mention the Knesset.

It took Labor leaders time to understand the power of this revolution, if not for any other reason than simply because it was news to them that they had hurt anyone, let alone entire populations. Now they too tried to join the trend, searching for attractive, "authentic" non-Ashkenazim of their own...Whether or not it was deliberate, the fact is that prior to the Begin revolution Israel was run pretty much exclusively by Ashkenazim. Now ethnicity is no longer relevant.

With self-made non-Ashkenazim like Yitzhak Tshuva and Haim Saban dominating the energy and telecom industries, and with the IDF having had, since the Begin revolution, four non-Ashkenazi chiefs of General Staff, there is no longer a sizable swing-vote fueled by ethnic considerations. Today no one even notices that, say, Yossi Bachar, the Treasury director-general who executed the Netanyahu reforms, is Sephardi; he was hired due to his abilities, and judged regardless of his origins.

That is a lot more than can be said of either President Moshe Katsav or Defense Minister Amir Peretz, whose rise to political prominence was part of the Begin revolution's misinterpretation and degeneration.

THE BEGIN revolution, besides its social side, had its ideological side, and here - from both the Right's and the Left's viewpoints - the decadence began with Begin himself.

In producing the Camp David Accords, Begin not only legitimized the land-for-peace formula which had been anathema to him, but also the abandonment of settlements, which was abominable to many Labor leaders, as former farmers raised on a Russian-inspired attachment to reclaimed soil. Begin's subsequent carpeting of the West Bank with suburbs changed none of this; the public had lost its admiration for the very act of settlement, which came to be seen less as Zionism and more as part of Orthodox observance. Ariel Sharon's subsequent abandonment of settlements for non-peace was, from the Right's viewpoint, but an extension of this momentum.

Meanwhile, on the economy, Likud leaders often preferred - until Netanyahu's takeover of the Finance Ministry - populism to their pre-'77 capitalistic commitment. It too was a form of ideological betrayal. The more this ideological striptease evolved, the less the Likud demanded of its followers...the less Likud leaders believed in the power of ideas, the more they became addicted to the idea of power.

That is how they also took the party's central committee, which Begin used innocently to popularize the political process, and turned it into a colossal Tammany Hall that forgot its original purpose as an ideological compass and became instead a public-sector employment agency. The same thing happened, in the aftermath of the Begin revolution, to Labor's central committee.

...Now, with the Begin revolution as spent as the Labor era that preceded it, Israeli politics is begging for an era of ideological restoration.

Natalie Portman Read Begin's White Nights

Natalie Portman: How studying psychology helped her in her latest role

"I don't think there's a message about terrorism in the film. It creates a complicated story and I think it's all about what the audience brings to it," insists the Jerusalem-born actress who plays Evey, a young woman rescued from gang-rapists by V, whose disfigured face is concealed beneath a curiously creepy Guy Fawkes mask. Set against the futuristic landscape of a totalitarian Britain, the pair become unlikely allies in a battle against tyranny.

"I literally begged for this part. I flew out to San Francisco and read for the role. And thank God I got it," she says earnestly. "I just think its so rare to find a movie that's really entertaining and really fun on a big scale and on an impressive visual scale, that's also really so interesting and is going to give you something to think about afterwards. I've not seen a movie like this - that's this big and this interesting - in at least the past 20 years. Not since the Sixties and Seventies has there been some evidence of a big studio movie being compelling and visually exciting, entertaining, smart and interesting and something you could fight about afterwards. Big, big Hollywood movies have been disappointing until this. James McTeigue and the Wachowskis have made something incredible," she says, referring to V for Vendetta's notoriously elusive screenwriters Andy and Larry Wachowski, who were also responsible for the $3bn-grossing Matrix franchise.

The daughter of the Israeli fertility specialist Avner Hershlag and the American artist Shelley Hershlag, Portman enjoyed a relatively normal upbringing, growing up in suburban Syosset, New York, and adopting her grandmother's maiden name to protect her family's identity.

But now, as one of a handful of Hollywood's openly political Jewish actors, she has no problem debating terrorism, having studied 'the anthropology of violence' in graduate school.

"Being Israeli has become a much bigger part of my identity in recent years because it's become an issue of survival," says the actress. "I am personally sort of a pacifist and I am against violence. My gut feeling is that hurting other people is wrong, whether or not it is state-sanctioned. It's all violence and I don't make distinctions. All violence is wrong in my mind. I don't like it but I also know that it's sort of the way the world is. My reason sort of goes against my idealism and my optimism about the potential of people to live without violence and obviously people saying, 'oh it's natural for people to be violent'. So obviously I understand why it exists, but personally that is my stand and it's very hard for me to agree with any sort of violence."

