Jewish Current Issues: Shmuel Katz: 1914-2008

May 13, 2008

Shmuel Katz: 1914-2008

Shmuel Katz, 93, died last Friday in Israel. The Jerusalem Post obituary called him “one of the last remaining links to the Zionist Revisionist icon, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and himself a towering figure and a mighty pen of the Zionist Right.”

Well over a hundred people attended the funeral Sunday afternoon at the Hayarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva. Among the mourners were Likud Party chair and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Moshe Arens, former MK Uzi Landau, former Knesset Speaker, MK Ruby Rivlin, Jabotinsky Institute director Yossi Achimeir and MK Gideon Sa`ar. . . .

Katz was elected to the First Knesset on [Menachem Begin’s] Herut list. He is believed to have been the last surviving member of that First Knesset. A Knesset honor guard placed a wreathe on his grave.

The New York Sun editorialized yesterday that Katz was “one of [Israel’s] greatest journalists,” and “a friend and inspiriter of this newspaper” whose life “offers much on which to reflect”:

Katz himself wrote a number of important books, including “Days of Fire” and “Battleground,” as well as a two-volume biography of Jabotinsky called “Lone Wolf.” Katz served in the First Knesset; was, for a while, part of Begin’s delegation to the Camp David peace talks; and, here in New York, helped found Americans for a Safe Israel.

Last year, when Judith Miller was preparing to make a trip to Israel, she asked whether there was anything she could do for us there. We asked her to stop in and see Katz and send a dispatch on how he was faring. It turned out to be, insofar as we can tell, the last major interview he gave. He was not happy with the current situation. “I have never felt so downhearted about Israel as I do now,” Katz told her.

Katz had spent his last seasons finishing what would be his last book — a history of the Jewish spy ring known as Nili, which operated against the Turks in World War I, a brilliant telling of the heroism of Aaron Arohnson and his martyred sister, Sarah (whose portrait hangs in the editorial rooms of the Sun).

The book was brought out but a few weeks ago. It is how, it seems, one of our greatest journalists dealt with his discouragement — moving to inspire new generations by telling of the heroism of an earlier one at a time even more imperiled than our own.

The Jerusalem Post obituary noted that “[a]s recently as several weeks ago, [Katz] was planning a new series of short op-eds for the Post in opposition to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's policies.”

Benjamin Netanyahu at the funeral of Shmuel Katz, May 11, 2008. Picture credit: Yisrael Medad (My Right Word). Medad reports on Netanyahu’s remarks at the funeral:

Bibi mentioned how, when he asked his father about an author named "Samuel Katz" who published "Battleground" while he was in college, his father, Ben-Tzion Netanyahu, said "why, that's our Moekie [Katz’s nickname]. He really knows the issue". And he stressed the hasbara element in waging a struggle for Israel's security and future.

There are some excerpts from Battleground here. The one on “Arab Refugees and the Right of Return” is particularly worth reading now.