Zeevi, Rehavam

Rehavaam Amikam Ze'evi was born into a family of indigenous Jerusalemites (sixth generation). As a youth, Rehavaam Zeevi joined the Mahanot olim youth movement. In 1944, he was mobilized in Palmach (a division of the Hagany ).

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Ze'evi continued his service in the Israel Defense Forces . Prior to his retirement in 1973, he commanded a battalion in the Golani brigade, was a senior intelligence officer at the headquarters of the Southern District , and in the Suez crisis of 1956 was chief of staff of the Southern District ; in 1968, Zeevi was appointed commander of the Central District , and served as chief of the operations department of the general staff. In the Doomsday War was a personal assistant to the chief of staff. Zeevi graduated from the highest military academy of the US Army and was considered one of the most competent analysts of the Israel Defense Forces .

After demobilization, he was appointed adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the fight against terror . In the early 1980s , Zeevi became chairman of the directorate of the Tel Aviv Museum of Eretz Israel . Working in the museum, he published a number of books and articles on the history and geography of Israel. He was the editor of the library "Masaot Bnei Yisrael". Zeevi has written and edited over 70 books. His last work was a book about Hebron , in which he collected rare documents and photographs of the pogrom of 1929. ^[6]

In 1988, Zeevi was elected a Knesset member from the Moledet party. In 1991, he joined the government of Yitzhak Shamir , but left the government in protest against the Israeli-Palestinian talks in Madrid. Despite the attractiveness of the Moledet party program for some segments of the population, the party could not get more than three seats in the Knesset elections.

He propagandized the idea of ​​voluntary transfer of Palestinian Arabs. The idea of ​​transfer was the cornerstone of the party program "Moledet" ^[1] , but, unlike the followers of Meir Kahane , the emphasis was on his voluntariness.

Many did not agree with this idea or with any other political and ideological convictions of Gandhi, but according to several sources, “no one ever doubted his sincere loyalty to the people and the land of Israel, for which he enjoyed general respect” ^{[6] [7 ] [8]} .

In March 2001, Zeevi joined the ruling coalition of Ariel Sharon and received the post of Minister of Tourism. Before taking office, he stated that he would suppress the Palestinian intifada and that "the Palestinians would crawl on our hands and knees, asking for a truce." Many foreign representatives refused to meet with Zeevi when he was minister ^[9] .

On October 17, 2001, Zeevi was shot dead by PFLP fighters in the Jerusalem Hotel Hayat. On this day, he intended to leave the coalition of Sharon in protest against the partial withdrawal of troops from Hebron ^[9] .

Tens of thousands of people took part in the mourning ceremony, among them all well-known Israeli politicians and military ^{[10] [11]} . The funerals were rabbis, Arabs, Knesset members, friends, and children of Gandhi. It was said that in everyday life Gandhi was a very modest man, compliant, ready to help anyone - a Jew, and an Arab, or a friend - in solving any household problems: education, wedding, kindergarten, etc. One Arab speaker said: “Gandhi was a good man and helped us all, but when it came to belief, he was straightforward and uncompromising. He spoke about what he believed in, and he believed in what he said ” ^[6] . Gandhi could raise the whole of Israel to find a doctor for a dying Arab child and save his life. In one of the Arab villages there is a street named after him ^[7] .

In a farewell speech, Beni Elon , his associate and successor in the Knesset, said:

Over the past year in Israel, many people have died at the hands of terrorists. Gandhi was at every funeral, he spent every one of the dead. Always walked with a badge on the chest, which are soldiers. On it - the numbers of soldiers captured on the border with Lebanon. It seems to me that Gandhi absorbed all the pain of the Jewish people, all the tension of his struggle for survival and for the right to be a free people on his land. So he fell - as a soldier in the struggle for his people and his country ^[6]

Rehavam Ze'evi was a supporter of an exclusively peaceful transfer of Arabs (during peace negotiations). He considered such a relocation "cure of a demographic disease" ^[9] . According to him,

... the first stage - the departure of Jews from Arab countries has already occurred. Now it is necessary to complete the transfer of the Arabs, but only on a voluntary basis.
“I never called for throwing out hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Eretz Israel,” said Zeevi. - The transfer is not only in our, but also in their interests. We need to reach an agreement with the international community to convince the Arab countries to accept their fellow tribesmen. At the same time, every Arab family should be paid adequate compensation for its home, so that at a new location, it can purchase real estate ^[7]

According to other sources, Zeevi did not rule out the forcible deportation of Arabs of Palestine during military operations or by a sharp deterioration in the standard of living of the Palestinian population in an artificial way. According to Ben Lynfield's article in the Christian Science Monitor, according to Zeevi, this could be achieved in three ways -

1. Make the life of the Palestinians so unbearable that they will leave themselves;
2. Agree on a transfer with Arab countries;
3. In the event of war, the transfer can be carried out by force ^[12] .

