Once a terrorist

Richard West

Not long ago, the Jewish terrorists of the Irgun Zwei Leumi who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem 35 years ago, killing some 100 English, Arabs and Jews, held a reunion dinner, appropriately in the King David Hotel. Their principal guest, the man who planned the bombing, now the Prime Minister of his country, Menachem Begin, could not attend because he was indisposed, not because he felt remorse for the crime. The same terrorist, Menachem Begin, arranged the kidnapp- ing, torture and hanging of two British sergeants of the Intelligence Corps, the field security police who were charged with the job of containing terrorists in the Palestine of 1947.

The photograph of the two British sergeants, dangling on their ropes, caused much ill-feeling, even among the placid and tolerant English. I can remember a riot breaking out in a cinema when a newsreel film from Jerusalem was shown. Fascists daubed some synagogues in the East End. The Intelligence Corps, with which I did my national service two years later, would not admit Jews.

The Zionist leaders of the time were, in public, disapproving of crimes such as the blowing up of the King David Hotel and the hanging of two British sergeants. Like Irish politicians today they said that they did not approve of terrorism but — the British ar- my should get out. In private, some Zionist leaders condoned the terror. The labour politician Richard Crossman, a life-long friend and admirer of terrorists from Hitler to Begin, and latterly the IRA, recalled a meeting in 1947 with Chaim Weizmann, who said how much he admired 'our lads' who had bombed the King David Hotel, and how he only regretted the deed was done against British rather than German people. The British themselves, the people landed with the unpleasant task of running Palestine, were characteristically fond of the people who tried to kill them. The Labour Party in conference in 1944 had passed a resolution: 'Palestine is surely a case, on humanitarian grounds and to pro- mote a stable settlement, for a transfer of population. Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out and the Jews move in . . . Indeed we examine also the possibility of extending the present Palestine boundaries by agree- ment with Egypt, Syria and Transjordan.' Even the Zionist leaders felt embarrassed by this suggestion that 'Arabs be encouraged to move out and the Jews move in'.

Most of the Labour Party, and all its left- wing factions, supported Zionism and even condoned the terrorists such as Begin. The wise, if incoherent, Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was damned as an anti-semite because he made a case for the Palestinian Arabs. The middle-class Left, on the Guar- dian, New Statesman and BBC, were just as vehement for the Jews as they are today for the Arabs. The Irish 'Republicans', apologists for the IRA, applauded the ter- rorists of the Irgun Zwei Leumi and Stern Gang, because they were murdering British soldiers. The Northern Protestants then supported the Arabs as now they support the Israelis. The American Jews in the late 1940s, like Irish Americans at the present time, were bloodthirsty in praise of anti- British terrorists. The playwright Ben Hecht, who wrote the amusing play The Front Page, said that he felt a 'song in my

heart' when he heard of a British soldier murdered by Jews in Palestine.

Now it is fashionable on the left to sup- port not Jewish but anti-Jewish terrorists. We tend to forget that in 1947, soon after the holocaust, there did seem to be grounds for excusing the Jews from normal laws of behaviour. An English left-wing journalist (one who is probably now on the side of the Arab terrorists) wrote that the Jews had 'a ticket to ride'. The rest of the world had a bad debt accumulated by Hitler. This is what Mr Begin meant when he answered ac- cusations on Israel's bombing of West Beirut by showing us photographs of the Polish Jews being led to the death camps. This is what he means when he talks of `blood libels' against the state of Israel; I can even think of some likely 'blood libel lawyers', near to the Temple and Gray's Inn Road.

But Mr Begin is wrong. The rest of the world in general is not responsible for the crimes of Hitler and his subordinates. Those who ordered and carried out the murder of Jews were responsible and should be punished. All Nazi war criminals should be brought to trial and punished, however old. And so should the people who ordered or carried out the bombing of the King David Hotel and the murder of two English sergeants. To put it bluntly, Menachem Begin, if he comes to this coun- try, should be arrested and tried for murder; as should the ancient IRA men who came on BBC television to boast of the murders they did in the early 1920s.

Why should the British feel any guilt for what the Nazis did to the Jews? Those crimes were done by individual Germans (and Poles and Ukrainians) who must in the end answer to God. Whenever possible they should answer as well to an earthly power. But their sins are not collective. Even in Germany there were many who, with greater or lesser courage, deplored the crimes of the Hitler regime.

The English did not deserve the wrath and vengeance of Zionists like Begin. Mediaeval England, until the unfortunate reign of Edward III, was tolerant of Jews; even King John, who is often wrongly por- trayed as anti-semitic, took pains to check the persecution of Jews in cities like Lin- coln. England accepted hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the pogroms of central and eastern Europe in the .18th and 19th centuries. Manchester, Leeds and to a lesser extent London flourished largely because of their Jewish communities. Almost alone in Europe dur- ing the 20th century, England did not pro- duce an anti-semitic movement. People like Oswald Mosley attracted only minute sup- port. There were plenty of jokes about Jews — from Dickens's Fagin onwards — but no real hostility. Although G. K. Chesterton is often described as an anti-semite, he was, if you trouble to read him, friendly and understanding towards the Jews; he liked them but he insisted on thinking of them as foreign.

