Very many mourned Levi Eshkol with the deepest of reverence; for all of his apparent prevarication, equivocation and convoluted diplomacy on the eve of the Six-Day War, it was beginning to dawn on more and more people that his gritty patience, nimble instincts and piercing shrewdness had ultimately convinced the world that Israel’s very survival had been at stake, and that the Jewish State had done all it could to avoid that war. Hence the widespread moral backing Israel enjoyed, not least from the president of the United States. Moreover, there was widening appreciation that it had been his prudent prewar vision as prime minister and defense minister that had prepared the idf for the fight of its life, just as it was his undaunted will that helped see the nation through. So yes, verily, the Six-Day War was Levi Eshkol’s triumph.
Menachem Begin put it best at the cabinet meeting of 4 August, 1970, the day he resigned from the national unity government, chaired by Golda Meir who had replaced Eshkol as prime minister:
At the end of May 1967, I came to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol with what was surely for him a painful proposition – that he invite David Ben-Gurion to serve as prime minister of a national unity government, and that he, Eshkol, step aside and serve as his deputy. After I explained to him my considerations I said that if the proposal was objectionable to him he should stop me there and then, and I would have no recriminations. Not only did he not stop me, he suggested we talk the matter through, and we spoke for almost an hour. Indeed, I can verily say that from that day forth we not only established a relationship of understanding, but one of intimacy, too.
Nothing came of my proposal, and a few days later a national unity government came into being under Prime Minister Eshkol. All of us here recall those days leading up to the Six-Day War. We recall the anxiety, the alarm, and the decisive and historic decisions that were taken.
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol proved the spuriousness of the epithets hurled at him at the time – that he was irresolute and indecisive. The very opposite was the case: He took upon himself vital decisions, initiated measures and lent support to fateful judgments of historic consequence. It was Levi Eshkol who stood at the helm of the nation during the Six-Day War. Without his leadership, whatever was accomplished could never have come about. Thus it was that on the evening of Monday the fifth of June, nineteen sixty-seven, in a small Knesset air-raid shelter, we took the decision to liberate Jerusalem. Without Levi Eshkol, that decision would not have been taken. We decided in the final phase of the Six-Day War to ascend and occupy the Golan Heights. Without Levi Eshkol, that decision would not have been made. At the conclusion of the Six-Day War, the government, under Levi Eshkol, authorized the legislation to extend Israel’s jurisdiction and administration over all of Jerusalem. Without him that law would not have come into being. It was on the basis of that law that we united Jerusalem, and I can verily say that without Levi Eshkol’s backing, Jerusalem’s reunification would not have been possible. And there is more, much more, that I can say of the accomplishments of the national unity government under the premiership of the late Levi Eshkol. Indeed, I believe his government was a unique phenomenon in Israel’s history.
I was subsequently to learn from Abba Eban that when he had interviewed Rabin for the Washington posting he had expressed concern about his imperfect command of English. Rabin asked Eban if he could recommend somebody of experience who knew the language to work closely with him, and my name was mentioned. This resulted in my receiving a telephone call from the new ambassador requesting I consider a transfer from the New York Consulate to his Washington Embassy, with the rank of Counselor. I grabbed at the opportunity, and spent the next four intense and highly rewarding years working at his side, in the course of which he was so parsimonious in his distribution of praise that the most gushing compliment he ever paid me was “B’seder ” – That’s okay.
At our first meeting he told me what he expected me to do, and I asked him what he expected of himself as ambassador. He stood up, thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window, stared out of it, features growing progressively more pensive, and then turned, and said, “My objectives in Washington are: One – to ensure that Israel is provided with her defense requirements. Two – coordinate the policies of the United States and of Israel in preparation for possible peace moves, or, alternatively, talks on a political settlement, or, at the very least, preventing a wide discrepancy in the policies between our two countries. Three – securing American financial support to cover our arms purchases and buttress our economy. And four – ensuring that America employs its deterrent strength to prevent direct Soviet military intervention against Israel in the event of war.”
