Special Report from the Fronts: June 1967




















(OK, I got carried away.  This was intended to be short and timely reflection on the Occupation, but the historian kicked in and produced this swollen document.)

Fifty years ago last month Israel began the Six Day War (5-10 June) by launching air strikes against the Egyptian Air Force. Initially the Israelis claimed they were attacked first, but later admitted they had struck the initial blow in their own defense, a “preemptive strike” in reaction to a build-up of Arab forces on their frontiers and Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran, through which most of Israel’s maritime trade passed.  Israel had warned Egypt that blocking the Straits would be considered an act of war and in part had gone to war in 1956 because of precisely that.  President Nasser claimed that Israeli warships in the Gulf of Aqaba threatened Egypt and that Egypt had not signed the international convention declaring a right of passage through the Straits.  Ironically, Israel would later use the reverse argument when they were accused of violating the Geneva Convention in the Occupied Territories: the Palestinians had never signed it.

In any case, the Israeli population certainly felt seriously threatened, and because unlike the Arab forces the Israeli militia-army could not be kept on high alert for very long, Israel was forced to settle the issue more or less immediately. On the other hand, while the preemptive strike may be justified by the closing of the Straits, this was in many ways the beginning of the legitimizing of military action without a traditionally accepted casus belli.  Now we have invaded Iraq because we thought they had chemical weapons and might use them, and Israel, a nuclear power, threatens Iran with air strikes because they might be making a nuclear weapon.

The Six Day War took place just as I was graduating from college, and while I was on my way to becoming an historian of antiquity, my understanding of Israel was still shaped by the popular image of Exodus, of David versus Goliath, of the beleaguered democracy, of making the desert bloom.  I was thrilled by the marvelous victories of the Israeli Defense Force and the triumph of Jewish democracy over Arab autocracy, taunting a pair of Lebanese brothers who lived in my dorm.

This all changed rapidly as I learned more of the history of modern Israel and of the war itself.  Did two millennia of persecution and the Holocaust really justify displacing the Palestinians, who were certainly innocents in what Europe had done to the Jews?  Initially, in fact, Theodor Herzl and the Zionists simply wanted a state for Jews anywhere, recognizing that as part of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was clearly not an option for state-building.  And the creation of a Jewish homeland was hardly high on the list of European priorities.

Theodor Herzl

With the outbreak of the Great War, however, the situation changed.  The desire of both the Allies and the Central Powers to cultivate European Jewry because of their supposed financial resources (yes, governments actually believed some of the anti-Semitic fantasies) provided the Zionists a more receptive audience.  On the other hand, British (and to a lesser degree French) military and political interests in the Arab regions of the Turkish Empire also provided a forum for Arab nationalism.  The Allies of course dealt with all this by making clearly conflicting promises to everyone in the region.

Arthur Balfour

The pivotal moment came in November 1917 with the publication of the intentionally vague Balfour Declaration:


The political calculation behind this seems to have been to garner support from German, Russian and American Jews, who would, respectively, undermine the German war effort, keep Russia in the war and attract more American support (another case of dramatically overestimating Jewish influence and power).  None of these things would happen.  Instead, already suspicious Arab allies were outraged, and Britain ended up being saddled with Mandatory Palestine for the next thirty years.  Many later labeled the Balfour Declaration one of the worst mistakes ever made by the British Empire.

For centuries Muslim, Christian and Jewish Palestinians had lived peacefully as neighbors, but that changed with the establishment of the British Mandate in 1920.  Jews began to pour into the territory: in 1920 they constituted about 11% of the population; in 1936 it was close to 30%, a huge increase given the high Arab birth rate.  The financial backing of the Jewish settlers was immense compared to that of the Muslims, allowing them to buy land and develop infrastructure.  Muslims considered the Jews a People of the Book, but having occupied the land for more than a millennium, they certainly did not share the enthusiasm of the Christian West for the resurrection of ancient Israel, which policy was increasingly viewed as another example of European imperialism.

