It is now one week since one of Israel's great leaders, a pillar of the Labor Party, former head of the Histadrut, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, was taken from us at the age of 100. It is most appropriate that we honor his memory with the words he wrote upon the death of one of his heroes:
[We] were shocked to hear of the terrible tragedy that has befallen the nations of the Soviet Union, the world proletariat and all of progressive mankind, upon the death of the great leader and extolled commander, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. We lower our flag in grief in memory of the great revolutionary fighter, architect of socialist construction, and leader of the world's peace movement. His huge historical achievements will guide generations in their march towards the reign of socialism and communism the world over.
Yeah, verily, Ben-Aharon, deserves no less a lament. Indeed, as the press universally declared this week, he was the "last of the giants". (Hat tip: Amnon Lord)
posted by Ben at 10:53 AM
8 Comments:
In Haggai Segal's weekly column in the same edition of Makor Rishon, he points out that Ben-Aharon has a 34 year-old grandson who is religious, learns in yeshiva and lives in YESHA ("East Gush Etzion").
It is interesting that Ben-Aharon is never referred to as an "extremist", neither, of course, is new Labor Knesset Member Sheli Yechimovich who admitted that in the previous elections she voted HADASH which is the anti-Zionist successor party to the Communists. It seems the mainline Israeli Left seems to have a soft-spot in their hearts for those old Communist mass murderers, which, of course, made it easy to transfer their affections to the more modern one-Arafat.
In the appendix of a book on the life of R' Jehiel Jacob Weinberg byMarc B. Shapiro is a letter to Hitler, signed by prominent orthodox rabbis. Well, it is not quite as bad as that eulogy of Stalin by Ben Aharon, but it is wrong to criticise people in retrospect. Also lets not forget, Stalin's armies liberated the remnant in the camps and fought Hitler.
I would like to point out to Thomas that Ben-Aharon wrote that nauseating peace at the height of the so-called "Doctors Plot" when innocent Jewish Doctors were under arrest and tortured in order to coerce from them false confessions that they intended to kill Soviet leaders. Stalin was using this as an excuse to carry out a second Holocaust by deporting ALL the Jews of the USSR to Siberia. This was the so-called "anti-Cosmopolitan campaign". The whole world was aware of it. Sure Stalin commanded the Red Army that did more than anyone else to defeat the Nazis. His vote was also crucial in the UN for the creation of Israel. Does this make him a Tzaddik? Would you, or Ben-Aharon have liked living in the USSR during the Great Terror? This is a stain that the Marxist/Communist Left has yet to live down, in my opinion, since, as I said, they are still looking for a mass murderer to love, now that their hero Arafat has croaked.
Actually, much of the news about Stalin's crimes came out after his death, 1953. The words of Ben_Aharon date from then. I would think that officially the Isr. govt. would have had to aknowledge his death just because of politics.
Lets face it Idi Amin was trained in Israel and met its leaders. The present chief Rabbi (the one opposing the Gaza pull-out)has just visited Castro. Israel had relations with Sout Africa. If you look hard enough you can find many things that look very bad years later.
Again, in reply to Thomas, you are repeating an old myth of the Left, that "no one knew about Stalin's crimes until Khruschev's 'secret speech' in 1956". That is simply untrue. Arthur Koestler wrote his masterpiece about the purge trials "Darkness at Noon" in 1940! As I said, the "anti-Cosmopolitan (i.e. anti-Semitic) campaign was well underway when he died and was given great publicity.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he asked Stalin, during World War II, how many peasants died during the collectivization campaign of the early 1930's. Stalin held up 10 fingers...now I assume you understand this means 10 MILLION, not just '10'! Churchill's memoirs were published when Stalin was still alive.
In any event Ben-Aharon, Hazan and the rest of the gang wrote this infamous death notice on their own, this was NOT an official governmental action.
Many of old religious Yishuv (not just the Naturei Karta) opposed the creation of the state of Israel. I did not say Stalin was not a major criminal and mass murderer. And, yes a lot of his crimes did come to light after 1953. Just that Ben Aharon's comments are are not so outrageous in context of the times. I wonder what Ben Aharon thought later in life. You are just trying to dig up dirt on every leftist. Ben Aharon was there at the creation of the state. No doubt, the influence of these leftists swayed Stalin for the crucial partition vote.
I think most people DID consider Ben-Aharon's hesped outrageous. Don't forget that Ben-Gurion was strongly anti-Soviet, although he had a strong Marxist mentality. MAPAI kids would beat up Communist kids. The (Jewish) Palestine Communist Party, at least passively supported the Arab terror war of 1936-39 so that did not win them a lot of friends during that period.
Regarding Stalin's support for the Palestine partition plan and his recognition of Israel, it certainly wasn't due to "advice" from Marxist admirers of Stalin like Ben-Aharon, Stalin had purged Hashomer Hatzair people in the USSR long before that. He despised Zionists as "agents of international imperialism". He supported partition because he viewed it as sticking it to the British and a chance to get Soviet influence in the Middle East (which it did). It had nothing to do with "love of the Jews".
Yes, I think it is important to "dig up dirt" on leftists of the type of Ben-Aharon, because their totalitarian mentality has caused much damage to Israel, bringing about the the post-Zionist Left's control of all the arms of state coercion (State Prosecutor's Office, SHABAK, Police, Supreme Court, the state-run media), the basic destruction of democratic life (meaning the people's right and ability to actually influence and change state policy) and their disastrous policy of bring cut-throat mass murderer Arafat to Israel which brought about the totally unnecessary deaths or wounding of thousands of Israelis. We are paying dearly for this Marxist sickness that infected a significant minority of the Jewish people.
Check out www.toughjews.blogspot.com
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