This is Eli Lake and welcome back to the re-education. My guest today is Vice News reporter and

fifth column podcaster Michael Moynihan. Our topic is why so many geniuses have embraced

such terrible politics. On December 4th, 1948, the New York Times published a letter denouncing Monacham

Began before a visit to the United States. He was a resistance leader in British-mandate

Palestine, a founding father of Israel. Began's visit to America was on the eve of the first general election in the history of the Jewish state,

and the letter asserted that his party, Herut, was, quote, closely akin in its organization,

methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and fascist parties.

To this day, the letter is often cited by progressives to score an unearned political point

against Leekoud, the political party that Began ultimately formed as a center-right coalition.

That's because the letter itself was signed by some of the most brilliant Jews of the 20th century.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt, physicist Albert Einstein, and the philosopher Sidney

Hook were among the signatories.

And yet, the letter was a terrible slur.

Not only was it offensive to equate Began's Harut party with Nazism and fascism.

Began himself had lost his entire family to the Nazis and had survived a hard

labor camp in the Soviet Union. But Began was also crucial to the very survival of Israel as a democracy.

After his Ergun resistance organization earlier that year in 1948, had arranged a shipment of arms to be delivered to its militia,

Israel's new national army confronted the vessel and opened fire.

This could have easily been the start of a Jewish civil war,

but Began had the wisdom to order his men to stand down.

Instead of soaking in exile, Began then committed himself to opposition politics,

only to lose and lose and lose again to David Ben-Gurion's labor party. But he kept at it,

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