Thinking about Oct. 7 from Geula Cohen’s point of view

Israel needs heroes and has always had them in abundance. We still do. 

Once, I was “chosen” by one of Israel’s heroes, none other than Geula Cohen, who took me on a tour of Judea and Samaria way back in 1980. I now think that a mutual friend might have told her that I was “one of hers.”

I doubt that I would have had the sheer physical courage and reckless daring to break out of jail—not once, but twice—as membership in the Jewish underground fighting organization Lechi in the 1940s demanded. Geula’s story as a member of Lechi, translated into English, is free and available online. Lechi fought the British, who were, at the time, murdering Jews and supporting Arabs in their murder of Jews in Mandatory Palestine. The British tortured, jailed and hanged members of the underground, even exiling them to Africa.

The Jewish underground exacted “measure for measure.” After they, too, tortured a British soldier to death, that practice among the British stopped, but the jailing and hanging did not.

Geula wrote, “For every murderous British law the Hebrew underground will enact an opposite and equally cruel law of its own. There will be quick justice and no mercy for all British criminals. The foreign regime has decided that prima facie evidence is no longer necessary in order to condemn a man to death. We have decided the same! The foreign regime has decided that membership in an enemy organization is punishable by death. We have decided the same!” 

When the British put her on trial, here’s what she said in the courtroom: “The accused does not recognize the authority of the court. I am a Hebrew fighter of the Freedom Fighters of Israel … you are intruders subjugating our homeland. We have our own set of emergency regulations: Any British soldier in this land is our enemy, and there is only one sentence that can be given him—death.”

Yes, I know some might think this sounds just like a Palestinian terrorist, but Geula was opposed to real colonial oppression. The Arabs have fabricated a new narrative, based on the Big Lie, claiming they are fighting the Jews who “colonized” their country—even though the Arabs have never actually had a country called “Palestine.”

Geula was one of the two voices of the Jewish underground radio broadcasts. I learned that Lechi had an anthem: “Hayyelim Almonim” (“The Anonymous Soldiers”). However, Geula named each precious person, and she knew most, if not all, of them.

At the time, Britain was also turning back and shooting down the “illegal” ships that were trying to bring European Jews to Palestine during and after the Holocaust. Britain also refused visas to Jewish survivors. It was always a heartless colonial power.

According to Geula, British official “Lord Moyne in Cairo refused one million Jews. ‘What would I do with them?’ He ordered the sinking of Jewish refugee ships. Two members of Lechi assassinated him—and were hanged.” 

Geula’s memoir reminded me of what Jewish fifth columnists have done and still do, but her example is also chilling and outrageous. She wrote,

Oh, there were many exceptions: Jews who hid the underground’s weaponry and lost both their own lives and those of their precious children; Jews and the Arabs of Abu Ghosh, who helped Geula escape from prison, risking interrogation and torture at British hands; a rabbi who came to visit the Jewish female prisoners and wept the entire time; and parents, including Geula’s, who were of Yemenite, Moroccan and Turkish ancestry and supported underground activities. Perhaps her parents understood that the Muslims of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia had been waging a religious and genocidal war against Jews for centuries, so the Jews sought asylum in the one place on earth that was their inheritance.

Geula is more eloquent than I could ever be on the subject of the British colonizers. Hear her speak:

But in the end, “The Brits had had enough. They would evacuate.”

The positions of Geula, Menachem Begin (head of the Etzel), and Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion (who controlled the Haganah militia) were all honorable. When Geula sent her memoir to then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, he wrote back to her. She published his letter at the end of her book.

Geula noted that the United Nations offered the Jews a very narrow strip of their own homeland, one without Hebron, Jerusalem, Judea or Samaria. Why should Lechi rejoice at this pitiful concession? So, she didn’t. Ben-Gurion accepted the U.N.’s offer, but conceded that he was “totally captive, heart and soul, to the magic of your [Geula’s] proud, cruel, and courageous story. … I read your book with pounding heart, excited and stirred, proud and admiring. … I felt all the depth of your pain, your disappointment and alienation, while not agreeing now, as at that time, with your position and that of your comrades.”

Ben-Gurion viewed Lechi, and perhaps also the Etzel, as having voluntarily embraced the biblical Yitzhak’s sacrifice (known as the akedah), sacrificing themselves, again and again, to their vision. No angel stopped them. Nothing could.

Like Geula, Ben-Gurion did not join in the dancing that followed the U.N. decision. He wrote to Geula,

The other day, an extreme anti-Netanyahu Israeli told me that a leading politician had received an 11-page military intelligence report many weeks, perhaps months, before Oct. 7. It warned of the coming attack. The politician “allegedly showed it to Bibi, who did nothing. Bibi did nothing.”

I said, “Why didn’t he go public with this, take it to the media, cry out to high heaven?”

My informant said, “But that would have landed him in jail.”

“What?” I responded. “He could not sacrifice himself to save his people, and now you support him as a leader?” 

My God, I thought. It would not have stopped Geula or Begin; it probably would not have stopped Ben-Gurion or Golda Meir. I am humbled by their sacrifices and long for others like them. Well, every member of the IDF is like them.

For example, I met a very young Israeli with an artificial leg, courtesy of Hamas in Gaza. He was in the United States for a better prosthesis. I stood and saluted him. When I asked him what his plans were, he said, “I will be joining a group that will be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.”