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The Good,the Bad, and Golda
By Elliot Jager
'Whoever wants to be prime minister deserves what he gets!'
- Golda Meir
It's a familiar scene. The silver-gray, armor-plated Cadillac
pulls up to the entrance of the Prime Minister's Office. Security
is tight, as Israel's top elected official moves from car
to doorway. The next image is usually the prime minister,
and entourage, heading up the stairway leading to the cabinet
room; and then finally, we watch the premier - center of attention
- making small talk, waiting for reporters and cameras to
be ushered out.
Ten men and one woman have served as prime ministers - first
among equals - in the 53 years since the establishment of
the state in 1948, starting with David Ben-Gurion, who formally
took office on February 24, 1949, to Ariel Sharon on March
7, 2001.
Collegial cabinet-style decision-making has never been the
name of the game. For better or worse, the central player
has always been the premier.
Stop a a passerby on the street - especially a young one
- and ask him to name our prime ministers, and you're likely,
at best, to get an incomplete and incorrect roster that includes
Moshe Dayan, Chaim Weizmann and "what's-his-name, you know."
Sharon, and ex-prime ministers Ehud Barak, Binyamin Netanyahu
and Shimon Peres, are still politically active or hovering
just off stage. But, what about the other seven?
So, consider it your civic duty on Independence Day to discover
(or rediscover) the pantheon of prime ministers.
Sitting in his office on the 17th floor of a Tel Aviv skyscraper,
businessman, scholar and political insider Boaz Eppelbaum,
a year older than the state, has given serious thought to
the the country's premiers, and has just published, in Hebrew,
what amounts to a primer for prime ministers.
The book, Beit Sefer Lerashai Memshala ("A School For Prime
Ministers - Ten Israeli Prime Ministers - The Personal Story"),
is a mix of pop psychology, politics, history and biography.
(The 11th, Sharon, was elected after the book was published.)
While the Haifa-born, intellectually curious, and personally
animated Eppelbaum was practically raised in the Labor Party,
and had a close association with Peres, A School For Prime
Ministers strives - not always successfully - to rise above
partisanship.
In a little over than 200 pages, Eppelbaum packs in a wealth
of data: vignettes, capsule histories, psychological insights
and biographical details. The book (soon to be published in
English) has garnered deserved attention in the Hebrew press.
Eppelbaum's thought is: If prospective prime ministers understand
their predecessors - what made them tick, and what made them
succeed or fail - the next leadership batch will be better
prepared.
In fact, if they study the book, Eppelbaum hopes some candidates
will realize that the job is not for them.
What motivated Eppelbaum to write the book was the failed
prime ministership of Netanyahu (1996-1999), a bright man
whose personality, in Eppelbaum's opinion, was not suited
for the job. He also thinks the young generation doesn't know
enough about the early prime ministers.
Eppelbaum began his political involvement as a youthful
Labor Party activist. He's had the opportunity to observe
what he calls Israel's Brahmins, the highest political caste:
Labor's ruling elite.
An affable name dropper, Eppelbaum seems to know just about
everybody who was anybody in Labor going back to Haim Bar-Lev,
Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir.
This exposure fueled Eppelbaum's curiosity about political
leadership in general. "I wanted to understand who wants to
be prime minister."
One thing he's certain of (though others beg to differ):
Each and every person to occupy the office wanted it. None
of them took on the job purely out of a sense of civic duty.
Talking to Eppelbaum makes one wonder: Who were these, sometimes
obscure, leaders? What challenges did they face? How did their
troubles stack up against "the current situation"?
And, how does Eppelbaum - political animal and party insider
that he is - rate each of them on his 1-10 scale, and, finally,
what should the rest of us make of his judgments?
Here are thumbnail sketches of the seven earliest premiers
using Eppelbaum's book as a take-off point but also relying
on interviews, the work of previous scholars and archival
research.
