Editor’s Note: We wish to extend a heart mazal tov to columnist J. Zel Lurie, who celebrated a birthday on December 4th — his 98th!
By J. Zel Lurie
DELRAY BEACH, Florida — The time was the spring of 1936. I was a cub reporter on the Palestine Post, which became the Jerusalem Post 12 years later.
Gershon Agronsky, the founding editor of the Post had invited me to his Friday evening at home. I was walking home around midnight with a small man with thick glasses named Billig. He may have been one of Gershon’s buddies from the Jewish Legion during World War I. He definitely had military trainng.
As we entered the tree-lined streets of Rehavia we heard shots. “Get down,” Billig hissed as he shoved my face to the ground. An open car with young men in the back passed us at high speed.
I raised my head and caught the first three letters of the license plate.
In the morning I called Gershon to report the shots. He was angry. He yelled at me. “Those damn Revisionists. They are trying to provoke an Arab riot like they did n 1929. First thing Sunday morning go to the Russian Compound (the British police) and give them the license numbers.”
Jews did not normally volunteer information to the British police. But that is what I did on Sunday morning. I was too late. I learned that the Arab riot had already started. The Arab Higher Committee, headed by the Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, had called a general strike of indefinite duration. The first Jewish casualties were already reported from Jaffa.
A couple of Jews were caught in the port area and brutally murdered.
A meeting of the Zionist Executive had been scheduled for that Sunday afternoon. It was open to the press and I was there.
The agenda was shelved for a heated discussion of the matsav, the situation. The normally peaceful Orthodox wanted action that would appease the Arabs and restore peace.
Here a word of explanation about the Orthodox Zionist party, which was called Mizrachi, is necessary. Traditionally, the Mizrachi rabbis were always for peace. The conquest of the territories in 1967 turned their heads. Under the leadership of Gush Emunim and the Lubavicher Rebbe they began to fight for a Greater Israel. They twisted Labor’s slogan of Land for Peace to Land Instead of Peace.
Back in 1936, Mizrachi was still peaceful but Chairman David Ben Gurion was not. He made a fiery speech ending with the fighting phrase, “Palestine is no picnic.” He adapted the English word picnic into Hebrew, pronounced peeknik.
Then he looked at me, a 22-year-old pacifist American reporter and said: “Everything said at this meeting is off the record.”
I have followed the journalist’s code and have never written about this meeting until today, 75 years later. But the code does not apply to journalists who were not present at the off-the-record meeting.
I told a Post columnist named Levitan about Ben Gurion’ s speech. A few weeks later, when Jewish settlements all over Palestine were under attack, the Nation in New York published an an article quoting Ben Gurion and headed in big black type “Palestine Is No Picnic.” It was signed with Levitan’s pen name.
Gershon Agronsky fired Levitan some time later and he left for Italy.
The Arab strike lasted six months with Jerusalem under curfew from dusk to dawn the whole time. There was fighting all over Palestine and many casualties — Jewish, Arab and British.
I kept a diary which I still have. It expresses sympathy for the Jewish victims but not for the Arab and British casualties.
The British appointed a Royal Commission headed by Lord Peel. The Peel Commision found that Arabs and Jews can not live together. It recommended a tiny Jewish state running along the coast from Tel Aviv to Akko and continuing into a small portion of Western Galilee. They further recommended that Arabs residing in the proposed Jewish state be transferred out.
Ben Gurion and the Zionist Executive wrestled with the concept of transferring Arabs for several meetings. The final decision was that it was immoral, impractical and opposed to Jewish values.
Everyone, Jew, Arab and British, opposed the Peel commission’s recommendations for different reasons. Then came the British White Paper in 1939 curtailing Jewish immigration, followed by the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.
Finally came the United Nations partition resolution of 1947 which divided Palestine equally between Jew and Arab. I was able to write the headline: U.N. DECLARES A JEWISH STATE.
