Premier Yitzhak Shamir came to the defense Tuesday of Tehiya MK Geula Cohen, who is under attack by Laborites and other Knesset factions, and by her hardline Tehiya colleague, Rafael Eitan. Cohen proposed in a television interview that extreme leftists and those favoring a Palestinian state should be purged from Israel’s secret service and defense establishments.
According to Shamir, if Cohen "meant people who oppose the very existence of the State of Israel and support a Palestinian state, if that is what she meant, then I do not think there is any grounds for the attacks on her. And that is what she says she meant."
The Labor Party Executive condemned Cohen’s remarks as "McCarthyite." Mapam and the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM) announced that they would henceforth ignore and ostracize Cohen. Ram Cohen, a CRM MK and reserve colonel, said if people with leftist views were weeded out, the country’s security would collapse.
The sharpest words came from Eitan, a former Chief of Staff, who said it was unjust to question peoples’ loyalty because of their political views. Eitan told Voice of Israel Radio Tuesday that during his entire career in the army there were always leftwingers, often in the most dangerous and sensitive positions, and they were not disloyal. He denied that his criticism of Geula Cohen stemmed from their internal Tehiya feud.
Geula Cohen, who is on the far right of the political spectrum, suggested in the television interview that recent embarrassments to Israel were the result of "leaks" by "leftist elements" who had penetrated the security services.
She was referring to reports of Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons build-up given to a British newspaper by Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona nuclear facility who is known to have leftwing and pro-Arab sympathies, and to the earlier scandal that rocked Shin Bet, the internal security service, over the deaths of two captured Arab bus hijackers at the hands of Israeli security agents.
Tehiya, except for Eitan, rallied around Geula Cohen. Likud, which sometimes has ideological affinities with Tehiya, maintained an embarrassed silence–until Shamir’s remarks Tuesday.
Ministry-Without-Protfolio Yosef Shapira of the religious party, Morasha, urged Cohen to reexamine her remarks and apologize. Shapira said he would gladly entrust his life to Hashomer Hatzair, the leftist Mapam youth movement.
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