David Ben-Gurion
- 1948-1953 and 1955-1963
- Eppelbaum rating: 8-9
- Years in office (*all figures are cumulative): 13
- Age range as PM: 62 to 77
- Rivals: Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol
- Opposed the introduction of TV, fearing America's cultural
dominance
- Voracious reader
- Wore khaki to hammer home message that the country remained
in a state of emergency
- What to read: Ben-Gurion: The Biography of An Extraordinary
Man by Robert St. John; Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire by Dan
Kurzman; David Ben-Gurion: Politics and Leadership in Israel
by Ronald W. Zweig
No one ever said that Ben-Gurion was a nice guy. But even
his opponents tend to agree that it is unlikely there would
have been a Jewish state without the Old Man.
"If any of the subsequent prime ministers were to have been
in Ben-Gurion's place in 1948, we wouldn't have a state today,"
says Eppelbaum.
Ben-Gurion taught us, he says, that "not everyone can be
prime minister." Meaning, he set such a high standard that
his was a very hard act to follow.
So, hard, in fact, that Levi Eshkol suggested that Moshe
Sharett go next. He did. And B-G had to be called back from
retirement to "save" the country.
His accomplishments were on a grand scale. He brought Israel
through the 1948 War of Independence. Bolshevik-style, he
cracked down on political opponents outside Labor (communists,
Jabotinskyites and Arabs), all the while dominating Labor
(and therefore Israel) well into Eshkol's term.
Ben-Gurion was a bulldozer. He usually got what he wanted.
He opened highly divisive negotiations with Germany on Holocaust
reparations. Opponents, led by Menachem Begin, rioted outside
the Knesset; hundreds were injured.
But Ben-Gurion's policy brought - starting in 1952 - millions
of desperately needed German deutschmarks to build the state.
("Blood money," Begin called it.)
B-G also set the course for the country's security policy:
Fedayeen attacks would seldom go unanswered.
What kind of man was he? Tough, hard, humorless - not a
people person.
"Although he inspires hero worship, there is little warmth
in his relationship with those around him," his biographer
Robert St. John wrote.
Eppelbaum puts it this way: "We needed a dictator. We had
a dictator." The quintessential right man at the right time.
Moshe Sharett (Shertok)
- 1953-1955
- Eppelbaum rating: 7
- Years in office: 2
- Age range as PM: 56 to 58
- Rival: Ben-Gurion
- Someone had to do it: Succeeded Ben-Gurion
- Excessively ambitious
- Shaped the Foreign Ministry into a respected, professional
institution
- What to read: Moshe Sharett: Biography of a Political
Moderate by Gabriel Sheffer (you might want to take it out
of a library. It has a price tag of $125); Moshe Sharett
by Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Who knew from Moshe Sharett? He was the William Howard Taft
of prime ministers. Like the obscure US president, who followed
a much better known predecessor, we might vaguely know the
name, but not much else.
But the "new" historians have resurrected Sharett's memory,
arguing that he was more inclined to pursue peace with the
Arabs than others in Labor's ruling elite. He understood them,
and spoke their language fluently (plus seven others), the
result of his having spent some of his early years living
in Samaria.
He believed that, far from being warlike, the Arabs tended
mostly to respond to Israeli aggressiveness.
In The Iron Wall, Avi Shlaim writes that Sharett "viewed
the Arabs as a people and not just as an enemy - a 'proud
and sensitive' people... [who] have 'extremely subtle understanding
and delicate senses.'"
By any stretch of the imagination, Sharett was not a trigger-happy
prime minister. Take the events of the night of March 16,
1954. An Eilat-bound bus was attacked by Arab infiltrators
from the West Bank. Eleven passengers were slaughtered.
How would Israel respond?
Sharett declared: "A retaliatory operation in reaction to
such a bloodbath would only diminish the terrible impact of
the murder, and put us on the same level as the murderers."
In those instances when he would order retaliation, the
response would be limited in scope. This stance had so little
support in the military establishment that Sharett sometimes
learned about retaliations only after the fact.
Using sound bites that Peres would popularize in the Oslo
era, Sharett asked a Hebrew University audience: "Are we going
to launch war, or do we intend to promote peace?"
As prime minister, he was even willing to consider "safe
passage" for Palestinian Arabs from Egyptian-held Gaza to
the Jordanian-held West Bank.
"I have finally obtained independence," he wrote on his
first day in office - from Ben-Gurion, he meant.
Sharett won some political battles against Ben-Gurion but
ultimately lost the war. The Old Man "un-retired" and became
Sharett's defense minister in February 1955. Three months
later, Sharett had to concede the No. 1 slot back to Ben-Gurion.
