Sounding Off with a Vengeance

Menachem Begin displayed his most aggressive streak last week in attacking his favorite enemy after the Arabs, the Germans. Irritated by statements from West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in support of the Palestinians, the Israeli Prime Minister fired off an incendiary salvo. Said Begin in an address to party leaders: "It seems the Holocaust has conveniently slipped his mind. The German debt to the Jewish people can never end--not in this generation and not in any other. Such words have not been heard since the end of World War II, when the world saw what was done to us in the crematoriums."

Returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia last week, Schmidt had stressed that West Germans, as citizens of a divided nation, were sympathetic to the Palestinian "moral claims of self-determination" and warned against branding all factions of the P.L.O. "terrorists." Though he was careful to reaffirm Israel's right to exist, Schmidt faulted Begin's policies as "not farsighted enough."

As if that were not enough to inflame Begin, Schmidt had also characterized him unflatteringly in an off-the-record remark that found its way into the West German weekly Stern and, apparently, to Begin's ears. The Jews, Schmidt reportedly said, had taken 2,000 years to found a state "and then 30 years later, along comes a lunatic like Begin and puts everything at risk."

Begin, whose parents died in the Nazi Holocaust and whose animosity toward Germany is such that he even refuses to ride in German cars, was little inclined to let Schmidt off with just one stinging rebuke. Later in the week, he told reporters that Germans "should be ashamed of their Chancellor." Then, in a rambling radio speech on Israel's Independence Day, he insinuated that Schmidt had backed Nazi persecution of Jews just by serving in the German army on the eastern front in World War II. Schmidt did serve as an army lieutenant on the eastern and western fronts, but he was later cleared of any Nazi connections by the British. Still, Begin was not deterred. Schmidt, he charged, had "remained faithful to Hitler until the last moment."

Hoping to avoid a diplomatically dangerous exchange of insults, the normally sharp-tongued Schmidt refused comment, suggesting only that Begin read the complete transcript of his remarks. An official Bonn spokesman, meanwhile, dismissed Begin's accusations as "misleading and insulting," and inexcusable even during an election campaign. Though Begin supporters denied the charges of electioneering, there was little doubt that his anti-German tirade was popular at home. Begin seemed downright pleased by the diplomatic havoc he had wrought. Said he: "I won't lose even a moment's sleep."

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