Elie Wiesel once said of Geula Cohen that she was a "hot soul." The energetic, tempestuous Cohen also once said of herself that she had no energy to be tired. Nonetheless, time has taken its toll. Today, the 88-year-old Cohen is a bit calmer and more pacified. Twenty-two years after departing the Knesset, the Israel Prize laureate and veteran stalwart of the Herut movement and the Lehi underground is still a kind of Sambation, that legendary river which raged with rapids and threw up stones and flames. The frequency with which those stones and flames were unleashed, however, has waned. This was evident during our interview with her.
In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that Cohen is one of my childhood heroes. When I was in high school, I eagerly devoured her breathtaking book "Story of a Fighter," in which she describes, through her eyes and the eyes of her Lehi comrades, how the battle for Israel's freedom unfolded. Years later, I gained a greater appreciation for her after she sponsored and spearheaded the passage of the Jerusalem Law, which strengthened Israel's grip on the city, even while there are those who do not cease to speak about its partition.
Years ago, when the idea of having right-leaning newspapers like Israel Hayom and Makor Rishon seemed like far-fetched fantasy, I participated in a series of meetings with journalists who share a Jewish-nationalist worldview who would often get together in Cohen's home. There we would conjure up the idea of a media revolution that would change the agenda of those shaping public opinion in Israel.
Now, as we approach Passover, I returned to that house once again, in one of the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem. It is the house that belongs to a woman with a steadfast belief that even her political adversaries are envious of it. It is a house whose walls talk history. Nearly every section of the wall in Cohen's living room featured a picture of some place. In one direction one can see a painting that depicts Cohen and her son, Tzachi Hanegbi, embracing on the balcony of a home in the town of Yamit, just days before it was razed to the ground in 1982. On the wall above the bookshelf sits a framed image of Cohen in the Knesset as she is tearing up the peace treaty with Egypt in front of the entire plenum.
There's another historic picture alongside it, one showing Cohen planting a tree in the Samaria settlement of Sebastia alongside her partners in the obstacle-filled journey. There were those from religious Zionism, and those from practical Zionism -- Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the spiritual teacher of those who founded the Gush Emunim movement; and Ariel Sharon, the grand builder and destroyer of the settlements.
It was Cohen who made sure to introduce the two individuals. During our conversation with Cohen, it became clear just how special and unconventional her relationship with Sharon was. To this day, she has trouble uttering a negative word about him, even after he "destroyed Gush Katif" and evicted its residents.
Three other pictures stand out. There's the image of Yair, none other than Yair Stern, the fighter, leader, and ideologue of the Lehi underground movement, which Cohen was a part of before the establishment of the state. There's also the enlarged photograph of the heroes of Nili operation, Avshalom Feinberg and Sarah Aaronsohn, holding each other's hands while exchanging loving, innocent glances. The sentimental Cohen melts at the sight of that picture to this day. Finally, there are the three caricatures which immortalize Cohen and which were sketched by two of the most noteworthy figures in the field who are no longer with us -- Kariel Gardosh ("Dosh") of Maariv, and Yaakov Farkash ("Ze'ev") of Haaretz.
Two of them portray Cohen as she was seen in the eyes of the public during that time. In Dosh's caricature, Menachem Begin is depicted as leading his movement, Herut, while having to bear the mark of stitches that were woven on his chest over his heart. The removed heart (which is meant to represent Cohen) is marching in the opposite direction.
In contrast, Ze'ev sketches an entirely different view of Cohen. Begin is seen as a strapping man who returns home happy and contented (after he managed to win passage of the peace treaty with Egypt), while Cohen, his supposedly furious, cheated wife, waits to ambush him as she stands at the door holding a rolling pin.
Pursuit in Bethlehem
Cohen is just as ready to erupt today as well. She loves the Land of Israel dearly, and she is convinced that the peace treaty with Egypt led Israel on a slippery slope that will ultimately threaten the integrity of united Jerusalem. This coming Independence Day, she will receive the honor -- and, in return, honor us all by her presence -- of lighting one of the torches during the state ceremony.
