The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership

by Avner, Yehuda

  A few days later, Begin was rushed to hospital. It was rumored that he had suffered yet another heart attack. His doctors denied this. What he’d suffered was a cardiac complication brought on by overwork, they said, and what he needed was a rest. So he rested, and from his hospital bed he drew up his new cabinet which he duly presented to the Knesset on 29 June 1977.

  It was an exquisite day, and he began it by going to the Kotel – the Western Wall – to pray. A crowd of onlookers included black-clad worshippers, Hawaiian-topped tourists, and a host of others, all gawking at a gray Plymouth saloon with three radio masts following an off-white Peugeot 504, out of which Begin emerged, ringed by a squad of bodyguards. Sephardic women ululated with excitement, yeshiva boys sang and danced, and the gleeful throng quickly surrounded the prime minister’s group, already swelled by a clutch of newsmen and photographers, recording every stride the prime minister took.

  Menachem Begin made his way toward the Wall, his bespectacled, patrician features alive with a glittering smile as he waved and nodded heartily to the assembly. There, at the Wall, he laid his head on a weathered stone, a spontaneous gesture so symbolic that it sparked a blaze of photo flashes. A flock of starlings startled, and went wheeling and screeching out of the crevices above, where bouquets of caper bushes sprouted.

  From his pocket, Begin solemnly drew a book of psalms, and recited both lamentations and thanksgivings with reverence. He was deeply aware that within a matter of hours the Knesset would give him its vote of confidence, and the burden of leadership would rest upon his shoulders for the first time.

  People watched in silence as he prayed. When he kissed the Wall, and turned to go back to his vehicle, many formed a chanting chain around him, singing Begin, King of Israel at the tops of their voices.

  Above the din, a voice called out, “So, under your prime ministership, Mr. Begin, how do you visualize a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem?”

  The question came from a big-boned man in a safari jacket on whose lapel hung a New York Times tab.

  “I see a ready solution,” answered Begin, unhesitatingly. “In nineteen forty-eight, on the day of our independence, five Arab armies invaded us. We defeated them at great human cost. As a result of that aggression, not one, but two refugee problems arose – Jewish as well as Arab. An almost equal number of Jews fled to Israel from Arab and Moslem lands, as did Arabs from here to Arab lands. Hence, a de facto exchange of populations has already taken place.”

  “And would you be willing to negotiate this and other matters directly with Mr. Yasser Arafat and his PLO?” asked a tall, gray-haired Christian Science Monitor journalist, in the precise tones of a Boston Brahmin.

  Something flickered far back in Begin’s eyes. The sun caught his glasses, sending a fierce flash across his face, and in a tone reserved for stubborn doctrines, replied, “No, sir – never! That man is the godfather of international terrorism. His organization, the so-called PLO, is a gang of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. His so-called Palestine Charter is an Arab Mein Kampf. We will never conduct talks with that archcriminal about our own destruction.”

  “And what if Mr. Arafat recognizes Israel’s existence – would you negotiate with him then?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wouldn’t believe him. It would be a trick, a subterfuge, a phase in his plan to destroy the Jewish State in stages.”

  “May I butt in at this point,” insinuated a tall, debonair chap in a bow tie, with a deep, perfectly pitched BBC voice. “Mr. Arafat asserts that the Jewish State is an illegitimate entity with no right of existence in international law. Arab governments hold to that same view. What say you to that?” His rich English accent was provocative.

  Begin, sniffing the foul odor of prejudice, but honed by years of legal training, restrained himself and, with the demeanor of a practiced lawyer, said, “Traditionally, there are four major criteria of statehood under international law. One: an effective and independent government. Two: an effective and independent control of the population. Three: a defined territory. And four: the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations. Israel is in possession of all four and, hence, is a fully fledged sovereign state and a fully accredited member of the United Nations.”