The growing influx of European Jews was seen – quite understandably – as an invasion supported by the British, and most Arab leaders refused to cooperate in creating Muslim-Jewish institutions.  Sectarian strife began in the twenties, producing the first Palestinian terror groups, and a full blown Arab revolt exploded in 1936, Arabs attacking Jews and destroying their farms and the British Army, supported by 6000 armed Jewish auxiliaries, attempting to suppress them.  When the revolt ended in 1939 some 5000 Arabs, 200 British and 400 Jews were dead.  The British, incidentally, began the policy of collective punishment of Palestinians by destroying their houses, a policy later adopted by the new state of Israel.

Jews leaving Jerusalem

Arabs “escorted” from Jerusalem by British troops

A British-Jewish Special Night Squad

Palestinian fighters

Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad “General Commander of the Revolt”

Dead also was any idea of peaceful coexistence.  The Jews responded to Arab opposition and terrorism by organizing their own militias, such as the relatively disciplined Haganah, which would become the core of the Israeli Defense Force, and less savory groups, like the Irgun and Lehi (Stern Gang), outright terrorist organizations.  Meanwhile, the British soldiers, who ultimately were targeted by both sides, were likely cursing the name of Arthur Balfour.

Irgun: bombed Arab bus 1947

Stern: assassination of peace mediator Folke Bernadotte 1948

Avraham Stern – founder of Lehi (and supporter of the Nazis)

Irgun: King David Hotel 1946

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Supreme Commander of the Irgun

Irgun: hanged British soldiers 1947










The Second World War brought matters to a head.  The slaughter of some six million European Jews could hardly fail to magnify the Zionist cause and the guilty consciences of Europe and America, which had turned away many Jewish refugees before the war.  The British Empire was in full retreat, and London was certainly open to any measures that would get them out of Palestine.  Finally, the war had produced an organization, the United Nations, which could serve as an international mechanism for the creation of a Jewish state.  Also crucial was the immense power of post-war America, whose President, Harry Truman, favored the creation of a new Israel, despite the objections of most of his advisors.  Joseph Stalin also supported the idea, which makes one wonder.

In November 1947 the UN voted to partition the Mandate, creating separate Jewish and Arab states and an international status for Jerusalem.  In hindsight the Arabs, now seemingly forever caught in a growing apartheid web of Israeli occupation, clearly should have taken the deal, but the Arab world did not see the self-determination talked about by the Americans, just another exercise in western manipulation of their affairs.

World Zionist Organization 1919 territorial claim

UN Partition Plan 1947












Zionism was a European phenomenon, the Holocaust (and to a great degree the persecution of Jews in general) was a European phenomenon and there had not been a Jewish state for almost two millennia. Why should there be one now?  And more important to the Arabs, why here?  Palestine had been Muslim and under the control of Islamic states for more than a thousand years (and had generally treated the Jewish minority far better than the Christian west).  I certainly could feel at least a twinge of the outrage when having met Arab families who could demonstrate possession of their land back into the nineteenth century and further, I had to listen to someone speaking English with a New York accent explain how it was in fact his land.

Well, for all the persecution and hatred of the people who “murdered the Christ” ancient Israel and Judah were an inseparable part of Christianity, which had after all accepted the Hebrew Testament, and Israel was where Jesus had walked. Today, many American Protestants, notably Evangelicals and sundry fundamentalists, are enthusiastic supporters of not just Israel but of its most extreme policies.  The British had painted themselves into a corner with the Balfour Declaration, and Hitler had made that corner virtually inescapable for them and the Americans.

The immediate response to the partition was violence, as Arab armies converged on the territory assigned to Israel, and it turned into inter-state warfare when Israel proclaimed her status as a sovereign state on 14 May 1948.  Here was the first of the “David versus Goliath” wars, at least in popular imagination.  In fact, Israel fielded almost twice as many troops as her opponents, and the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) estimated that Israel would handily defeat the forces of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt.