She told us that the honor is more moving to her than when she received the Israel Prize in 2003 for her special contributions to society and the state. "The torch has a flame, which is similar to me," she said, her eyes lighting up. "So it suits me."
Even the conversation with her began with somewhat of a blaze. She had just returned from a visit to Rachel's Tomb, during which she was accompanied by Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Ben Hanan. She had a difficult time calming down.
"What have they done to that place-" she said. "I was crying my eyes out over there."
Like many before her, Cohen had a hard time digesting the scene just outside of Rachel's Tomb, which has turned into a barricaded fortress. Her memory is seared with the innocent, intimate image of a small, domed building with an olive tree sitting atop. It is the image that is remembered in the collective memory as an icon of the Jewish Land of Israel.
"If I had dynamite, I'd blow the thing up," she said. "That's Rachel's Tomb? That's what befits our matriarch? They buried her a second time under a pile of cement."
The roots of this particular psychological wound can be traced back to Cohen's history in Lehi. To be more exact, it goes back to that moment in which the British authorities interrupted her famous underground radio broadcast which was transmitted from Hashomer Street in Tel Aviv.
It was 1946. Cohen was arrested and jailed in an all-female prison in Bethlehem. Her mother, Miriam, visited her often. "On her way to the prison, she would stop at Rachel's Tomb to weep and pray that I would be released from jail," she said. "My mother had long conversations with [Rachel], and she made her swear that she would beg for my freedom before the Almighty Creator," she said.
From the start of her incarceration, Cohen was planning her escape from prison. She tried to execute her plan as Passover was approaching in what would have been a highly symbolic act of restoring her freedom.
At sunset on March 1, 1946, Cohen found a hiding place behind a bush that lied in the prison yard. With a kerchief wrapped around her head -- a common look for Christian women in Bethlehem at the time -- and blue sweat pants covered by a skirt held together by pins, she waited for the whistle that would be blown by her other female jail mates. That whistle would signal to the inmates that the afternoon roll call went by without a hitch.
When the whistle sounded, she jetted from her hiding place and began climbing the wall. Her exposed thighs were lacerated by the barbed wire that covered her legs. She was surprised to learn that the barbed wire had ringed the entire prison from outside.
Bleeding but still fleet afoot, she forcefully made it past the barbed wire and sprinted down the back of the nearby hill toward the next town over, Jerusalem, and its Talpiot quarter. When she began to climb the next hill the prison guards noticed her and tried to chase her down. Many of the villagers nearby joined them.
"Half of Bethlehem ran after me," she said. Cohen was arrested after a bullet penetrated her leg. She fell to the ground. When her pursuers reached her, they angrily cursed her.
"Bint al-shaitan," they said in Arabic. "The daughter of the devil." They ordered her to lift up both arms as if to signal surrender. The British prison warden was so furious that he denied her medical care. It was a personal affront to him that a woman managed to get the best of him and escape from his prison.
Cohen was thrown into solitary confinement, where she took off her shoe and began to bang on the thick, iron door. Four other Jewish inmates who were incarcerated at the time -- Hasia Shapira and Nechama (Naha) Cohen of Lehi; Bracha Shomron and Dvora Shapira of the Irgun -- joined her. That entire night, five Jewish women incessantly banged away at the iron doors of their cells. "This gave us strength, and it certainly drove the British crazy," she laughed.
It took a year for Cohen to successfully escape, this time with the help of garb that was appropriate for Arab women. The clothing was left for her by two Arab women from Abu Ghosh who were treated at the government hospital in Jerusalem. Cohen's friends from outside the prison conjured up an escape plan for her. At first, they ordered her to fake an illness. This attempt failed, though Cohen did eventually get to the hospital when she had contracted a genuine case of pneumonia. She has kept in close touch with her Arab saviors and their families through the years.
"The state betrayed them," she said, recalling the story of how the provisional government headed by David Ben-Gurion arrested Yusuf Abu-Ghosh, himself a Lehi member, following the assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who was killed by the same underground movement. The state also expropriated his home and thousands of acres of land which he owned.