  The BBC man’s acerbic comment on Israel’s right to exist had so infuriated Begin that he wrote a last-minute addition to the address which he was shortly to deliver in the Knesset, presenting his government for a vote of parliamentary confidence. And when the time came, in a House already buzzing with excitement, every seat taken, the president in his chair of honor, senior officials cramming into their reserved sections, and all the galleries packed with ambassadors, senior officers and other dignitaries, Menachem Begin, a picture of robust self-assurance, mounted the podium to present his cabinet for approval.

  Old-timers, noting that he held in his hand a sheaf of papers, called out to each other in surprise, “Look, he’s going to read his speech!”

  Menachem Begin had not read a speech since he addressed his compatriots over the Irgun underground radio on the day of Israel’s birth twenty-nine years before. In deference to the magnitude of the moment, he, the undisputed master of the impromptu word, began reading his address.

  Begin started dryly, by outlining the democratic processes that had led to the present changing of the guard from Labor to Likud, but when he came to the body of his remarks, a deepening passion crept into his voice. Recalling Israel’s rebirth and its inherent right to exist in the family of nations, he wagged a finger, and asked in a trembling tone, “Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people the recognition of its right to exist? Their existence per se is their right to exist!”

  As he said these words he rose up on his toes, and every chattering voice in the chamber stilled. He made an arch out of the tips of his fingers, glared at his text, and thundered, “We were granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago! And so it is that the Jewish people have an historic, eternal and inalienable right to Eretz Yisrael, the land of our forefathers. And for that right, which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unequalled in the annals of the nations.”

  Applause rose from the coalition benches. Many got to their feet. It was a stirring moment, but the man sitting on my left in the section reserved for senior aides did not seem to be particularly moved. Busying himself with a notepad, he was scribbling down names and numbers in a handwriting so bold I could not help but notice them. I threw him a glance and he grinned back with a wide and disarming smile.

  “Yechiel Kadishai,” he said above the ovation, introducing himself, and he gave my hand a friendly shake.

  He was in his mid-fifties, of medium height, with silvering hair bordering a high forehead. Knesset old-timers gossiped fondly about Yechiel Kadishai, for he was a gregarious sort, quick-witted and irreverent. Yet for all his bonhomie and easygoing manner, he was reputed to be the most influential member of the Begin coterie, his most intimate confidant, his alter ego, his factotum, the man who saw him unshaven in pajamas in the morning.

  As Begin resumed his extravagant oratory, Kadishai returned to his notepad, but soon enough he got up and left, presumably on some urgent errand. At this point his master’s speech gradually cooled to a dry and factual outline of the policy aims of his new government, and the naming of the ministers who would carry them out, after which speakers from all parties spoke.

  When Moshe Dayan rose to speak, a sudden restlessness seized the Labor benches. Eyes glared and hatred flashed at this one-time war hero and stalwart of the Labor movement who, forever the maverick, had jumped ship to join Menachem Begin’s cabinet as his foreign minister. The moment he opened his mouth, the wrath of his former comrades was flung at him.

  “Traitor!”
one of them screamed

  “Turncoat!” yelled another.

  “Give back your seat!” bawled a third.

  “Resign!” shouted a fourth.

  “Shame on you!” bellowed somebody else.

  Amid the jeers, hissing and name-calling, Moshe Dayan kept his temper, his face masklike. He delivered his address, mentioning Israel’s intention to attend a Geneva peace conference on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242, and affirming that no step would be taken to annex Judea and Samaria while Israel conducted peace negotiations with its neighbors.

  One Labor member, totally beside himself, jumped up and cried out, “You are unfit to represent Israel as our foreign minister. Get out of our sight!” This evoked such a squall that the Speaker of the House shouted that he was of a mind to close the meeting. Yet without missing a beat, Moshe Dayan pressed on, insisting that Israel was heading toward crucial decisions and that national unity was more urgent than ever. Few could hear him, because the barrage of abuse shattered virtually every second sentence he uttered.