She recalled the sufferings of her grandparents during the Holocaust when she filmed V for Vendetta's concentration-camp-style torture scenes. "Fortunately my grandparents escaped, but their whole family perished in the Holocaust," she explains. "There were stories in the house of what had happened to them and it wasn't that much talked about. I had to go on a website to read my grandfather's descriptions of what happened to the family, but it is absolutely something I have lived with and have grown up with.

"I loved that this film is an abstract thing because, after the Holocaust, people said it would never happen again but now we have Rwanda and Bosnia. Maybe V for Vendetta can remind us to stand up against such despotism."

Portman was discovered in a New York pizza-parlour, aged 11, and made her film debut in 1994's Leon, opposite Jean Reno.

Today she has no regrets about her four years at Harvard followed by a further year's Hebrew and film studies in Jerusalem. "My parents have always stressed education over success, over money, over everything," she says, "and I think college was great in terms of how it has made me want my career to be as interesting as school. And with fascinating material like this, its all about finding the questions that don't have answers.

"I don't want to ever be working just for money because then you are no different than a prostitute," says Portman, who not only shaved off her hair for V for Vendetta but also voraciously researched her role despite the fact it is a work of fiction. "I read Antonia Fraser's book. It's a great background to the whole Guy Fawkes story - which is not even really the Guy Fawkes story, like there were several other people involved and Guy Fawkes was the first one caught, becoming the poster boy! I also looked at lots of other things like Menachem Begin's book, White Knights, [sic! It's White Nights] plus Macbeth!

Begin Center Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 26

Volume 3, Issue 26
April 11, 2007

Total Number of Visitors Since October 2004: 272,931

Full House Over Chol HaMoed Pesach

Hundreds and hundreds of visitors—many of them from overseas—filled the Begin Center on all the days of Chol HaMoed Pesach. They were anxious to see the building and to visit the museum and other features of which they had heard. Among them were also several hundred soldiers from different units who are soon to receive ranks and to advance in their military careers. When they came out of the museum, they said it was a moving experience and very exciting.


Three of the Top Ten!

In an article by Ehud Asheri, published in Haaretz on the eve of Pesach, various rhetorical skills of Israeli personalities was discussed and Asheri, a noted critic, listed the 10 most outstanding speeches in the history of the state. Menachem Begin was included three times for his Reparations Speech in 1952, his White House Lawn Peace Treaty Speech in 1979 and the "Tzachtzachim" Speech in Kikar Malachei Yisrael in 1981. The others were David Ben-Gurion announcing the proclamation of the State, Moshe Dayan's eulogy of Ro'i Rutenberg in 1956, Levy Eshkol's "Stammered" Speech in 1967, Yitzhak Rabin's Mt. Scopus speech, 1967, Rabbi Shach's "Rabbits and Pigs" speech, 1990, Rabin's Oslo Peace speech, 1993 and Haim Ramon's "Whales" speech, 1994.


Tammuz Premier at the Begin Center

The Jerusalem premier of an exciting documentary movie entitled Tammuz about the Israel attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in Osirak near Baghdad is to be shown in the Begin Center on Friday morning, April 13. So great has the interest been in this event that there are three showings—in the Reuben Hecht Auditorium, in the seminar room and a second showing in the afternoon.

The movie outlines the preparation for what Abba Eban described as the "most remarkable decision of the atomic age." One of the persons appearing in the film says that it was one of the most important decisions by Israel since the creation of the State. The decision was made by Menachem Begin after he came to the premiership in 1977. He had every aspect of the problem posed by Iraq at that time thoroughly investigated and after he decided to proceed with the act, he called the heads of the military and secret services to put it into effect.

Ten years later, he received a letter signed by 100 members of the Knesset thanking him for what he had done.

The event will be presided over by Herzl Makov, Director General of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center.


Meir Feinstein's Tanach

A unique occurrence will be marked at the Underground Prisoners Museum in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem next Thursday evening, April 19, when the memory of the two heroes, Feinstein and Barazani, will be honored at a gathering headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Head of the Begin Center, Mr. Harry Hurwitz, will speak on behalf of the Center.

It has now been revealed that when the two heroes, Meir Feinstein (of the Irgun) and Moshe Barazani (of the Lehi/Stern Group) were to be executed by the British, Feinstein gave his Tanach, with a suitable inscription, to the British guard—Sgt. Thomas Henry Goodwin. He had kept it in his home until he passed away in 2005. Now the family has sent the Bible back and entrusted it to the Underground Prisoners Museum.