"In the 1960s, Yusuf sank into a deep depression and died years later," Cohen said. To this day, she is in touch with his son, Thabet. She still feels a deep urge to ask Yusuf for forgiveness, "in the name of my ungrateful people, whose leadership has certain individuals who know how to love those who hate us, but hate those who love us."
A torn letter to Arik
Nearly seven decades later, with Passover approaching, Cohen fondly remembers the Seders which she attended at the home of Ariel Sharon.
"Ark was a leader," she said. "He gave orders like a general, even during the Seder. Sharon read the Haggadah word by word. He didn't skip any part, and he really lived the exodus from Egypt, just as we are commanded to do: 'A man must see himself as if he left Egypt.'"
"This was -- not just for him -- the first independence day for the Jewish people, which thousands of years later led to the first-ever Independence Day for the State of Israel," she said. "It really bothered him that the Haggadah skipped over Moses. 'How could this be-' he would ask every year. I didn't have a satisfactory answer for him. Even the experts have a hard time explaining that one."
Israel Hayom: You speak of him as if you miss him greatly.
"It's true. We spent years traveling around Judea and Samaria together to tend to and nurture 'the newly planted seedlings,' the communities that were planted there [Cohen herself lived in a caravan in Kiryat Arba for six years], but the uprooting of Gush Katif wounded my heart. The wounds of someone who loves hurt more, and Sharon once loved this settlement enterprise. For the first time, I understood the significance of the term, 'bitter tears.'
"Arik invited me to meet him before he announced his decision to the public. He informed me that he had decided 'to cluster the settlements inward, together.' I said to him: 'What does that mean "to cluster-" It's an expulsion. It's an eviction. What are you talking about-'
"'There's no other choice,' he said. 'I've come to the conclusion that this is what needs to be done.' After that meeting, I wrote him dozens of letters with harsh, stinging words, and he didn't respond. Then, one day, I told him that I would release the letters to the press. From that day on, he asked that I write him frequently. If I hadn't sent a letter for some time, his secretary would call me and have me dictate to her what I wanted him to hear. He answered curtly, and in writing. He made me swear that I would destroy the letters. I did just that. In hindsight, I'm sorry I did. Once, I even sent him a letter that he wrote which I tore up, just to prove that I was abiding by my promise."
IH: There was a great friendship between the two of you and a very intimate familiarity with one another. What drove him to his decision? Was it really as some of his former friends claim, "the scale of the expulsion is commensurate with the depth of the criminal investigations against him-"
"I don't know. I have a hard time believing this is so. The way I saw it, Arik was very conflicted within himself over what he did. One day, after he destroyed Gush Katif, he came over to my house. I saw his eyes fill up with tears. I asked him, 'Arik, are you crying-' 'Yes, Geula,' he replied. 'What happened-' And he replied: 'There's a reckoning with God that brought me to this.' It was very touching. I'm not a doctor, nor am I God, but I came away with the impression that his heart had defeated his head. Both of them were in conflict. The stroke which felled him was part of it."
IH: Perhaps if Lily was by his side, history would have taken a different turn.
"Perhaps. Lily had a very good influence on him. They were the perfect couple. There's one picture, taken many years ago, which I can't get head out of my head. Lily is standing in the kitchen in their house, and Arik is calling her from the battlefield during the Yom Kippur War. Lily brings the phone's mouthpiece closer to her face and sings in a soft, romantic voice the song 'Anachnu Shneinu Meoto Hakfar' ('We are Both from the Same Village').
"'Arik really needs this,' Lily explained to me after hanging up the phone. 'Just before he went out to battle, and sometimes even during the battle itself, he calls me and asks me to sing to him one of the old Israeli folk songs that he loves'."
"You can't not have an ideology"
Much like her relationship with Sharon, Cohen has also had her ups and downs during her decades-long relationship with Yitzhak Shamir.