And so they did.  When the war ended in March 1949, Israel had acquired 60% of the territory initially assigned to the Arabs and now had a foothold in Jerusalem.  More than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled; yes, contrary to the popular mythic version of their history, the Israelis did engage in ethnic cleansing.  (In the next three years about 700,000 Jews entered Israel, many fleeing Arab countries.)  In the state of Israel itself some 400 Palestinian villages (against 10 Jewish communities) were emptied of people, creating a class of Internally Displaced Persons among the Arab citizenry, and by 1950 one in four Israeli Arabs was an IDP, barred from their homes and land, which were confiscated by the state.  The laws applied also to descendants, so the situation continues to this day.

King Farouk I of Egypt

King Abdullah I of Jordan

1948 Arab-Israeli War

First Israeli Expansion











For Palestinians this was al-nakba, “the Catastrophe.” In 1950 Jordan annexed the remaining non-Israeli territory, the West Bank (Gaza was occupied by the Egyptians), and offered the inhabitants Jordanian citizenship.  Many Palestinians turned this down, and only Britain recognized the annexation, while the Arab states, anxious to keep the Palestinian question alive, pressured the Jordanian King, Abdullah I, to declare the annexation “temporary.”  This temporary arrangement would last 17 years and be replaced with something much more onerous.

In 1956 Israel joined in a secret coalition with Britain and France, who were responding to the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and fielded 175,000 troops (twice that of her allies) to attack Egypt. Worldwide outrage erupted, mainly directed against the French and British for their blatant assault on a sovereign state in order to protect their imperial interests, and domestic and international pressure soon forced them to withdraw, leaving President Nasser in power.  Israel was primarily – and understandably – concerned about regular terrorist attacks coming out of Gaza and Soviet weaponry going into Cairo and would be delighted to see a weakened Egypt without Nasser.  They occupied Gaza and Sinai and refused to leave when their erstwhile allies gave it up, and it took two more weeks of threats of sanctions and lifting of American aid by President Eisenhower (the first and last American President to stand up to Israel) to finally force them out.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Prime Minister David Ben Gurion

President Gamal Abdel Nasser

Suez Crisis


Unlike the humiliated French and British, Israel benefited from the brief war, her defiance of the US and international community winning important guarantees: a UN presence in Sinai and the opening of the Straits of Tiran, which had been closed by Egypt in 1951. Nasser kept the canal and his power and emerged with an enhanced reputation, but he failed to understand that he had been saved by American diplomacy not the Egyptian military.  While the Israelis correctly concluded that their citizen soldiers were better trained and could conduct large scale operations, Nasser deceived himself and his people by concluding that his forces could take on the new kid on the block.

The Suez Crisis set the stage for the Six Day War, suggesting to Egypt, Syria and Jordan that together they could defeat Israel. They could not, and while much of the world marveled at tiny David facing the Arab Goliath again, the CIA in fact concluded that it would take Israel less than two weeks to defeat the Arabs.  It took less than one, and Israel made out like a bandit.

Battle for Sinai

Battle for the Golan Heights

Battle for the West Bank

(Whether the Egyptians shot retreating soldiers or the Israelis murdered some POWs is still debated, but another more disturbing incident of the war is now perfectly clear: Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats deliberately attacked the intelligence ship USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 174 American sailors; see my post “Our Best Ally and the USS Liberty” (https://qqduckus.com/2012/06/07/our-best-ally-and-the-uss-liberty/) 

Prime Minister Levy Eshkol of Israel


President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt


King Hussein I of Jordan


Sallah Jadid of Syria

President Abdul Rahman Arif of Iraq











President Lyndon Johnson


General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev











When Washington finally forced the Israelis to accept a ceasefire (they were ultimately dependent on American resupply), they had seized Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. Eretz Yisrael had attained its greatest territorial extent – ever – and possession of all of Jerusalem, which meant control of sites sacred to all three Abrahamic religions: the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the el-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.  (Perhaps the most iconic image from the war is that of jubilant Israeli soldiers at the Western Wall; less well known is the immediate destruction of 135 Arab houses and a mosque to create the plaza that now fronts the Wall.)

