Maof

Inreview with Eliakim Haetzni.

  Long before he began the struggle for Eretz Israel, Elyakim Haetzni waged wars for a state of Israel free from injustice. Neither Ben Gurion, nor the gigantic machinery of the Mapai party of which he was a member, were able to frighten him. He brought cases of corruption to light, was tried, convicted, appealed, released and then boycotted. "I have retained pain of distrust of any government," he says, "that is why after the Six Day War I decided  that I could not rely on them to keep our historic heritage."

Elyakim Haetzni, who predicted horrors resulting from the Oslo agreements, was called in Israel "the prophet of wrath."  Many know his passionate articles with their sharp expressions. Much less is known about Elyakim Haetzni himself, the resident of Kiryat Arba and MK for Tehiya in the last Knesset. He began his social career almost half a century ago as a young activist in the Mapai party, contending with the almighty party leader and prime minister, David  Ben Gurion, in a struggle for lawfulness in the use of power.

He moved to Kiryat Arba almost at its beginnings, when he was a successful lawyer from Tel Aviv. Later he built a two-storeyed house here on the hill, Har Sin. Everything is in the Mediterranean style, many pictures, variegated chairs, stone benches along the walls. And five cats. 

Haetzni told of his life story, from the city on the shores on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the north of Germany to his home on the outskirts of Hebron; from the War of Independence, in which he was wounded, to the Al Aksa war, which he predicted. 

Sipuro sheli oreh din, sheratza lihiot lo rak haham, ella gam tzodek. 

Elyakim Haetzni, born in 1925, immigrated with his family in 1938, several months before an iron curtain separated Jews who remained in Germany from the rest of the world, and the final tragedy began that had started with the arrival of Hitler in power.  Haetzni (then Bombah) grew up in the city of Kiel in North Germany in a religious family. There was no Jewish school in the region, and he had to go to a public school until the summer of 1938, when he was expelled from the school together with the other Jewish students. His family owned a furniture store; already in 1933, the Nazi newspapers urged their readers to boycott this and other Jewish stores. "These are your enemies, Germans," said the advertisement, "the Bombah family store on the street."

The men in the Bombah family understood what was going on. In the mid-thirties the father and brother of Haetzni had visited Eretz Israel. When they returned they brought back "valuables", art works from the Bezalel Academy, megillat Ester, photos, and so on, but while greatly praising Eretz Israel they decided it was not a good place to make a living ? too many mosquitoes, food prepared on primus stoves, in short not modern living. So they decided to stay in Germany. "These Jews!" Haetzni sighs.

In  1938, the family decided to leave, but his mother?s sister and her family remained in Kiel. Her husband Kalman was a trader, he knew all the peasants in the vicinity and was on friendly terms with everyone. He spoke the local dialect, which is very like Dutch, and the peasants were good to him and called him Karl. When it was suggested that he obtain a visa for Paraguay,  he refused. "What shall I do there," he said, "nothing will happen to me here. All the Jews have gone, nobody will harm me here." 

 Kalman was deported to Poland, and killed on the street, when he went to buy milk for his wife and son. His wife Berta and nine-year old son Arnold were shot in the forest.

The Bombah brothers had time to transfer to Eretz Israel one thousand pounds sterling each. A thousand pounds was then a significant sum and each brother bought a home in Rehavia. Haetzni?s father did not start a business in Israel. "He was in outlook a national-religious Jew," Haetzni explains,"but something was broken within him, when he was rooted out of his own place into a new country."  The family lived in the Jerusalem district of Kerem Avraham. 

Haetzni studied at the Mizrachi  teachers? college. During the War of Independence, he was wounded in the battles for Jerusalem, and spent a year and a half lying in hospital.  He then began to study law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Then he took off his kippa and became close to Mapai. 

