(Author: Hadassa Ben-Itto, Vol. 70, No. 3, Chanukah 2015)
Editor’s Note:
The following constitutes the first of a three-part feature reprinting (with slight editing) Chapter 10, as well as the relevant section of Chapter 12 of Hadassa Ben-Itto’s landmark book The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Vallentine Mitchell – London, 2005). A best-seller on its publication, The Lie That Wouldn’t Die has since been translated into ten languages, and is regarded as being one of the definitive studies on The Protocols and its pernicious influence worldwide. The book focuses mainly on the 1934 trial in Bern, Switzerland, in which the Jewish community successfully took the local Nazi party to court for publishing The Protocols. In Chapter 10, however, the author exams another Protocols–related trial, one that took place in Grahamstown, South Africa, and which concluded shortly before the Bern trial commenced in October 1934. That case was brought by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) on behalf of Rev. Abraham Levy of Port Elizabeth after local pro-Nazi activists had accused him of authoring a document whose contents were based on the antisemitic conspiracy theories of The Protocols. In its judgment of 21 August 1934, the court ruled against the defendants, finding that the document in question was a forgery and condemning The Protocols. In Chapter 12 of her book, Ben-Itto recounts how in 1991 the SAJBD, this time together with the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (South African Chapter), successfully made representation to the Publication Appeal Board for The Protocols to remain on the list of banned publications
The Editor wishes to thank Judge Ben-Itto for kindly allowing Jewish Affairs to reprint the above extracts from her book, which provide the most thorough analysis to date of one of the most significant episodes in the 175-year history of the Jewish community in South Africa. Thanks, also, to Rodney Mazinter of Cape Town, whose idea it was that Jewish Affairs republish the chapter and who to that end made the initial contact with the author.
The Lie That Would Not Die is available through the publisher (frank.cass@vmbooks.com), from the distributor in the USA (wendy@isbs.com) and at Amazon.
Like in Bern, it started with a public meeting, or rather, two meetings, one on 27 March 1934, in Aberdeen, and the other, on 4 April1934, removed to the Feather Market Square of Port Elizabeth, when town-hall denied the organizers the use of the Feather Market Hall.
The meetings were advertised, stating that only Christians would be allowed. It was at these meetings that the speaker, one Johannes Strauss Von Moltke, read aloud in the Afrikaans language the contents of a document, originally written in English, alleging that it had been stolen from the Western Road Synagogue in Port Elizabeth. The document had been delivered to him, Von Moltke revealed, by Harry Victor Inch, who had himself committed the theft. Die Rapport, a news sheet published weekly in Aberdeen in both Afrikaans and English, printed the same document, in an Afrikaans version, on 6 April, and in the original English version, on 13 April, repeating both times, in print, that the document had been procured by theft from the Western Road Synagogue. On the front page the paper carried this statement, in bold letters:
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA A DOCUMENT HAS COME INTO THE HANDS OF GENTILE SOUTH-AFRICANS, WHICH THROWS LIGHT ON THE PERSECUTION OF THE GENTILES BY ORGANIZED JEWRY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
Von Moltke was the leader in the Eastern Province of an organization called South African Gentile National Socialist Movement whose admitted object was ‘to combat and destroy the perversive influence of the Jews in economics, culture, religion, ethics and statecraft and to re-establish European Aryan control in South Africa for the welfare of the Christian peoples of South Africa’.
Die Rapport, the organ of the organization, which propagated its opinions and principles, was owned, edited and published by David Hermanus Olivier.
Inch was the leader of a subsidiary of the organization, the South African Grey Shirts Movement, in the Eastern Province, which was said to provide the ‘Body Guard’ of the other movement. Its aim was ‘to combat the pernicious influence of the Jewish race’.
Like other countries, South Africa also had its share of newly formed Nazi-oriented organizations that surfaced boldly since Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. As early as 1 November 1933, the Minister of Justice, General J.C. Smuts, had issued a statement warning against attempts to work up an anti-Jewish feeling among the public by the dissemination of leaflets and in public meetings, where ‘wild charges are made against the Jews as a community which are calculated to create ill feeling and racial prejudice…’ There were indications, General Smuts said, that these charges represented an organized movement, which, lamentably, had its origins abroad and was an attempt to import into South Africa ‘the alien hatreds and rancors of the old world’. The Minister of Justice warned that if his appeal to the peoples of South Africa went unheeded, those who were spreading the anti-Jewish poison would find themselves in trouble.
