Geulah Cohen
Member of the Stern Gang who went on to serve as a Right-wing MP in the Knesset for 18 years
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 the underground Lehi (“Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”), which the British dubbed the “Stern Gang”, and which had been founded by Avraham – “Yair” – Stern in Palestine to fight the British Mandate.
Geulah Cohen joined the underground group in 1943; she was given the nom de guerre “Ilana” and soon became the Stern Gang’s 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 broadcast, British detectives broke into the flat in Hashomer Street in Tel Aviv from which Geulah Cohen was broadcasting; listeners could only hear her asking in alarm: “What happened?”
She was arrested, and was 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, Geulah Cohen tried to escape by climbing the jail’s wall, but she was spotted by guards, shot in the leg and re-arrested.
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, who was a Jewish Lehi member dressed as an Arab, walked into the hospital, where Rivka left an Arab dress in the women’s toilets. Geulah Cohen then went to the toilets, put on the Arab dress and left through the window while the guards were distracted by Abu Gosh, who deliberately caused a commotion which required their intervention.
Once she was out of prison, Stern Gang members arranged a hairdresser, who turned the dark Geulah Cohen into a blonde. She was provided with glasses and a new identity card.
Geulah Cohen was born on December 25 1925 in Tel Aviv, one of nine children of Yosef Cohen, who emigrated from Yemen to Palestine in 1905, and a mother, 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 aged 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, which she regarded as “more revolutionary … like in the books we used to read …. We would meet up in public parks to get to know each other … perhaps even to kiss … But under the benches we would have leaflets and glue, and as it would become darker, we would stick the [anti British] leaflets on trees …”
The Stern Gang was fought not only by the British Mandate but also by the mainstream Jewish parties in Palestine, who believed that the small but violent organisation caused damage to the Jewish cause. As the mainstream Jewish organisations exerted their influence, Geulah 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 worked in various jobs, briefly edited a Lehi newspaper and wrote for Sulam (“Ladder”), a publication edited by a leading Lehi member, Israel Eldad.
From 1961 to 1973 Geulah Cohen worked as a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, also serving on its editorial board, and she earned a master’s degree in Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Literature and the Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 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, and soon afterwards Begin 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, which had been occupied since 1967.
Opposing any withdrawal from occupied lands, Geulah Cohen would deliver fiery speeches in the Knesset against the peace agreement. President Sadat, aware of the debates which were going on in the Israeli parliament, 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, Geulah Cohen founded a new ultra-right wing party, Tehiya (“Revival”), that became a major proponent of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories as a way of preventing these lands from being offered to Arabs. In 1981, just before the actual withdrawal from the Sinai was to take place, Geulah Cohen 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. In 1990 she served as deputy minister of science and technology. 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 the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the 1990s, and vocally opposing the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip which was led by the Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon.
In 2003 she was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian honour.
Geulah 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.
Geulah 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, who is the Likud minister of regional development.
Geulah Cohen, born December 25 1925, died December 18 2019