This, I soon learned, was classic Rabin: a conceptualizer with a highly structured and analytical mind. Whenever he had to grapple with an intricate issue he habitually did what I observed him doing on that first day: thrust his hands into his pockets, stare out of the window, mentally analyze the matter in hand, neaten it into an abstract model, and then typically say, “The whole thing boils down to four salient points. They are…” and he would tick them off one by one with unmistakable clarity.
On that particular afternoon, he was preparing himself for a meeting on the morrow with Dr. Henry Kissinger, then President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser. Kissinger wanted Rabin’s ideas on how to advance the implementation of the famous post–Six-Day War Security Council Resolution 242, which Abba Eban had so meticulously worked on. Most particularly he wanted Rabin’s interpretation of the clause which spoke of withdrawal: “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and the establishment of “secure and recognized boundaries.”
While Rabin gazed long and hard out of the window, hands deep in his pockets, I sat there waiting for what seemed an eternity until, finally, he said, “I’m going to deal with the matter in principle, not in detail,” and on he went to dictate in a staccato Hebrew what I was expected to render into plain English. It said:
“On the meaning of withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries: One – the Jewish people have an inalienable historic right to the whole of its biblical homeland. Two – since our objective is a Jewish and democratic state and not a binational state, the boundaries we seek are those which will give Israel a maximum area of the biblical homeland with a maximum number of Jews whom we can maximally defend. Israel, in peace, aspires to be a state that is Jewish by demography, society, and values, not just borders.” And then: “On the measures to achieve such boundaries, peace cannot be accomplished through a single act such as a peace conference. Progress toward peace is a gradual, step-by-step process that will require much time to accomplish. It is dependent on four major steps: One – disengagement between the parties. This will eventually lead to Two – diffusion of the conflict between the parties. This will eventually lead to Three – trust between the parties. And this will eventually lead to Four – negotiation between the parties.”
And that was that – no frills, no superfluities, no flourishes.
Measure these sentences against Yitzhak Rabin’s strategic record and you will find that he held to these guiding principles with absolute consistency for the rest of his life. They informed his doctrine of peace diplomacy as a step-by-step process, evinced in his 1975 Sinai interim agreement with Egypt, his peace treaty with Jordan, his formula for a future peace with Syria, and his vision of peace with the Palestinians in his highly controversial 1993 Oslo Accords. All were based on the notion that Israel’s integrity as a Jewish and democratic state could be assured only by dividing the land between its two peoples – Jew and Arab – embodying as they did two separate faiths, two separate languages, two separate nationalities, two separate narratives, and two separate destinies.
Long and hard did I work on that first talking paper on that first day. It was tricky precisely because Rabin’s mind was so diagnostic and his Hebrew so laconic. By the time I had it polished and typed he had gone home for dinner, leaving instructions that I was t
o deliver it to his residence for a going-over preparatory to his meeting with Kissinger.
The maid who answered the door escorted me into a spacious L-shaped lounge where I caught sight of the Rabins supping with a couple of guests in shirt sleeves, one a short and lively man with leathery skin like a well polished boot, and the other tall and powerful with a fluff of silvery hair and a scar on his left cheek. I could see them clearly in an angled wall mirror which reflected the dining area where Leah Rabin, a striking, dark-eyed woman, was dishing out fruit salad while telling some tale that had them all rollicking with laughter.
Soon they sauntered into the lounge, where Yitzhak Rabin introduced me to his wife and guests – old army pals it transpired – and invited me to join them for coffee before going over the talking paper.
With his tie loosened, jacket off, drinking and chain smoking, Yitzhak – that’s what everybody called him – listened rapturously to the army gossip his old mates were telling him in colorful detail. These were men on whom he had staked his life since the days of his youth as a fighter in the Palmach. The short man – I didn’t catch their names – was drinking uninhibitedly, and began to hum an old Palmach ditty with dewy-eyed sentimentality. The rest hummed along, and all picked up the refrain, chanting in throaty harmony – all but Rabin, that is, who, incapable of holding a tune, sang along off beat in a grating, earnest bass.