Levi Eshkol
- 1963-1969
- Eppelbaum rating: 9
- Years in office: 6
- Age range as PM: 67 to 73
- Only prime minister to die in office of natural causes
- Rival: Ben-Gurion
- Did the right thing: Overturned Ben-Gurion's ruling and
allowed the remains of Ze'ev Jabotinsky to be re-interred
in Israel
- What to read: Eshkol: The Man and the Nation by Terence
Prittie
Levi Eshkol was the LBJ of Israeli politics: A wealth of
behind-the-scenes political experience; outstanding one-on-one
people skills, but a terrible public speaker, and a media
flop.
Fortunately for Eshkol, when he took over from Ben-Gurion
in June 1963, Sharett had already served the role of "failed
successor."
Not that Eshkol was home free. His biographer Terence Prittie
says that he faced "violent" hostility from Ben-Gurion.
Still, compared to Sharett, Eshkol was far more competent
in dealing with Ben-Gurion's intrigues.
Eshkol "taught us how to be a prime minister," says Eppelbaum.
An excellent administrator, he was a career nation-builder,
responsible for hundreds of settlements and kibbutzim.
Yet, his decision-making style led Yigal Allon to quip:
"When Dayan is hesitating, his admirers say that he is thinking;
but when Eshkol is thinking, his critics say that he is hesitating."
Eshkol was the "most Jewish" of the prime ministers, Eppelbaum
says. He had Yiddish, not just as a language but as part of
his cultural worldview.
While he was as manipulative as the next politician, he
was essentially a mensch who could laugh at himself.
He led the country through the 1967 Six Day War. After the
war, he said: "We shall never return to the conditions prevailing
before." He was, however, ready to make concessions along
the lines of the Allon Plan: "The river Jordan," Eshkol declared,
"must be a 'security border' for us."
He was the only PM to die in office of natural causes. He
suffered a fatal heart attack on the morning of February 26,
1969.
Eppelbaum doesn't give Eshkol the highest possible rating
because he abandoned the idea of "land for peace." That, to
Eppelbaum's way of thinking, makes him a tad too far to the
Right.
Golda Meir
- 1969-1974
- Eppelbaum rating: 5
- Years in office: 5
- Age range as PM: 71 to 76
- Rival: Rabin
- Night bird; wrote her autobiography in English
- Mistake she took to her grave: listened to the men in
her cabinet with vast military experience and didn't order
an emergency call-up of the IDF reserves on the eve of the
Yom Kippur War
- What to read: My Life by Golda Meir; Golda: The Uncrowned
Queen of Israel by Robert O. Slater
Think of Golda Meir as an early version of Margaret ("Iron
Lady") Thatcher - with support stockings, old-lady shoes and
a frumpy frock.
Golda, Eppelbaum says, "taught us that not every leader
can be a prime minister."
Maybe. But many American Jews liked her no-nonsense persona.
And they were downright proud of her perfect English, kvelling
when she appeared on Face the Nation.
The native-born Eppelbaum pokes fun at her failure to master
Hebrew, by quoting Abba Eban: "She has a Hebrew vocabulary
of 400 words. Why does she only use 200 of them?"
To hear Golda tell it, she was a retired foreign minister
living on a pension when, in 1969, the country prevailed upon
her.
Aged 70, she had recently relocated from Jerusalem to a
comfortable flat near her family in Tel Aviv.
Eshkol's sudden death caught Labor unprepared for a succession
battle. Rivals Allon, Dayan and Pinhas Sapir each wanted to
replace Eshkol; party bigwigs sought a temporary, compromise
candidate, and Golda was seen as a perfect custodian.
She writes: "I honestly didn't want the responsibility,
the awful stress and strain of being prime minister. I became
prime minister because that was how it was, in the same way
that my milkman became an officer in command of an outpost
on Mount Hermon. Neither of us had any particular relish for
the job, but we both did it as well as we could."
Eppelbaum says Golda didn't do us any favors. Her personality
made her unsuitable for office. She was authoritarian, intolerant
and inflexible. "Overly conservative," he says disdainfully.
