ALL FOR ISRAEL: REVIEW

One admires caution and fairness in a reporter, and Mr. [Ned Temko], who served in Beirut before he was posted to Jerusalem, knows the journalistic perils of inflated statistics and embroidered horror stories. But in the case of Deir Yassin and again with Sabra and Shatila, Mr. Temko so understates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New York times 1987
Main Authors: H.D.S. GREENWAY, H. D. S. Greenway, an associate editor of The Boston Globe, reported from Israel for The Washington Post from 1976 to 1978.
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Begin, Menachem
Greenway, H D S
TEMKO, NED
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Summary:One admires caution and fairness in a reporter, and Mr. [Ned Temko], who served in Beirut before he was posted to Jerusalem, knows the journalistic perils of inflated statistics and embroidered horror stories. But in the case of Deir Yassin and again with Sabra and Shatila, Mr. Temko so understates what happened as to make the outcry among Jews and non-Jews alike seem capricious and uncalled-for. In a similar vein he says that President Reagan held up delivery of F-16 jets because Mr. [Menachem Begin] bombed a Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in which ''dozens of civilians died.'' According to The New York Times, it was an apartment building that was attacked and the estimated casualties were 300 dead and 800 wounded, thus making Mr. Reagan's reaction more understandable. THE high point of the book is Mr. Temko's account of how Mr. Begin and his Attorney General, Aharon Barak, simply wore down and outnegotiated both Sadat and President Carter at Camp David - creating so many legalistic loopholes that Sadat finally bought a separate peace without gaining anything of substance for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. That, Mr. Temko makes clear, was Mr. Begin's intention all along. '' 'Anwar Sadat doesn't understand what he agreed to at Camp David,' '' Mr. Temko quotes Begin as ''crowing to his aides.'' Mr. Temko was not able to interview Mr. Begin himself. Mr. Begin has turned down all his biographers. But Mr. Temko has caught the essence of this extraordinary man. ''Begin was one of those rare persons who sum up an entire people, an entire generation,'' he concludes. ''He was a hurt, insecure, angry shtetl Jew - an ugly child, a weakling, and a loner forced to find ways to prevail.'' But his struggle ''did help make him a symbol and an inspiration for many thousands of Jews.'' For good or ill he changed the Jewish state forever.
ISSN:0362-4331