And England has done well by Jews. Some have gone into unadmirable jobs like property speculation, gold mining finances, Trotskyist politics, sex counselling and psychoanalysis. But many more are surgeons, university lecturers, restaurateurs and taxi-drivers. Some of my best friends . . . but the truth is that most English people actually like the Jews, which was why we were so enraged in 1947 by Mr Begin and his kind. Even the English remember insults, and that was one we should not forget. It was a crime to blow up the King David Hotel and to murder the two British sergeants; it was even more a crime to justify their murders by what had been done in Nazi Germany. England did not support or condone Hitler. Our Foreign Office may not have done enough to help the victims of Nazism, just as it does not do enough to help the modern victims of Com- munism. But many English people did give help to the Jews: I am proud to say that my parents took in a Jewish child and helped the rest of his family. Of course we should all have done more; but it cannot be said that those who did not do enough share the guilt of the murderers.

T n Beirut, in what we have now come to 'call West Beirut, I witnessed in 1969 a demonstration by young people, com- parable to the 'demos' that were popular at the time in the US, Berlin, Paris and Derry, wherever the angry young wanted to kick their heels. Most of the demos in those days were aimed at American intervention in Vietnam. No demos were made against the appalling war then waged against the Biafran or Ibo people of eastern Nigeria; this was the one great crime of recent history, but Biafra's cause attracted sup- port from only a few cranks like Auberon Waugh and myself. The Biafrans did not use terror.

The Lebanese youths, I was told, were marching about conscription. 'They are against it?' I asked my Lebanese informant. 'No,' he said, 'they are demonstrating in favour of conscription.' The Moslem Lebanese were wanting to learn the martial skills in order to fight on the side of the

`It got wrecked when Athens played Man- chester United.'

The Spectator 23 October 1982 Palestinian Arabs. The next week I went 10 Amman, the capital of Jordan, where gunmen of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation held me up in the lounge 0f the Intercontinental Hotel, asking Or money. 'No thanks,' I said, with a smile' Not long afterwards, the Jordan government troops slaughtered the PLO and drove then' to other unhappy Arab countries, including Lebanon.

In 1938, a Jewish terrorist shot and killed

the German consul in Paris. The Nal" government used this as an excuse for a murder campaign against the German JeWS: the Crystal Night. In 1982, an Arab ter' rorist shot the Israeli ambassador in Len" don. The Israeli government used this as , excuse to invade Lebanon, and to bombaru the PLO stronghold of West Beirut. On the day I went into West Beirut in August' very loud bang alarmed even the locals ae" customed to days of bombing and shells. 11 turned out that the Jews or their Christian, Lebanese allies had left some 200 kilos °` dynamite in a car outside the Ministry of In formation. A few weeks later, another ear bomb killed 60 people in East Beirut i".; cluding the president-elect, Bast!' Gemayel. Three days after that, the Chrls. tian Lebanese murdered about 1,000 meat women and children in West Beirut, in t" refugee camps.

The Jews, the Arabs and then the Chris'

tians have taken to murder by bomb /0 bullet. If only because they were last 1r,the the game of terror, one has to favour tb''), Lebanese Christians, always defarae.ci .„0 the organs of left-wing, liberal opirn", abroad; always described as `right-W1 and `Phalangist', whatever that mearls.0 Levantine terms. I once heard a BBC n' broadcast spoken in prissy Oxbridge ac

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cents: 'Today, the area of Beirut occuP1`”, by the right-wing, Phalangist Christiana

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came under artillery fire from the SYr'of peace-keeping force.' After the death is Bashir Gemayel, the Guardian carried had breathtaking report: 'His father i'e already laid the foundation of the Pbal.ai:0 after being impressed by the Nazis durareo visit to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He t to. came to power in Lebanon with the rePti,be tion of a warlord. He was clearlY Israelis' preferred candidate.' art)' Clearly? The representative of a P rif founded on admiration of Hitler was der;a0 the favourite of the Israelis? The Guar only shows how muddled things ' become in that part of the world. elvileer Lebanese Christians themselves have gory been much concerned with 20th-ceildays ideology. Their troubles go back to thel o when most of their people apostastse heir Islam and they were left to the cult of :17w own St Maron. As one of the Mar los said to me in the summer: 'Nothing

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le gone right for us since the Crusaders est Now, inexorably, the Christian Lebal1,44 have followed the Muslims, who Lobo the Jews into this new and horrible wort assassinations and car-bombs.