That's also the line Shlaim takes in The Iron Wall: "The
differences in temperament between Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol
were very striking. She was a fighter; he was a man of compromise.
She was dogmatic and domineering; he was open-minded and often
hesitant. She was intransigent; he was flexible."
Golda may have been closed-minded, but she certainly took
advice from one quarter with disastrous consequences.
"On Friday, October 5 [1973], we received a report that
worried me. The families of the Russian advisers in Syria
were packing up and leaving in a hurry. It reminded me of
what had happened prior to the Six Day War, and I didn't like
it at all."
But when she checked with Dayan, and IDF Chief of General
Staff David Elazar, they told her not to worry.
"How could it be that I was still so terrified of war breaking
out when the present chief of staff, two former chiefs of
staff [in her cabinet] and the head of intelligence were far
from sure that it would? Today I know what I should have done.
I should have overcome my hesitations" and ordered a full-scale
IDF mobilization.
She should have. The war cost Israel 2,838 dead and some
8,800 wounded.
Eppelbaum credits Golda with few accomplishments. Hebrew
University Professor Yehezkel Dror agrees with Eppelbaum that
Golda was probably our "worst" prime minister.
Dror says she failed to appreciate the importance of the
Palestinian element and ignored the ethnic divide inside Israel
that led to the creation of Israel's Black Panther movement.
Her blackest mark, as far as the Left is concerned, was
her attitude toward the Palestinians. Her views about them,
according to Shlaim, were formed in the pre-Independence period
and had hardly changed. He quotes her as saying: "It is not
as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering
itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them
out and took their country away from them... They did not
exist."
Yitzhak Rabin
- 1974-1977 and 1992-1995
- Eppelbaum rating: 8
- Age range as PM: 52 to 73
- Years in office: 6
- Rival: Shimon Peres
- First sabra PM
- Assassinated in office
- What to read: Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of
Yitzhak Rabin by the Jerusalem Report staff, David Horovitz,
editor
You can't say "we hardly knew ya" of Yitzhak Rabin. Thanks
to the media spotlight - the White House ceremony with Yasser
Arafat and Bill Clinton comes vividly to mind - Rabin was
one of the world's best recognized leaders.
He may also have been the least understood.
His murder leaves us asking "what if?" What if he had not
been assassinated? What if he had tried to reach out to his
political opponents instead of ostracizing them? What if he
had lived to implement Oslo by insisting on reciprocity?
Rabin is less well remembered for his first term. The clearest
recollection many people have relates to Entebbe, when terrorists
hijacked an Air France airliner to Idi Amin's Uganda. Rabin
ordered the historic July 4, 1976, rescue.
Nine months later, he was gone, quitting over an illegal
bank account his wife, Leah, maintained in the US.
It would take him 15 years to climb his way back to the
top.
By the time he did, the scoop on Rabin was that he was a
"Labor hawk." He was the Dwight Eisenhower of Israeli politics
- a general turned colorless politician.
Eisenhower surprised Americans when he broke with the armed
forces lobby to warn of a US "military industrial complex."
Rabin's decision to overturn long-standing policy and get
on board the Oslo Express was an even more radical about-face.
We do not know whether Rabin was in on Oslo from the start.
That's what Arab players like Abu Ala believed. That's also
the view of historian Shlaim.
In any event, on the morning of September 10, 1993, Rabin
initialed a document recognizing the Palestine Liberation
Organization.
Because Rabin played his cards so close to the chest, as
Eppelbaum says, we'll never know the process that brought
him to the determination that the strategic clock was running
against Israel; that the PLO - now on its last legs in Tunis
- had to, somehow, be manipulated into offsetting a malignant
Islamic fundamentalism that was taking root in the West Bank
and Gaza.
Abba Eban found Rabin inscrutable.
Was he a closet leftist? In Personal Witness Eban recalls
joining Eshkol in wondering - back in 1968 - whether Rabin
would make a suitable ambassador to the US. Eshkol was worried
that Rabin's heart was not with the Mapai faction of Labor
but with the more left-wing and Marxist Ahdut Ha'avoda. By
1992 Eban was wondering if Rabin was a closet right-winger
because of his "platform of castigatory menace toward our
Arab neighbors."
