‘Young terrorist’ who went on to become staunch Right-wing member of Knesset
Geulah Cohen, the so-called ‘‘First Lady of the Israeli Right’’, who has died aged 93, was a lawmaker in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, who vocally opposed any withdrawal from the lands Israel seized in the June 1967 Six-Day War.
Before Israel’s independence she was a member of Lehi (‘‘Fighters for the Freedom of Israel’’), an underground group founded in Palestine by Avraham – ‘‘Yair’’ – Stern to fight the British Mandate. It was dubbed by the British the ‘‘Stern Gang’’.
Cohen joined the underground group in 1943; she was given the nom de guerre ‘‘Ilana’’ and soon became the radio announcer on their Voice of the Hebrew Underground station.
Wanted by the British authorities in Palestine, she left her parents’ house in 1945, and went into hiding with other members of the group. On February 18, 1946, during a live transmission, British detectives broke into the flat in Hashomer St, Tel Aviv, from which Cohen broadcast; listeners could only hear her asking in alarm: ‘‘What happened?’’
She was arrested, and sentenced on June 6 by a British military court to several years in prison for possession of a wireless transmitter, four pistols, revolvers and ammunition. Imprisoned in Bethlehem, she tried to escape by climbing the jail’s wall, but she was spotted by guards, shot in the leg and rearrested.
Her second attempt to get out of prison was more successful as it was a rescue operation planned by her underground comrades in Tel Aviv. She pretended to be ill and was sent from the Bethlehem prison to a hospital in Jerusalem, where she was guarded by three British personnel who would not allow any Jew to approach her. But an Arab named Josef Abu Gosh, who worked with the Jewish Stern Gang against the British, agreed to help smuggle her out of hospital.
He and his ‘‘wife’’, Rivka Hamza, a Jewish Lehi member dressed as an Arab, walked into the hospital, where Rivka left an Arab dress in the women’s toilets. Cohen then went to the toilets, put it on and left through the window while the guards were distracted by Abu Gosh.
Once she was out of prison, Stern Gang members arranged a hairdresser, who turned the dark Cohen into a blonde.
Geulah Cohen was born in Tel Aviv, one of nine children of Yosef Cohen, who emigrated from Yemen to Palestine in 1905, and Miriam, who was born in the old city of Jerusalem. ‘‘From my father,’’ she once said, ‘‘I learnt how to dream, and from my mother how to fight’’.
Young Geulah studied at the Balfour school in Tel Aviv and at 12 joined Betar, a youth movement of the Right where, as she once put it, ‘‘I felt myself like a woman soldier in Betar uniform . . . I felt I had responsibility on me, that I’m a soldier . . . this gave me the power to survive even when I was called a ‘fascist’.’’
In 1942 she joined the Irgun, and a year later switched to the more militant Lehi. The Stern Gang was fought not only by the British Mandate but also the mainstream Jewish parties in Palestine, which believed the small but violent organisation damaged the Jewish cause. As mainstream Jewish organisations exerted their influence, Cohen was expelled from the Levinsky Teachers Seminary in Tel Aviv where she was training as a teacher.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 she briefly edited a Lehi newspaper and wrote for Sulam (Ladder), a publication edited by a leading Lehi member, Israel Eldad. From 1961 to 1973 she worked as a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, also serving on its editorial board. In December 1973 she joined the Right-wing Likud party and entered the Knesset.
Likud came to power for the first time in 1977 under Menachem Begin, who soon afterwards began peace talks with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. In 1978 Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David accords under which, for peace, Israel would return to Egypt the Sinai desert, occupied since 1967.
Opposing any withdrawal from occupied lands, Cohen would deliver fiery speeches in the Knesset against the agreement. President Sadat once told an Israeli minister, Shimon Peres, about a woman he watched on television, who spoke out against the peace with Egypt.
‘‘She has beautiful eyes and feminine charm,’’ Sadat told Peres. ‘‘She called someone ‘a dictator, a Nazi’ – was she referring to me?’’ Peres replied: ‘‘Sometimes it’s hard to agree with her, but she speaks frankly and with passion.’’ Sadat said: ‘‘Yes, it looks that way.’’
In 1979, disillusioned by Begin, Cohen founded a new ultra-Right wing party, Tehiya (‘‘Revival’’), that became a major proponent of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories to prevent these lands being offered to Arabs. In 1981, just before the actual withdrawal from the Sinai was to take place, she moved to live in one of the Sinai settlements, Yamit.
She was re-elected to the Knesset several times with Tehiya and, in spite of her disillusionment with Likud, often joined Likud coalitions as a minor partner. Her political career came to an end when she lost her Knesset seat in 1992.
Even out of official politics, however, Cohen continued to advocate against any territorial withdrawal, campaigning against the Oslo peace accord signed between Yitzhak Rabin’s Labour government and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the 1990s, and vocally opposing the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip led by the Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon. In 2003 she was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honour.
Cohen regarded herself as an eternal warrior, once saying: ‘‘Those who don’t fight don’t actually know what fun it is to fight for the things you believe in. At 18 people want to change the world . . . I, at my advanced age, still want to do so . . .’’
She published a few books, including an autobiography, Story of a Warrior (1961), which became the basis of Woman of Violence 1943-1948: Memoirs of a Young Terrorist.
Cohen married a former Lehi comrade, Emanuel Hanegbi, in 1947. They had two sons, one of whom died at a young age, and separated in 1962. She is survived by her son Tzachi Hanegbi, the Likud minister of regional development. – Telegraph Group
‘‘From my father I learnt how to dream, and from my mother how to fight.’’