Visitors

Leo and Susan Noe of London England and members of their family who were in Jerusalem for the whole Pesach holiday visited the Begin Center and its museum on Chol HaMoed Pesach. They were greeted by Harry Hurwitz who accompanied them on the tour. Then they were shown the Reuben Hecht Auditorium, the Junior Knesset and the Beit Midrash Menachem, which is the source of the Rohr Family Parashat HaShavua program. All the group was greatly impressed by what they saw.

* * * * *

Members of the Falic family from Florida, USA, were very impressed by the Begin Center and its museum and its other facilities. They are friends and neighbors of Mrs. Sisel Klurman of Miami, Florida, who asked them especially to visit the Begin Center. They were shown the Samuel Aba and Sisel Klurman Research Department in the building.

* * * * *

David and Ronit Zwebner brought two couples to the Begin Center this week. They were Mr. and Mrs. David Kornbluth, the Israeli Ambassador to Unesco in Paris, and Mr. and Mrs. Pinhas Rothem of London (brother of Knesset Member David Rothem). They were very impressed by everything they saw in the building and in the museum.

Moshe Arens on the "Saison"

Add them to the Pantheon

By Moshe Arens

Sooner or later the truth will out. Although long suspected, it is now official. Teddy Kollek informed on fighters of the prestate Irgun underground to British intelligence during the waning years of the Mandate, and many of those Etzel fighters
who languished for months in British concentration camps in the wilds of Africa were there based on information provided by Kollek to the British. One of them was Yaakov Meridor, Menachem Begin's second in command, who eventually succeeded in escaping
from the Gilgil concentration camp in Kenya in March 1948.

Kollek did not act on his own. The leaders of the Labor movement, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided on cooperation with the British authorities toward the end of 1944 in an attempt to crush the underground movement that was fighting the British. The period that followed has been named the Saison, or the hunting season, when Etzel and Lehi members were hunted down and turned over to the British. Not everybody in the Labor movement was prepared to implement the decision of the Labor leadership.
A notable exception was Yigal Allon, then a senior commander in the Palmach.

Anita Shapiro writes in her book "Yigal Allon: Spring of His Life" that in October 1944, at the convention of the Ahdut Haavoda party, Yisrael Galili, one of the leaders of the Haganah, insisted that the need to act against Etzel and Lehi
fighters stemmed from the fascist nature of these organizations. The convention united around a declaration that the "the terrorist gangs are a Jewish transmigration of world Fascism."

Labeling Jabotinsky and his adherents as fascists was nothing new. What might seem surprising in retrospect is that this slander was still being used against a rival Zionist movement toward the end of World War II. As a matter of fact, under German occupation in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Socialist Zionist movements considered Betar, the Revisionist youth movement, as fascist. Mordechai Tenenbaum, one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the ghetto, wrote in a publication of Dror, the Socialist Zionist youth movement, led by Antek Zuckerman and Tzivia Lubetkin, that both the Italian Socialist Giacomo Matteotti and Chaim Arlosoroff had been the victims of Fascism. "Matteotti was murdered by killers hired by Italian Fascism: Arlosoroff - by men sent by the Fascist organization that has arisen among Jews. The death of the martyrs, Matteotti and Arlosoroff, cries out for retribution." This was written when news of the mass murder of Jews by the Germans in Vilna, Lublin, and other places had already reached Warsaw, and only a month before the transport of Warsaw's Jews to the Treblinka gas chambers began.

It is little wonder that the Revisionists in the ghetto were not included in the ranks of the Jewish Fighting Organization, together with representatives of all other political groups, and that the two fighting organizations that led the uprising, the Jewish Fighting Organization, commanded by Mordechai Anielewicz, and the Revisionist-led Jewish Military Organization, commanded by Pawel Frenkel, did not fight the Germans as a united force.

Sadly, the story does not end here. The fact that Pawel Frenkel and his fighters fought the main battle of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising at Muranowski Square has been obscured for more than 60 years. A deliberate and effective effort has been made to
ignore, or at the very least minimize, the participation of Frenkel's fighters in the uprising, while adopting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a creation of the Labor movement.

The hunting season of underground fighters in Palestine occurred a year and a half after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Labor party leadership at that time was not about to give credit to the comrades of Etzel who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a
matter of fact, it took years before the contribution Etzel and Lehi made to the establishment of the State of Israel in fighting British rule in Palestine began to be recognized, and their fighters who went to the gallows were acclaimed as national heroes.

Today there is hardly a town in Israel that does not have a street named after the Etzel and Lehi. For that matter, there is hardly a town that does not have a street named after Mordechai Anielewicz. And rightly so. But Pawel Frenkel is still missing
from the national pantheon.

