The Terrorist

One day last week, a tubby, blond young man strolled into Israel's Foreign Ministry carrying a briefcase. The Israeli police had been warned and were ready. They grabbed him. Inside the briefcase they found a 6 1/2-lb. bomb, timed to explode in ten minutes and blow Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett and his staff to pieces.

The would-be assassin was Dov Shilanski, onetime inmate of Dachau concentration camp, later a member of the Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist organization. When peace came to Israel, Shilanski became a terrorist without a target. He found a humdrum job as a clerk, slid out of sight for four years. Last spring, when the hard-pressed Jewish government sat down with the hated Germans to negotiate reparations, Shilanski took up his old tools and vowed to avenge the "betrayal."

The news shocked Israelis, who remembered when terrorists' murderous exploits had been glorified in the struggle against the British. Said one man: "I feel as if a disease of which I had been cured had struck at me again."

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