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Columnist Lurie reflects on turning 98, career
By David A. Schwartz
Staff writer for the Jewish Journal of Southern Florida
Longtime Jewish Journal columnist J. Zel Lurie will celebrate his 98th birthday on Dec. 4. In an interview with the newspaper at his home in Delray Beach, Lurie looked back on his more than 75 years as a journalist for Jewish publications. He said he began his long career in journalism as a reporter for the “Palestinian Post” (which later became the “Jerusalem Post”), covering a swimming competition in Haifa in 1934. Lurie returned to the U.S. in 1937 to complete his education and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
He said he founded Americans for the Haganah and became organization’s spokesman. He also started Hadassah’s first newsletter. Lurie reported for the Jerusalem Post on the events at the United Nations in November 1947 that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Jewish Journal publisher emeritus and columnist Rabbi Bruce Warshal, who hired Lurie to write for the newspaper almost 20 years ago, called him the “dean of American Jewish columnists.”
Warshal said Lurie is a journalist who is recognized all over the United States. “How many people who are around actually covered that vote [in November 1947 for the plan to partition Palestine and create a Jewish state] ?” Warshal asked. “Jews all over the world were listening in,” he said. Lurie is “not just some guy who is living in South Florida,” Warshal said. “He has a lifetime of accomplishment.”
Warshal said Lurie is the “perfect columnist for Israel.” He said that Lurie has both viewpoints, that is, he sees Israel from both the left and the right, politically. But Warshal was quick to acknowledge that Lurie is “a liberal and proud of it.” He said that Lurie is not anti-Israel and noted that Lurie has children and grandchildren who live in Israel. “He has more at stake than many of his critics,” Warshal said.
Columnist Rabbi Yaakov Thompson of the Sunrise Jewish Center, who also writes frequently in the Jewish Journal, said it is his pleasure to read every one of Lurie’s articles. He called Lurie the “elder statesman of the Jewish press.” Thompson said that reading Lurie’s columns is “always a celebration of the great diversity of opinion in the Jewish community” He said that although he disagrees with Lurie’s “high hopes for a quick peace in the Middle East” and Lurie’s faith in the Obama administration to make that happen, he would be very happy if Lurie’s prophecy proved to be true.
When Lurie was asked during the interview about his columns and told that many of the newspaper’s readers do not share his point of view, he said he has been in the minority “probably all my life.” He is not “anti-Israel” but “pro-peace,” Lurie said. “What keeps me going is there’s always an advance and the minority becomes the majority,” he said. “Right now the Palestinians are thriving and when the election is over, they will make peace. The Israelis believe there will never be peace.” And Israeli settlers and the Orthodox would reject peace, Lurie added. Still, Lurie said he thinks there will be peace in President Obama’s second term.
He said economic sanctions will hamper Iran in its development of an atomic weapon but Russia will not agree to a boycott of Iranian oil. Lurie said he doesn’t know how Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon can be stopped. “I certainly wouldn’t start a war,” he said. “If Israel bombs Iran, there are thousands of missiles in Lebanon aimed at every Israeli city. The Israeli army would have to go in and destroy Lebanon. It would be an awful mess.” He said he is not concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon. “It doesn’t excite me in the slightest,” he said, citing the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Iran knows that if it uses nuclear weapons on Israel, then Israel will use its nuclear weapons on Iran, Lurie said.
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Postscript from J. Zel Lurie: Rabbi Thompson calls me an “elder statesman” He is only half right. Yasser Arafat was a stattesman . He lied to Bill Clinton and prevented peace. Netanyahu is a statesman. He lied to French President Sarkozy and Obama expressed his sympathy.
Rabbi Thompson doubts that my prediction that Obama will make peace before the end of his second term will come true. The Rabbi like many believes that the status quo and expansion of settlements is preferable to peace. I do not. Peace will prevail but first we must elect Obama to his second term.
Bless you all.