Sneh (Kleinbaum), Moshe

(1909–72)

   Israel politician. Sneh qualified as a doctor but spent much of his early life as a Yiddish journalist and Zionist politician in his native Poland. He escaped to Palestine in 1940 and became chief of the Haganah National Command a year later. After 1945 he wanted a more ‘activist’ line against the British than the Zionist leadership considered practicable, so he resigned in 1946 and devoted the remaining years of the mandate to organizing illegal immigration.

   Politically, Sneh was moving steadily to the left. He had been a leading personality in the General Zionist party in the 30s. In 1948 he joined the left- wing Mapam party, in which he led a group that demanded total support for the USSR, even when its policy became strongly anti-Zionist and verged on anti- Semitism. After the SLáNSKý trial in Czechoslovakia in 1952, this group was expelled from Mapam. Shortly afterwards Sneh and his associates joined the Israel Communist party, Maki, and when this divided largely on Arab-Jewish lines in 1965, Sneh led the Jewish wing. From then on, and especially after the Six-Day War of 1967, he became increasingly hostile to Moscow and its anti- Israel policies. He was a member of the Knesset from 1949–65 (for much of the time leading the Communist party) and editor of the Communist newspaper Kol Ha-Am (‘Voice of the People’) for many years. Sneh was a talented, witty orator, and was liked and respected even by his political opponents.