In January 1972, the then leader of the opposition, Menachem Begin, accompanied his cheerful wife on a historic visit to London.
It was the first time that the commander of the Jewish revolt against the British Empire landed in its capital, almost a quarter of a century after that revolt led to the expulsion of the British from Israel and the establishment of the Jewish state.
A sense of historic status was in the air, and many in the UK gave their opinion on the visit.
Some saw it as a conciliatory symbolism, some were intrigued by the very character of the guest, and some poured threats on him and anyone who was expected to meet him or listen to him in public performances, just because he was Israeli.
Among the various voices stood out with special hostility Christopher Mayahu, an influential Labor MP and former minister.
Begin's eye did not disappear from the man's anti-Israel activity, and he attributed it to Mayahu as a senior aide to Foreign Minister Ernest Bowen, whose policy was known to be overly hostile to aspirations for the establishment of a Jewish state.
Mayahu himself boasted that in the years after World War II, the Hebrew underground movement in Israel sought to eliminate him, and Begin did not remain obligated.
"It was not and was not created. Who in those days was even interested in one of them?", He hurried to put it in place.
"I did not even remember his name. I only recently heard about him at the head of the anti - Israel gang in the House of Representatives, which praises Fatah gangs, those who use their bombs on purpose, against civilians, women and children."
Maariv reported on the start of the trial in Jerusalem,
"From the haters of Israel like him, every mud is a perfume, every poison is a poison of life, every curse is a blessing," Begin concluded his opinion of Miyahu, not knowing that as a result of a legal drama in Jerusalem during his reign, this opinion will be given a final legal seal.
The research of historian Dr. Shuki Blass re-reveals an affair that agitated Israel in the late 1970s, and became clear in the Jerusalem District Court against the backdrop of the shocks of the period. The entire Arab world has spawned a wave of renewed hatred against the Jewish people and their country, and the helplessness of the Arabs on the battlefield in the face of those who have always been seen by anti-Semites as an easy and convenient target for attacks will ignite another outburst of anti-Semitism.
"Mayahu was one of the founders of a strong pro-Arab lobby - the Council for the Advancement of British-British Understanding (CAABU)," said Dr. Blass. Life.
One of the arguments that the lobby tried to spread focused on the context theory regarding the existence of a 'Zionist lobby', which allegedly operates in crooked and hidden ways in order to prevent a fair discussion of the conflict in the Middle East and lead to biased media coverage in favor of Israel.
"In simple terms, CAABU sought to present itself as an underdog, as a muted voice for justice in the face of 'predatory and omnipotent scores'."
"Because of the contempt they were not focused."
Prof. Porat,
Among some circles in Europe even the word "Zionist" was already labeled in those days as a curse.
The UN Disgrace - UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 - was adopted on November 10, 1975, declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Anti-Semites around the world immediately used it to disguise their true intentions: they could Attacking Jews and pushing them from every possible place, while at the same time claiming that they are allegedly acting against racism, in the name of the forces of light and against the forces of darkness.
In the same year, Mayahu and Adams published the book "Publish It Not: The Middle East Cover-Up", a kind of indictment against Israel and its supporters.
In essence, Dr. Blass explains, he had no more than a cycle of antisemitic lies from the past, now directed against Israel with the addition of complaints about "censorship of the Zionist lobby."
However, thanks to the authors' status and influence in British society, the book was accepted with interest.
CAABU and other pro-Arab arms have been responsible for the publication of sympathetic reviews, some of which were written by renowned commentators linked to them.
Unsurprisingly, a particularly praiseworthy critique, which actually did not need to be commissioned, was published in a fringe newspaper, affiliated with an extremist fascist organization.
The author of the review was very impressed by the "courage" needed to go against the "Zionist lobby", and was genuinely enthusiastic about Miyahu and Madams.
Serial silencer
The idyll of the orchestrated support was broken by a lone voice, by Maariv reporter in London, Yosef Finkelston.
Like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale, Finkelstone did not hesitate to shout in loud voices that the king was naked.
"In an article for Maariv in Israel and a thin version of the newspaper published in London at the time, he wrote that it was an antisemitic pamphlet, a kind of Nazi propaganda," says Dr. Blass. ".
Information about her testimony that Dina Porat was on trial,
In perfect accordance with the image of the robbed Cossack, the same Miyahu who often complained about the silence of his voice by the "Zionists", happily took every opportunity to silence other voices that he did not like.
In the mid-1970s, for example, he vehemently demanded that he stop talking about Nasser and other Arab leaders threatening to throw Jews into the sea or use other similar terms.
Either you prove your claim in court or you remain silent, he demanded, while taking advantage of his position as a powerful member of parliament.
A young Jewish student who wanted to sue him as a result was forced to dismiss the lawsuit and issue a statement of apology to him.
It is not known why Mayahu and Adams decided to file the lawsuit against Finkelston, Maariv newspaper and its editor Shalom Rosenfeld in Israel.
Perhaps the reason lies in their arrogance, and perhaps they believed that a legal victory in the Jewish state would produce a particularly large propaganda echo, and after being swept away from the charge of anti-Semitism by an Israeli court - they would be able to act against the more hated Zionists.
As befits a silence lawsuit, the amount of the lawsuit was set at half a million Israeli pounds, a fortune in terms of time.
Blue-and-white legitimacy
Realizing that this was not an ordinary legal hearing, Mayahu and Adams enlisted the help of three unusual expert witnesses.
