The murder of Dr. Haim Arlosoroff has once again captured the public's imagination -- or at least part of the public. This month 80 years ago, on June 16, 1933, Arlosoroff, a gifted Zionist-socialist leader, was murdered while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew city. It was a double tragedy. First, it was the murder of a pre-eminent Jew, a rising star in the Zionist firmament. It was also the beginning of an insane and despicable witch hunt within the Yishuv and abroad surrounding the circumstances of his death. Until today it is hard to grasp that during the same year when the Nazi party assumed power in Germany, while Jews were being persecuted in Europe, at a time when Arabs in the Land of Israel were increasing their harassment of Jewish villages and cars -- the heads of Mapai, with David Ben-Gurion at their helm, saw fit to cook up a blood libel against prominent Revisionists, perhaps for political gain. The same occurred 22 years earlier in Russia in what became known as the Beilis Affair. British and Israeli courts, as well as an official committee of inquiry, completely acquitted the three suspects (my father, Abba Ahimeir; Abraham Stavsky; and Ze'evi Rosenblatt), saving them from the gallows, and vindicating all charges of slander against their accusers. Nevertheless, 80 years since that awful day, some people among us continue to spread lies and deception. For instance, Dr. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion's biographer, writes that this was a "political assassination," in other words, a murder by Jews. Professor Zeev Tzahor writes, without basis, that "Stavsky committed the murder" while retired Judge Shelly Timen is scheduled to give a talk entitled "Four Murders of Jews by Jews -- from Arlosoroff to Rabin." Dr. Yossi Beilin, in his May 31 Israel Hayom article on the trial and murder, was surprisingly fair and balanced for a leftist. My father used to call the trial "Beilis all over again." Nevertheless, Beilin's article is not devoid of error. Beilin condemns what he describes as Abba Ahimeir's fascism. It is true that Ahimeir published a column entitled "From the diary of a fascist," in 1928. In other words, long before fascism became what it ultimately became. Later, Ahimeir was quick to dissociate himself from fascism and was the first to initiate anti-Nazi activity in Israel, in May 1933. His fascism was not love for the movement itself, but rather an intellectual reaction against to the cruelty of communism, which he abhorred. Beilin attributes the insult "erev-ze-rav" [a Hebrew pun comparing Arlosoroff to the biblical "mixed multitude" or riffraff] to Arlosoroff's rivals on the Right. The truth is that Revisionists did not come up with it. According to Professor Dov Sadan, Arlosoroff's comrades in his own party -- Berl Katznelson and David Zakai -- are the ones who called him that. Also, Ahimeir did spend 18 months in a British jail, but not -- as Beilin writes -- for murdering Arlosoroff, but rather for leading the first anti-British militia in the land. In 1930, Ahimeir and his friends established the underground movement Brit Habirionim (the Strongmen Alliance). Ahimeir was definitely proud of his group, and was also proud to be a prisoner of Zion. Eighty years ago, Arlosoroff was physically assassinated. My father and teacher, Dr. Abba Ahimeir, was spiritually assassinated, and the people of Israel got caught up in the whirlwind of a near-civil war. Perhaps the time has come to respond to my father's call, on the tenth anniversary of the murder, "Come, let us ascend together to his grave in the Trumpeldor cemetery." Perhaps, in the spirit of the fair and balanced article by Beilin, the time has come to speak the truth and reconcile-
Time to tell the truth about Arlosoroff
מערכת ישראל היום
מערכת "ישראל היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