The Second Israeli Expansion

Israeli soldiers at the
Western Wall

Clearing the area before the Wall










The Israelis now also controlled the West Bank, which was promptly named the Judea and Samaria Area, though the term did not come into regular use until Menachem Begin became Prime Minister in 1977. The territory of the West Bank was in fact the heart of ancient Israel, Judea being the southern state of Judah (which ended up composing the history found in the Old Testament) and Samaria the northern state of Israel (completely maligned in the Bible).  A great irony of the creation of modern Israel is that inasmuch as the partition was based on demographics most of ancient Israel fell to the Arabs.  And this is certainly on of the central facts behind the sad fate of the Palestinians.

Ancient Israel Based on the Bible

Israel and Judah 9th century BC


Israel now occupied all that “homeland” (real or imagined), and while Israel was initially concerned with security – the occupation would quickly fuel Palestinian terrorism – the extremists saw the possibility of recreating ancient Israel, or at least the swollen image of it in the Judah-edited Old Testament.  Reestablishing a state that had ceased to exist two millennia earlier was questionable enough, but claiming territory for that state on basis of a clearly unhistorical holy book strikes me as absurd.  But because Christianity has also accepted that book as sacred, many clearly do not see Israel’s actions as absurd – or as violations of international law.

Before the end of June Israel brought East Jerusalem and surrounding land under its administration, calling it “municipal integration,” but it was clearly annexation, which was confirmed by the Jerusalem Law of 1980.  The occupied Golan Heights were to be retained for security reasons and settlements began to appear, leading in 1981 to the Golan Heights Law, by which the region was formally annexed.  Only Costa Rica recognized the Jerusalem annexation and Micronesia the Golan annexation – one wonders why these two states.

One of the fundamental provisions of the post-World War II international agreements, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention and the United Nations Charter, is the prohibition of annexing or settling territory acquired through war, whatever the reason.  Israel apparently felt exempt from this, for security reasons but increasingly in the West Bank simply because it was believed to be the land of Israel.  These settlements were not merely “obstacles to peace,” as the United States calls them, but gross violations of international covenants the United States is pledged to uphold.  Nevertheless, Israel was continually protected from hostile resolutions of the United Nations by the American veto in the Security Council.

Already in 1967 Israel reestablished the old settlement of Kfar Etzion, whose inhabitants had been massacred in the 1948 war.  More ominous was the foundation on the outskirts of Hebron of Kiryat Arba in 1968: the land was confiscated from Palestinians on the grounds of military needs, but it was in fact intended for a Jewish settlement.  Because of the connection between Hebron and Abraham (who might have once been a local cult figure), the city is sacred to everyone and has attracted a particularly nasty group of Jewish settlers, who are holed up in the old town, protected by the Israeli military.  Kiryat Arba has a park dedicated to Meir Kahane, whose Kach party is considered a terrorist organization even by the Israeli government, and nearby is the grave of Baruch Goldstein (an associated shrine, attracting thousands of visitors, has been bulldozed by the government), who slaughtered 29 Palestinians praying in a mosque. Both these men grew up in Brooklyn.

Kahane Tourist Park

Meir Kahane

Kiryat Arba

Baruch Goldstein

















The confiscation of land for Jewish settlements became standard policy during the 1970s, though it was denied by the Israeli government.  When a Likud government under Menachem Begin (former leader of the terrorist Irgun; a later Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, led the Stern Gang) took power in 1977, the process accelerated, and later the government began subsidizing housing in the settlements (which continues to this day), drawing huge numbers of Israelis who were moved far less by the dream of ancient Israel than by cheap available housing.  Whatever the motivation, these colonists were creating the “facts on the ground,” a growing Jewish population that made it more and more difficult for the land to be returned to the Palestinians.

