It is with profound sadness that I report to you the death of Professor Israel Shahak. Shahak inspired a generation of Middle East activists. In the 70's and 80's he self-published the "Shahak Papers", a mimeographed collection of translations of articles he gleaned from the Israeli press that were critical of Israeli governments. Even better were the scathing commentaries and brilliant footnotes that he attached to each article. Shahak eventually wrote several books about Israeli repression and most importantly about the Jewish religion. He wrote a devastating essay about Orthodox Judaism's religious teachings about non-Jews in a British magazine, "Khamsin". Shahak said that the oppression of the Palestinians could not be understood accurately without knowing the contempt Orthodox Judaism held towards all non-Jews. In 1994 it was published as a book, "Jewish History, Jewish Religion, The Weight of Three Thousand Years". Shahak came to Connecticut twice. Once he spoke for New Haven's Middle East Crisis Committee and another time I interviewed him for a public access TV news show.
Christopher Hitchens wrote a wonderful biographical sketch of Shahak in "Raritan" Magazine in the spring of 1987. Shahak was born in Warsaw in 1933, and lived there until 1942 when his family was sent to the Poniatowo concentration camp. He and his mother escaped but were later captured and sent to Bergen-Belsen. His father was killed by the Nazis and his brother died while serving in the British RAF. Shahak and his mother arrived in Palestine in 1945. He was an Orthodox Jew and an admirer of Ben-Gurion, but his faith in classical Judaism and Zionism slowly broke down. In the glorious '60's they shattered. In his "Jewish History ..." book Shahak writes that in 1965 he witnessed a Jewish man in Jerusalem refuse to use his telephone on the Sabbath to call for an ambulance for a non-Jew who had collapsed near his house. Shahak took this outrageous behavior to the Rabbincal Court of Jerusalem. He was told that the refuser had acted correctly, even piously! As for Zionism it was the aftermath of the '67 war that changed him. He saw Palestinians driven out of their homes and could never forget it.
Shahak began political activity in 1968, standing with ten others to protest the administrative detention of a Palestinian Israeli citizen. He told Christpher Hitchens that by the end of the day he was covered in spit. Throughout the '70's hundreds of death threats were mailed or telephoned to him. For years his mail was opened by government authorities. Yet he continued on with his work. His was a full professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University. Though his politics made him a virtual pariah in Israel he was proud that year after year students voted him one of the best teachers at the university. He also prided himself on being an Israeli culturally and chided leftists who divorced themselves totally from their society.
In the '80's I heard him speak at a convention of a now-defunct Palestinian human rights organization. The woman who introduced him had accompanied him on a tour of the U.S. She began by saying that one of the things that amazed her about Shahak was his wide ranging knowledge. Every speech he gave was different. I can believe it. Every time I heard him spoke he delved into another side of the occupation. His was brutally honest, too, and not at all diplomatic. In New Haven he made a blistering attack on a man who praised Israel's "Peace Now". My wife remarked, "He certainly takes no prisoners."
Israel Shahak was a moral and intellectual giant, an authentic Jewish hero.
Our lion is gone.
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Below is another appreciation of Israel Shahak by one of his friends, the journalist Ellen Cantarow. Note Shahak's importance in the first journalistic account of Israeli torture.
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Dr. Israel Shahak, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Hebrew University, headed the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, was a ferocious and tireless critic of his country's policies, and wrote volumes of articles and other work including "Jewish History, Jewish Religion" (Pluto Press, 1994). As a young child he survived Hitler's death camp, Bergen-Belsen, with his mother, and arrived with her in Palestine around age twelve. (His father died in the holocaust.) He grew up in Israel; served in the army; became a chemist; went on to the faculty of Hebrew University. He was a savage, unbending and courageous critic of his country's policies, denouncing its colonialist designs from earliest Zionism.
As head of The Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights he was instrumental in 1977 in persuading editors at The London Sunday Times to publish the first international exposure of Israel's torture of Palestinian prisoners. I was one of a group of US intellectuals who in the 1980s and early 90s received his invaluable monthly "Shahak Papers"- ten to fifteen single-spaced pages of translations from the Hebrew Press, headed by his commentaries.
I knew Dr. Shahak as a friend starting in 1979. He was a staggering intellectual with an encyclopedic erudition in world religions; the migrations of ancient peoples; archaeology; ancient and modern history, and more. He once lectured to me about the horse and its domestic use in early human history. In 1985, after I'd done a reporting stint in the Sudan, he told me details about the work of a heroic woman I'd met, prominent in the Sudanese Communist Party. He adored opera; on US speaking tours he brought tapes of his favorites and listened to them for relaxation. He was an ardent supporter of women's rights; he abhorred the denunciations of feminism usual among male intellectuals including his countrymen. When I became Senior Editor of *The Women's Review of Books*, he subscribed, and wrote me letters in which, predictably, his praise was leavened with criticism.
During my reporting trips to Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s he opened his small home to me. When I visited he'd always start by giving me his most recent Hebrew press "cuttings." His two-room apartment was always in breathtaking disarray - "cuttings" everywhere, piles of magazines and newspapers, no place to step, apparent chaos! Yet he could always find whatever was needed for his visitors. He lived a Spartan life with almost no furniture - a bed, a table, a lamp, a couple chairs. To many he seemed cold, abrupt, and a peculiar recluse. Once on his wrong side, you didn't easily regain his friendship, and it was often hard to know where you'd erred. Perhaps he saw me as a niece or little sister, for he showed me another side, gentle and compassionate.
In his ferocious denunciations of the occupation he was a "loyal patriot" not unlike his friend, the fiery Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibovitz. H was warm in his appreciation of his country's positive aspects (for example he treasured memories of his comradeship with ordinary men during his Army service.) A true friend of Palestine, he denounced not only his country's policies against it, but also PLO corruption and injustices within the Palestinian community (for example the "honor murders" of Palestinian women by male family members.) In countries like Israel and South Africa, people of Dr. Shahak's integrity, fearlessness and breadth of mind stand out against the background of their states' injustices as humanity's most shining gems. In any just world he should have received a Nobel Prize. I had hoped to see him once again and I write this with tears in my eyes and a very heavy heart.
- ELLEN CANTAROW