Sofia:"Why Mapai?"
Haetzni:"I?m not from the followers of Jabotinsky, and so far when I see the fruits of that tree, I don?t regret it.  I have the complete collected works of Jabotinsky, a gift from Shmuel Tamir. All honour and esteem to him for Etzel, but as for the political movement that emerged from it, the disappointment of the century! I am one hundred percent sure that if Begin had been the leader of the Yishuv or the head of the Jewish Agency in 1948, the state would not have come into being, and if it had it would have fallen. I see what he did at the first Camp David, and what his followers did. And Sharon is creating  a Palestinian state!" 

Sofia :"And yet Sharon is from Mapai."
Haetzni." It is clear now that the Mapainiks are destroying the state. But  I had expected something different from Sharon."

The fanaticism of the Left

After World War II, Haetzni sided with the Hagana. Then they demanded that he act against the porshim, as the Revisionists were called then, and he refused. It was the period of the "Season."  Haetzni was even denounced for refusing to obey the order, but remained in the Hagana. 

In Mapai he saw the party which had established the state and brought in mass aliya.  According to him, the leadership of Mapai devotedly brought in immigrants because they felt remorse for not doing enough to save Jews from Europe and bring about their immigration to the land. Instead they had been concerned with selection, which was not only political (the preference was for supporters of the "correct" Socialist ideology) but also guided by the principle of productivity ? only workers were considered productive. "To immigrate to Eretz Israel, you should become a halutz (pioneer), dry the swamps and be content to lose social status. They wanted to turn intellectuals into sausage salesmen on Mugrabi Square in Tel Aviv. The Left," says Haetzni, "were always obsessed by religious fanaticism; just as now they have pro-Palestinian and anti-national religious fanaticism, then they had the socialist fanaticism of class struggle."

Some scratching noises from the kitchen. "Cats," says Haetzni, "cats."  He gets up from his chair, goes to the kitchen and fills one of the small saucers on the floor with milk. A greenish-grey coloured cat walks into the room. "We call her Green, because of her colour," explains our host. Here there is a whole family of cats, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, aunt and cousin,  all from the same dynasty, whose founder was Shula, named after Shulamit Aloni, because she had "a terrible temper ? that is, the cat." This was at the beginning of the Oslo process, when Shulamit Aloni was Minister of Education. A lot of water has flowed down the Jordan river since that time. Shulamit Aloni is no longer in politics, and Shula the cat has died, but left her descendants a warm home.

Haetzni returns to the living room, and we go back to the fifties. "Ben Gurion," he recounts, "was always slow in taking up Jabotinsky?s ideas for his own. In the thirties he was opposed to establishing a state, but then he took up the Biltmore program, to the incomprehension of his camp. Then he adopted the idea of a non-party army, liquidating Etzel and Lehi, and at the same time disbanding the Palmah. Then he introduced state non-party schools and job placement office. After the Holocaust, over the fresh grave of European Jewry, he understood that there is no place for selection in aliya."

Mass immigration fascinated and enchanted Haetzni, who was then studying law at the He brew University.  At the beginning of the fifties he set up the organization called "Volunteers Column" (shurat ha mitnadvim) to help in aliya absorption. Originally, the organization was established in the framework of Mapai, but when Haetzni saw that the students did not want to be related to a party organization, it was changed into an independent student organization. The students helped at nights in guarding the maabarot (temporary camps) for the olim in the period when the terrorists were infiltrating the frontiers, and the olim had no idea how to use weapons. 

In one of these camps, Haetzni met his future wife, Tzippora, who was studying Hebrew and joined Shurat hamitnadvim.  She later worked as Secretary to Pinhas Sappir, when the latter was Minister of Industry and Trade. 

The government assisted the student organization, which volunteered to help in creating a "melting pot"  to help immigrants to become Israelis, as it was then understood. With time, however, a group arose in the organization, which had the goal of struggle with corruption. Then the idyll came to an end. 