Ytizhak Shamir, Prime Minister and former terrorist

Menachem Begin, Prime Minister and former terrorist.

Yasir Arafat, President and former terrorist





In 1983, as part of the peace treaty with Egypt, Israel removed the settlements from Sinai, and in 2005 those in Gaza, in both cases facing serious resistance from the settlers.  Unfortunately, with Israel controlling Gaza’s frontiers, waters and air space this rump Palestinian state became the world’s largest open air prison, periodically blasted by the IDF because some Hamas jerk shoots a rocket into Israel.  As of today, approximately 1,730,000 Palestinians are living in a semi-wasteland, and malnutrition has become a serious problem.

Meanwhile, the Jewish population in the Occupied Territories continues to swell, as increasingly right wing governments blithely paint Israel into a corner.  There are now some 800,000 Israeli Jewish citizens residing in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and a growing number of Israeli-only roads slicing up Palestinian territory.  Israeli and foreign governments still talk about the “two state solution,” but it has become an impossibility.  Even were the government willing – an extremely unlikely development – attempting to evacuate the settlements would almost certainly lead to extreme violence and civil strife.

What then?  There are now some 2,754,000 Palestinians in the West Bank (and 5,000,000 in Arab countries), and their birth rate is much higher than that of the Jews – excepting the ultra-Orthodox Haredi (who are producing a growing number of Israeli males who know virtually nothing but the Torah).  They certainly cannot be simply expelled, and that leaves two possibilities: annex the territory and give the citizenship to the Palestinians or continue with the current policy.  The first will not happen because Jews would then be a minority, a difficult proposition if Israel is to be a “Jewish” state, and one could expect the new voters to be unsympathetic to many Israeli institutions.

That leaves the status quo, which can lead only to some form of an apartheid state, which is already taking shape in the West Bank.  I visited Israel/Palestine about twenty-five years ago, when the settler presence was much smaller and the Israelis-only road network was just getting underway, and even then the West Bank was beginning to look like something out of the Middle Ages.  The settlements are for the most part on hill tops or ridges, looming like little fortified cities over the Palestinian communities below.  The traditional whitewashed houses of the villages, where water is increasingly in short supply, are in dramatic contrast to the modern accommodations, malls and swimming pools of the settlements, which are like bits of American suburbia planted in the Holy Land.

Settlement life

Israel has now occupied Palestine longer than the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe, a tragedy for the Palestinians and ultimately the Israelis.  The Palestinian leadership, such as it is, has been frequently corrupt and seems to have a special knack for doing just the wrong thing, but consider a half century of rather unpleasant (by contemporary western standards) occupation: how would you feel after a lifetime of second class status – at best – and watching your ancient homeland being recolonized?   Or seeing your home destroyed because someone in your family was arrested (collective punishment, another violation of international law)?  Or being shot with relative impunity because you were defending your olive trees from settler vandals?

Back a quarter century ago I and a companion visited a Palestinian family in Bani Naim, five miles east of Hebron, and when we entered the children began crying.  They thought we were Israelis.

The sad history of Palestine











Ironies from Israel #4: The Embarrassing Benefactor

Well, this is not exactly an irony from Israel but rather an irony from the Third Reich that has put Israel in an ironic position.

Israel has a circle of honor for those who rescued Jews from the clutches of the Third Reich, whether it be one or thousands. Nominations are sent to a department of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial (built on land confiscated from Palestinian families, we must not forget), where the cases are checked and researched and then passed to a committee of ten Holocaust survivors, which makes the final decision. 24,356 people from forty-seven countries, five hundred of them Germans, have been so honored as the “Righteous Among the Nations.”

On the face of it, the case now facing the committee should be extremely simple. The candidate aided several dozen Jews and non-Jews in escaping from the Reich and set up Swiss bank accounts to help the exiles. On a number of occasions before the war he saved individual Jews from assault by Nazi thugs, and as an executive with the vast Skoda works in Czechoslovakia he aided resistance fighters and supported anti-German sabotage. He once took a truck to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and demanded workers for the Skoda factories, then driving them to a woods where they were released. All these activities are documented by witnesses, most especially the people (or their children) he helped to survive.

