Word: talmon
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DIED. Jacob Laib Talmon, 64, Israeli professor of history and international authority on totalitarianism; of a heart attack; in Jerusalem. A brilliant lecturer at Jerusalem's Hebrew University since 1949, he was the author of several magisterial books, notably The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, that traced the distortions of the democratic idea by the belief in a "popular will." Talmon recently sparked a debate in Israel when he attacked Prime Minister Menachem Begin's autonomy policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza as "an archaic concept, a trick to shut the Gentile's mouth...
That idea was given a forceful public statement last month by Professor Yacob Talmon, a leading historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a staunch Zionist. In a letter to the Tel Aviv daily Ha'aretz, Talmon acidly denounced Begin's autonomy idea as "an archaic concept, a trick to shut the Gentile's mouth." Talmon argued that similarly limited autonomy plans had never worked in the past and charged that the government's territorial and settlement policy not only contributed to the corruption of the Israeli people but also violated "the vital Zionist...
...Talmon's harsh judgment is apparently shared by many of his countrymen. According to a public opinion poll published last week by the Jerusalem Post, Begin's right-wing Likud coalition would be easily ousted from power by the opposition Labor Party if the elections were held today. (They are not scheduled until October 1981.) Reaching similar conclusions, Pollster Mina Zemach attributed Begin's dramatic drop in popularity largely to domestic issues, but the settlement policy was clearly a factor: 50% of those polled were opposed to allowing Jews to settle in the Arab city of Hebron...
Other Israelis acknowledge the injustice of the occupation but are troubled by the alternatives. "The occupation goes against the basic attitudes of Zionism," says Biblical Expert Shemaryahu Talmon of Hebrew University. "It's clear that we have not been able to turn the situation of ourselves as occupiers into one of cooperation. The obvious solution is to say, let's get out of it. But you can't return to a situation [before 1967] where Israel was twelve miles wide at its waist...
...tribes (see map) the country stretched from Dan to Beersheba, which has become a famous phrase of definition. The country reached its greatest size two centuries later in Solomon's time. Begin has consistently referred to the occupied West Bank as "Samaria and Judea." Says Biblical Scholar Shemaryahu Talmon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University: "The Promised Land always includes Judea and Samaria and sometimes even the eastern side of the Jordan River...