By Dale Crowley Jr.
The incident reveals the power of the untruthful, ungodly Israeli
lobby in the United States more clearly than anything in recent months.
Joe Sobran is a respected nationally known syndicated columnist.
(He is also an editor of Bill Buckley's National Review.) His columns go
to hundreds of newspapers throughout the nation, but if for some reason a
newspaper does not like what he has written, it is not required to print a
particular column. There was almost a total blackout nationwide on the Haviv
Schieber article. (Reprinted below). Not one New York or Washington paper
printed it. We had to go to Tampa Florida to get a copy of the column.
WASHINGTON — Haviv Schieber loves America. All he asks of it is a
little green card.
Schieber was born in Poland in 1913. As a young Jew, he opposed
both the great forces that were closing in on him: Nazism and communism. He
dreamed in Zionist dream of a Jewish democracy in the Middle East.
He got to the Holy Land sooner than he expected to. In 1939, the
German and Russian armies invaded Poland. Schieber caught the last train out. He
persuaded a reluctant friend to come with him. The friend, Yuri Zvi Greenberg,
later became one of Israel's leading poets.
In Israel, Schieber founded an anti-communist political party, the
Democratic Party of Israel. He found himself at odds with the country's leading
politicians, from David Ben-Gurion to Menachem Begin.
Like Begin, he had been a member of the Jabotinsky movement, whose
founder had envisioned a state where Jews, Moslems and Christians could live in
happiness and prosperity. Unlike Begin, Schieber took the vision seriously.
Two things chiefly distressed him: the Israeli treatment of Arabs
— Moslem and Christian — and what he saw as Israel's infiltration by communism.
A turning point in his life was the building of a Baptist church over the
objections of the rabbinate. He was outraged when the church was destroyed on
orders of the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.
Schieber's solution to religious strife was a new dream: a Holy
Land state on the Swiss model, a federation of which Jews, Christians and
Moslems would enjoy equal rights. He decided sadly that the original Zionist
movement had become a disastrous failure, one that could result only in
permanent friction and possibly wide scale war in the Middle East.
The Holy Land state and anti-communism became his twin
preoccupations. In the late '50s, he went to Central America, where he spoke at
a conference to warn that Fidel Castro was no democrat but a communist and that
Israeli policies were jeopardizing peace. In response, the Israeli government
refused to extend his passport. He came to the United States in 1959 and has
been here ever since.
It hasn't been easy for him. He hasn't seen his son, who was 15 in
1959 and will be 42 next month, since he arrived here. The U.S. government,
under pressure from
Israel and its partisans (some of whom work in the government),
has refused him the green card signifying permanent residency status.
Schieber has fought repeated efforts to deport him. At times he
has gone into hiding. Once he was jailed. He prevented deportation at the last
minute one time by slashing his wrists with razor blades.
For all that, he has been an American patriot without waiting for
a welcome. He was active in Barry Goldwater's campaign for president in 1964.
During the Vietnam War, he used to lecture young radicals on the virtues of
America. When he was confined in an Arlington, Va., jail pending deportation
proceedings, he stepped forward to give a group of visitors a little impromptu
talk on how life in America, even in detention, was infinitely preferable to
life in many other countries. It was several minutes before the visitors
realized that this impassioned little man with a thick foreign accent was
actually a prisoner.
Today, after more than a quarter of a century in this country,
Haviv Schieber is still fighting for his green card. It would let him hold a
job, move freely about the country (he is largely confined to the Washington,
D.C., area), and leave the country to visit his relatives.
He is opposed by several of the major Zionist organizations, who
list him among the "enemies of Israel" and "anti-Israel
pro dists" who promote the interests of "Arab countries!'
Actually, he wants to promote the rights of everyone who lives in Israel and
the interests of the United States.
It does Schieber an injury to lump him with anti-Israel leftists
and Arab nationalists. He did far more to build Israel than most of his
detractors have done. He has paid dearly for his principles. It is even to his
credit that he has so often been on the losing side: He has a quixotic instinct
for causes that seem all but lost.
You can dismiss Haviv Schieber as an eccentric if you want to. But
you have to give him credit for an unfailing courage that this world does ill
to turn its back on. This old man, in failing health, is still the same young
man who fought communism and Nazism in the '30s. In spite of everything, he
still loves this country. We ought to be able to afford to give him the green
card that would let him see his family one last time.
Previous Article Spring 2005 Front Page Next Article