But the Nazis were on the move and nothing would stop them. The Protocolsof the Elders of Zion, which came to be known as ‘The Bible of the Anti-Semites’, and strongly promoted by Hitler and his disciples, were widely distributed. It was for good reason that the Jewish community kept ordering from London hundreds of copies of the Philip Graves articles published in the Timespamphlet, in an attempt to prove the falsity of the Protocols. Little did they dream that a four page local document would soon prove to be much more dangerous to the Jewish community of South Africa than the widely distributed Protocols. It was therefore with profound horror that the shocked leaders of the Jewish community in Port Elizabeth learned of the document that was allegedly signed by the Reverend of a large and prestigious synagogue. The word Rabbiappeared at the end of the document and was read by Von Moltke and published by Olivier as part of the text. No name was mentioned, but it was public knowledge that Reverend Abraham Levy was considered as the Rabbi of the Western Road Synagogue in Port Elizabeth.
The first report came from some Jews who had attended the Nazi rallies out of curiosity. Aileen Pearson, a local Jewish housewife, supplied a copy of the document, which had been distributed at the April rally. She had also made notes of the inflammatory statements and the derogatory terms used by the speaker, aimed at the Jews. Jacob Cohen a farmer near Aberdeen, reported that he had attended the Aberdeen meeting, but as he thought he was the only Jew present, he had to restrain himself. He reported that the speaker at the meeting had appealed to his race, the Nordic people of South Africa, to form a Racial Patriotic Organization, in self-defense, against this occult alien organization harbored in the Jewish synagogue.
Cecil Neethling McDermot, a non-Jewish clerk, who had also been present at one of the meetings, was so shocked that he immediately wrote a letter to the editor of the Eastern Province Herald stating his firm belief that the document read at the rally was a forgery, and expressing his shame, as a British citizen. He was not taking up the fight for the Jew, he wrote, but his love for honesty, freedom and British fair play compelled him to come out and cry halt. He felt shame for the Christian race of South Africa, he wrote. The Jews had been instrumental in the development of this country; trade and commerce had progressed through the Jew, who had built up their great cities. Instead of running the Jew down they should respect him and raise themselves to his level.
A small group convened at the synagogue, which also served as the community center. Reverend Levy studied the document in utter disbelief. Surely somebody was playing a joke on him, he thought. No joke, they told him. But who would believe such utter nonsense; who would take seriously such a crude forgery, he cried. At the time Jews had ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they reminded him, also believing that people of common sense would realize immediately that it was a false document. This new document was more dangerous to the Jews in South Africa than the Protocols, they feared. Even those who had ignored the alleged existence of a world conspiracy aiming to undermine all Christian governments would hardly dare ignore ‘proof’ of a local conspiracy aiming to attain Jewish domination of South Africa. This document, they said, was an ingenious libel, based on the Protocols. It purported to be proof of the local application of the international plot. Using the tactics of the forgers of the Protocols, this document was not what others said about the Jews, this was the so called ‘Jewish Secret Plan’ itself, stolen from the synagogue and published, in the nick of time, by a patriot who had put himself in danger in order to save his country. This was how it would be presented, they warned.
As they only had one copy and no immediate means of making a photocopy, they passed the document around and examined it. It looked like a carbon copy of an original document, typewritten on four pages of foolscap. At the top, in the right-hand corner of the first page, appeared the words ‘copy of M. Lazarus’. (But Mark Lazarus was a printer, who did not even belong to the congregation, somebody remarked). Immediately below these words were badly formed Hebraic characters handwritten in real ink, signifying ‘Fit for Passover’ (Kosher Lepesach). Then came words written in similar characters making up the words ‘The Book of Memorial or Remembrance’ or ‘The Book of Chronicles’. On the left side, similarly written, were Hebrew words meaning ‘Holy Congregation’. After the words ‘copy for Mr. M. Lazarus’, came the heading ‘Lecture No.2’ and the title: ‘Subject: Our Plan of Attack.’
