The Last Revisionist Zionist

Jabotinsky abhorred wanton killing and condemned terrorism, but his disciples in Palestine believed that only acts of terror directed against the British occupiers would free the land and establish a Jewish state. Shamir and Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, the largest underground group and Lehi's main competitor, planned their revolt against the British despite the objections of Jabotinsky. The underground therefore was both an indirect challenge to Shamir's mentor and a direct challenge to the elected bodies of the Yishuv, the PRE -- 1948 Jewish community in Palestine. David Ben -- Gurion, the doughty Labor leader who would become Israel's FIrst prime minister, and the leadership of the Yishuv "had the habits of settling for immediate, if deceptive, calm," writes Shamir, adding a fat hint about his feelings on Labor's current politics. Then, as now, his leftist opponents displayed "a kind of pessimism inappropriate to the daring concepts that were both Herzl's and Jabotinsky's." Shamir is not concerned in the least that those "pessimists" represented the overwhelming majority of the Yishuv, and that they correctly assumed that the real threat to Jewish statehood was Arab belligerence, not British intransigence. Ben -- Gurion and his allies opposed terrorist acts against the British on moral and political grounds. Strained relations with the British jeopardized military preparations for the inevitable confrontation with the Arabs, which of course came when six Arab armies immediately invaded Israel after it declared its independence on May 14, 1948. One shudders to think what would have happened had the "dissenters" -- Shamir and Begin -- been directing Jewish political activity during the crucial years before 1948.

But the Lehi, led by Shamir, had no doubts about the "daring concepts" of Zionism, and dismissed the realpolitik of Ben -- Gurion, depicting him as the founder of the "Jerusalem National Old -- Aged Home." Avraham Stern, the founder of Lehi, wrote: "Force always forged the destiny of nations . . . The destiny of the land of Israel has always been determined by the sword, not diplomacy. The only justice in the world is force and the dearest asset in the world is freedom. The right to life is granted only to the strong, and power, if not given legally, should be taken illegally."

STERN UND DRANG

Kati Marton has written a fine new book about Lehi's final act of pistol diplomacy -- the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, the U.N. mediator given the unenviable task of resolving the Arab -- Israeli dispute during the warfare of 1948. Marton has done a splendid job of recounting the tragic tale of the Swedish messenger of peace who paid with his life for his naive attempt to meddle in the Byzantine politics of the Middle East. She provides a solid historical background to explain Bernadotte's murder in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood by Shamir's gunmen on September 17, 1948. Some of Marton's historical contexts are strained, and her attempt to connect the 1948 assassination to the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron's Ibrahimi mosque by a fanatical Jewish settler is tenuous at best. She highlights, however, important facts that Shamir, in his autobiography, chooses to blur. Marton meticulously describes Shamir's direct responsibility for planning and giving the order to commit the crime, a widely known fact in Israel. Shamir, however, dismisses the deed: "The idea was conceived in Jerusalem by Lehi members operating there more or less independently. Our opinion was asked and we offered no opposition." This laconic treatment is another reason why the Lehi commander's autobiography cannot be treated as a wholly reliable historical document.

Lehi's modus operandi was objectionable even to Begin. "He opposed all assassinations," Shamir writes of the Irgun leader. "Going to war when there was no alternative was all right, but the singling out of one person, even of an informer, for execution was morally wrong in his eyes." Shamir writes disapprovingly about Begin's belief "in the primary importance of the political effort and its priority over armed conflict." Begin once asked Shamir, "Do you really think you can create a state with pistols?" Shamir, however, had no second thoughts. Even after the state of Israel was established, he believed that he could change the course of history itself with pistols.

Shamir would like to conclude the story of Lehi with the end of the underground days, and therefore devotes only one short paragraph to his failed attempt to form a political party. This was indeed a farce, and Shamir writes that he "had not especially welcomed or encouraged the party's birth, so its end . . . did not sadden me." Thus he exempts himself from describing the deep rift between ex -- Lehi members from the radical left and the radical right.

More significantly, he does not have to reflect on the difference between himself and Begin, the other great underground leader: Shamir could not adapt to ordinary political life, while Begin showed great political skill in transforming his Irgun from an underground movement to a mass political party -- the Likud. Thus, Begin could offer Shamir a place in the Likud's leadership when Shamir retired from the Mossad in 1970. What he was unable to achieve in 1949, he received from Begin on a silver platter: a place in Israel's national leadership. In 1983, in a moment of great irony, he received Begin's supreme gift, the prime ministership, after Begin suddenly resigned in agony over Israel's ill -- fated invasion of Lebanon. Here, then, is the greatest example of the contrast between the principled Begin and the unscrupulous Shamir: it never would have occurred to Shamir to quit over such a matter of conscience.

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE