The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership

by Avner, Yehuda

  “I don’t pretend to know much about Sadat,” said the senator, “but I know Mr. Begin to be a man of strong principle – tough to negotiate with, but his word is his bond.”

  “I’d certainly grant that,” said Ambassador Lewis.

  “Indeed so,” said Vance, benevolently. “But one of the problems in this negotiation was that, unlike Sadat, Mr. Begin is a man of many words. It can be terribly irritating at times, but he relishes a good argument, sometimes just for the sheer sake of it. That’s what makes him a good parliamentarian, I suppose. But in these peace negotiations we sometimes wasted a lot of time arguing about the meaning of words and, in the process, he occasionally got lost in the trees. That was one of the problems Sadat had with Begin. Sadat sees things broadly, his eye always on the horizon. He has no desire or willingness to get down to the nitty-gritty of arguing out the finer points of a document. He leaves that to his subordinates. Mr. Begin, on the other hand, can get lost in the small print; he’s pedantic about semantics.”

  “But those semantics can be vital,” said the senator, whose reputation as a tough negotiator was legendary, not least as a leading proponent of increased American aid to Israel, and blocking Soviet trade advantages with the U.S. so long as Russia’s Jews were prohibited from leaving at will.

  “Vital, yes, but you also have to take into account that Mr. Begin is a very good poker player,” said Ambassador Lewis irreverently.

  “Oh, that he is – a poker player, first class!” confirmed Vance. “He’s as sharp as they come – one of the best interlocutors I’ve ever negotiated with.”

  “In what sense?” Jackson asked.

  “In the sense that as I quickly learned when negotiating with him, he could sometimes display a wounded heart, as if to say in disbelief, ‘How can you possibly ask me to make such a sacrifice?’ And then he won’t budge an inch, sitting his opponent out until he does the yielding. He can outsit the man on the other side of the table time and time again. That’s what I call a good poker player.”

  “You make him sound devious,” said Jackson. “I don’t believe he is. The man genuinely believes what he says. He’s haunted by the Holocaust. He’s a patriot. He fears for his country’s future. His whole life has been a struggle for Israel. There’s no other side to him.”

  “I never suggested otherwise,” said Vance defensively. “He certainly is a patriot, with the interests of his country at heart. Indeed, I’ve always found him very clear in his objectives, very precise in his thinking when it comes to Israel’s defense. What I’m saying is, he sometimes will make a demand that he is later willing to sacrifice, as a bargaining chip. That’s why he’s such a skillful negotiator.”

  “I have to add, he has a masterly sense of timing,” affirmed Lewis. “He can stonewall a situation, sending everybody nearly crazy, and then, at the very last minute, when everything seems about to collapse, he’ll make a tiny concession that will, by then, look huge to everybody else. His instincts identify the very last moment to offer a compromise, by which time it looks like he’s made a tremendous sacrifice. It’s a brilliant negotiating technique.”

  “So, what comes next after this peace treaty?” Jackson asked.

  “The West Bank and Gaza,” replied Vance, solemnly. “Israel is committed to continuing ongoing talks with the Egyptians for self-rule for the Palestinians. Five years after the self-rule has been established it will be open to review.”

  “I hardly think Mr. Begin will be in a mood for West Bank concessions after those five years,” said the senator, soberly.

  “The Lord works in wondrous ways,” said Vance, raising his eyes skyward as if in search of a miracle. “The Begin I know today won’t budge from what he calls Judea and Samaria. He’s made no bones about that. He said to me, ‘I will never preside over the transfer of one inch of the Land of Israel to anyone else’s sovereignty, because the country belongs to us. Others may come after me who might feel differently, but not me.’ That’s what he said.”

  “But he has agreed, has he not, to make no claims of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza during that five-year autonomy period, if and when it ever starts?” asked the senator.

  “Indeed, he has. And when I’ve asked him what the sovereign disposition of the West Bank after those five years would be, the answer he gave me was, ‘By that time I may not be around.’”