To save time, one of them was asked to read to them the whole document, and as he did, they hung their heads and sank deeper and deeper into their chairs. They thought they had heard the worst libels, but these had always been imported repetitions of old. This one was new, and it was so close to home. It threatened to disrupt the very fabric of their lives in South Africa. After the whole document had been read out loud, each one insisted on examining it and reading it with his own eyes. Still, it was hard to believe that even a Nazi anti-Semite could concoct such nonsense. It was such a crude forgery. Only an ignorant and careless forger would use the words ‘Fit for Passover’ in a document that had nothing to do with food. They could just as well have written ‘Buy Nestle milk’, somebody remarked. But they knew that non-Jews would hardly notice such a detail.
The alleged Jewish ‘Plan of Attack’ listed the following subjects:
Our attitude to the Christian faith: the Unholy Christ; We are the Chosen of God; Division of the Churches; the Rebirth of Catholicism; the Greyshirt Menace and how it will be combated; Gentile Decay; ‘Live and let live’ – Our greatest asset; our Imperial plan in comparison to other Empires; our attitude to World Socialism; the next attack and riot; how we shall achieve our wish; how the gentile dogs shall crave the mercy and our refusals; our Bolshevik propaganda scheme.
This general plan was followed by a detailed one, appearing to be a record of an address delivered by the Rabbi to the members of the Council. It read as follows:
A. Our attitude to the Christian faith.
As I have explained to you in previous meetings, our attitude to Christianity is one of great interest to the High Circle of the Jewish citizens of Port Elizabeth. As you all know the divisions in the Christian Church were of our construction. It was our ancestors that urged Luther and the other reformers to break from the Mother Church, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church, for our own private purposes, which would hasten the fulfillment of our World Imperialism. The Roman Catholic Church was severely wounded in the head (that is, literally), and the Protestant Churches are as dead as mutton. But, my beloved Council, the R.C.C. has been unconscious for countless centuries, but it is beginning to stir to life again. It has awakened after a long and great sleep and its influence is beginning to be felt throughout the Earth. (Did not the Fascist, Mussolini, make treaties with the Pope, and is not Hitler a Catholic?) We must destroy it. It is interfering with our world socialism.
I mentioned to you before several times at our council meetings of the select that we are the pure people. The Nordics in our eyes are in no wise different to the Chinese Dogs or the Turks. They are all our destroyers, our enemies. The Christian religion is wrong. Christ, in the Jewish sense, was a false prophet born of the womb of a foul bitch whose husband was in our eyes never married to Joseph. In our Talmud Torah and other holy books it does say that the gentiles will be made to drink the piss and eat the dung of the Jews.
‘PHARAOH’.
2. ‘Lectures on Judaism V. Christianity’
Anti-Semitism and the South African Greyshirts.
Pharaoh, the King of Egypt was the first Anti-Semite, and I can assure you that Hitler will be the last. As far as the Greyshirts are concerned, we shall cripple them as follows:
We have received information through A.4 that the Greys are to have a meeting in the Feather Market Hall after the Christian holidays. All preparations are being made, disguising a crowd of our most trusted servants as Greyshirts. We shall see that they are supplied with Swastikas and gray ribbon. Their duty is to hackle the speakers, kick up a row, and sing so-called patriotic songs, that to us, internationals as we are, have no meaning whatever, in preparation for the greatest riot ever witnessed from Cairo to the Cape. We are prepared for homicide, murder and manslaughter. Hit right and left, wherever you see a Gentile face. The equipment that must be brought are to be pepper pots, blackjacks, knuckle dusters, revolvers, lead piping, sticks, stones and boxing gloves. We have arranges, that if there are no police around, for a contingent of our fellows, to be near the parapets ready to fling rocks and boulders through the opposite windows. We are confident in our success. We always get through unscathed. We who boast of our survival over all empires. We the Chosen of the Almighty, who guides and approves of our every action. Our cult is gold. These Greydogs are to us as the sowing of the wind on a wintry day – we who control, financially and even politically behind the scenes, yea, the chosen, who were promised all these things. Earthly pomp, splendor, imperialism, and ever lasting sovereignty over the animals of the earth.
Christianity, I repeat, is Satan’s religion, the religion fit only for the dogs that they are, who go to their churches to see whether their neighbor has on a Paris model or print dress. What foolishness. What utter foolhardiness.
The ‘live and let live’ motto of the churches is our greatest asset I can assure you. The British Imperialism was one of help to Christian Civilization, but ours is the direct opposite.
We stand for World Communism, for dictatorship of the proletariat. Our Imperialism of Pax Judaica is one for the downfall of western civilization and its replacement by the eastern or Japanese system. We have seen the progress of the U.S.S.R. since 1917 when our agents, Lenin, Stalin, etc. murdered the Tsar. The Pope is a religious Imperialist, and that interferes with our world plan. As we have got control over Russia, so we will also control the Union, and so achieve our object in the destruction of the British Empire by making propaganda for wars that as a result it will fall to bits as did mighty Rome. Yet we survive and our object has been fulfilled. Such is the mission of Judah. It is our plan to give South Africa to the natives. ‘South Africa and Africa for the Black Man’ said Abdurahman and our several loyal agents. However, we have the prospect in view that if South Africa is given to the Sons of Ham, we shall not be in any way molested.
Of the British we may say that they are innocent of our plan to deprive them of the countless possessions she has herself developed, and of the Dutch we may say that they are the most lovely of our specimen of Gentile decay, and are of as much account as the unclean meat, pigs flesh that they consume in such large quantities. The natives are of no account. They are as brainless as their Teutonic cousins – rapers, blackguards, thieves and spies.
The following papers which financed us are the Empress (Mr. Barlow editing with our approval The Socialist Review, The Anti-Nazi, and Mr. Lazarus’ Propaganda Scheme).
We will fool the public, so that their belief in ‘Live and Let Live’ will be intensified a thousand fold. We will make them digest as much silly rot as their decayed and filthy minds are capable of understanding. Hitler, Lunatic Goering, Von Papen and their co-lunatics, with the Asylum Contingent (namely the Brown shirts) are guilty of devastation, and crimes against civilization, which we have built up. They raped our women, murdered our old men, bombarded and dynamited our synagogues, threw our children to our hunting dogs, made our little ones to dance on hot coals until they fried, made our husbands run the gauntlet in the passage ways in our clubs while they themselves struck them as they passed. These low common sons of a filthy womb know not the Japanese menace that is upon the face of Europe and Africa.
Brethren, although for countless centuries you have been despised and hated, in the near future the races of the Earth will kiss your feet and worship you, they shall bow down before thee and exult and praise thee. They shall beg mercy of thee and thou shalt refuse. They shall acknowledge that thou art the chosen, the infallible. Our elected leader will be the first sovereign over all the earth. The Communist World, and at last the Talmud Torah and prophecies will be fulfilled. I may say that we are on the threshold.
On our very life take care of these instructions; do not mention a word to not even your own what is contained in these pages. You know our law. You know the result. The propaganda that would shortly arrive from Moscow, that will be in our safekeeping in the Syn. West. Rd. will be handed to trusted members of the local and Cape Trade Unions and F.S.U. as soon as the appointed time arrives. We shall instill into the warped minds of Goya then that we are the proverbial ‘now know-alls.’
Issued by the select high circle of the anti-Nazi propaganda vigilance committee c.x.v.o. 3838 and authorized for use by the trustee and the six council members only.
RABBI
A stunned silence followed the reading of the document, then a hot debate. Some of them suggested that the incident be ignored. It will blow over, they said; nobody in his right mind will believe it, they argued; only a limited number of bigots attended the rallies, they maintained, legal action will only publicize the document; the Nazis will not dare print it in a newspaper, they assured each other. They decided to sleep on it, not make hasty decisions. But a few days later the full document was published in Die Rapport and they learned by word of mouth that the document was beginning to have its impact. Stephen John Moore, a contractor from Aberdeen, a former policeman who belonged to the Apostolic Church, was overheard telling a neighbor how impressed he was with Von Moltke’s message. ‘We were told that it was John Bull (meaning the English) who persecuted us and stole our diamond fields, but it had always been the Jew under the mantle of John Bull, he said bitterly. He was also upset by the fact that the Jews were calling them Goy, he took it to heart, he said, for ‘Goy’ means animal. (What a joke, they said!). A mechanic who had attended the rally, Ellis Charles Simpson, confided to a co-worker how upset he was ‘that there should be such a low thing floating about the world reflecting on Christians about the undermining of British Justice, which had been protecting them for many years‘. ‘I told my Jewish neighbors’, he told his friend, ‘that if that was proved as such I would not say good morning or good afternoon to them. I was inflamed against the Jewish people. I understood it to be a world plan with South African conditions super-imposed.’ Ebenhaezer Fourie, a pupil studying for matriculation, had also attended one of the meetings. He described to his friends in school how they all wore swastikas. He had read the document carefully, he explained, and understood that the Jews were filled with hatred to the Christians. Only after the meeting did he realize that the Jews had all the possessions worth having in South Africa. Jacobus Petrus Johannes Kruger, a bachelor farmer, read about the document in the paper. Now he was finally convinced, he told his friends over a beer, that all the Jews were in this terrible conspiracy. ‘I believed in the document seeing what happened in our place’, he said, ‘the Jews are progressing and getting possession of our farms.’
It took the community leaders only a few days to come to a decision. They had been educated in the British system and had great confidence in the legal process. They knew about the Bern trial but the South African legal system was different. They knew that this was not a personal attack on the Rabbi, the real target was the whole Jewish community, but since the document appeared to be a record of his address to the council, signed by his title, although not by name, the complaint would have to be filed by him.
Before long Reverend Levy filed in the local division of the Supreme Court, sitting in Grahamstown, Eastern province, civil actions for damages naming as defendants Johannes Strauss Von Moltke, David Hermanes Olivier (Junior) and Henry Victor Inch. The Rabbi was represented by Mr. Reynolds K.C. (King’s Counsel) and Mr. E. Stuart.
The trial date was set for Tuesday 10 July 1934, before the honorable T.L.Graham and honorable Mr. Justice C. Gutsche. The claims against all three defendants were consolidated.
As it was not a private matter of the Rabbi, a committee was appointed to instruct the lawyers. They convened in the synagogue to decide on trial tactics. The pleadings of both sides had been filed, defining the conflict and the issues. The trial would begin in a few weeks and it looked as if the judges intended to dispose of the case as quickly as possible. The issues seemed to be clear-cut: had the document, admittedly published by the defendants, originated from the synagogue, and had it been stolen from there by Inch on Saturday afternoon, 24 March as Inch maintained, or was it a false document, forged and fabricated as a means of inciting against the Jews, as the Rabbi asserted. In the regular course of the disposition of court business the case should take up no more than a couple of days.
They thought they were meeting to prepare the list of possible witnesses, but a hot discussion developed. Some argued that they should keep a low profile. This was a simple case, the court would not allow it to become a Dreyfus Trial, they argued; It was not the function of the court to combat anti-Semitism, the judges would only admit facts relevant to the issues set out in the pleadings; The defendants did not mention in their pleadings the Protocols of the Elders of Zionor the existence of a Jewish World Conspiracy.This was a local issue and the court would not appreciate it if they dragged the problems of world Jewry into this court.
Others insisted that they would be missing the whole point of the trial if they allowed it to be limited to the stealing of a document; The document was the talk of the town and was causing harm to all of them; the fabricated facts did not concern the Rabbi in his private capacity, they were horrible lies about all Jews; It was their duty to confront not only the technical issue of the theft, but the false allegations which would somehow stick in the minds of people; they were not equipped to confront the Nazis in the public square, they argued, this was a unique opportunity to confront them in a court of law, open to the public; the forgers would soon realize that here the rules of the game were different, and they could not get away with crude lies; they must use this arena to confront the rising tide of Nazi anti-Semitism, they might not have another such opportunity.
In the end it will be up to the court, the lawyers said, the decision might not be theirs. So they decided to be prepared. They would line up witnesses to testify on the bigger issues, if the court would allow it.
Studying the transcript of the trial I was greatly impressed. Lawyers usually drag out trials arguing that they needed long periods of time to prepare their case and line up witnesses. Yet this unusual trial, which lasted 10 full days, from 10 July to 24 July, with a record exceeding 700 pages, was prepared by the litigants in less than two months. And it took the court less than a month to deliver, on 21 August a detailed, well reasoned, 31 page-long judgment.
Had the defendants been represented, their lawyers would probably have advised them to limit themselves to the technical facts. But when the day arrived they marched into court, Inch and Von Moltke in uniform.
They had no money to engage lawyers, they announced, it was the Jews who had all the money. They raised all kinds of technical points, including the argument that there was no proof that they meant that particular Rabbi.