Rabin's method of decision-making may have left people wondering,
but on a personal level things were straightforward.
Not a charismatic personality, he was abrasive to the core.
Says Eban: "He was the sort of man who, if anyone stopped
him in the street and asked him politely for the time of day,
might well reply, 'Why don't you buy a watch?' "
Henry Kissinger adds: "Rabin had many extraordinary qualities,
but the gift of human relations was not one of them."
Eppelbaum looks for a balance. Behind that brusque exterior,
he says, was a "good heart."
After Rabin's assassination on November 4, 1995, by an anti-Oslo
fanatic, he was practically canonized by supporters.
Eppelbaum's assessment is less worshipful. Rabin was a politically
ambitious player, suspicious and doctrinaire in his outlook.
Interestingly, in weighing Rabin's accomplishments, Eppelbaum
points foremost to the first term: The 1975 interim agreements
with Syria and Egypt; ending the recession; and advancing
social legislation.
Menachem Begin
- 1977-1983
- Eppelbaum rating: 7
- Years in office: 6
- Age range as PM: 61 to 67
- Rival: Shamir, according to Eppelbaum
- Almost always showed up in the Knesset dressed like a
lawyer to counter image that he was a "terrorist"
- What to read: The Revolt by Menachem Begin; Begin: A
Portrait by Harry L. Hurwitz
If Sharett was a name most Diaspora Jews hadn't heard of,
Menachem Begin's was the name most Diaspora leaders and Israeli
elites didn't want to hear.
He was the Barry Goldwater of Israeli politics. Honest.
Earnest. Dangerous.
From the creation of the state, the Labor Party (in one
form or another) monopolized the political system. But in
a surprise upset, in 1977, the former IZL commander and perennial
opposition leader became prime minister.
The foreign press was horrified.
Time helpfully instructed its readers to pronounce Begin's
name by rhyming it with the loathsome Dickens character Fagin.
Newsweek called Begin a zealot and fundamentalist. The New
York Times called him "hard-line."
There would be no honeymoon for Begin with Jimmy Carter's
administration. Yet Carter, like everyone else, was stunned
when on November 20, 1977, Egypt's Anwar Sadat broke a 29-year-long
taboo and set foot in Israel.
The prospect of peace with Egypt was met with rage. The
Palestinians in particular unleashed a wave of devastating
attacks. One of the worst took place on Shabbat afternoon,
March 13, 1978, when 11 PLO terrorists landed off the coast
near Caesarea and killed 37 Israelis, wounding 76.
Yet, despite this difficult environment, never had a prime
minister faced a less supportive Diaspora leadership. Behind
the scenes, the Carter administration worked hard to "disassociate"
the support American Jews might have for Israel from Begin's
pro-settlement policies.
Begin also found himself in hot water with the Reagan administration.
In June 1981 - 10 years before the Gulf war - he ordered the
Air Force to destroy Saddam Hussein's atom-bomb factory near
Baghdad. Begin called the bombing "an act of national self-defense."
Intense international condemnation followed. Even the US
voted to condemn the air strike in the UN Security Council.
If Golda's tragedy was the Yom Kippur War, Begin's was the
June 1982 Lebanon War.
The war started out as a reprisal against a terrorist attack,
and with clearly defined goals: to stop Arab terrorist assaults
like the ones against Ma'alot and Kiryat Shmona, and rocket
attacks on Galilee coming from Fatah-land in south Lebanon.
Israel achieved most of its initial strategic goals.
The infrastructure of the terrorist network was smashed.
But Israel over-reached, not stopping when it was ahead.
With the assassination of Israel's ally, Christian warlord
Bashir Jemayel, the entire Lebanon campaign unraveled. Christian
Arab paramilitary forces slaughtered some 300 innocent Palestinians
in an area that was nominally under IDF control.
The media blamed the Jews and Israel's image took a further
beating. Israel's missteps also turned the Shi'ites of south
Lebanon against it. While the PLO itself had been banished
from Lebanon, the war (now against Shi'ite Moslem fundamentalists)
turned into a quagmire that sapped Israeli lives and resolve.
On August 28, 1983, Begin told an astounded cabinet: "I
cannot go on," and left the room.
