Summary
Herut Knesset member whose speech of 5 March 1957, in Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, is the book’s sharpest parliamentary catalogue of the government’s reversed Sinai declarations: Golda Meir had said on 6 November that Gaza was part of the liberated Homeland, David Ben-Gurion’s Sharm al-Sheikh letter had restored Yotvat to the “Third Kingdom of Israel”, and the Knesset had decided the ceasefire accord was “dead and buried and would not be resurrected” — “In this country miracles occur. And evidently this is not the first time that someone has been resurrected” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.303).
Details
- Bader interrupted Ben-Gurion’s Qibya regrets in the Knesset on 30/11/53 with “Not me!” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.193).
- Bader (Knesset Records 22/1243, 5/3/57): there is one language for the Knesset and for the nation for propaganda purposes and a different language at the UN — Meir’s UN speech mentioned neither “Solomon’s Gulf” nor the Eilat Gulf, but the Gulf of Aqaba; what was decided on 7 November was effaced 24 hours later on 8 November “without a decision by the Knesset, without singing Hatikva”, and the “UN Emergency Force” entered the territories; two weeks before, the Coalition had organized “No withdrawal from Gaza” demonstrations, and “yesterday Israeli policemen beat students as they called out shouted the same slogan: no withdrawal” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.303-304).
- The book’s verdict on Bader’s party: Herut’s criticism of the faits accomplis was justified, but its criticism of the withdrawal itself smelled of scoring cheap political points, since the war’s consequences were determined by external global power relations, not by Israel’s actions (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.304).
- Ben-Gurion, replying on 6/3/57, mocked Herut with the claim that “they initiated that campaign, planned that campaign, and Major-General Bader stood at its head” — the translator’s footnote notes the reference is apparently to Yohanan Bader, an editor of the Herut newspaper and subsequently a Knesset member (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.314).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Operation Sinai, United Nations Emergency Force, Qibya