Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  For years, though, none succeeded. No other politician could engender the sense of security that Israelis, for all their grousing about Netanyahu, needed to feel at night when tucking in their children. The majority of Israelis still could not trust anybody else to manage a war, meet the Iranian nuclear threat, and prevent a Gaza-like Hamas state from arising in the West Bank. “One way or another,” one Israeli pundit told me, “every election for the past twenty years has been about Bibi.” And each time, he had won. Benjamin Netanyahu might not always be loved—not by his people, not even by his own party—but neither could he be replaced.

  This was the Netanyahu I had come to know, a man of mighty contradictions. Less than a modern Jew, he reminded me of an ancient Hebrew, a biblical figure with biblical strengths, flaws, appetites, valor, and wrath, scything his foes with rhetorical and political jawbones. Uncannily robust, he retained in his sixties the physical heft and endurance of a Sayeret Matkal captain, only rarely revealing the depths of his exhaustion. Though he tried to get five hours of sleep each night—“Someone’s got to drive,” he said—Netanyahu rarely got more than four, and was frequently awakened by emergencies.

  Pundits often tried to plumb the origins of Netanyahu’s outlook, especially the influence of his father, Benzion. A hard-line Zionist historian who nevertheless spent many of his 102 years in the United States, Benzion chronicled the racist roots of anti-Semitism from antiquity through the Inquisition and the Holocaust. That gloomy view of Jewish fate—to be hated for who we are irrespective of how we hide it—darkened the son’s worldview, analysts said. Though Netanyahu dismissed such insights as “psychobabble,” the images of Masada, Auschwitz, and looming Jewish apocalypses permeated his speeches and even our private talks. “The world sees Israel as the most powerful Middle Eastern state,” he once told me, “but that could change overnight, rendering us very vulnerable.”

  Another influence on his life was his brother, Yoni, the dashing Sayeret Matkal commander who lost his life rescuing Jewish hostages hijacked by terrorists during the 1976 Entebbe Operation in Uganda. Yoni, who would remain young, handsome, and iconic, joined Benzion in setting another bar—the armchair therapists alleged—that Netanyahu could never reach. But no one swayed the prime minister more than his wife, Sara, so the papers claimed. Politically outspoken, a working child psychologist and mother of two, she might be expected to serve as an inspiration for Israelis, especially women. Instead, Sara supplied lurid headlines about her alleged mistreatment of staff members, her overspending, and undue influence on policy.

  I never met Benzion or, of course, Yoni, though their photographs hung prominently in Netanyahu’s private office. By contrast, I knew Sara, but our contact was limited to the times when she entered the room where her husband and I were mulling over a speech. She offered comments and usually seconded my efforts to make the text less militant. On another occasion, while she was visiting Washington and riding to her only meeting with Michelle Obama, Sara’s limo stopped short and pitched her into the front seat, severely gashing her foot. But she refused medical attention and refrained from mentioning the injury at the White House. When I asked her why, she explained that she wanted the conversation’s focus to be solely on family, not on her foot. She struck me as strong-willed, fiercely committed to her husband, and never to be crossed. More than those of his late father and brother, the photographs of Sara dominated the prime minister’s walls.

  So did Churchill’s. Like that old-fashioned Englishman, I discerned, Netanyahu was not quite a man of his time. He hated political correctness—futilely, I tried to get him to say “humanity” rather than the “mankind” that feminists resented. He despised the word paradigm and shunned all computers, cellphones, and teleprompters. Like Churchill, he believed in the power of language, disdained slang and most expletives, and adhered to the British Bulldog’s dictum that any good point should be hit repeatedly “with a pile driver—a tremendous whack.” And like Churchill warning the world of the looming Nazi threat, Netanyahu viewed himself as a man with an historical mission. Destiny had tasked him with saving the Jewish people, irrespective of the personal price. “I spoke about the Iranian nuclear threat when it was fashionable and I spoke about it when it wasn’t fashionable,” he declared. “I speak about it now because when it comes to the survival of my country, it’s not only my right to speak, it’s my duty.”