As they chanted, the thought occurred to me that I was in the presence of a special breed: the Palmach generation – patriotic, agnostic, deeply anchored in the turf of their Hebrew culture, and consecrated wholly to the defense of their country. Whatever their diverse backgrounds they all seemed to share the same sort of crusty personality, speaking an often-ungrammatical Hebrew, expressing themselves in the most inexplicable slang, and sharing a strong aversion to suits and ties.
When Leah Rabin rose to leave them to get on with their masculine tittle-tattle, the warmth of her husband’s smile echoed in his voice when he lovingly said to her, “Thanks for feeding us at such short notice. You know how the chevra – the pals – are, popping in at the drop of a hat.” Everybody laughed, and I sat wondering at the warm and affectionate resonance of his words which were at such odds with the gruff and reserved individual I had encountered earlier in the day behind his desk at the embassy.
For this I was to learn about Yitzhak Rabin: put him in the bosom of his family, or among his old army buddies, and his warm passions instinctively flowed. He was relaxed, spontaneous, loving, even doting. But put him elsewhere and he invariably clammed up, and became introverted and shy. Such was his nature, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was not one to kindle a flame in public. His delivery of the English speeches I drafted for him was wooden. His words failed to resonate. Emotional language was foreign to his terse style. When he tried to put on a pose he looked ridiculous. He could be no one but himself, and because he spoke his mind with unembroidered frankness and didn’t much care what anyone else thought, he could often infuriate his ideological detractors, while his supporters showered him with an innate trust. Certainly, neither side had any doubts as to who he was. At rock bottom Yitzhak Rabin had that most elusive yet indispensable attribute of leadership – authenticity. He never wore a mask.
Chapter 16
Envoy of the Year
Before moving to its new and smarter premises at 3514 International Drive in the late 1970s, the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC was located in a rather decrepit building on a ramshackle street of terraced houses at 22nd and R Street. There, in December 1969, Menachem Begin called on Ambassador Rabin to pay his respects and be briefed on the latest goings on in the American capital. Begin was visiting the United States on behalf of one of his pet causes: the Israel Bonds Organization, an operation headquartered in New York that was – and still is – dedicated to the sale of securities issued by the Israeli Government for the development of national infrastructure projects. It remains a hugely successful venture, boasting a multi-billion dollar portfolio of nationwide development programs.
Menachem Begin was still serving as a minister without portfolio in the national unity government, now headed by Golda Meir, and his visit to Washington coincided with media reports of a growing rift between the White House and the State Department. Indeed, the Washington Post asserted that very morning that President Nixon was worried that the squabbling between his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, and his secretary of state, William Rogers, was so impeding United States diplomacy that its consequences had serious repercussions for America’s relations with the Soviet Union, the still-raging war in Vietnam, and the deadlocked conflict in the Middle East. Begin wanted to learn what the ambassador thought about it.
“Extraordinary times,” said Rabin. “Yesterday, Bill Safire [who was then a presidential speechwriter before later rising to prominence as a New York Times columnist] told me off the record that Nixon had told him that he regretted the two men were not getting along. He quoted Nixon as saying, ‘Their quarrel is really deep-seated. Henry thinks William isn’t very deep and William thinks Henry is power-crazy.’ That’s what the president said.”
“And what did Safire have to say about that?” asked Begin lightly.
Rabin, in a communicative mood that afternoon, smiled. “Safire said they are both egomaniacs!”
Begin laughed, and said a tad teasingly, “It sounds a bit like what’s going on between you and the Foreign Ministry back home.”
Rabin’s face went amber. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, it is said in Jerusalem that you and Foreign Minister Abba Eban are hardly on speaking terms these days. Please don’t take offense. I simply report what I hear.”