This was the period of the corrupt establishment. As Ephraim Kishon described it, the location of the residence of an important organization man in Mapai was enough to cause work to begin on infrastructure, like  laying water-pipes and so on, but when he moved, the work stopped and everything was neglected. There was a review committee in Mapai, and Haetzni, the young lawyer and member of the party believed that the party must be interested in self-purification. "Harei ein tovel vesheretz beyado." "One does not immerse in the mikva with sheretz (reptile, vermin) in his hand." Eventually he understood that he was wanting the vermin to cleanse itself. 

"This was a very difficult period," he remembers, "there are always rich and poor, but now if there are hungry and homeless people, it is usually a drunkard or someone who does not want to work.  Then it was different. The people had to content themselves with a little, while the government was occupied with its "lofty historic mission of gathering in the exiles."  In such an epoch should someone become rich by misappropriation of public money? We wanted the leaders to behave themselves decently, in accordance with the situation in the country. "

Foxes in the china shop

The Shurat hamitnavdim  demanded that the vehicles of government officials be marked, so as to take note of those who would use a car for private purposes. In that situation, the drivers should not be taking ministers? wives to do their shopping, unlike the mores of today. Every drop of fuel was precious. In fact, the cars did get marked, and complaints began to flow in from citizens who noticed their elected representatives on the beach, and they got it hot. 

The organization, among other demands, requested that celebrations not be held at the King David Hotel on the occasion of the founding of the state Bank, and the ceremony was actually conducted in the modest bank building. But when young idealists dared to raise their voices against the corruption of the leaders, the work of the organization was hampered. One such case was  connected with David Bekharel, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency, who embezzled foreign currency.  Such crimes were then considered the most severe, since foreign currency was vitally important to the state and the economy.  For such crimes the cases were judged in accordance with the emergency regulations, and the accused did not have the right to silence. 

An inspector was appointed, Emil Shmulik, and he discovered crimes had been committed by Bekharel, and prepared his report accordingly. Communications were received by Levi Eshkol, then chairman of the Jewish Agency, saying, "Lo tahsom shor bedisho" (don?t muzzle the ox during the harvest), i.e. the Treasurer of the Jewish Agency cannot possibly be expected not to put his hand in the till. The then Attorney-General, Haim Cohn, later appointed Vice-president of the Supreme Court, called for an investigation, even before Eshkol?s decision.  A committee was appointed from members of Mapai, which ordered the case closed. Haim Cohn obeyed, even though he had earlier pointed out that "the law must be the same for all citizens."  He had no choice. Even if he had resigned, it would not have helped much.

"Then there was no such concept as the authority of the law." Haetzni says. "It was a party regime, the dictatorial regime of Ben Gurion. A paradoxical situation has arisen today. Those who accuse me of acting against authority, because I?m Right wing, were Bolshevists when I began to struggle for the authority of the law. The totalitarians and Stalinists of yesterday have suddenly transformed democracy into a religion.

The Left ? they are religious fanatics," repeats Haetzni. "Then they had red admors -- Yaari and Khazan. Then they had a red church, today they have created a new church. They need to have some religion, they cannot live without it. Jews are a completely religious people. How many psychological schools are there in the world?  Only psychoanalysis transformed itself into a religion, because it was founded by Freud. And Marx, the grandson of a rabbi, created a theory that became a religion. In democratic countries, like the USA or England, it would not have become a religion. And here, the Left were seeking a new religion, and they have two "Testaments,"  Palestine and democracy. Now they have a saint of this religion, the religion of peace, Saint Yitzhak. And there is a cult of flowers and candles; every year they play Bach?s great B Minor Mass for him. It?s a cult. Their democracy is not real."

