'HaOlam HaZeh' readers were not fools.
They knew that if there was something strange
that appeared in 'HaOlam HaZeh'
it was a sign that something had been censored.
And most people got it immediately.
We never published stories, and certainly not fiction, so why now?
And the clever ones realised what it was all about,
and the less intelligent learned from the clever ones.
One day, the censor phoned me.
The censor was a nice guy, we were good friends.
'Uri, what have you done to me?'
I said: 'What have I done?'
He said: 'You know what you did with this story'.
I said to him: 'The story of Greece and Turkey?
Why is that of interest to you?'
He says: 'Don't play innocent with me, you know exactly what this is about'.
So I told him: 'Listen, why is there censorship about the incident?
You say there is censorship, because our prisoners are sitting in an Egyptian prison
and there is a possibility of releasing them at some point,
and if we will publish the details of the case,
Nasser will not be able to release them.
So if I publish a story about Turkey and Greece
that doesn't change anything,
no one in Egypt would understand it.
He says: 'Okay, but what about the second part?'
'You know what? You are my friend,
and you're curious, so I will send it to you,
not as a censor, but as a friend, for a literary opinion'.
So he read it, he changed some of the details, slightly,
and the second part was also published. And it caused waves in Israel.
With the passage of time, it became clear to everyone what it was about.
I, of course, participated in the movement
to remove Ben-Gurion from power.
Following the Lavon affair quite a broad movement was established
to overthrow Ben-Gurion.
And that's what happened.
The historical Mapai party, the veteran leaders,
suddenly got it.
I forgot to mention that some time earlier, in 1957,
I had a secret informant named Israel Bar,
who was in the heart of the military establishment,
and following what he revealed to me,
I published an article called 'Ben-Gurion's Boys'.
I said there was an anti-democratic group consolidating around Ben-Gurion
that wants to seize power
through non-democratic means.
A military coup. I gave all the names -
except Moshe Dayan. Dayan was Chief of Staff
and we could not publish that because the censors would have erased that.
But this group was: Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan,
Yossi Almogi, a very important fellow named Ehud Avriel,
who has been completely forgotten.
And I published it.
I do not know how much it influenced or got through,
but from that time on the Mapai leadership began
to really be afraid of Ben-Gurion and those around him,
and the Lavon Affair served as a pretext for them to oust Ben-Gurion.
They conducted a trial within the party,
Ben-Gurion resigned and a new party was formed consisting of those people
whose names HaOlam HaZeh had published some time before.
And this was the start of the Levi Eshkol affair.