The lawyers realized that it was the defendants who would define the scope of the trial, as it soon became apparent that they viewed the court as a proper arena for their propaganda. As the evidence unfolded, the issue was no longer limited to the authenticity of the document or the identity of the Rabbi. It became clear that the court would have to address itself to the alleged existence of an international plot, to a Jewish conspiracy to gain domination of the world. The defendants maintained that the said document was only the local application of this international plot. It became clear that the court would have to rule not only on the authenticity of a local document, but on that of the Protocolsof the Elders of Zion.
When it was their turn to present their defense, Von Moltke, speaking for all the defendants, officially requested the court to allow them to amend their plea. They now pleaded justification, he said, they would prove and argue that they had been justified in whatever they had done, for it was all for patriotic aims. They now officially pleaded the existence of a dangerous international ‘Jewish Plot’.
Was it a coincidence, a friend asked me, that the two most important trials of the Protocols took place at the same year, independently of each other, in two countries, on two continents?
No coincidence, I assured him. Hitler had caused a revival of the ‘Protocols’. There was ample proof that the Nazi propaganda machine targeted the ‘Protocols’ as their strongest argument in the attempt to convince the world that the Jews constituted a grave danger not only to world peace, but to the very existence of legitimate Christian governments. Here is what they will do to you, the Nazis cried, if they are not dealt with. The Weltdienst in Erfurt, headed by Ulrich Fleishauer, was given the task of promoting the ‘Protocols’ around the world, as part of their anti-Semitic drive to de-legitimize the Jews and place them beyond the pale of legitimate human society. The unsuspecting world, and even the naive Jewish communities, perceived this phenomenon as yet another routine outburst of anti-Semitism. Blaming the Jews was not a newly invented tactic; Jews had been persecuted and even massacred before; this wave will pass, like all its predecessors, they tried to convince themselves. Not only was there no premonition of the coming Holocaust, but there was no suspicion that the’Protocols’ were more than just another tool in the hands of anti-Semites. The idea that Hitler was not only using the ‘Protocols’ as a tool against the Jews, but had actually adopted the so called Jewish plan of world domination, would have sounded preposterous, had anybody voiced it in those first years of the Nazi regime. Nobody in his right mind would have dared announce that Hitler was using the ‘Protocols’ not only as a common denominator which would serve as a basis for the organization of Nazi parties in other countries, based on the logic that both Jews and anti-Semitism existed everywhere, but that he was using the ‘Protocols’ to mask his own plan to attain world domination. They could not have known of the conversation with Hitler, reported by Hermann Rauschning in his book Hitler Speaks. ‘I have read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, Hitler told him, ‘it simply appalled me. The stealthiness of the enemy, and his ubiquity! I saw at once that we must copy it – in our own way, of course.’
In 1934 Jews were not aware of the approaching disaster. Like the law-abiding citizens that they were, they thought that they could combat the Nazis in courts of law. Reading the record of the orderly conduct of the trials, the polite questions put to Nazi bigots, who were openly uttering the most unspeakable libels against Jews, and the learned and well reasoned judgments, I suddenly thought of a man carefully and meticulously plugging up a small hole in his boat, not realizing that in no time at all a huge wave would sweep it and throw it on the rocks, with no survivors.
The second part of Hadassa Ben-Itto’s account of the Grahamstown libel trial, dealing with the first part of the trial itself,will appear in the Pesach 2016 issue of Jewish Affairs and the final instalment in the Rosh Hashanah 2016 issue.
Hadassa Ben-Itto served as a judge in Israel for 31 years at courts of all levels. She served twice as a member of Israel’s delegation to the UN General Assembly and Israel’s delegation to the UNESCO conference on human rights, Paris, 1982. As well as heading various committees, she has taught criminal procedure at Bar-Ilan University, and since 1988 has served as World President of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. In 1999 she was awarded the Zeltner Prize, a most prestigious prize awarded in Israel to an outstanding jurist, and in 2003 was awarded the Women in the Law citation of merit by the Israel Bar Association. For her book The Lie That Wouldn’t Die, she received, at the President’s mansion, the prestigious Herzog prize in 1997. From 1998-2002 she served as the only woman on the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Zurich, that adjudicated claims against the Swiss banks concerning dormant accounts after World War II.