David Landau, one of Frenkel's fighters who survived the uprising, wrote in his book "Caged" that shortly before the uprising began, Frenkel, in an address to his fighters, said: "Comrades! We will die before our time but we are not doomed. We
will be alive as long as Jewish history lives." It is high time that Pawel Frenkel and his comrades become part of Jewish history.

Zochrot

There is an organization in Israel, Zochrot, which works to perpetuate what they term Arab Palestinian memories.

Here is their statement of purpose:-

Zochrot ["Remembering"] is a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.

The Zionist collective memory exists in both our cultural and physical landscape, yet the heavy price paid by the Palestinians -- in lives, in the destruction of hundreds of villages, and in the continuing plight of the Palestinian refugees -- receives little public recognition.

Zochrot works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful common history. We hope that by bringing the Nakba into Hebrew, the language spoken by the Jewish majority in Israel, we can make a qualitative change in the political discourse of this region. Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences. This must include equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes.

This was their notice about Deir Yassin:-

Deir Yassin

On Tuesday, April 10, 2007 we will observe 59 years since the massacre at Deir Yassin. At 5:30 p.m. a procession will begin at the corner of Kanfey Nesharim and Akiva Azoulay Streets in the Givat Shaul neighborhood in Jerusalem. We will walk in the direction of Deir Yassin, today the Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital, where the commemoration ceremony will take place.

Transportation leaves Tel Aviv Central (Arlosorov) Station at 4:00 p.m. from the El Al Terminal. The ceremony is expected to conclude at 7:00 p.m.

For more details or to sign up for transportation:

Umar 052-8743099
Zochrot office 03-6953155

Yehuda Avner on Deir Yassin

The ghosts of Deir Yassin
YEHUDA AVNER,
THE JERUSALEM POST
Apr. 7, 2007

In October 1952, I attended a debate at the Oxford Union between a Dr. Ali el-Husseimi, adviser to the Secretary General of the Arab League Abdul-Khalek Hassouna, and Dr. Gershon Levy, adviser to prime minister David Ben-Gurion. The motion was, "This House Condemns Zionism as Imperialism."

Gershon Levy I knew. He had lectured at a course I attended in Jerusalem some years before.

As their war of words mounted, the contenders, fighting fire with fire, sought to clinch their arguments with every verbal device they could muster in an effort to vanquish the other over the slaughter that had occurred in a place called Deir Yassin.

Deir Yassin - now Har Nof - was an Arab village on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. It was located across the valley from Beit Hakerem where I was lodging. In the early spring of 1948, Deir Yassin gunmen began taking potshots at Beit Hakerem and other nearby neighborhoods, and at dawn on Friday, April 9, Menachem Begin's Irgun Zvai Leumi, assisted by members of the Stern Group, attacked the village.

I was 18 at the time, and this is what I scribbled in my diary: "Practically knocked out of bed by big explosion at 5 a.m. and then another at 7 a.m. They were explosions from Deir Yassin, a village across the valley. Told that IZL and Lehi attacked the village. Had always been very quiet and quite friendly. Told that Arab gangs had pushed themselves in. Went at 10 a.m. to investigate. Crawled down valley behind rock. Could see Jews maneuvering into positions. Crashed Jewish lorry on hill.

"Hagana asked for reinforcements for wounded etc. Village captured by 2 p.m. Jewish flag raised over destroyed mukhtar's house.

"Prisoners taken around town by terrorists [sic] in lorry with their hands up. Idea is to bolster morale. Rumored they were to be shot.... Walking home we saw the captured women and children in a truck. They just stared. Many Jews around. I felt ashamed the way they cheered. Told that Hagana were going to hand them over to the British."

AND NOW, more than four years later, there I sat crammed into the spectators' gallery of the Oxford Union, looking down on a chamber packed with students listening to Dr. Ali el-Husseini lashing out at Dr. Gershon Levy over what he asserted was a deliberate Jewish massacre at Deir Yassin.

"Menachem Begin," he raged, "stands indicted as a war criminal for the deliberate brutal massacre of 254 innocent men, women and children at Deir Yassin. He ordered his thugs to descend upon this quiet village, savage its women, throw scores of mutilated bodies down the village wells, and burn the rest. Those who survived the massacre were, at Begin's command, loaded onto trucks and paraded throughout Jewish Jerusalem, to be stoned and spat upon, before being taken to a nearby quarry to be shot."