The only problem: the man’s name is Albert Göring.

Yes, the man in question was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s little known younger brother. He was an apolitical engineer and a dapper womanizer, but despite his family connections he was also anti-Nazi and despised Hitler. Rather than turn a blind eye, however, he used those connections to rescue people from the system in which his brother was the number two man.

He obviously fits the bill for the honor of being a member of the Righteous Among the Nations, but his name is Göring, which might be a bit difficult for Israel to accept. But there is a way out. There is a rumor that Albert was actually the child of his mother and the family doctor, who was a Jew. This would give the Israelis an opportunity to avoid what might be an embarrassment in proclaiming a Göring one of the Righteous Among the Nations, since only non-Jews are eligible for the honor. There is, however, absolutely no evidence for this claim of a Jewish father, and even the Reichsmarschall would have had some difficulty protecting his brother had the Reich suspected Albert of carrying Jewish blood.

Confirmation of Albert Göring’s role in rescuing Jews would be a victory of truth over image, but unfortunately, Israel, more than most states, has allowed the image of its past to be built upon serious distortions of the truth, beginning with “A land without a people for a people without a land.” This must have been a baffling proclamation for the millions of Palestinians already living in the “land without a people.” Closer to the subject of this essay, missing from the list of the Swedish Righteous is the name Folke Bernadotte, who saved at least 1600 Jews (among tens of thousands of others) near the end of the war. But as a mediator during the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1947-1948 Bernadotte earned the ire of the extremist Stern Gang, and in 1948 he was assassinated on the orders of its leaders, one of whom, Yitzhak Shamir, was later Prime Minister of Israel. Clearly, it would be awkward to encourage public review of Bernadotte’s life.

With Jews, Czech resistance fighters and others defending him Albert Göring was completely cleared by the allies, but out of loyalty to his family he refused to change his name, and even a talented engineer could not find work in Germany with the name Göring. He died a poor man in 1966, his deeds unknown to the world until an Australian writer published an account in 2009.

Excerpts from the Book of Yitzhak

(Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the two one-time terrorists become Prime Ministers of Israel, were inclined to speak in Old Testiment terms, inevitably referring to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and reminding the world that these areas once belonged to Israel and should again.  It is thus appropriate to provide an account of the Shamir administration in such terms.  Just to remind you: Shamir was PM from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992; from 1984 to 1986 his ally Shimon Peres was PM.  In 1986 Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon, Ariel Sharon having presided over the Phalange massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.  The first Intifada erupted in the West Bank in 1987 and over a thousand Palestinians were killed.  The First Gulf War erupted in 1991.)                        

And it came to pass in the thirty-fifth year of the kingdom of Israel that the Lord said unto Yitzhak, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses and Menachem, so will I be with thee.  And I will give unto thee, and to thy brother Shimon, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, and Judea and Samaria, and Sinai and Golan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God, and thou my prophet.

And so Yitzhak went forth among the children of Israel and said unto them, Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord thy God.  And Yitzhak said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Jordanites, and the Iraqites, and the Syrians, and the Palestites, who art an abomination in the sight of the Lord.  Ever with us is He, Who in the ancient days of Baal Four set up an ensign for the nations, and assembled the outcasts of Israel, and gathered together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

And heavy was the burden set upon the children of Israel by the Lord of Hosts, for many were the enemies of Zion and great the company of unbelievers and idolaters.  And the kings of the earth rose up, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and against His annointed, and said unto the seed of Abraham, Go forth from the Lebanon, O Israel, for this land is not given thee, and in Sabra and in Shatila the Palestites have suffered a great wickedness and pain, as of a woman in travail.

