From Gruner to Gruner By Shifra Shomron

From Gruner to Gruner

By Shifra Shomron

20 Tamuz 5765 /16.July.06

Nitzan Caravilla site



Dov Gruner. Ariel Gruner.
Past and present merge in a surname, in an imprisonment, in a stance.

Dov Gruner – he gazes shyly at me and smiles gently. Is his smile a bit crooked? Perhaps. After all, his jaw was busted by a bullet during the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (I.Z.L.) 1946 attack on the Ramat Gan police station. Dov was wounded severely during this, his second and last attack. And the British captured him. After seven months of imprisonment he was finally brought before a military court. Did it matter that Dov had served five years in the British army, that he had served bravely and been wounded in combat? Did it matter that he'd fought with them on the dangerous Italian front? Of course not. And after the judge pronounced that Dov was to be hung until dead, the court was silent. Dov rose and proudly declared: "In blood and fire Judea fell, in blood and fire Judea will rise again." [A quote from a poem by Ya'acov Cohen, 1903, after the Kishinev pogrom]. He then spent the next 103 days in a small cell waiting to be hung. He refused to beg for clemency, and wrote to I.Z.L. leader Menachem Begin – thanking him and saying that if he could choose again he would do the same thing. Such was Dov Gruner. Today he is a national hero.

And now let's take a look at another Gruner – Ariel Gruner. He hails from the Shomron, wears a large kippa and a beaming smile. Has been arrested and placed with hardened criminals in Shikma prison – yet he hasn't been tried and hasn't committed any crime! That is, if you don't think that being a religious and nationalist Jew is a crime.

Today he is being taken to the Be'er Sheva court in order to increase his administrative detention term. The government can imprison his body, but his spirit is free. The same spirit that brought Gush Katif evacuees last night to sing and dance in front of the Shikma prison in order to uplift him and show our solidarity.

The spirit that can topple governments.

The spirit that can save our land.

The merging of a busted jaw and a big kippa.