Love of the Land: The Schoenau Ultimatum

The Schoenau Ultimatum

Yehuda Avner

JPost
03 September 09

How does one treat terrorists? Deal with them and you're done for; don't and innocents die. Take the case of Schoenau. It is a tale of infamy that seized the assemblage of the Council of Europe in September 1973.

The Council of Europe in Strasbourg is that continent's approximation to a representative house. At the time in question, its 400-odd delegates watched with various degrees of curiosity as a stooped, aging woman with a face deeply scarred with tragic lines mounted the podium. She was prime minister Golda Meir, and she was there at the invitation of the European Council to state the case for Israel.

Generally speaking, Golda Meir preferred to speak extemporaneously, but since this was a formal occasion, protocol required she deliver a pre-prepared address. I, her in-house speechwriter, drafted one. In its preparation I had torn up a dozen or more versions, leaving tooth marks on my pen as I wrote and rewrote page after page, scribbling deranged doodles while mentally struggling for concise, rhythmic, salvationary nouns and alliterative descriptions in my effort to give her words a defining oratory.

Finally, a coherent theme emerged and a speech surfaced. It thanked the council and individual European parliaments for raising their voices in support of Soviet Jewry's right to freely emigrate to Israel (this was at the height of the worldwide "Let My People Go" campaign), delved into the intricacies of the Middle East conflict, pleaded for "the European Council's help to enable the Middle East to emulate the model of peaceful coexistence that the council itself had established," and perorated with a quote from the great European statesman Jean Monnet, that "peace depends not only on treaties and promises. It depends essentially upon the creation of conditions which, if they do not change the nature of men, at least guide their behavior towards each other in a peaceful direction."

To my consternation Golda never enunciated a single one of these words. Instead, she scanned the assembly from end to end, jaw jutting, her expression defiant, and after combing back her hair with the fingers of both hands, brandished the written speech, and in a caustic tone said, "I have here my prepared address, a copy of which I believe you have before you. But I have decided at the last minute not to place between you and me the paper on which my speech is written. Instead, you will forgive me if I break with protocol and speak in an impromptu fashion. I say this in light of what has occurred in Austria during the last few days."

CLEARLY, THE woman had decided it was idiotic to read her formal address after the devastating news which had reached her just before leaving Israel for Strasbourg: A train carrying Jews from communist Russia en route to Israel via Vienna was hijacked by two Arab terrorists at a railway crossing on the Austrian frontier. Seven Jews were taken hostage, among them a 73-year-old man, an ailing woman and a three-year-old child. The terrorists issued an ultimatum that unless the Austrian government instantly closed down Schoenau, the Jewish Agency's layover near Vienna where the émigrés were processed before being flown on to Israel, not only would the hostages be killed, but Austria itself would become the target of violent retaliation.

The Austrian cabinet hastily met and, led by chancellor Bruno Kreisky, capitulated. Kreisky announced that Schoenau would be closed forthwith, and the terrorists were hustled to the airport for safe passage to Libya.

Read All at :

Love of the Land: The Schoenau Ultimatum