  As the heckling rose and fell, Freuka Poran, who was sitting behind me, leaned across to say, “That’s exactly how Dayan behaves under fire, with that same expression on his face – blank! Shells can be bursting all around him but he carries on as if he’s not hearing a thing. That’s what he’s doing now – he’s cut himself off from reality. People can shout till kingdom come, he won’t bat an eyelid.”

  Hours later, well past midnight, and after what had died down to a largely humdrum debate, the vote of confidence in the new government was carried, and Menachem Begin and his newly appointed ministers stepped up to the podium one by one, to take the oath of office. When the Speaker finally banged his gavel to declare the session closed, I caught sight of Yitzhak Rabin edging his way around the crowd to join the cluster of well-wishers surrounding the new prime minister.

  “Mazal tov! ” said Rabin with his shy, lopsided smile, extending his hand in congratulation.

  Begin returned the handshake, bowed, and said, “If it is convenient may I call on you at the prime minister’s office tomorrow morning at nine?”

  Rabin’s smile spread into a grin. “Convenient? I shall make it convenient. You’re the prime minister now!”

  At 8:45 on the following morning, Yitzhak Rabin, casually dressed in a long-sleeve white shirt and flannel slacks, walked into the outer office of the prime minister’s bureau looking stress-free and even cheery, as if his cup of bitterness had miraculously emptied overnight.

  “Time to call it a day,” he said with mock relief to us, his handful of personal aides, gathered together to make our farewells. Rabin had ended his self-imposed leave of absence the day Begin won the election, and as the law prescribed, resumed the prime ministership until the prime minister-elect had wrapped up the haggling and horse-trading that always accompanies the formation of a new coalition. That day had finally dawned, and while Rabin waited for Begin’s nine o’clock arrival we engaged in chitchat about the furor Dayan had caused in the Knesset the evening before. Not only were Labor people furious over his desertion and his appointment as foreign minister, but bereaved families from the Yom Kippur War were outraged, too. They had never forgiven him for the war’s initial failures. Wherever he appeared in public they jeered and booed him, and sometimes threw rotten vegetables at him as well, so the fact that he had now been made foreign minister filled them with renewed anger.

  Though never a Dayanist, Rabin thought the appointment a shrewd move on Begin’s part. Begin needed Dayan, he said. The new prime minister was virtually unknown outside the Jewish world, whereas Dayan was an international figure. His appointment was proof to foreign governments that Begin’s cabinet was serious, not a bunch of former terrorists.

  “Believe me,” said Rabin with a smirk, “when an ambassador calls on Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan he’ll make sure his tie is straight when he walks into his room, and he’ll watch his every word. Nobody else in Begin’s cabinet comes close to Dayan’s eminence.”

  While this chitchat was going on I opened the door leading into the prime minister’s inner sanctum.

  “Close that door!” said Rabin.

  “Why – you’re not going to receive Begin in your room?” I asked.

  “That room’s no longer mine. I’ll walk into it when I’m invited.” Then, to Dan Patir, his media adviser, “Are the press assembled next door?”

  The adjacent conference room was where the formal handover ceremony was to take place. Patir assured him that the reporters and photographers were all present, together with senior staffers, and he showed him the running order of the ceremony. It was to be a straightforward, modest affair – a couple of speeches and toasts, no more.

  Satisfied, Rabin, hands in pockets, walked over to the window to stare at the road along which Menachem Begin’s car would shortly pass. He glanced at his watch – less than two minutes to go.

  A silence settled on the room. It was an awkward moment. There was nothing more to say. Our desks were cleared, the drawers emptied, the last calls made, and the farewells done. Rabin, without turning, said he hoped we’d continue to see something of each other, and we said we would, but we knew we wouldn’t. We were, for the most part, office colleagues, not personal friends. We had worked together as a team because Rabin had galvanized us to serve him loyally in that marvelously cosseted and privileged environment known as the prime minister’s bureau. But now that he was going, so were we – off on our separate ways, driven by dissimilar interests and ambitions, and miscellaneous insecurities. As for myself, I would be moving back to the crabby bureaucracy of the foreign ministry, to be offered, no doubt, a posting in some far-off Third World capital that would leave me and my family unsettled and itinerant.