  “That’s what he said?”

  “In those very words – ‘I may not be around.’”73

  The Washington ceremonies done, the prime minister flew to New York for a hero’s welcome that included an extended weekend of public rallies, receptions, interviews, meetings with lay and religious leaders, and the mandatory fund-raising banquets for Israeli causes. It was a hectic, emotional, euphoric outpouring of Jewish wining, dining, and celebration, and Begin reveled in it. As was his wont, he spent the Sabbath day resting in his suite on the thirty-eighth floor of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, but came Saturday eve and off he was, making a grand entrance into the hotel’s grand ballroom where two thousand people, black-tied and evening-gowned, rose and roared their acclaim, and wrote out their checks for Israel with glittering abandon.

  Then came the serious business of Sunday, whose morning program began with a visit to a modest Lower East Side apartment, there to pay respect to the world-renowned rabbinic luminary and leading halachic authority of the day, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. This was followed by a CBS interview on Face the Nation, while in the prime minister’s Waldorf Astoria suite on the thirty-eighth floor, another camera crew was setting up equipment for an interview of a different kind. It was to be a documentary for posterity – a relaxed soliloquy in which Mr. Begin would be given all the time he needed to talk candidly in depth about his life and times. The brainchild of Rabbi Alexander Schindler, head of the Conference of American Rabbis, the footage was intended for archival purposes, to be released at some unspecified future date. He and Begin were old friends, having worked closely together during Schindler’s chairmanship of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

  As I sat with Schindler going over his notes, awaiting the prime minister’s arrival, a demonstration was beginning to form on Park Avenue below. We knew that the police had granted a permit to an ultra-Orthodox group who were protesting an archeological dig in Jerusalem at a location called “Area G.” Human bones had allegedly been uncovered at the site, thereby rendering the ground hallow. The group protesting were zealous disciples of the fanatically anti-Zionist, New York-based Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, many of whose followers were associated with a fanatical sect called Neturei Karta – Aramaic for Guardians of the City. To these Jews the State of Israel was, by its very existence, a secular blasphemy, a man-made obscenity, a sinful obstacle along the road to divine redemption.

  The NYPD had assured us that while microphones would be used for speeches, the volume would not reach the prime minister’s suite, thirty-eight floors above. Looking down, I could discern the cordoned-off area where the demonstration was beginning to assemble, between 49th and 50th Streets, right in front of the hotel. From where I stood, everything was in miniature. A mobile speaker’s platform was positioned in the center of the block, on the south-bound lane. Hundreds of tiny beings, all garbed in black, were gradually filling the cordoned-off block in what seemed to be absolute silence. No street noise penetrated the multi-paned windows of the hotel suite; it all looked so neat, so symmetrical, so choreographed. The black was sprinkled with spots of dark blue, these being the policemen posted in no particular pattern. They wore no crash helmets, nor did they carry shields or batons. Jewish demonstrations were never violent, it was said. There was nothing sinister about the feel of it all. Indeed, I could not but marvel at the innocent civility of the occasion, how this great metropolis was taking in its stride an anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jewish demonstration on a Sunday afternoon in the very heart of Manhattan, and shrugging it off as just one more community of New Yorkers doing its ow
n thing in its own way, as the law allows.

  Unaware of the protestors below, the prime minister entered the lounge and greeted Schindler warmly. Then, observing me looking out of the window, he asked what was attracting my attention. When I told him he strode over to look down. “Nu, nu,” he said, “thank God America is a free country, where Jews can demonstrate without fear.” He then clapped his hands, placed himself in the armchair facing the camera, and said with alacrity, “Shall we begin?” And the cameras rolled.

  Schindler asked him about his home life as a youngster, his early years as a Zionist, his trials as commander of the Irgun underground, his frustrations as a politician, and his aspirations as a statesman. The most personal and difficult questions he left to the end – those about the fate of the Begin family during the Holocaust; what their slaughter had done to him as a man, and as a Jew. And, yes, where was God?