In the year 1956, Shurat hamitnadvim published a brochure which described yet another case of corruption under the title, "The threat is from within."  Before the agreement about reparations, the German government transferred goods to Israel as a "down-payment."  An official delegation of four men from Israel went to Germany. Among them was Shaike Yarkoni, husband of the singer Yaffa Yarkoni. A few days later, the director of a porcelain works in Bavaria told an Israeli businessman, Zaidman, that four men from Israel had come to him, had ordered chinaware at a cost to the Jewish Agency of hundreds of thousands, and asked him to increase the price by 15%, the difference to go into their own pockets. Zaidman lodged a complaint with the Haifa police.  An investigation began and was soon closed. Shaike Yarkoni was a friend and business partner of Amos Ben Gurion, the son of the Prime Minister.  When Shurat hamitnadvim published that story, Amos Ben Gurion brought a suit against  Haetzni and three other activists. 

All four were called before the party bosses, among them Dayan and Namir, who said, "This time you have crossed all lines. Either you apologize to us or we destroy you." "We answered that it is impossible to forgive such corruption," Haetzni remembers, "and so we decided to wage war."   

A suit against Shurat hamitnadvim was heard by a panel of three judges, a number usually reserved for murder cases. The mass media opposed the activists. The radio was then responsible to the office of the Prime Minister, and Teddy Kollek, then the  director-general of the office, operated the censorship. Haetzni and his comrades were represented by Shmuel Tamir. Young activists did not have the money to pay for legal services, and lawyers as you know cannot work for nothing, but three well-known lawyers, Tusiya-Kohen, Edelboim and  Tamir offered their services. It was after Kastner?s law-suit, and  Haetzni chose Tamir,  who was dynamic and aggressive. In the event, all three participated in the defence, but Tamir headed and financed the team.. 

 "And then,"  Haetzni narrates, "they (Mapai) called us in again and said, `At least without Tamir.?  We did not agree. But I laid down terms to Tamir not to use the case politically against Ben Gurion and the party. I was still devoted to the party then. It become clear only afterwards that Ben Gurion had involved Shabak (the General Security Service) in helping his son."

"The trial was carried on in the atmosphere of a military tribunal, " Haetzni recounts, "The highest ranks sat in the first and second rows. The chief of police at the time, Yehezkel Sogar, who had earlier been Secretary to Haim Weitzmann, testified that Shaike Yarkoni had never been interrogated by the police. When Shmuel Tamir, the advocate, asked to have the case, which had been closed by the Haifa police, reopened, and asserted a claim that his testimony was not true, Sogar announced that the matter was confidential for reasons of state security. "What is confidential in this?" asked Tamir, "it is only china." But the court accepted the claim and fined the respondents fifteen thousand lire. 

Shurat hamitnadvim appealed to the Supreme Court. Among the judges was Moshe Landau, who was amazed by Sogar?s evidence, and the Supreme Court rejected the claim of secrecy. The case was reopened and it was discovered that Sogar had given false and perjured evidence. Yarkoni had in fact been interrogated.  Meanwhile Sogar had been appointed Ambassador in Vienna. When he heard about the decision,  he sent a sharp letter complaining of an investigation taking place while he was abroad. "It is hutzpa on the part of the Supreme Court," he wrote. This was his mistake. He arrived in the country, was judged and sentenced to three months suspended sentence for giving false evidence, and his public career was destroyed.

The finding of the Supreme Court  was revolutionary. It changed the attitude towards closed (confidential) proceedings, and prevented high officials from covering up personal corruption by alleging the secrecy of documents. In essence this court laid the corner stone for the authority of the law.

 But Shurat hamitnavdim was already destroyed. Shabak, according to Haetzni, planted agents in the organization and destroyed it from within. Elyakim Haetzni, the young lawyer, abandoned his public activities and engaged in private practice. 
 
 The press tried hard to neutralize him. Shabtai Tevet published  in Haaretz a series of articles attacking the Shurat hamitnadvim. 

What we will not succeed in inhabiting will be lost

After that Elyakim Haetzni opened a law firm. "I began from the ground floor," he tells, "which was  very hard because I was being boycotted. Shabak and the mass media described me as a monster." 

 After a number of years, Haetzni succeeded in getting on his feet. He maintained good relations with the lawyers who had represented him at the trial. At the beginning of his career he worked under Edelboim, and Shmuel Tamir became his good friend.  Tamir even proposed him for second place on a voters? list for the Knesset he wanted to create, but Haetzni refused. "Enough," he said, "I don?t like politics."  
 
