Postscript
Shoa business
Patrick Marnhant
Abook has been published that sh°1/eild cause a few headaches for the israao government's information officers It associated apologists. It is called Longest (Chatto & Windt's, Picador £2.50), and it is written bY Jae° Pri5°I _Mr Timerman's previous boak, 1. Without a Name, Cell Without a Milli% math at eb ohoi him he describeddienstcerrinbaetdi ohni as l erxepPeur itean7eria a victim of Argentinian tyranny. He IsA-rg who has lived for most of his life in "-ner tina where he became one of the leading 'of ponents of the regime. He was the ecli,tLrol La Opinien, the country's first newspaper. He was eventually arrested tortured. His likely fate was to beconle usif Of as the thousands of 'disappeared'. 13,t1tnist. merman w also an influent H ial Z1c) Ti "1,31 his death hdaedatfhriewnodusidwhcoaawsee exreatbrelemte e o en nisbUar,erriassos. ment to the rulers of Argentina. nt ;li. to therefore fortunate enough to be au'd to leave that country, with his familY, arthal settle in Israel. He had finally foun° reason to settle in Israel which so °bee! Zionists today never find; he ,113„cl:Alld persecuted and he had found a rert16-al it he makes it clear in this book that Isr`-tv now his home and that he regards it proper destiny of every Jew to settle the_ii Now we come to the embarrassing Poor, Mr Timerman does not feel that it is to part of his gratitude to his new coci ‘
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he should leave his principles beltinw1"',11( he enters it. And in The Longest " makes a fierce attack on the present israni government, in particular on Mr Begin. General Sharon, and on the tradittofiw Israeli attitude towards the Palestinian5. considers that Begin's government ot totalitarian in inspiration,.and that 1,11„e,ari in the Lebanon took place because General Sharon had a Pr logical need to wage a war and had saving one up for himself for some time. 7, etmbuarennrmotnoanat'hnsedsfwornoasnstteh.revaedj aialseda for returnTrei o Olt The reasons why Sharon's war was 5 The popular in Israel are clearly described.es soldiers, who had always seen themseivanc,' heroic defenders of their small eol'nfarre looked on while their artillery and ai d.es,treYed the crowded cities of Tyre, s (11.'3n, Damur and West Beirut. They hiscovered that the Palestinians did not :I'll 500 modern tanks, as they had been but only 90 obsolete tanks which e‘134111d not move. Then they listened while ht. Regin told the people at home that the si,raeli army had conquered several divi- of Panzers. As the Israeli soldiers ivatelled, more children were kilted in one Trn 4241th in Beirut than had died from Palesti- , s'ati terrorism in 30 years. Finally the :idlers turned on Israeli reporters and ac- tr,s,,e,c1 them of cowardice in refusing to con- ckuct the lies put out by the Ministry of erinence- Meanwhile back in Israel people tu r to the BBC to find out what was tep;'Y happening. This was all quite familiar Man from Argentina. Ler, r Timerman twice travelled through the 04-alion as a war reporter. He returned on the occasion to find that the chief rabbi of she Israeli army had produced a new map th,°Ivillg that the Lebanon was marked as A'ssterritory of the antique Jewish tribe of tser, and that Beirut was now to be spelled yooer°t. He recalls that when he was a reg-nng Zionist he and his friends had always Ap-rtsr,cled Menachem Begin as a terrorist. oh" Ile considers that he is a terrorist still, rpt.°11gh he is now the most powerful ter- ist in the world. At one point Mr Timer- Re44, tried to file an insanity suit against Mr rtlighl;11 in the belief that the Israeli prime tiCo'ster suffers from violent hallucina- of's' He is quite certain that the outcome y present Israeli policy will be that in five oeIrt s the PLO will have rebuilt its military rtsrlisation along more effective and more ess lines. He would prefer not to live in I,,lI:ea-11114Y where, when he takes his two- grand son for a walk, he is told.. .;hturn will come with the war of '99. I lira ue unoriginal conclusion, and one has‘vrl hY most Zionists, is that once Begin 49rie everything will be all right again. the linerman, on the contrary, realises that tee °WY hope for Israel's future lies in an 4eeeriptance of the Palestinians and their f Or a country too. If Zionism ever ac- that, then it will have changed beyond iroirlition. The force of his book comes t,Ile fact that it is written from inside is e,7.°Y a man of great moral stature who
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SOb. Y devoted to his country. He has the t\`' Painful things to say to the Jews of ii"asPora. the e, and many other Israelis, do not like tIttow..,45' in which Jews outside Israel have eiu'the Holocaust' into 'a civil fortn'• he reveals that the Hebrew word 4A"010CatiSt is Shoa. In Israel there is a 'Tting to describe this new religion: hltere's no business like Shoa business.' rgf`lfeillIt eegristi is of course one of the worst nde When it comes to misusing the be 4.°rY of the Nazi persecution. It would , toold'ce if the press in Britain and America 'e1e,k4 in future pay more attention to the repos of Israelis like Mr Timerman when tioo rting the Middle East, and less atten- the bt? the usual spokesmen for the Jews of lasPora.
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