"Yitzhak Shamir, my commander in Lehi, was a solid rock who knew how to stand up for the dignity and interests of the Jewish people, without caring what others thought," she said. "On the other hand, he was also cruel."
IH: Cruel-
"Cruel in the sense that he kept his cool. At times, his temperament was terrific. I remember when he made one of the toughest decisions while he was in Lehi -- executing Eliyahu Giladi, who was an irresponsible, daring swashbuckler. Giladi had a plan to execute Ben-Gurion and all of the heads of the Jewish Agency on the charge of 'treason,' and Shamir got word of this. Even before this, Shamir detested Giladi's amorality. Giladi would've killed Shamir as well. Yehoshua Cohen begged Shamir to pre-emptively kill him. Giladi was killed on the sands of Rishon Lezion. The verdict was approved by members of the Lehi central committee.
"I also remember Shamir when he was quite emotional when facing the coffins of Eliyahu Hakhim and Eliyahu Beit Zuri, who were sent by him to assassinate Lord Moyne in Cairo. As a result of the operation, the two men were hanged in Cairo. They were his proteges, and he made every effort to bring their bodies home as part of a prisoner swap with Egypt. As prime minister, Shamir knew how to withstand pressure from the Americans and the world, and not to move one millimeter from the Land of Israel."
IH: But your political conduct, and that of your colleagues in the Tehiya party, led to the downfall of his government.
"That's true. We thought that Shamir's participation in the Madrid conference, in which for the first time ever there was recognition for the PLO murderers as representatives of the Palestinians, would lead to a slippery slope. We were correct in this assessment, but we erred in bringing about his downfall. The toppling of Shamir brought Yitzhak Rabin to power, and it sent us spinning toward the disastrous Oslo Accords."
While Cohen doesn't miss politics, she is regretful that "the level of commitment demonstrated by representatives of the nationalist camp to the integrity of the Land of Israel is lower today." As such, she would be happy to see more women in politics.
When the name of her archrival, Shulamit Aloni, is mentioned, she has good things to say, in addition to some harsh words, about the woman who passed on just a few months ago.
"We liked each other, and we fought each other," Cohen said. "At one point, she stood up in the Knesset and called on the Arabs to form their own Lehi, the 'Freedom Fighters of Ishmael.' I immediately got up, approached her -- nonviolently -- and screamed at her to get down from the podium. This made her furious.
"On the other hand, she was an ideological rival whom I respected. We had many conversations. To this day, I respect people who stand up for their opinions, even if they are in the minority, and they don't hesitate to pay the price."
IH: Does ideology still exist in politics? Or has it been replaced by personal interests-
"You can't not have an ideology, but it has been significantly weakened. It can't die completely. I know that these days many people are always talking about pragmatism. It's quite trendy now. I also knew how to be pragmatic when it was necessary. After Begin evacuated Sinai and the Yamit settlements, my colleagues in Tehiya and I joined his government, much to everyone's surprise. I was the one who was pushing for it. We got the Ministerial Committee for Settlements, which was headed by Professor Yuval Ne'eman. This committee founded 80 settlements in Judea and Samaria. That was wise pragmatism, without giving up on ideology."
"Alterman was a genius and insane"
If there was one thing that Cohen looks back on with regret, it was that she never had the opportunity to serve as education minister.
"I really wanted the job," she said. "But Begin had promised Zevulun Hammer of the National Religious Party. If I had the job, I would perform a Judaization and a Zionization of the entire educational system, and at the same time I would pour great efforts into teaching Arabic and learning about the culture and history of the Middle East. We don't know anything about the culture of our neighbors, about their history. I have grandchildren. What do they know about the history of the Middle East and Arab countries? Instead, they are taught about the United States and Europe. This is important, but we live here!"
IH: The Palestinians, who also live here, want a state. Netanyahu declared his readiness to give them one on condition that they meet certain conditions. He was once in your position. Perhaps Sharon was right when he said that what one sees from the prime minister's chair is different than what one sees from the lawmakers' benches.
Cohen is angered by the statement.
