All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [162]
Since I have just used the word “ashamed,” let me dwell on it for a moment. On the instructions of Dov, who had apparently read a report on the subject in Time magazine, I researched an article on organized crime in America: the Mafia, and in particular the hired killers of “Murder Incorporated.” As I sifted through the archives of various newspapers and visited the Public Library, I was stunned to come across some Jewish names. In the twenties and thirties there were Jews who offered their services to the criminal underground, murdering men and women who had done them no harm. One of them reportedly boasted of being an observant Jew who wore his kipa to “work” and scrupulously respected the day of rest, the Shabbat. It was also reported that two members of a gang suggested to a Palestinian Zionist leader that they eliminate delegates who planned to vote against the UN partition resolution in 1947. Regrettably, it is also a fact that some Jewish gangsters considered themselves Jewish “patriots.” In his memoirs the writer Ben Hecht told of having been “kidnapped” by persons unknown and taken to a garage where, in the presence of various gangsters, he was given a suitcase stuffed with dollars for the Irgun.
These revelations came as a shock to me. I simply could not imagine a Jew becoming a hired killer. Yes, I had too idealistic a view of Jews, but the fact is that in Eastern Europe my people might have been criticized for just about anything, but not involvement in murders. Jews may have been guilty of lying or cheating, fraud or smuggling, theft or perjury, but murder was unimaginable. Very long ago there had been in my region one case of a Jew who had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for murder. His name was Reinitz, and it became common to call criminals “Reinitzes.”
I like to think that what accounts for this virtual absence of blood crimes in our communities was perhaps related to the commandment revealed at Sinai: Thou shalt not kill. The voice of God sounds and resounds in our collective memory. But then what accounts for the present reality? The fact is that in modern Israel acts of murder do occur. True, there are few such cases, but even one is too many. It seems we are finally becoming a people like any other, neither better nor worse. Does this mean we are not “the chosen people”? No, we are, but only in the sense that Anglo-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill attributes to the term: “the people that chooses itself, its destiny and mission.” And as important, in the sense of teaching all peoples that they, too, must aspire to reach beyond themselves, to lift themselves ever higher, and to see themselves as unique.
It was in America in 1956 that I met David Ben-Gurion, when I was assigned to cover his visit with President Eisenhower. The first time I saw him I could not help thinking of the tragic episode of the Altalena. Was this the same man, the same ruthless leader, who now spoke of prophetic ethics as often as of world politics, and who said it was Israel’s mission to serve as “the light unto the nations”? Despite such thoughts, in the end I fell under his spell.
Working alongside the American and foreign journalists accredited to the White House, I discovered the power of the news media. Indeed, the immense American machinery of state often seemed to function only to mollify them. Today the power of the media is even greater.
Along with the prime minister’s advisers (among them Teddy Kollek, future mayor of Jerusalem, and Yitzhak