  As Begin began to explain the meaning of kiddush Hashem – the sanctification of the Almighty’s name, even in the hell of the Holocaust – something diabolical occurred. The sound system below was turned up full blast, and a speaker was heard damning Begin as a Nazi, and calling upon the United Nations to dismantle the Jewish State. Begin, seemingly unaware of the intrusion, continued to dwell at length on what he called his ani ma’amin – his credo – on why, even after the Holocaust, he remained a believing Jew.

  But now the single voice grew to a chorus, which gradually swelled into a roar, as hundreds of distant voices from the street below welled up, yelling in unison a chilling curse in a rhythmic beat, “Begin, yemach shimcha! Begin, yemach shimcha! ”

  As the protestors were calling down the wrath of God upon the prime minister, to obliterate his name from the face of the earth, he did not stop talking about his undiminished belief in Elokei Yisrael – the God of Israel. In an almost whisper, staring straight into the camera, he said, “After the Holocaust, there is no command more supreme than that a Jew should never abuse another Jew, should never lift a finger against another Jew, and should endeavor to love his neighbor as himself.” And as he said these words, his eyes reddened, and he left the room.

  Chapter 42

  The Child in El Arish

  A couple of months later, in the early hours of Sunday morning 27 May, four tourist buses, two Egyptian and two Israeli, came from opposite directions along the coastal road of northern Sinai, bound for El Arish. In those days, El Arish was a sand swept, lazy oasis of some forty-five thousand souls, anchored in desert dunes and lapped by a velvet sea. It was also the administrative capital of the Sinai, which was why Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar Sadat had chosen to meet there on that May morning for its ceremonial transfer back to Egyptian rule. The implementation of the peace treaty had begun and, with it, the gradual withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Sinai.

  The passengers in the tourist buses were not tourists. They were disabled veterans of the two armies, who had charged at each other across the sands of Sinai, in tanks, in half-tracks, in gun carriers, in command cars, in helicopters, and in aircraft, attacking each other in combat in many wars, over many decades. Now, at Begin’s instigation and with Sadat’s concurrence, the wounded veterans had agreed to rendezvous at El Arish in a gesture of chivalrous reconciliation.

  Prior to their arrival, honor guards and military bands of both armies had marched in unison across the parade ground in files of five, as the prime minister and the president took the salute. It was a thrilling spectacle to view at first, but then the bugles sounded, signaling the lowering of the Israeli flag and the raising of the Egyptian one. Watching it, many a Jewish face turned momentarily melancholy, showing an indefinable disquiet. Who knew how long this peace would last?

  In rigid homage, the two leaders listened to the playing of their national anthems, after which they retired for a private talk, while a number of us, members of the entourage, strolled to the nearby flag-bedecked recreation hall where the wounded veterans were to rendezvous.

  The Egyptian buses arrived first. They churned up much desert dust as they came into view, and drew to a halt at the entrance to the hall. There must have been about seventy men in all, resplendent in fresh uniforms of different rank and insignia, and all lavishly decorated in campaign medals. Their descent from the buses was painfully slow. Some were missing a foot, others a leg. At least four had had both legs amputated. Some wore hook-like contraptions where their hands had been, and the sleeves of those without arms were neatly folded back and pinned at the shoulder. A number were grotesquely disfigured; others blind. They walked, wheeled and limped their way into the hall’s cool interior, on crutches, with canes, and in wheelchairs. Medical orderlies guided them to the far end of the hall, where they were handed refreshments.

  Five minutes later the two Israeli buses, red and cream-colored, pulled up, and the scene repeated itself. One by one, the Israeli war invalids emerged, some lame, some disfigured, some with artificial limbs, some paralyzed, some blind. Unlike the Egyptians, however, none wore uniforms or decorations of any sort. In wheelchairs, or leaning on crutches and canes, they were assisted by medical orderlies as they hobbled and rolled their way into the hall, lining up opposite the Egyptians.

  Silence!

  Eyes locked in a palpable maelstrom of conflicting emotions. The wounded appraised each other, as if striving to pick out the one who had pressed the trigger, pulled the pin, pushed the button. Gallant though this encounter was, no one had thought it through to the end. Nobody knew what to do or to say as the two groups of smashed men confronted one another across a distance of ten or twelve yards, that was an impassable no-man’s land. A restless stirring gripped the hall. Some asked orderlies to get them out. The wounds were too fresh.

  Close to where I was standing, an Israeli in his thirties, blind, bent low to embrace a whimpering child. The child was eight or nine, with big eyes as black as his curly hair. Their resemblance was striking.

  “Kach oti eleihem” [Take me to them], whispered the father, but the child looked up at his father pleadingly. “Ani m’fached mihem,” [I’m scared of them], he sniveled. Gently, the father nudged the child forward and, timidly, the boy led the father into the no-man’s land. At his very first step, an Egyptian officer in a wheelchair, legless, began rolling himself toward them. They met in the middle and the officer placed the blind man’s palm into his own, and shook it. Instantly, the tension eased. A Jew began to clap; he was joined by an Arab. The sprinkling of claps quickly swelled into a burst of boisterous applause as the two groups moved toward each other, melting into a huddle of embraces, handshakes, and backslapping. With laughter and tears, the maimed soldiers of the 1948 war, the 1956 Sinai War, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1970 Attrition War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War fell on one another, calling out “Shalom!” “Salaam!” “Peace!”

  It was in the midst of this embrace that Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat entered, and the applause rose to an even higher pitch. The two leaders circulated among the men, asking about their wounds and where they had fought. And when the two leaders mounted the rostrum to laud their brave armies and their wounded veterans, many in the crowd wept and called out to each other in Hebrew, in Arabic, and in English: “L’chayim! ” “Lihayot! ” “To life!”

  Enveloped in the midst of this raucous camaraderie, the child clung tightly to his blind father. He looked bewildered, his eyes darting back and forth at the animated faces of Arab and Jew. As long as he could remember, he had played escort to a father who would never see because he had been made blind by these Arabs. To him, they would always be the enemy and, by definition, bad. Sensing his son’s apprehension, the blind man lifted his child into his arms, kissed him gently, and said, “Al t’fached b’ni. Ha’Aravim ha’eyle tovim” [Don’t be afraid my son. These Arabs are good].

  Photograph credit: Israel Government Press Office

  British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher receives Prime Minister Begin at 10 Downing Street, 25 May 1979

  Chap
ter 43

  Begin’s Bag and Baggage

  A few months later, Mr. Begin was invited to London, as a guest of the Anglo-Jewish community. It was not all that long ago that many of its elders had cold-shouldered the man as a nationalist lunatic, but now they were opening their doors wide to him, as a world statesman. It was in this spirit that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher hosted him for lunch at 10 Downing Street.

  Few things tickled Mr. Begin’s fancy more than walking across the threshold of Number 10, for it was there, in the mid-1940s, that the order had been given to promise ten thousand pounds – what was then a huge sum – as a reward for information leading to his capture, dead or alive. Amazingly, now, British reporters were still pillorying him, and one, a bald man with the shape of a beer barrel, bellowed from the other side of the street as the prime minister emerged from his limousine, “Mr. Begin, people in Britain still call you a wanted terrorist. Any comment?”

  Begin crossed over to the scrum of newsmen, and in an eminently reasonable tone said to the man, “You really want my comment?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then you shall have it. Kenyan Mau Mau leaders visit Britain and they are called freedom fighters. Cypriot insurgents, Irish revolutionaries, and Malaysian militias visit Britain, and they are all called freedom fighters. Only I am called a terrorist. Is that because I was a Jewish freedom fighter?”

  “Are you going to ask Mrs. Thatcher for her support of the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?” fired another, in a la-di-da accent. He was tall, smartly dressed in a blue serge suit, with a silk handkerchief neatly tucked into his breast pocket.