  Ever mindful of the opportunity he gave me to achieve a lifelong dream, I liked Netanyahu, but I never became his friend. Rendered suspicious by years of political treacheries, he appeared not to cultivate or even need friendships. Firgun was not his forte. And yet, I still empathized with his loneliness, a leader of a country that had little respect for rank and often less for those who wore it. A person, reputedly, of indulgences, he seemed to derive no joy from them, but rather ate and drank with a grim resolve and resignedly smoked his cigars. Except when watching the TV series Breaking Bad, Netanyahu never seemed to relax. Rather, he presided over unremitting crises, domestic and foreign, that would break most normal men.

  Which was why making him laugh could feel like an act of kindness. Whenever I told him an off-color joke or gave him a funny line for a speech, he kept repeating them and guffawing, sometimes for hours. And along with levity, I gave him loyalty. And honesty. In the face of that Old Testament temper, I offered advice he did not always relish hearing.

  One of my recommendations was to conciliate rather than confront Obama, to roll with the president’s punches rather than try to outsock him. I believed that Israel needed to maintain the bipartisan support and widen the diplomatic leeway we might later need in war. And preserving the alliance remained my paramount priority. Netanyahu, though, insisted that by giving in on peace issues, Israel would undercut its credibility on the most pressing threat of all: Iran. But in addition to his strategic thinking, my approach ran counter to Netanyahu’s personality—part commando, part politico, and thoroughly predatory.

  That combination, perhaps, deterred me from telling Netanyahu the most difficult truth of all. Simply: that he had much in common with Obama. Both men were left-handed, both believed in the power of oratory and that they were the smartest men in the room. Both were loners, adverse to hasty decision making and susceptible to a strong woman’s advice. And both saw themselves in transformative historical roles.

  Their similarities, perhaps as much as their differences, heightened the chances for friction between the president and Netanyahu, I could have told him. But I did not. Rather, as the prime minister descended the stairs to the tarmac that early May 20 morning, I merely said, “Welcome to Washington, sir,” and extended my hand. This he gripped and pulled me toward him. With his eyes still flaring, he recalled the cable I sent him months back predicting the president’s speech. “You called it right,” he whispered.

  —

  An elegant Federal-style structure built in the 1830s, Blair House serves as the official pension of the president, who lives directly across the street. Visiting dignitaries usually stay for two nights, though in view of Netanyahu’s protracted visit, the U.S. chief of protocol, the whimsically named but hypercompetent Capricia Marshall, gave us four. Inside, Blair’s décor—the candelabra, wainscoting, and brocade—casts an air of antique grace. Weather permitting, decision makers prefer to confer in the trellis-lined courtyard. That is where the prime minister’s advisors congregated around him, hunched on wrought-iron chairs, and tried to avoid a crisis.

  Or at least mitigate one. Already piqued by Netanyahu’s “expectations” of the president, the NSC’s Dan Shapiro warned me that confronting Obama over the speech would be “a terrible, terrible mistake.” But Netanyahu was incensed over what he regarded as a flagrant violation of trust and could not—as his advisor Ron Dermer put it—“simply roll over.” The statement he had prepared to deliver to the president said as much, and I understood my role just then was to take its tone down as many decibels as possible. Hours of fervid debate passed in that courtyard b
efore the prime minister agreed to address his rebuke to the Palestinians, rather than to the president.

  Adjourning to the White House, Obama and Netanyahu conferred for two hours alone in the Oval Office, leaving their teams to wrangle in the Roosevelt Room. Secretary of State Clinton assured us that she and her staff had worked hard to insert pro-Israeli positions into the president’s speech, which did not even mention Hamas. But the Israelis were still incredulous as to why Obama would want to award Abbas for kicking him in the teeth. I predicted that the Palestinians would simply pocket America’s latest concession and then seek UN recognition of an independent state based on 1967 lines. “As in the settlement issue,” I once again wagered, “the United States will have to veto its own policy.”