  Ironically, the one man slated to remain with Begin was his biggest detractor – General Ephraim Poran. The novice prime minister had asked him to stay on as his military secretary and, predictably, Rabin had told him in the plainest of terms that it was his soldierly duty to accept. Rabin insisted that Freuka alone had the expertise to manage the sensitive liaison between the new prime minister and the chiefs of the IDF, the Intelligence services, and the defense ministry. Freuka was persuaded to put off his retirement for another year.

  “Here he comes!” said Rabin, abruptly stepping back from the window. “He’s making sure to arrive on the dot of nine. I’ll go down to receive him.”

  The off-white Peugeot 504 curb-crawled along the road, followed by the gray Plymouth saloon filled with its bevy of security agents. Soon, the vehicles drew up under the portico of the prime minister’s office, and a doorman saluted. Policemen encircled the car, cameras clicked, and bystanders applauded. The man inside reached out to clasp the welcoming hand of the man standing outside to welcome him.

  In the brightness of that June morning, the formal and impeccably neat attire of Prime Minister Menachem Begin looked like a costume of high rank compared to Yitzhak Rabin’s dressed-down shirt and pants. This, in Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s parlance, signified hadar, Hebrew for ‘splendor.’ Hadar suggested not just style, but a frame of mind and attitude. It implied nobility of spirit, chivalry, self-esteem, majesty, honor, and stateliness. A Jew should conduct himself with hadar. And on this morning, Begin’s hadar advertised a fresh kind of government, a nationalist creed with a social-liberal bent, in place of the discredited informal, bare-chested socialist habit of yesteryear.

  Begin, smiling broadly, escorted by Rabin and trailed by an entourage of three, Yechiel Kadishai among them, mounted the stairs and entered the outer office, where he pumped our hands enthusiastically. Rabin then stepped forward to open the door to the inner sanctum and gestured to its new occupant to enter, but Begin held back. Putting on a mock frown, he insisted Rabin enter first.

  “But it’s your room now,” said Rabin, partly tease, partly earnest.

  “Indeed it is,” replied Begin, in the highest of spirits. “Therefore I, not you, am the host. It is I who must open t
he door for you. I insist you go in first.”

  They crossed the threshold together, and commandeered a corner for a tête-à-tête while we aides engaged in stiff small talk. Eventually, Begin called Kadishai over to show Rabin a letter he had just received from the president of the United States, Mr. Jimmy Carter. Kadishai dipped into his jam-packed briefcase and, in a jiffy, extracted the document and gave it to Rabin, whose eyebrows rose as he read it. He whispered something into Begin’s ear that caused him to throw me a quick, assessing look, and he then suggested they join the assembly awaiting them in the adjacent conference room. Entering together, they were greeted with applause amid the whirling and clicking and flashing of cameras.

  Yitzhak Rabin, though no orator, handed over the reins of government with articulate grace. He spoke of the privilege of having devoted his life to the service of his people, and of his democratic responsibility to ensure the smooth changing of the guard from himself to Mr. Begin, and his prayer for the success of Begin’s administration.

  In turn, Begin thanked Rabin profusely for his “dedicated years.” He was “immensely proud of the mature expression of democracy that made an election day in Israel a day of such beauty.” Moreover, “words cannot adequately express the nation’s gratitude for the manner whereby Knesset member Rabin has overseen the historic change of administrations.”

  Each speech ended with a toast, followed by round after round of handshaking, which trailed off only after the two men briefly embraced for the benefit of the cameramen. Then came a final wave of the hand and a thank-you, and the newly installed prime minister turned to enter his room. As he was about to do so, a bold Jerusalem Post reporter called out after him, “Mr. Begin, what does it feel like to walk into that room after so many years in opposition?”