"Perhaps people just get weaker as the years go by, and their opinions get weaker along with them? What, all of a sudden you mean to tell me that from the lofty perch they get a view that wasn't available to them before? A Palestinian state is a historic and moral travesty which would come at the expense of the rights and security of the Jewish people. The settlements are the epitome of Jewish justice, just as Jerusalem is, just as all of the State of Israel is. From the Palestinians' viewpoint, we are all one giant settlement. Only we differentiate between the settlements and other settlements.
"The Palestinians write and say that one day they will liquidate the Jewish people. It's only us that are blind, shuttering our eyes, closing our ears, and imagining to ourselves a different reality. I don't want to kick any Arab out of his home, but I'm not ready to allow others to kick me out of my home."
In recalling her career as a public servant, she has a special fondness for "the emotional moments that I shared with the Jews who immigrated from Ethiopia.
"I remember being in the Israeli consulate in Addis Ababa, and whenever I mentioned Jerusalem, the children there would applaud enthusiastically. The most senior Jewish religious figure in Ethiopia explained it to me this way: 'A sick person goes to the doctor, a thirsty person goes to the water, and a Jew goes to Jerusalem.'
"A few months afterward, I found myself standing at the small military airport in the north, near the ramp of the huge IDF plane, one of many that transported the olim from Operation Solomon to Israel. Prime Minister Shamir was at my side, and he stretched out one of his hands toward this little girl and asks her name. 'Yerushalayim,' she answered. Shamir was in awe. One of the Jewish Agency workers who also arrived from Ethiopia explained to him that this was a very common name for Jewish girls in Ethiopia.
"Afterward, I heard then-IDF chief of staff Ehud Barak ask the senior religious figure from Ethiopia, 'How long did you wait in Ethiopia until you made aliyah to Israel-' He replied: '2,500 years, since the destruction of the First Temple.'"
IH: Do you still get up in the morning and get angry, wishing to change things-
"I would want to change the name of the state, from the State of Israel, to the State of the Land of Israel, because that is the proper name. Once I sponsored such a bill, and they wouldn't allow me to submit it. 'Have you gone crazy-' they asked me. 'Who will vote for such a bill-' But this is the historic, biblical Land of Israel. It's spiritual. It's literary. You say 'France', 'Italy', not 'the State of France'. So why not say the State of the Land of Israel-"
IH: What about its cultural preferences? When it comes to poetry, the state likes the works of Uri Zvi Grinberg.
"Ehud Olmert deserves credit for helping establish Uri Zvi Grinberg Heritage House in Jerusalem, which I remain head of to this day. Uri Zvi was a great poet. It's a shame that his works aren't taught in schools. I'm still waiting for a worthy translator who will be able to translate his words to other languages. Once this happens, the world will go crazy. It would be unprecedented. Who else wrote about the Holocaust in such a manner-"
Cohen also reserves special mention for Yehuda Amichai, Haim Guri, "and, of course, Nathan Alterman. Bialik doesn't interest me as much.
"When it comes to literature, I admire S. Y. Agnon, Moshe Shamir, Aharon Meged, and I would also put Alterman in this category. He was a genius and insane at the same time. His insanity wasn't that of a crazy man, but the insanity of genius. It's no wonder that Uri Zvi, who didn't appreciate that many people, appreciated him."
IH: You gave an interview to the NRG website, which you described as "my last interview." Why did you say that-
"That was the sense I had at the time. It's hard for me to explain, but, happily for me, I'm being interviewed again."
IH: Does death preoccupy your thinking-
"There are time when it does, and there are times when it doesn't. It's not something that grips me constantly, but it's a difficult age. You feel like doing things, you want to jump, but you are only capable of walking. You want to talk, but you are only capable of limping. Whatever you want to do, you do less of it. It's good that the head is still working most of the time. I live each day as if it were a separate entity, and I tell myself, without any hint of regret, that this is how God, the Creator of the Universe, intended it to be, and perhaps this will be my last day, even though I really want to go on living longer."
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו