'He was an officer and a gentleman' By Miriam Shaviv Jerusalem Post JERUSALEM (October 18) - Colleagues of Rehavam Ze'evi yesterday mourned the murdered minister as a cultured and mild-mannered man, whose gentle personality was often at odds with his public image as a hard-liner. "He was an officer and a gentleman," MK Avigdor Lieber-man told a meeting of the National-Union-Yisrael Beiteinu faction. "Like the last of the Mohicans, he was a true representative of the generation which fought to establish, and maintain, the State of Israel." "Although our political disagreements were harsh, our debates in the Knesset were very civil," said Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan. "He would often apologize for having to oppose me." "As an enemy, he would never stab you in the back. He was respectful to every MK, Jew or Arab," agreed MK Michael Kleiner (Herut). Ze'evi edited more than 65 books, most of them about the Land of Israel. He was a great reader, and had an enormous library of thousands of books, including many rare publications, Kleiner said. The Jerusalem-born minister was also a stickler for the Hebrew language. He would correct people's mistakes, but unlike many people, his corrections were actually right, Kleiner said. One MK said that he had on occasion caught Ze'evi leafing through a dictionary, trying to find words he didn't know: "I'm not sure which letter he reached." Ze'evi, who was apparently nicknamed Gandhi, was a man easily loved - gentle, pleasant, very clear about his priorities, recalled his assistant, Hagit Sachs. "He was important to people who worked for him on a personal level. I'd only been with him for five months but he knew every detail about my life." MK Gideon Ezra first met Ze'evi after the Six Day War, when Ze'evi was OC Central Command and Ezra was in the GSS. "He had a clear outlook on life even then," said Ezra. "His love for the Land of Israel and for Jerusalem was obvious in everything he said and did. "He was terribly efficient. He knew the Knesset regulations by heart." "In his recent months as tourism minister, Ze'evi missed the debates in the Knesset. He was in a very problematic ministry, and although he tried to fight to improve the state of tourism here, the problem was greater than him. He wasn't tired, though, he was never tired," Ezra said of the 75-year old. "In his final days, Ze'evi was in a defiant mood," said coalition chairman Ze'ev Boim. "I spoke to him for the last time on Tuesday morning, and asked him to take back his resignation. He didn't want to hear my reasoning. He was convinced that [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon is following [Foreign Minister Shimon] Peres and that he wouldn't be able to influence the cabinet."