The first was Prof. Roger Owen, an expert on Middle Eastern economics.
In addition, with traditional antisemitic sophistication, two Israelis were added to the mission.
And not just Israelis, two former IDF officers whose worldview managed to migrate from Zionism to far-left anti-Zionist districts - Maj. Gen. (Res.) Matti Peled and the historian of the Zionist movement Yigal Eilam. The idea behind their election was clear: In our opinion and sure that the Arabs are right, the two plaintiffs hinted, why did we hang on to us?
"Prof. Owen, who himself was a partner in CAABU for several years, gave his reputation and claimed that despite the disagreements between him and the plaintiffs they were not known to him as having antisemitic views.
"On the other side were defense witnesses, and they and their personalities also had a special weight that went beyond mere areas of expertise: Haim Herzog, who tore up the shameful UN resolution, Gideon Hausner, the mythical prosecutor from the Eichmann trial, and Jehoshaphat Harkabi, former head of the Armed Forces In the Arab world. "
However, according to Dr. Blass, prosecutors began to realize they were in trouble following the appearances of someone unfamiliar.
The person who devoured the cards was Dina Porat, then a young doctoral student and eventually the chief historian of Yad Vashem.
It came with a thorough textual work, which led to a turning point. "
"Attorney Benny Levinbock, coming on behalf of the defendants, approached me in the summer with the offer to become an expert witness," recalls Prof. Porat.
Summer is to blame for that, and the other experts, too, are bigger than me: one stayed abroad, another did not believe anti-Semitism could be proven, the third's wife did not allow him to attend the trial for fear of getting excited and having a heart attack.
In any case, they trusted me, and I began to prepare for the task. "
Porat prepared two thick bags for the big trial of her life.
"One dealt with the general background of that period and the general atmosphere that was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel," she says.
"The reasons for this were different: the reaction to the defeat of the Arabs in the Six Day War, the UN decision that Zionism was equal to racism, and the rise of extreme left movements, some of them terrorist, whose ties with anti-Semitism became tighter.
At the time, it could not be determined that anti-Zionism was always anti-Semitic, but classical anti-Semitic tones began to accumulate on anti-Zionist grounds.
"One of them focused on the claim that if it is a Jewish state, then the vile characteristics that anti-Semites attribute to Jews characterize the state."
Broke the idyll.
FinkelstonePhoto: Cover of "Anwar Sadat: Visionary Who Dared",
Porat's second case was devoted to the book of Mayahu and Adams.
The headline in Maariv spoke of an antisemitic book in the style of Nazi propaganda.
"It's not that they sat down and deliberately read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Maine Kampf and then copied things from there, but that their worldview causes them to express themselves in a similar way to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Maine Kampf. The hidden hand of the Jews "- a phrase that Goebbels used to use - and I presented all this to the court."
The struggle is not over yet
Porat remembers that Judge Yaakov Bezeq offered the parties to reconcile.
Dr. Blass confirms this: "The outline was simple - the plaintiffs will declare that they oppose the use of violence against Israel and will continue the prosecution, and the defendants will publish a clarification that Mayahu and Adams are not anti-Semites.
In the interval between the hearings on the power of attorney, the plaintiffs turned with this proposal to Tommy Lapid, then secretary of the Maariv editorial board, who saw the trial as a national task, and were immediately rejected.
He announced - "I do not compromise with any antisemitic."
"Mayahu and Adams did not attend all the hearings in Jerusalem," says Porat, "so I always saw two English lawyers in front of me. It was terribly hot - August, but a court without air conditioning, I wore a summer dress and I must have looked like a little girl. Probably because of my dress. They despised me at first, often exchanging smiles as an expression of the absolute confidence that they would eat me without salt, because of the contempt they were not focused, ready and careful.
"They cited, for example, an example that allegedly contradicted the Finkelstone reporter's claim and to substantiate it they quoted something. I raised a finger and asked the judge to comment that the citation attribution was incorrect. You could see that their position was slowly being undermined."
Did the trial resonate with the Israeli public?
"It aroused great interest, and three expert witnesses on behalf of the prosecution stepped up it. External events were added to this: there was a decision by the health organization that we are harming the health of the Arabs, and a women's conference in Mexico Maariv was a big deal, and everyone who was a partner felt it. The court ruled in favor of the defendants in the amount of NIS 70,000, and in a separate comment in the ruling thanked me for my testimony.
When it was all over, I received flowers and songs in the mail from ordinary citizens that I did not know at all. "
Relationships help promote the book.
Mayahu, Photo: Wikipedia
The legal victory put an end to the "Mayahu affair" and ruled that his worldview, like the worldview of others before and after him - even if he tried to disguise himself as anti-Zionist - was nothing but obscene anti-Semitism.
Despite the blow he received, Mayahu continued to poison British public opinion against Israel and Israelis.
The appeal of his party, the Labor Party, against the Jewish state, which officially took place years after him, is largely recorded in his name.
Publications that are horribly similar to the book by Mayahu and Adams flood the bookshelves of the world, and of course the websites in almost every language, and no one challenges them legally.
Maybe we got used to it?
"The word 'we got used to' does not seem to me," replies Prof. Porat.
"It is true that in the last 20 years, since the Durban Conference, the new anti-Semitism has taken to the air. It is more violent, came from the Muslim field, and spread in the street. In the 'Maya affair' there was no internet, ""
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