He did not explain the decision, though observers said he
was emotionally distraught over the death, several months
earlier, of his beloved wife, Aliza, and the rising casualty
figures for IDF soldiers in Lebanon.
Whatever the reasons, Begin retreated to his home and became
reclusive for the remainder of his life.
Yuval Elizur and Eliahu Salpeter, in Who Rules Israel, describe
Begin as "a rarity" among Israeli politicians. "When the state
was proclaimed, Begin emerged from the underground and called
on his followers to obey the laws of Israel," despite the
fact that his bitter foes would have a stranglehold on state
power.
Only when the Knesset debated the reparations agreement
with West Germany did he come close to urging revolt.
He lost, quit politics, and went into self-imposed exile
in Switzerland for six months.
His "fiery oratory" was in complete contrast to his extremely
polite manner and considerate personality. As a party leader,
he tended to be autocratic. But as a national leader he was
a democrat, and a defender of law and justice.
Begin's biggest accomplishment, says Eppelbaum, was the
Israel-Egypt peace treaty, and the bombing of Iraq's nuclear
facility. His most grievous failure was the Lebanon war.
Yitzhak Shamir
- 1983-1984 and 1986-1992
- Eppelbaum rating: 6
- Years in office: 6
- Age range as PM: 67 to 74
- Rival: Peres (Begin, according to Eppelbaum)
- Highly organized; willing to take advice
- Quote: "I have never 'run' for office. As had been true
at junctures of my life, including in the underground, I
felt that I had no alternative other than to do what I was
doing."
Yitzhak Shamir is the George Smiley of Israeli politics.
Like the character in the John Le Carré spy novels, Shamir
spent most of his career in the shadows.
He was a leader of the underground Lehi and later a Mossad
operative. Like Smiley, Shamir cultivated a nondescript image.
But unlike the plump Smiley, the diminutive Shamir is ascetic
and, even compared to Smiley, taciturn.
Shamir doesn't even have his own entry in the 1974 Encyclopaedia
Judaica.
His modus operandi is understatement, as in this description
of reaching the top spot: "When the time came for someone
to be chosen to take Begin's place my name came up. The people
who proposed me were those who, several years earlier, had
recommended that I be appointed foreign minister. I myself
said nothing."
Shamir is an ideological true-believer; steadfastly holding
the line against criticism from the Left.
He nurtured settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but
backed the GSS when it cracked a ring of 25 vigilante settlers
who conspired to blow up Arab passenger buses.
After Ben-Gurion, Shamir turned out to be the longest-serving
prime minister.
Eppelbaum can't help but admire Shamir's survival skills.
His restraint kept Israel out of the Gulf war, saving the
anti-Iraq coalition. Shamir also gets credit from Eppelbaum
for delivering Israel to the Madrid Conference. "He understood
that it is impossible not to talk to the other side."
The seventh prime minister was not a party animal. "In private
life, I also lived by rules I had learned long ago under different
circumstances. I ate little, didn't smoke, hardly drank though
I had once appreciated a brandy, went on long walks whenever
conditions permitted and, thanks to [his wife] Shulamit's
forbearance, came home daily for a lunch and nap, returning
to the office till evening."
Though not observant, Shamir, like Begin, was always respectful
of Jewish tradition. Shamir took no calls on the Sabbath,
reserving the day for family and privacy.
It's too early to tell how Sharon's premiership will play
out, and hard to believe that Barak, Netanyahu and Peres have
truly given up all hope for a return to the top spot. Eppelbaum
considers Netanyahu bright but lazy; says Barak could yet
make a good leader if he learned from his mistakes, and not
surprisingly given their ties, thinks Peres, though egotistical,
is an extraordinary politician.
Having looked at the careers of the prime ministers who
are no longer on the scene, and with misgivings about the
comeback wanna-bes, what characteristics should the next batch
of prime ministers bring to office?
The answers now seem obvious: solid administrative skills,
superior intelligence, emotional stability, a knack for working
with people, the ability to persuade through the media and
high ethical standards.
We want someone affable but not mercurial.
Who is that person?
So, before we part, I ask Eppelbaum who would make a good
prime minister?
"Let's pray that the Sharon-Peres team has longevity," he
answers.
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