Then, thunderously, bitterly, in a tear-smothered voice:

"What happened at Deir Yassin was emblematic of the notorious and horrific totality of Zionist massacres and imperialist crimes committed against the Palestinian people. The Deir Yassin massacre and the resultant terror that seized the Palestinian people marked the beginning of the depopulation of Arab Palestine. For millions upon millions of Arabs this tiny village has become a symbol of Zionist imperialistic perfidy, brutality and aggression."

WITH THAT, he sat down and Gershon Levy jumped up. In an incensed voice that lifted to a shout stopping all applause dead, he fumed, "What this House has just heard is an elaborate exercise in Arab myth-making. On trial here is not what happened at Deir Yassin but what has been invented about Deir Yassin."

And now, tersely, vigorously, powerfully, as an attorney might address a jury, he made his points - that Deir Yassin, high on a ridge overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, was a place of strategic importance in a life-and-death struggle for Jewish survival; that on Menachem Begin's orders a loudspeaker mounted on a truck had forewarned its inhabitants of the impending assault, thereby surrendering the element of surprise; that the fighting was house-to-house and, therefore, murderous, causing heavy civilian casualties; and that the number of dead was less than half of what Arab propaganda alleged.

Turning now to Ali el-Husseini he said to him in a voice as cold as his eyes:

"I would advise you, sir, not to don the cloak of hypocrisy before an audience as perceptive as this. You cannot pull wool over their eyes, as the show of hands shall presently reveal. For they know it to be true that we Jews, unlike you Arabs, are not a martial people. And unlike the Arab nation" - he was talking to the students again - "the legendary heroes of the Jewish nation are not warriors and conquerors, but prophets and scribes. There never was, never could be, a Begin policy of deliberately attacking civilians as there has been a consistent Arab policy of doing just that. I speak of the policy of massacre and mutilation of Jews in the riots of 1920, in the riots of 1921, in the riots of 1929, in the riots of 1936 to 1939, and in the recent 1947-1948 war in which the Arabs set out to massacre and mutilate the Jewish state at birth; a war, in the course of which a convoy of 77 Jewish doctors and nurses, in clearly marked ambulances en route to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, met with massacre and mutilation. I speak of the massacre and mutilation of the 35 ambushed in a convoy en route to the Etzion Bloc. I speak of the massacre and mutilation of all but four survivors of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. I speak of the massacre and mutilation…"

Cries of revulsion and nausea suddenly cut him short as a foul stench inexplicably suffused the hall. Outrageously, an unseen blackguard - or a mere prankster, perhaps - had hurled a fistful of stink bombs in the direction of the president's chair. They fell at his feet, and the reek was so pungent people held their noses, their faces screwed up as though biting into lemons. The Oxford Union president, handkerchief over his nose, began yelling, "Order! Order!" but his audience was fleeing in such droves he declared the debate null and void.

THIS EXPERIENCE came to mind almost 30 years later, in 1980, when I found myself working closely with the man who had actually assumed command of the IZL attack on Deir Yassin. His name was Yehuda Lapidot, a soft-spoken professor of biological chemistry at the Hebrew University. He had taken a leave of absence to head up a unit in the Prime Minister's Office called Lishkat Hakesher, a semi-covert operation that maintained contact with Jews locked behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

One day, over coffee, I shared with him my diary notes of that bloody Friday of April 9, 1948. He mulled over the pages trying to decipher my boyish handwriting, and when he spoke there was a tinge of sadness in his voice.

The battle had not gone as planned, he said. They had been repeatedly hit, sustaining heavy casualties from the start. He had taken command after the officer in charge, a fellow called Ben-Zion Cohen, went down early in the fighting.

Menachem Begin had ordered that bloodshed be avoided as much as possible, which was why he had insisted upon the use of a loudspeaker to forewarn the villagers, giving them a chance to flee. Many did. The intention had been to smash right into the center of the village with the truck and blare the announcement: "You are being attacked by superior forces. The west exit of Deir Yassin leading to Ein Karem is open to you! Run immediately! Don't hesitate! Our forces are advancing! Run to Ein Karem!"

But the loudspeaker vehicle plunged into a ditch at the village outskirts. The overturned vehicle I had seen on the crest of the hill mentioned in my diary was probably that loudspeaker truck, and its breakdown marked the beginning of the calamity.

The Arabs chose to stand and fight. They were better armed. The 120 Jewish attackers had, between them, something like 20 rifles, three Bren guns, 30 to 40 Sten guns - most of which proved defective - and grenades.

None of them had house-to-house battle experience, and all they could do was toss grenades and spray gunfire. A few buildings were dynamited, and those were probably the explosions I had heard in Beit Hakerem. Thus it was that instead of smashing right through to the heart of the village as planned, it took them two hours of horrific fighting to reach and capture the mukhtar's house and raise the flag.

