ISRAEL: A Different Stripe

The struggle to create the state of Israel brought forth three great modern Zionist leaders; each had his day and his role. Chaim Weizmann, No. 1, was the gentlemanly persuader, pleading eloquently in the world’s chancelleries, the acknowledged leader until the time came for action. Then in stepped No. 2, David Ben-Gurion, the roughshod warrior-intel lectual, the visionary with a rifle who physically established Israel. Last week, to succeed the retiring Ben-Gurion as Premier, the Mapai, Israel’s biggest party, nominated a man of quite different stripe: Moshe Sharett, 59, Israel’s Foreign Minister.

If David Ben-Gurion has been the fire brand, Moshe Sharett is the count-the-costs civil servant. He went to Israel from Russia at the age of eleven, and grew up amidst Arab farmers, learning their ways and their tongue. He never forgets that Israel is a tiny island in the Moslem sea. In 1913 Sharett enrolled in law at the University of Constantinople; with the outbreak of the war he was drafted into the Turkish army as an officer, and fought at one time against T. E. Lawrence’s Arab irregulars.

After World War I he spent five years at the London School of Economics, studying government and absorbing an admiration for British Socialism. Later, in Palestine, he headed the political department of the Jewish Agency, and was active in organizing the Jewish Brigade within the British army during World War II. In 1946, however, the British imprisoned him for four months on suspicion of condoning terrorism. When Israel became a nation and he its first Foreign Minister, he changed his original Russian name, Shertok, meaning “little devil,” to Sharett, meaning “servant.”

Slight, short Moshe Sharett is meticulous to the point of being pedantic; his Cabinet nickname is “Teacher.” Recently he summoned a press conference, talked without interruption for half an hour. Finally a foreign correspondent nudged an Israeli newsman: “What’s he saying?” “Oh, he hasn’t begun yet,” replied the Israeli. “He is attacking the Hebrew press for misusing Hebrew words.”

Sharett, a cautious legalist by temperament, will probably pay more heed to the U.N. and to Western wishes than his rambunctious predecessor. For Sharett believes in the give & take of negotiation, while B-G believed more in the power of a fait accompli. The two clashed violently over Israel’s defiance of the U.N. on the Jordan dam project, and over the Kibya massacre.

Said one Israeli observer: “With Sharett there won’t be any more fireworks. But there will certainly be lectures.”