Diplomatic Explosion

An icy gale whipped the trees along Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard and tore at the policeman on guard before the Soviet legation to Israel. While he patrolled the front, someone neatly clipped a hole in a wire fence at the rear, crept through and placed a bomb--six pounds of high explosives in a thin metal container--against a wall of the somber grey stone legation. The bomb went off with a crash that shook Tel Aviv and sent diplomatic shock tremors across the world.

A fast-thinking French correspondent dialed the legation--6551--and asked in Russian: "Was that bang a hand grenade or a bomb?" "Don't be a fool," came the reply. "It was a bomb, and a big one. Seconds later the Iron Curtain was lowered, and even Israeli police, barred from the legation, had to wait outside while the injured were carried out. The wife of Soviet Minister Pavel Yershov was slightly hurt, the legation housekeeper was wounded seriously (fragments in the abdomen) and had to be rushed to Hadassah Hospital in an ambulance. A tight-lipped legation official rode with her, suspiciously demanded to know every step the Jewish doctors performed, and insisted on being present during the emergency operation which saved her life.

Handy Pretext. A flush of horror and foreboding spread across Israel. The bombing was the most serious anti-Communist incident since Moscow came out in the open with its anti-Jewish campaign (others: the firing of a Soviet bookshop in Jerusalem; a hand-grenade explosion at the Czech legation). This is as bad as the assassination of Count Bernadotte," said a civil servant. Will our people never learn?" Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett rushed a fervent apology to Moscow. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion cut short a vacation to lay the matter before the Knesset. "An abomination was committed by hooligans last night " he stormed. "If self-styled Jewish patriotism was the motive for their foul deed and if their intention was to fight for the honor of Israel, then let me say that it is they themselves who have profaned ... the honor of Israel.' As he spoke police were rounding up 27 suspects most of them members of something called the Anti-Communist League.

But no amount of apology or police diligence could undo the damage, since the bomb could not have served Soviet leaders better if they had touched it off themselves. It would have been normal for the Kremlin to accept Israel's apologies: in 1927, for example, when a White Russian killed the Soviet ambassador to Poland, Moscow contented itself with a strong note of protest. This time the Kremlin obviously had been awaiting a pretext.

The Israeli minister in Moscow was summoned before Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky and handed an angry note. "Malefactors with the obvious connivance of the police engineered [the] explosion," it said. "It is quite obvious . . . that the declarations and apologies of the Israeli government ... are a falsehood aimed at covering up." The conclusion: "The Soviet government . . . breaks off relations with the Israeli government."

It was the end of a relationship that began in 1948, when the Russians were second only to the U.S. in championing the creation of the state of Israel. "We know that you are largely dependent on the help of American Jewry and that you must remain friendly with the U.S.," Andrei Gromyko once told Sharett at Lake Success. "That we don't mind, so long as it doesn't make you unfriendly to us."

Scapegoats & Decoys. Gromyko's easy line did not last: for one thing, it does not suit Soviet policy to have any group of her people looking outside Russia for their homeland. Secondly, the Russians were disappointed at the slenderness of Communist strength in Israel, which remained small despite immigration from Eastern Europe. So the 2,500,000 Jews behind the Iron Curtain have become scapegoats and decoys for the big Communist purges now underway. How many will die or disappear, no one can guess: western eyes can only grub for stray hints in the Soviet press.

Always agile at getting two benefits from one move, the Russians are already exploiting their break with Israel in that vast strategic vacuum, the Middle East. They found eager hearers among the Arabs, who dislike Britain and France for past colonial behavior and mistrust the U.S. for its constant support of Israel. The day after Vishinsky's note, every newspaper in Syria printed editorials hailing Russia's action and urging other governments to do likewise.

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