And the children of Israel gathered themselves together, as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude, and they cried unto Yitzhak, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness.  And Yitzhak said unto the people, You come to me with lamentation, but I come to ye in the name of the Lord, the God of the armies of Israel.  What is my sin before ye, that I have gone the way of Menachem and his captain Ariel?  But the hearts of the children of Israel were hardened.

And so it came to pass that the hosts of Israel came forth out of the Lebanon, and the valley of Bekaa, unto the waters of Litani.  And Yitzhak said unto the nations, Comfort ye, Speak ye comfortably toJerusalem, for she cries unto ye, that her warfare is accomplished.  But the cry of the Shiites is great, and their sin is very grievous, and ever will the Lord rain upon them brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, that He may overthrow their wickedness.

And it came to pass in Gaza, and in Samaria, and in Judea, even unto the waters of Jordan, that the Palestites corrupted themselves, and they worked a great evil upon the children of Israel.  And the wrath of Yitzhak waxed hot, and he cast the tablets of David out of his hands and brake them beneath his feet.

And Yitzhak went unto his captain Ariel, wherein his strength lay, and he laid his hands upon him, saying, Like unto Joshua art thou to me, and like Moses I give thee a charge.  Do thou cross over into Samaria, and Judea, that thou mayest smite the Palestites with the edge of the sword, for they conspire to do a great evil against the children of Zion.  And Yitzhak said unto Ariel, And thou shalt do to Hebron, and to Shechem, and to Ramallah as thou didst unto Tyre, and Sidon, and mighty Beirut; only the spoil thereof, and the water thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves.

And so it came to pass that Ariel went forth into Samaria, and Judea, and even unto the Golan, and many were the tents and camps of the children of Israel.  And great was the anger of the Lord of Hosts, and His wrath blew hot upon the Palestites, and the cries of the rulers of the west were as chaff upon the wind.  And Ariel sent to Yitzhak, saying, Now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side, and, behold, I propose to build a house in Jerusalem, unto the name of the Lord my God.

But the hearts of the Palestites were hardened in their wickedness, and no more would Yitzhak forebear, because their sin was very grievous.  And Yitzhak said unto the people, If a Palestite smite a man of Israel with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die, and though he not die, he is a murderer, and the murderer shall surely be put to death.  And Yitzhak sent to his captain Shinbet, saying, Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which the Lord gave unto the children of Israel.  And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon the people, and they slew the Palestites, who had transgressed.

And it came to pass in the east, by the waters of Babylon, that the Iraqites builded themselves a great army, with chariots of iron, and they conspired all of them together to come and fight against Jerusalem.  And Yitzhak said unto the children of Israel, A great evil and abomination unto the Lord is spawned in the east.  And it is an accursed thing, and ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed and make the camp of Israel a curse.  And the rulers of the west heard Yitzhak, and they gathered a great host, and the Lord rained upon Baghdad brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and great was the rejoicing of Zion.

But great was the number of the enemies of the Lord, and the princes of the west cried unto the seed of Abraham, saying, Go forth from Jerusalem, O Israel, for this land is not given thee, and the Palestites suffer a great wickedness and pain.  And Yitzhak was called forth, out of the land of Canaan, by the kings of the west, and he went unto the Amerikites.  And Bey Ker the Amerikite spake unto Yitzhak, saying, Bring forth the children of Israel out of Judea, and Samaria, and proclaim liberty throughout the land.  Go forth from Golan, and from Gaza, O Israel, for thine enemy is fallen, and by the waters of Jordan shall the Palestites raise a nation.  And even in the house of Israel, Shimon, and his brother Yitzhak, turned not from iniquity, but led their tribe in rebellion against the Lord of Hosts.

And great was the power of the Amerikites, but like unto a lion out of the desert was Yitzhak, and his servant Benjamin, and they were filled full with the strength of the living God.  And Yitzhak said unto his people, The kings of the earth seduce ye, saying, Peace, when there is no peace, and terrors by reason of the sword shall be upon the children of Israel.  But he that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn, the Lord shall have them in derision.

