Veterans: Gentleman’s politics

Anti-Semitism in England built up John de Frece’s Zionist fervor

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
John de Frece. (photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
John de Frece.
(photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
"I decided to have one last go at trying to make some sort of a difference – I’m so desperately unhappy with what Israel has become,” says lawyer John de Frece, who has just been elected chairman of Meretz in Ramat Gan, where he lives.
He began his political activity in Liverpool, where he was born, and continued in Israel, where he came to live in 1975. Always on the far left of the political spectrum, he first became active in the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement as a teenager.
“I was attracted to the ideology of socialism and Zionism and the synthesis between the two,” he says. He found the Labor Party, represented by the Poalei Zion movement, too centrist.
“It was less radical than I wanted it to be,” he says. The creation of Meretz in 1992 was the answer to his reservations.
He has not changed his fundamental beliefs, but spent many years not actively involved, citing disillusionment with the way things were run, and the general business of bringing up a family and making a living.
“I dropped out after the assassination of [former prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin,” he recalls. “I was so devastated that I decided to give up my political activity and use my time and energy for my family.”
Now he is back with a vengeance, determined to make the electorate sit up and take notice of all he sees as wrong with the country he loves – and what his party can do to improve the situation.
He was born in 1950 to a family whose roots he can trace back over 200 years and which originated in Holland. His father was a well-known bookmaker in Liverpool, and his grandfather was a money-lender – both occupations identified with Jews in times past.
Although he grew up in a comfortable home, attending the prestigious Liverpool College and studying law at Liverpool University, it was anti-Semitism that drove him to settle in Israel.
“I joined the National League of Young Liberals, which had a very active branch in Liverpool,” he recalls. “The national branch was headed by Peter Hain (today a member of Parliament), and after the Six Day War in 1967, it became very anti-Israel under his leadership.”
He had visited Israel several times – the first time in 1968 – and had fallen in love with the country, but had not considered aliya at the time.
“I had to finish my studies and then complete my articles, working in a law office to gain experience,” he says.
But the anti-Semitism of his political allies changed his views.
“It was a classic situation,” he says.
“Their anti-Semitism was driving someone like me into a Zionist position.”
When the Yom Kippur War broke out, he went to volunteer and was accepted to work on a kibbutz in the Galilee. The experience strengthened his feeling that he wanted to live here permanently.
On returning to England, he became general secretary of Mapam in England and vice president of the Zionist Federation, finally making aliya in 1975 and going directly to the WUJS Institute in Arad.
He studied Hebrew there, but it wasn’t until he was drafted into the army at the age of 26 that his language skills really took off.
“I have to give credit to the IDF,” he says. “They were marvelous and really interested in absorbing immigrants. Although I was inexperienced, they were prepared to take someone like me and assign me to the military advocate-general’s office to do my army service. I was completely alone, no family in the country at all, and I know I wouldn’t have made it without the army enabling me to function here. Thanks to them, I became an Israeli.”
He did the officers’ course, rose to the rank of major and returned for reserve duty for the next 25 years.
After completing his army service, he continued working as a lawyer and eventually opened his own office in 1984. He also got married – his wife, Michal, works as a travel agent, and they have two sons, today 30 and 23. He also got back to local politics for a time and was elected to the Ramat Gan council, still representing Mapam.
His decision to leave Labor and move left to Meretz he ascribes to the election of Ehud Barak as the former party’s chairman in 1999.
“I knew it would be a disaster,” he says.
After a break of several years, he is back in his spiritual home left of center and raring to go, working to help Meretz get the maximum number of votes possible.
“We have six seats at the moment, but believe we can do even better,” he says.
The only other thing likely to distract him from his goal is his passion for the Everton Football Club, and he dreams of returning to England to watch his team win the Cup Final. While some football enthusiasts might think there is as much hope of that as of Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal-On becoming prime minister, everyone is allowed to dream. And for de Frece, at least, some of those youthful dreams have been realized. ■


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