  The discussion might have grown heated but, just then, the protocol officers entered and invited us to join the principals in the Oval Office. Netanyahu was seated on the edge of his chair and gesturing emphatically at the president. “For there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities,” he began. With his chin propped on his fist, Obama glared as dozens of reporters noted his constricted body language. Netanyahu listed those realities: No return to the 1967 lines, which were half as wide as the Beltway and ignored the large Jewish neighborhoods built beyond them. No negotiations with Hamas, which he called “the Palestinian version of al-Qaeda.” No resettling of Palestinian refugees within the Jewish State. Classic Netanyahu, his memorized comments repeated the Jewish legacy of “expulsions, and pogroms and massacres and the murder of millions.” Israel, he concluded, remained committed to peace, but “we don’t have a lot of margin for error because history will not give the Jewish people another chance.”

  Crammed in among the press corps, I listened to the prime minister and thought—Pollyannaishly—that the showdown was averted. To my ear, Netanyahu sounded firm but not preachy, and focused exclusively on the Palestinians. As if to reinforce that impression, he and Obama subsequently strolled for twenty minutes across the South Lawn, chatting amicably. Following them at a respectable ambassadorial distance, I heard them refer to each other, as they always did, as Barack and Bibi, and saw the president put his arm around his guest. “Goodbye, my friend,” he said.

  Only back at Blair House did I learn that the White House was livid. During Netanyahu’s remarks, it seemed, Bill Daley, Rahm Emanuel’s recent replacement as chief of staff, hissed in Ron Dermer’s ear, “Is your boss in the habit of telling off his hosts?” I could imagine Obama’s advisors meeting him after his South Lawn stroll and complaining of Netanyahu’s unpardonable offense. For the first time in history, they probably raged, a foreign leader had entered the Oval Office and publicly lectured the president.

  Within minutes, the word lecture clamored from every headline, along with arrogance and affront. In his memoirs, David Axelrod wrote how congressional and world leaders sometimes resented Obama for “telling them why acting boldly was not only their duty but also served their political needs” Clearly Obama did not appreciate being on the receiving end of such counsel. The result was precisely the crisis I had tried to avoid. The sole task now was to limit its damage.

  Leaving Netanyahu and his staff in the courtyard, I phoned every administration official I knew. “If we’d known that your prime minister was going to insult the American people and the president of the United States we would never have invited him,” Bill Daley scolded me. “Yes, you can go to Congress and be hugged by the Republicans, but know that you’ve got this president for six more years and know that you’ve got a problem.”

  Still, I went on phoning, trying to find a way of defusing, or at least containing, the crisis. “What if the prime minister just walked over to the White House and joined the president for a beer?” I suggested, recalling the time Obama shared a beer with the Cambridge police officer who had arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates. The proposal was curtly rebuffed. I nevertheless kept dialing until finally Tom Donilon, the new national security advisor, roared in my ear: “Stop phone-banking the White House!” Netanyahu, I learned, was guilty not only of lecturing Obama but of leaving out any mention of “mutually agreed swaps.” Donilon shouted, “He maliciously distorted the president’s words!”

  I had nothing but respect for Donilon, and hearing his deeply incensed tone both hurt and startled me. Finally, I proposed that the prime minister put out a statement citing the positive points in the president’s speech. This seemed to soothe Donilon somewhat, and I thanked him for teaching me a new word, phone-banking.

  Back in the courtyard, I had to convince Netanyahu and his team of the need to draft that communiqué. Though I expected more resistance, the prime minister clearly realized that he had gone very far indeed and needed to pull back. “It’s true we have some differences of opinion, but these are among friends,” the statement read. “President Obama has shown his commitment to Israel’s security, both in word and in deed, and we’re working with him to achieve common goals.” Only once I saw the words online—close to midnight—did I finally relax and remember that May 20 was my birthday.

  My reprieve, it seemed, was premature. That day’s Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Dr. Dore Gold. A successful ambassador to the UN in the late 1990s, and a senior advisor to several Israeli prime ministers, Dore was part of the prime minister’s entourage and present at the Oval Office “lecture.” As if to respond to Tom Donilon’s charges of distortion, the article addressed the question of swaps. But Obama, it argued, was gullible for believing that Abbas would agree to anything but “minuscule” swaps and would not use the president’s words to force Israel back behind indefensible borders. “We want to get this straight,” the next call from the West Wing upbraided me. “We invite this guy into the White House and he attacks the president?”

