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bsentence had been reduced, and he was preparing to go home bafter having served a mere eighteen years. bThere were some seventy prisoners in the wing, fifty-eight bof them Jewish. Of those, the overwhelming majority were Jews bfrom Eastern or Arab lands, Sephardim. Perhaps more than any- bthing else, this is the accusing finger that points at the Israeli bEstablishment, for what the Muslims could not do during more bthan 1,000 years of domination of the Jews in their lands, the bJewish Establishment of Israel accomplished in less than 25: the bspiritual destruction of hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews bwho came to the Holy Land with their religion, Zionism, and bbasic Jewish values. Less than three decades later, they were bdeep into crime, violence, drugs, prostitution, and pell-mell emi- bgration from the country. In my wing alone there were four bYemeni Jewish murderers. I doubt that there had been a total of bfour Jewish murders in the 2,000 years of exile in Yemen. . . . bThe greatest enemy of modern man is boredom. In prison, bit can drive men mad. And so I instituted a stiff, disciplined bdaily regimen of study and writing that would keep me busy bfrom early morning (4:30 A.M.) until lights-out (midnight). bThis schedule included regular study not only of Bible, Talmud, band Law but also of other writings of various kinds. I have, for bexample, been creating a biblical commentary for the past ten byears, and, ironically, never did I have so much time—and peace band quiet—to work on it as in prisons. It is a labor of love, and bI spent many hours on it, daily, while in Ramle. bThat in itself gives more than a passing clue to the attitude bof the prison guards and officials toward me. It goes without bsaying that the Jewish prisoners treated me with respect and badmiration. Not only did I represent, in the eyes of these Jews bfrom Arab lands, opposition to the Establishment they so hated, bbut they had a genuine gut feeling that the Arab poses a terrible bthreat to Jews within Israel. No Ashkenazic Jew from Europe bcan really appreciate this, for he has not lived with an Arab bmajority. He has not tasted the bitter dregs of Jewish minority bstatus under Muslim rule. bEven more significant, the average guard was over- bwhelmingly sympathetic to me. It was clear to all that I was not ban ordinary criminal and that I had been imprisoned for my bideas—ideas that so many of those guards, as well as Jews b
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