“And I’m glad you have,” said Rabin earnestly. “As a cabinet minister you have to know the facts. The fact is that Nixon prefers that national leaders maintain maximum direct contact with one another without going through their foreign ministers – in other words a back channel. So, when Golda was here a short while back, he proposed to her that she pass her messages directly to him through Kissinger via me, and vice versa. Golda approved. So, if that suggests a lack of confidence in Rogers by Nixon and in Eban by Golda that’s hardly my fault, is it? The trouble is, I’m caught in the middle, and have to take the brunt of Eban’s umbrage.”
Begin was not surprised. Foreign Minister Eban had aired his complaints about Rabin to various cabinet members, Begin among them. He’d asserted that Rabin’s wayward diplomatic behavior showed that he had no real comprehension of his ambassadorial tasks. Rabin was under the misapprehension, so Eban carped, that the hierarchy which applied to the idf did not apply to the relations between his embassy and his ministry. This was evident in Rabin’s cables. Some were thoughtful and moderate, others intemperate and aggressive. They invariably targeted members of the Foreign Ministry staff, or Eban himself, or other ambassadors and, on occasion, even the Israel Government as a whole, not to speak of the Army Command which Rabin had so recently led. In short, he was acting more like a minister of government than an official of the Foreign Ministry.
But Begin had no intention of getting involved in that spat. He wanted to get to the core of things, so he asked about Rabin’s relations with President Nixon. “Rumor has it his door is open to you,” he said.
“That’s an exaggeration,” answered Rabin dryly. “The truth is that in the presidential elections last year I did indicate my preference for him, and he seems to have appreciated that.”
“Really? You, our ambassador, spoke out in support of Richard Nixon against [Democratic candidate] Hubert Humphrey?”
By the manner Begin posed the question it was clear he was being more inquisitive than disparaging, and the way Rabin answered suggested he was being more bold than discreet, for he replied scathingly: “Our sensitive souls at our Foreign Ministry may find distasteful the notion of an Israeli ambassador trying to set one presidential candidate against another on matters of vital importance to us. If that is what they think they under
stand nothing of the ways and means of American politics. It is not enough for an Israeli ambassador here to simply say ‘I’m pursuing my country’s best interests according to the book.’ It doesn’t work that way here in Washington. To promote our interests an Israeli ambassador has to take advantage of the rivalries between the Democrats and the Republicans. If he doesn’t do that he’s not doing his job. An Israeli ambassador who is either unwilling or unable to maneuver his way through the complex American political landscape to promote Israel’s strategic interests would do well to pack his bags and go home.”18
Begin let Rabin’s forceful remarks sink in, but made no comment. He respected Rabin, first and foremost because he was a veteran general, and the old Irgun commander had high esteem and a soft spot for veteran Israeli generals, whatever their politics. Indeed, there was no resentment in Begin’s mind when speaking to this old Palmachnik, who had once taken aim at the Altalena, with him on board. In fact, he greatly admired Rabin for being the soldier that he was, possessed of unbending intellectual honesty and forthrightness, so that when he spoke he conveyed authority and incisiveness. This was why Begin had no compunction now in saying to him rather cheekily, “People tell me Nixon’s an anti-Semite. Is that true?”
Rabin smiled, but the smile didn’t reach the eyes. “Confidentially,” he said, “I reckon he is. He doesn’t like the way Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat, and he certainly doesn’t like the way liberal Jews are leading the anti-Vietnam War campaign against him. Moreover, he probably believes Jews control the press, and he suspects many of them are more loyal to Israel than to America. However, this hasn’t stopped him from appointing individual Jews to high places, like Henry Kissinger, based on their exceptional competence. I think he has high regard for our leaders, and admires our guts in defense of our national interests. Like now, for instance” – a grin was spreading across Rabin’s usually acerbic features – “he seems to have no objection to my clipping the wings of Secretary of State William Rogers.”
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership Page 21