 He left the party because it was bogged down in corruption.  He moved to Ramat Gan with his wife and their two cars. They went abroad on vacations and had a good time thanks to the income of a successful lawyer. And then came the Six Day War.

"It was like a  bolt of lightning for me," he remembers, "until then I had not had any connection with Judaea, Samaria and Gaza or with Hebron. I knew about the pogrom in Hebron in the year 1929 and that was all. I was not in any eldad  organization. But perhaps there is some kind of spring in a man, of which he has no suspicion,  and then something happens and the spring uncoils."

"Naturally, we all dreamed about the liberation of Jerusalem, dreamed about it, but the liberation of Hebron seemed absolutely unreal, like getting to the other side of the moon. It was something improbable and terrifying, the pogrom of the year 1929 and the exile of the Jews, the massacre at Gush Etzion. The Arabs of Hebron were termed killers, and they deserved the name. 

"From Shurat hamitnadvim, I had retained the pain of distrust towards government, any government. I decided not to rely on them to preserve our historical heritage.  At the end of June, 1967, I heard about the Allon plan. I said to myself, Gewalt, if the government is going to carry on the policy of Britain?s White Paper, then we will act as we did in the mandatory period and create settlements. 

"I got interested in this and found out that the children of the exiles from Gush Etzion were forming a group for return. The National Religious Party was then dovish,  with Moshe Shapiro. A rich American Jew made a contribution for the rebirth of the settlement, but because the NRP was not inspired by the idea, he said to them, Well, if you don?t want to participate in this, Haetzni gets to work. I was still somebody to scare little children by. That was the usual field of activity of the NRP, and Haim Shapiro changed his opinion. Afterwards Hammer and Ben Meir changed direction when they saw which way the wind was blowing."

Haetzni founded the headquarters of the struggle against retreat. After Gush Etzion they decided on the next step, Hebron. There was then no living connection in the society  with Shechem or Gaza. Only Hebron and Gush Etzion were deeply imprinted in the national memory. Their centre put up posters in synagogues calling for the return to Hebron. He appealed to the leader of  the Hebron yeshiva in Keren Avraham  to return to  Hebron. He of course declined the proposal. 

"And then I realized," said Haetzni, "that the torch of settlement had passed from the secular on the Left to the religious on the Right. Everything now turned upside down  and not only because of Judaea, Samaria and Gaza. The new settlements were not being created by Labour; Arik  Sharon founded them.

" I searched among my friends to see who was willing to found and develop new settlements. I did not find any either in Labour or amongst the Revisionists. A lot of talk and no action. Suddenly we discovered that a new group was emerging with new leadership. These were the kippot srugot (knitted kippas), the followers of Rav Kook and his son. Rabbi Levinger came to me and I interested him in settling in Hebron. This was exactly the man needed, a leader supported by a society.
 
 "We arrived here on the day of the Passover Seder, and walked all the way from the Park Hotel to the Maarat Mahpela. From that time on I have been occupied only with this, because it is clear to me, that what we do not inhabit will be lost to us. Jericho, the northeast of Hebron ? lost. Where we had got hold of even a little we still have it. In September, 1972,  we moved here, when the first houses were built in Kiryat Arba. It was after the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich. We said, this was our answer."
 
 A year and a half later, Haetzni shut down his office in Tel Aviv and opened a small law firm in Kiryat Arba. He learned Arabic and represented Arabs from nearby villages. He became very popular, and was an honoured guest at weddings and celebrations. "Those were idyllic days, " he remembers. "Israel has destroyed peaceful coexistence with the Arabs  by its politics. "
 
 The hands of the peace camp are stained with the blood of those who collaborated with us.
 
