The official protocol of this
meeting was probably edited so as to make no mention of Sharett’s use of the
word “Satan” in the course of his critique of the timing of the decision to
launch the Kinneret operation. Two senior officials seated beside Ben-Gurion
chose to record the following accounts.
In a
memoir published in 1981, senior MFA official Gideon Rafael recalled Sharett’s
speech in the following dramatic terms:
Sharett
reported on his mission to Geneva and Washington [- - -]. The atmosphere was
leaden. He plunged into a minutely detailed account of each and every one of
his activities and then reached his climax – the ruinous effect of the
Kinnereth action. “Satan could not have chosen a worse timing,” he exclaimed,
his voice high pitched in anger. Ben Gurion had taken a seat between Yitzhak
Navon, his political secretary, and myself at the side of the room; he had
declined the invitation of the chairman to sit at the head of the table. When
he heard the word Satan, the same in English as in Hebrew and more sinister in
its meaning than the more colloquial “devil”, he jerked as if he had been hit
by a bullet, then leaned back without uttering a sound. I could physically feel
how the word had hurt him. The audience gasped, as if witnessing a tightrope
walker losing his balance. Sharett continued his report, apparently oblivious
of anything untoward. After he had finished, the chairman invited Ben Gurion to
take the floor. He declined curtly. The members of the political committee
dispersed in a mood of gloom and I went home with the nagging thought that the
brittle Ben Gurion-Sharett relationship had reached breaking-point.
SOURCE: Rafael, Destination Peace,
48.
In his recently-published
autobiography, Yitzhak Navon, Ben-Gurion’s Political Secretary, wrote:
Some time later
[after Sharett’s return from Washington], the Mapai Secretariat [sic.] was
convened and Sharett raised the issue [of the Kinneret operation]. Among
other things he said: “Even if Satan wanted to intervene and disrupt, he could
not have done it better! Here I was, about to meet with the US Secretary of
State in order to appeal for arms, and that was precisely the time to mount
such an operation!?'' Ben-Gurion was deeply hurt by this remark. He
meant to take the floor after Sharett, but upon hearing Sharett’s harsh
words I saw him angrily crushing the pages of his speech. “I will not
speak. I will remain here only out of respect for the haverim,” he
muttered. When Moshe Sharett ended his speech, I sent him a note: “You said,
in fact, that Ben-Gurion was worse than Satan. That's a very offensive remark. I recommend that you take back your words.” Sharett wrote back: “How
do you know that precisely that word hurt him? I thought that my whole
talk about the operation is what hurt him.” Still, after the next speaker
finished, he stood up, muttered some apology regarding the comparison
he had made [with Satan], and sat down again.
SOURCE: Yitzhak Navon, All The Way (Beit Shemesh: Keter
Sefarim 2015 – in Hebrew), 136.
