Abie Nathan- A Lonely Rider

AT THE funeral of Abie Nathan, I said to myself: the Israel-as-it-is takes its leave from the Israel-as-it-could-have-been.
 
From the state that we dreamed of when it was founded. A state where moral considerations govern both domestic and foreign policy. A state whose citizens take responsibility for their own actions and the actions of their country.

Abie Nathan symbolized these aspirations, not in theory, but in practice - by his own deeds.

I WAS an eye-witness to the birth of this Abie.

At the end of the 50s, coming home from a few days abroad, I heard the latest news from the Tel-Aviv scene: some members of the air-crew of El Al had opened a new café in the very center of the city, at the corner of Disengoff and Frishman.

We liked "California" from the beginning, not least because of the host, a pilot called Abie. It was said that he was born in Iran and had grown up in India, had joined the Royal Air Force there and had volunteered as one of our first pilots in the 1948 war.

Abie was 33 at the time, with a dark complexion and a broad smile. He spoke mostly English, or Hebrew with a marked English accent. He was a perfect host and knew how to make his guests feel special, as if they were his personal friends. Within a short time, the place became the meeting-point of Tel-Aviv's Bohemians - the group of artists, writers, media people, celebrities and night-lifers who had turned Tel-Aviv into the center of the country's social life. Politicians, too, were attracted by the liveliness of the place.

The restaurant 's life revolved around him: when he was absent for a few weeks, the clients, too, disappeared. He knew how to pamper people, offer drinks "on the house", and prepare the special dishes people liked. There were also "regular tables". (The table I joined on Friday afternoons still convenes to this very day.)

The young state of those days was optimistic, fermenting, a paradise for young people. The new Hebrew culture with its authors, poets, theaters and satirical programs was flourishing, and the Bohemians of Tel-Aviv set the tone. Their organ was "Haolam Hazeh", a radically anti-establishment weekly magazine, whose editor I was.

One day in the summer of 1965 Abie took me aside and asked for my opinion. Some friends, he said, were urging him to run for the Knesset.

Frankly, my first reaction was that it was a practical joke. But after some days, I realized that he was deadly serious. Abie, who saw the politicians at his tables and listened to their conversations, asked himself: Why are they any better than I?

A small group of friends from among the clients of the restaurant gathered around him. They were "with it" people, and egged him on. What had started as a game was to have far-reaching consequences.

I MUST confess that it made me angry.

A short time before, the government had enacted a new press law that was quite openly intended to muzzle Haolam Hazeh. It mandated draconian punishments for newspapers that published "evil tongue" (Hebrew for libel), clearly intended to stop our revelations about government figures. In response, a group of peace and human rights activists founded a movement that represented the radical line of the magazine: peace with the Palestinians, the fight against corruption, separation between state and religion, social solidarity. They called it the "Haolam Hazeh - New Force Movement". It was an audacious endeavor: until then, no one had ever succeeded in breaking into the Knesset with a new political force- at the time it an exclusive club of old-established parties and their splinter groups.

Our movement appealed to the young generation that had grown up in the country. Abie's list was liable to attract to itself parts of this public, the size of which was uncertain and perhaps too small to satisfy the minimum percentage clause. It seemed to me an irresponsible game.

Abie's friends, among them some public relations people, were looking for way to draw attention to his list. They hit upon a gimmick: some years before, Dwight Eisenhower had been elected after promising to "fly to Korea" in order to end the war there. Well, Abie was pilot, why not promise that he would fly to Egypt?

Egypt was then the main enemy of Israel. Nine years before, Israel had attacked it in collusion with two colonial powers, France and Britain. Everybody understood that going there was a very dangerous undertaking.

Abie acquired a small airplane, painted it white and named it "Peace 1". It was displayed in an empty plot near the restaurant. One of his friends composed a popular jingle.

However, the gimmick did not work. Abie's list got only 2135 votes, far from the minimum required. The Haolam Hazeh list attained 1.5% of the vote throughout the country, and I was elected. If we had had the support of all of Abie's voters, we would have won a second seat.

That could have been the end of the story - but something had happened to Abie. The idea that had started as an election gimmick took hold of him. The extrovert, carefree restaurateur, the darling of the Bohemians, started to treat the matter of peace very seriously.

A few months after the elections, in the middle of a meeting in the Knesset, somebody brought me the startling news: Abie was on his way to Egypt. In the morning he had climbed into his plane and just taken off. The whole country was holding its breath. And than the blow fell: the radio announced that his plane had been shot down, and that it was unclear whether Abie had survived.

The public was shattered. Agitated people, some of them weeping openly, were glued to the radios. And then came another exciting announcement: Abie had not been shot down after all, but had landed safely in Port Said and been cordially received by the Egyptian governor.

A brilliant playwright could not have wrung the public heart more effectively. True, the Egyptians did not take Abie to meet Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the already legendary Egyptian leader, but they refueled his plane and sent him home with all respect.

Nobody who lived through that day in Israel will ever forget the experience. As for myself, I stopped doubting Abie's sincerity and started to see his actions in a new light.