Pitch thy tents in Judea, and in Samaria, O Israel, for out of Zion shall go forth our law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  And we shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and we shall beat our plowshares into swords, and our pruning hooks into spears.  For we are the annointed of the Lord, who art charged to carry out His holy work, and I will make of thee a great nation.

And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers, and they possessed it, and dwelt therein.  And Yitzhak went into Samaria, and looked over Jordan.  And the Lord said unto him, Behind thee is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, unto Jacob, and unto Menachem, saying, I will give it unto thy seed.  And I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.  Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers.

And it came to pass in the forty-fourth year of the kingdom of Israel that Yitzhak the servant of the Lord died, according to the word of the children of Israel.  And he was buried in the land of Moab, in the tomb of Likud, wherein lay his father Menachem.





Sheol Welcomes Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir, a founding father and two-time Prime Minister of Israel (1983, 1986-1992), died on June 30.  He was given a state funeral and praised as an outstanding patriot by virtually every Israeli political leader of prominence, including Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he had fought politically.  Interestingly, in praising him his daughter took the opportunity to stick it to the current leadership: “(My father) belonged to a different generation of leaders, people with values and beliefs. I hope that we have more people like him in the future.”

There is no question that Shamir was a patriot and a brave man, who essentially dedicated his life to serving his county.  But of course the same could be said about Adolph Hitler, and while Shamir is certainly not in the same league as the man who murdered his family, life does reveal that Israeli patriotism can accommodate serious brutality.  As in the days of the First Temple, when the Lord of Hosts often expected His people to treat their neighbors with utter barbarity, so too in modern Israel does serving the country sometimes involve behavior generally condemned by democratic societies.

Shamir was born in 1915 in a Jewish village in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, became a Polish citizen after the Russian-Polish war of 1920 and moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1935.  There in 1940 he joined the Irgun, a paramilitary organization fighting the British, and when it split into two factions a short time later, he went with the more extreme Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang after its leader.  Financing themselves with bank robberies, the group was so anti-British that it actually had talks with the Nazis and proposed a Jewish state based on fascist principles.  After Stern was killed in 1942, Shamir became one of the leaders of Lehi, which gravitated towards the USSR, declaring in 1944 that it supported a national bolshevism (whatever that is).  While under Shamir’s leadership Lehi assassinated the British Resident Minister in Cairo in November of 1944 and subsequently engaged in terrorist acts both in Palestine and the UK, tactics which Shamir justified with references to the Old Testament.  He was arrested by the British in 1946 but escaped and found political asylum in France, where he was when the state of Israel was established in 1948.

Shamir immediately returned to Palestine and Lehi, which teamed up with the Irgun in March for an attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassein.  The Irgun was then led by Menachim Begin, another future Prime Minister (1977-1983), whose group had blown of the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 103 people, many of them Jews.  In the Deir Yassein operation over a hundred villagers were killed, many of them women and children, and according to the later testimony of an Irgun fighter 80 prisoners were executed.  The massacre was condemned by the two chief rabbis in the area, by the leadership of the Haganah and even by Ben-Gurion, but no one was punished.  Then, in September of 1948 Lehi assassinated the UN mediator, Folke Bernadotte, fearing his peace proposals would surrender coveted territory.  This was too much even for the Israeli provisional government, since during the war Bernadotte had rescued some 30,000 inmates from Nazi camps, about 10,000 of them Jews.  Lehi was declared a terrorist group and its members arrested, only to be pardoned the following year.  In 1980, seemingly as part of the sanitizing of the country’s origins, Israel created a military decoration, the Lehi ribbon, becoming the only democratic state to officially celebrate a terrorist organization.

After the war for independence Shamir served from 1955-1965 in the Mossad, where he could indulge his penchant for assassination.  He entered politics in 1977, and in 1983 the one-time terrorist became the Prime Minister of Israel.  And there he would wield his righteous sword against a new group of terrorists, this one seeking to end the Israeli Mandate in Palestine.

The irony is neverending.