  Dore and I had been friends since our Columbia days—we made aliya together—and I did my best to defend him. But I could not dispel the administration’s belief that he wrote the article on Netanyahu’s instructions. The crisis was reignited and threatened to roil out of control. The following morning, Sunday, Obama would address the AIPAC conference. “The president is going to take on the prime minister in front of AIPAC,” Bill Daley warned me. “And if he gets booed, so what?” Bill might have been right: any dressing down of Netanyahu before that crowd was liable to unleash acrid reactions. Before me glared the specter of ten thousand Israel supporters jeering the nation’s first African-American president. The organization would be indelibly tainted and the U.S.-Israel alliance damaged, perhaps irreparably.

  —

  Entering the cavernous Walter E. Washington Convention Center at 10 A.M., I waved at the densely packed audience, displaying optimism in spite of my inner fear. The next twenty-six minutes were some of my most stressful as I waited for Obama to strike back. But, to my immeasurable relief, the president’s remarks were benign—Dennis Ross, I later learned, had helped calm him down. Rather than retaliate against Netanyahu, the president reiterated his commitment to the Qualitative Military Edge for Israel and its “unbreakable” bonds with America. Rather than taking Netanyahu to task on the issue of “mutually agreed swaps,” the president merely clarified that “Israelis and Palestinians will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” The definition elicited a single boo that was instantly drowned out by the crowd’s ovation, together with my audible sigh.

  From the convention center, I rushed back to Blair House to help prepare two more speeches. The first, for AIPAC, was scheduled for the following evening, much to Netanyahu’s ire. Unlike American presidents, who annually deliver the State of the Union message and can address their nation at almost any time they choose, Israeli prime ministers have no such stage. Their only opportunity is to speak abroad—often in English—in the morning, in order to be broadcast on Israeli prime time. Unfortunately, the prime minister’s appearance closed the AIPAC conference and could not be moved. That lent even greater weight to his televised speech to th
e joint meeting of Congress, set the next day for 11 A.M., which was 8 P.M. in Israel.

  Beyond providing access to the Israeli public, the joint meeting enabled Netanyahu to set out his views on the peace process and Iran, and to highlight the U.S.-Israel alliance. The speech-honing team took up position among the dusty volumes and colonial busts in the Blair House library. Time Warner’s Gary Ginsberg again volunteered to help add “music” to Netanyahu’s remarks. These contained several groundbreaking concessions, including recognition that a peace accord might leave “some Israeli settlements…beyond Israel’s borders,” and that with “creativity and with goodwill,” the Jerusalem issue could be solved. But such largesse could easily be lost in bluster. “You’re going to get beat up on this stuff at home,” I advised the prime minister; “you might as well emphasize these gestures before Congress.” The music was still being pumped in twenty-four hours later when, without sleep, we left for Capitol Hill.

  In total, Congress has hosted more than one hundred joint meetings, for the heads of forty countries, but very few—Rabin and Churchill among them—more than once. This was Netanyahu’s second address to the combined Senate and House, and the chamber was packed, the atmosphere electric. For a resplendent moment, the claim of across-the-aisle support for Israel was unassailable. Liberal and conservative members, progressives and Tea Partiers, together greeted Israel’s leader. Less enthused with the moment were the Israeli journalists who, craning from the mezzanine, snapped photos of Sara Netanyahu.

  I, too, was distracted. The Treasury Department had just announced the sanctioning of an Israeli-linked shipping company that was supposedly doing business with Iran. I suspected the timing of the statement might not be coincidental and I was trying to persuade Treasury officials to hold off, at least until after the speech. But an usher threatened to expel me from the hall for using a cellphone. I scarcely had time to give the thumbs-up to Sally and our son Yoav, watching from the gallery, when the prime minister ascended the rostrum.