"No! No! No!" insisted Prof. Yehuda Lapidot, with emphatic conviction. "Absolutely no! There was absolutely no deliberate massacre at Deir Yassin. It is a lie!"

"But what of those dazed and shaken Arabs I had seen being driven through Jerusalem on trucks that Friday afternoon?" I asked. "Were they not being taken away to be shot?"

"That is a pernicious lie, too," answered Lapidot, his face frowned with fury. "It was part of a smear campaign spread by the Ben-Gurion camp which would stop at nothing to slander Menachem Begin. Those Arabs were being taken to the Arab side of town where they were released among their own people."

And so it is that that the cant of Deir Yassin lives on. Like Scheherazade narrating one of her never-ending tales of the Arabian Nights, Arab storytellers continue to weave their gory fiction, resurrecting the ghosts of Deir Yassin from generation to generation.

Surf the Internet and see.

=========================

For example, here's a recent metion of the Deir Yassin "maasacre" and how it is manipulated for Arab propaganda and read the comments.

The Bible, the Jailer and the Gallows Martyrs

The good jailer
By Yair Sheleg

In two weeks, the Bible that a condemned member of the Irgun gave to his British prison guard minutes befo re he and a fellow militia member blew themselves up will be returned by the guard's son in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, exactly 60 years after the events.

Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani actually gave the guard, Thomas Goodwin, two gifts: By asking him to step out of their cell, the members of the pre-state militias Irgun and Lehi also spared his life.

The ceremony will be held at the Museum of the Underground Prisoners. The Bible, which Feinstein kept in his cell, contains about 115 woodcut illustrations by Gustave Dore. The son of Sergeant Thomas Henry Goodwin, the guard, will hand the volume to Feinstein's nephew, Eliezer. Goodwin's son does not wish to reveal his full identity due to his work in the British gas industry, which entails a close relationship with several Arab countries. Subsequently, the book will be presented for safekeeping to the museum, which is located in the same building in the Russian Compound that housed the Mandate-era prison where Feinstein and Barazani took their own lives rather than be executed a few hours later.

Goodwin kept the book at home. "I knew about this Bible my whole life and saw it once," his son says. "But my father didn't say much about his service in Palestine." When he found the book, after his father's death in November 2005, the son remembered that his father always wanted to return to the Bible to the family. "My mother said he told her that if he died first she should try to contact the family and return the Bible."

Goodwin Jr. e-mailed the Prime Minister's Bureau. His message was forwarded to the museum, which is dedicated to perpetuating the memory of Olei Hagardom ("those who ascended the gallows" - members of the pre-state Jewish militias who were arrested by British Mandate authorities and sentenced to death by hanging). The museum, which maintains regular contact with the prisoners' families, had no difficulty locating Feinstein's nephew, and thus the circle was closed.

Feinstein wrote a dedication in the Bible to the guard, in Hebrew and English, which was in effect his last testament: "In the shadow of the gallows, April 21, 1947, to the British soldier as you stand guard, before we go to the gallows, accept this Bible as a memento and remember that we stood in dignity and marched in dignity. It is better to die with a weapon in hand than to live with hands raised. Meir Feinstein." There is a hint ("to die with a weapon in hand") that the prisoners might be in possession of a weapon but the words apparently did not arouse Goodwin's suspicion.

The son recounts his father's description of how he obtained the Bible: "[Feinstein and Barazani] called him to their cell and asked to speak with him in private. Feinstein handed him the Bible. Then they told him they wanted to say a few prayers in private and asked him to step away. He went into the corridor and they blew themselves up. Apparently they sent him away because they didn't want him to be hurt." Feinstein and Barazani detonated two booby-trapped oranges they had hid in their cell.

The story of Feinstein and Barazani became one of the most famous tales of heroism in the history of Zionism. Feinstein, of the Irgun, was sentenced to death for his part in the bombing of the train station in Jerusalem. Barazani, of Lehi, was apprehended four months after Feinstein's arrest with a grenade in his pocket and accused of attempting to assassinate the military commander of Jerusalem. Condemned prisoners were usually held in separate cells, but according to museum director Yoram Tamir, "Feinstein was put in Barazani's cell because he needed assistance as a result of the injuries he sustained during his capture, which led to the amputation of his left arm."

Tamir says the Lehi had envisioned a suicide operation during the hanging of one of their men prior to this incident: "They called it Operation Samson, in an allusion to the suicide of the biblical figure." Eliezer Ben-Ami, who prepared the makeshift orange grenades while he was imprisoned along with the two men, confirms that the plan was to turn their ascent to the gallows into an action that would harm the British authorities.