  After the Six Day War, the mayors of Bethlehem, Beit Sahura and Beit Jalla, all three Christian-populated towns, turned to Israel appealing to us to annex their cities, as had been done with East Jerusalem. The Israeli government refused, and thirty years later got shooting  towards Gilo (from Beit Jalla, ed.)" Then after the Six Day War Haetzni and Israel Harel met with the mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Bendak, and asked him why  he wanted to be annexed by Israel.  "It will be bad for us under Arab rule," he said,  "it was bad under Hussein, but if Hebron is in control, it will be much worse." 
  
  The forecast came true. The Christians turned out to be a persecuted minority in Bethlehem, which was under the control of Mohammed Rashid, from the Hebron family of Jabari, a proteg? of Arafat. When Haetzni was building his house in the area of Har Sin, there was tremendous inflation, and he needed money.  "I turned to my friends," he tells, "and each Jew responded: I?ll be forced to unfreeze my savings account; you should compensate me for the difference.  I went to an Arab who was famous in Hebron, and he immediately lent me money. What about interest?  Why ever...?  I wanted to give him a receipt, but he refused. Suppose something happens to me.?  Then there will be no need for money, he said. And I would lend to him, if he asked me. We are still in good relations. 
  
  "An Arab sheik approached the authorities and offered to rebuild the Avraham Avinu synagogue. The authorities rejected the offer. The Hebron leadership was interested in a connection with the Israeli government, but Israel" says  Haetzni, "made all possible mistakes, including Oslo.
 
 "Of course in my law practice I was never involved in the cases of terrorists or those occupying state land. Once an Arab came to me and said his son was having problems, and he asked me to defend him. I have never defended those who tried to kill me and my family, I told him. Then just try it , he said.  I asked him, Do you eat pork? He was frightened and said, Never. Then just taste it, I said.
 
 "When the first intifada began, the Arabs of Hebron warned of the danger. When in the Daiheshe case Haetzni defended  the residents of Kiryat Arba who had opened fire in response to having stones thrown at them, it was revealed that the Daiheshe sheikhs had turned to the commandant of Bethlehem and said, Intervene, our bandits are preparing an ambush. The local leaders were interested in cooperation with the administration to prevent such events developing, which threatened them as well. Israel did not use that opportunity.
 
 "Already at that time," says Haetzni, "attempts were starting to prevent Tzahal (the IDF) from winning. The officers were brainwashed by politics. It is Algeria, you must evacuate Algeria. It was possible to end the intifada in two to three months, but the Left wanted Israel to lose, so that a Palestinian state could emerge."
 
 The headman of the village of Kabatiye was the first mashtapnik (collaborator  with us) to be hanged on a pole. Tzahal could have entered the village and prevented a murder, but Mitzna, then the Commander-in-chief of the Central Region, now mayor of Haifa, did not want to do it. Haetzni phoned him  and asked him if it was true. Mitzna answered, "If Tzahal entered the city, many Arabs would be killed." " Such is the peacefulness of the Left," Haetzni sums up, " their hands are stained with the blood of Arabs, left to the mercy of fate."
 
 In those years Haetzni was elected to the Knesset as a member for the Tehiya party. He proposed to Shabak to issue communications facilities to our Arab helpers, and give them similar powers to the SLA in South Lebanon. They know the area, why not use them? With time it became clear how naive he was. Yaakov Peri would not allow this. Shamir and Arens in essence did not have control of the army, and Shabak was entirely in the hands of the Left, who already intended everything for the PLO. 
 
 "Vilnai, then the Commander-in-chief of the South district, was the chief villain, " Haetzni tells, "his principal aim was to avoid conflict. This did not mean running away, but `withdrawal by controlled methods.? They intentionally aimed at a defeat, to pave the way for Oslo."
 
There were two wars in the life of Elyakim Haetzni. The first was for justice in court, the second, which he is still waging today, is for national justice. It is not popular and gratifying work. But there are people who follow that path, in Tel Aviv and in Kiryat Arba, and they cannot act otherwise.
 
Russion version