According to the Guardian newspaper, Zeevi called for depriving Arabs, Israeli citizens, of voting rights on the grounds that they did not serve in the Army, and believed that Israel should seize Jordan, because Israeli tribes lived there in the biblical era ^[13] .

According to Donald Neff of Washington Report in Middle East Affairs (often criticized by US Jewish organizations for his pro-Arab position ^[14] , and among whose Israeli authors are declared Uri Avnery , Ilan Pappe , Israel Shahak ...), “Zeevi called the Palestinians a“ cancer ”and "Lice" " ^[15] .

In fact, Zeevi’s words referred only to 180,000 Palestinian Arabs who immigrated from Israeli-occupied territories, living and working illegally in Israel. In an interview with the radio station " Galya TSAHAL ", he said the following ^[16] :

They come here and try to become Israeli citizens because they want to get the right to social security benefits. We must get rid of those who are not Israeli citizens in the same way that they get rid of lice. We must stop the spread of this cancer among us.

Original Text (eng.)

"Ze'evi said." "We get rid of lice. We’re getting there."

Zeevi is also known for calling George Bush the elder “liar and anti-Semite”, he called Ehud Barak “crazy”, and Yasser Arafat “war criminal” and “snake”. He argued that the first transfer was made by Avod's party in 1948 ^[9] .

According to Moshe Cohn (The Jerusalem Post ^[17] ) and President of Israel Shimon Peres ^[8] , Rehavam Zeevi was completely unfairly labeled as “fascist” and “racist” for defending the idea of ​​transfer:

If we consider the transfer of Arabs from the land of Israel as an agreement or, if necessary, coercion deserving one of these epithets, then both he and the named Zionists and other respectable Jews find themselves in the glorious company of such “fascist-racists”

• Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Fridtjof Nansen, organizer of the mutual transfer of the Greek and Turkish populations after the First World War;
• The 31st President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, his followers, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Sir Norman Angel,
• Royal 1937 year (English) Peel Commission,
• English Colonel Richard Meinertzagen,
• American author John Gunter,
• Harry St. John Philby, a fanatical British anti-Zionist and advisor to the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the man responsible for the transfer of Hashemite Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula to Transjordan,
• His Holiness James Parks, an English Christian theologian and historian
• British Colonial Minister William Ormsby-Gore, British Labor Party, British Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Anthony Eden and other non-Jewish leaders,

[who at certain stages expressed the idea of ​​transferring Arabs from Palestine.]

(The history of the transfer is set out in Chaim Simon’s book “International proposals for the transfer of Arabs from Palestine”, 1988) ^[17] .

Terror by the Palestinian Arabs after the Oslo Accords , even before the start of the 2nd intifada , drastically changed the attitude of Israelis towards the idea of ​​transfer, which was supported by Rehavam Zeevi, and towards this very word. According to the journalist Alexander Kogan ^[18]

... the more the Israelis buried the dead, in parallel increasing the volumes of the proposed to the Palestinians in the negotiations, the faster their point of view changed. In September 1998, the results of a survey among Israeli Jews about the deportation of Arabs from the territory of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip were stunning. To the question: “Do you agree to transfer the Palestinians, if Israel can conduct it without“ diplomatic ”consequences?” 65% of respondents answered “Yes”. After three and a half years, 46 percent of Israelis agree to even suffer for a “just cause”.

Until the end of his days, Zeevi considered the transfer "the only way out for Jews and Palestinian Arabs." He was convinced (and tried to convince opponents) that sooner or later the transfer will occur. Or transfer to the Arabs, or - the Jews. But it will shed a lot of blood ... ^[7]

Peace Plan B. Elon ( eng. )

• Zeevi Rehav'am - an article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Rehavam Zeevi (Neopr.) . Knesset The appeal date is May 15, 2013. Archived May 21, 2013.
• Mosaics with Israeli Gandhi Michael Dorfman