"Of course, we needed the condemned men's approval," Ben-Ami recalls. "Moshe agreed right away, but since there was an Irgun man with him we had to request their approval, too. We asked the person responsible for Irgun prisoners in the jail, Yehoshua Tamler, what he thought, and he said they needed the consent of the top command. We had to wait a few days, despite fearing that they would be taken to the gallows in the meantime, until approval arrived from the commander of the Irgun, Menachem Begin."

The original plan was to hide the explosives in the set of tefillin brought to the jail by Rabbi Aryeh Levin ("the father of the prisoners"), who ministered to the underground prisoners throughout the period. (Levin, of course, knew nothing about the phylacteries' intended use.) When Ben-Ami opened up the boxes of the tefillin he realized they were too small to hold the required amount of explosives. One day at lunch in prison, he looked at the oranges that were served for dessert and had the idea of scooping out the flesh and replacing it with explosives. Two booby-trapped oranges were smuggled into Feinstein and Barazani's cell. Ben-Ami kept a third for himself, "to see how long it takes for the peel to dry out and fall off, exposing the explosive."

To Ben-Ami's dismay, he found that within a few days, before the date was set for the men's execution, the peel of the orange in his cell had begun to detach. "We passed [Feinstein and Barazani] an order to dismantle the grenades, but that day they were informed that they were to be hanged the following day," Ben-Ami recalls.

The announcement of their imminent execution came from Rabbi Yaakov Goldman of the Jewish Agency, who had been asked to be with the condemned men in their final hours and to recite with them the vidui, the confessional prayer recited by Jews before death. Goldman's involvement was out of the ordinary, since this was usually Levin's role.

Tamir says Goldman replaced Levin after Feinstein, a student of Levin's, asked for his opinion on the anticipated suicide. When Levin rejected the idea, Goldman was brought in instead. "[The switch] was an intelligence failure on the part of the British," Feinstein's nephew Eliezer says. "They should have realized that something unusual was about to happen."

Goldman's involvement also caused a change in the plan. He told the condemned men that he insisted on escorting them right up to the gallows. Tamir: "Goldman told them that he wanted the last face they see to be that of a Jew. He repeatedly rebuffed their request that he not escort them, missing their hints." His insistence caused Feinstein and Barazani to kill themselves in their jail cell rather than on the gallows, since Goldman as well as the British guards would have been killed.

According to contemporary newspaper reports, Goldman left the cell and went to the officers' room in the prison to wait there until the men were brought out for their execution, which was scheduled for 2 A.M. But at 11:40 P.M. a loud explosion shook the prison. The guards who rushed to the condemned men's cell found their bodies. Ben-Ami, who was in his own cell at the time, remembers hearing first the traditional song "Adon Olam," with all the militia prisoners joining in, and then the explosion. Goldman's account is slightly different: He recalls Feinstein and Barazani singing "Adon Olam" while he was still with them, followed by "Hatikva" (which became the Israeli national anthem), but does not remember hearing singing right before the explosion.

This story begs the question of why the men did not blow up Goodwin together with themselves. After all, if the original plan was to take as many British guards as possible with them when they died, then why not at least make sure that Goodwin was killed? One possible answer comes from Goldman. The rabbi relates that he spoke with the two prisoners from the corridor outside their cell.

"A British sergeant stood there guarding them," Goldman recalls. "They told me, 'We want you to thank the sergeant. He's a good fellow, he treated us well.'" Goodwin's kindness was also apparently the reason Feinstein decided to give him his Bible.

Ben-Ami confirms this: "In our secret correspondence with the two, when the gallows suicide operation was still the plan, they said that they had two guards, one who was a bastard and one who was nice, and they said that if the 'good cop' was there when they ascended the gallows they would try not to hurt him."

The ceremony in two weeks will mark not only the return of the Bible to the Feinstein family but also the 60th anniversary of the entire Olei Hagardom episode. In 1947, the hangings of members of the Jewish underground reached a peak, with the execution of nine of the 12 who were eventually hung.

Irgun and Lehi prisoners refused to recognize the legality of British rule in Palestine, including a rejection of the courts' authority to judge them. Naturally, they refused to ask for clemency, even when it was hinted that such a request could lead to a more lenient sentence.

This policy aroused a public debate in the Jewish community, even among Irgun and Lehi sympathizers: Were terror operations justified? Was it right to insist on non-recognition of British rule even at the price of the condemned prisoners' lives? The equivocal stance in relation to the underground's terror activities was perhaps best expressed by the "national poet" of the time. After Feinstein and Barazani's suicide, Natan Alterman published "Lail Hit'abdut" ("night of suicide") in his regular "The Seventh Column" in Davar. The poem was mainly a paean to their heroism. But after commending the men's bravery, it concludes with three stanzas condemning the stupidity and arrogance of their commanders.

According to political scientist Dr. Udi Lebel of Be'er Sheva's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, who has researched the role of the executed Irgun and Lehi fighters in the national memory, during the term of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, there was a deliberate effort to suppress the memory of Olei Hagardom.

"There was no mention of them in the school curriculum," Lebel says. "The most blatant examples of the attitude toward them was the speed with which Acre Prison, where most of the underground prisoners were hanged, was converted into a mental hospital and the prison in Jerusalem, where Feinstein and Barazani committed suicide, into a book warehouse - all to prevent them from becoming heroic sites and pilgrimage destinations," Lebel states.

Ben-Gurion's successor, Levi Eshkol, was more conciliatory. Lebel says he ordered the Acre psychiatric hospital moved, although this did not take place until after 1977, when Begin became prime minister. By total coincidence, in 1963, when Eshkol formed his first government, Am Oved published "Bekolar Ehad" (English title: "The Gallows"), by Haim Hazaz, which was devoted to the suicide of Feinstein and Barazani, treating it as a tale of exceptional heroism. (In order to maintain literary freedom Hazaz changed Feinstein's name to Menachem Halperin and that of Barazani to Eliahu Mizrahi in the novel.)

Hazaz, like Alterman, was identified with the Labor movement, although he was not a party member. "Their story attracted him from the beginning," his widow, Aviva Hazaz, says. "He stressed that it was not about the Irgun and the Lehi or the issue of the undergrounds, but about kiddush hashem (sanctifying the name of God, used to describe Jewish martyrdom). This subject appealed to him since his bar mitzvah, when his father taught him what Maimonides wrote about kiddush hashem. He even looked for a way to connect with the people from the undergrounds to get to know the story from up close, but they weren't very receptive to him," Aviva Hazaz recalled.

According to Hazaz's widow, it was a random meeting with Rabbi Aryeh Levin that brought the writer back to the story. "In 1958 Haim was very ill and in hospital. Another patient was put in his room, it was Rabbi Aryeh Levin. They formed a special bond and naturally they also talked about the men of the underground. There were two elements at that time that made him go back to the story: the attempt to stand up to death and the compassion that Rabbi Aryeh Levin showed for the underground prisoners."

Eshkol sent Hazaz a warm letter after the book's publication. "Some say that book was a factor in the decision to bring Jabotinsky's bones to Israel," Aviva Hazaz says. She says her husband was horrified by the conversion of the site where Feinstein and Barazani took their lives into a storeroom for the Bialik Institute. As a member of the institution's board of directors he actively tried to have the books moved.

In the early 1970s, the status of Olei Hagardom changed again, when streets throughout the country began to be named for them. The most prominent instance is in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, which was built after the area was captured in the Six-Day War. In a gesture of "historic vengeance," its main street in the neighborhood, not far from the mansion in which the British high commissioner lived during the Mandate, was called Olei Hagardom. Other streets were named for individual prisoners, including Feinstein and Barazani.

The change in status reached its peak when Begin came to power. Instead of following the tradition of giving his Memorial Day speeches at the country's main military cemetery, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Begin went to the cemetery in Safed, where the first Oleh Hagardom, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, is buried. It was during Begin's term as prime minister that the prisons in Jerusalem and Acre were converted into national museums. Stamps were also issued in memory of the underground prisoners.

Lebel notes another interesting and significant step taken by Begin: "He 'annexed' to the list of Olei Hagardom others from other periods, such as Na'aman Belkind and Yosef Lishansky from Nili (the underground that aided the British during World War I, whose members were hanged by the Turks); Eli Cohen, the spy who was hanged in Damascus; and even Mordechai Schwartz from the Haganah, who was hanged by the British after he killed an Arab policeman in 1938."

The Haganah leadership refused to acknowledge Schwartz as a casualty from its ranks, let alone an Oleh Gardom. Not until 1987, after repeated appeals from Schwartz's fiancee, did the organization of Haganah members agree to have Schwartz's picture in the museum's exhibit of Olei Hagardom members, with a notation that he was from the Haganah.

"Begin acted as he did in order to embarrass the Labor movement," Lebel said, "which in its disavowal of the Irgun and Lehi Olei Hagardom was in effect disavowing all the others, including its own."

Begin's identification with Olei Hagardom culminated in his will. He, and his wife Aliza before him, asked to be buried not in the area on Mount Herzl reserved for the nation's leaders but rather on the Mount of Olives, next to the graves of Feinstein and Barazani.