The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (14 page)

In 1963, a small miracle fell into my lap when Adi Yaffe was promoted to become director of the prime minister’s bureau, and arranged that I be seconded as the prime minister’s English speech writer, note-taker, and responder to letters from the general public, most of which came from people with madcap ideas on how to wage war and make peace.

The prime minister of the day was Levi Eshkol, successor to Israel’s founding father, the legendary David Ben-Gurion who, in 1963, amid a storm of rhetoric, abruptly renounced the premiership, quit his Labor Party in a war of principle, and went off in a huff to live in a hut on a remote desert kibbutz. There, surrounded by books, he relentlessly harangued his longtime trusted lieutenant, Eshkol, pouncing on him at every turn. Curiously, in 1965 he even set up his own rival rump party
–
Rafi
–
the Israel Workers’ List
–
supported by his two young Turks, Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres. They, in turn, lost no time in besmirching Levi Eshkol’s competence, charging that his intellect was not as finely honed as that of his predecessor, that he did not enjoy Ben-Gurion’s international reputation, that he was a military lightweight, and, to top it all, that he was an utter neophyte in matters of cabinet command.

This last was partially true.

I was present at a musical evening in London in 1986 when Abba Eban, exemplar par excellence of Israeli diplomacy, past master at witty stories, and droll purveyor of salacious gossip, regaled a circle of admiring guests with a tale about Levi Eshkol in his first days as prime minister. He related how Eshkol had summoned him to the prime minister’s office to ask him what exactly the job of the prime-ministership entailed.

The former foreign minister was in terrific form that night as, with dry wit and subtle animation, he mimicked Eshkol beckoning him into his room, making sure the door was properly shut and the telephone off, and then asking Abba Eban to tell him as clearly as he possibly could, what exactly was involved in being prime minister of Israel. In his previous capacities as minister of agriculture and of finance, Eshkol explained, he had dealt with concrete matters for which his responsibilities were clearly defined. But now, he had been sitting at his desk for a couple of days as prime minister, and he was not quite sure what he ought to be doing. He was so unused to his new position, he said, that at a public event the evening before, when the prime minister was announced, he had looked around to see who was entering.

Eban described how he had told Eshkol that, first and foremost, the job of a prime minister was very much like that of a conductor of a symphony orchestra. The conductor did not play an instrument, but his will, personality, and interpretation decisively determined the sounds that emerged from the collective whole.

“And you, Mr. Eshkol, are our conductor,” trumpeted Eban, impersonating a maestro waving a baton. “Your task is to persuade us, your cabinet ministers, to perform together in a single, harmonious whole in accordance with your program, your vision, and your interpretation.”

This simile was particularly apt on that night in 1986, for as Israel’s then ambassador to Britain, my wife and I were hosting a musical soiree at our residence in support of the Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, whose chairman was Abba Eban. A goodly sprinkling of socialites and commercial big hitters were gathered in our spacious lounge to hear Daniel Barenboim’s rendition of Beethoven piano sonatas, and it was in the glow of the post-recital drinks that Eban told his tale. He ended it off on a solemn note, saying bleakly, “I also advised Mr. Eshkol that if Israeli history was anything to go by, he would very soon find himself occupied with tasks bearing directly upon the Jewish State’s very survival.”

The author with Abba Eban, London, 1986

And indeed he was. Hardly a year went by before Eshkol found himself confronting a Syrian stratagem to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River in an effort to dry up Israel’s main source of water. It was at this juncture of affairs that I started my new job as a junior member of the prime minister’s staff.

The prime minister’s office was located in the heart of the newly built government compound in Jerusalem, and Eshkol’s office was a tastefully appointed wood-paneled chamber whose magisterial authority so overwhelmed me that when the man himself extended his hand and asked me my name, my throat clamped up and I stood there frozen, speechless. He beckoned me to take a seat, which I did with the ramrod posture of a new recruit.

“
Nu, yunger man
, tell me again, what is your name?” he grunted.

I cleared my throat and managed to squeak it out.

“And where are you from?”

“Manchester.”

“Manchester?” His eyebrows rose a trifle and his eyes squinted in amusement when he teased. “Our first president, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, once told me that Manchester was a rainy place
–
a place to come from, not to go to. Ha! Ha! Actually, I hear it’s a fine community. Been here long?”

“Twenty years, almost.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“
Oy vey
. That’s not good. Children?”

“Four
–
a boy, three girls.”

“
Oy vey!
That’s not good at all.” And then, lightheartedly, “This means you won’t be able to be at my beck and call day and night. Never mind, I’ll make do with what I can get.”

I was quick to learn that this utterly likeable man was an accessible and easygoing chief, with no airs or graces. So devoid was he of personal vanity that one day, after instructing me about a letter he wanted drafted to former President Harry S. Truman, he turned to the doorman, who was holding open the door of his car preparatory to departure, and wryly asked him in Yiddish, “Nu, Yankele, how am I doing as your prime minister today? Ere bist tzufreiden? ” – Are you satisfied?

Yankele, a dour, lean, stooping figure, closed one eye as if to take aim, and in a no-nonsense fashion, shot, “No, I’m not. My taxes are far too high. You have to bring them down. I’m being robbed.”

The prime minister, one leg in, one leg out of the car, cupped a palm to his ear the better to hear the man out, and then spent the next few minutes explaining why taxation was still high and what was being done with the money.

“We have to buy weapons for our army to deter our enemies,” he explained, “and that costs a lot of money
–
twenty percent of our budget. And we have to build homes for our refugee immigrants, schools for our children, hospitals for the sick, and factories for employment. The more we develop our economy, the quicker I’ll be able to bring taxation down. So be patient, Yankele. Be patient.”

“I hope you’re right,” grumbled Yankele, unconvinced. There was skepticism evident in his eyes as he whirled a salute, closed the door, and let the premier go. And I, mouth agape, watched the limousine move off, wondering how many other prime ministers ask a doorman for an opinion, listen, and then try to explain what they are endeavoring to do.

Eshkol was sixty-eight at the time, a bit on the paunchy side, with a high forehead and a solid square face. He wore half-framed spectacles that gave him a perpetually bemused expression and a wise, family-friend countenance. His thickset body, hefty shoulders, gnarled fingers and the waddle of his walk still suggested the period in his life when he had dug irrigation canals, swung a scythe, pushed a plow, heaved a sack, and sweated in the dust and heat of the Jordan Valley. The old pioneer was a man of the fields who had, at various times, been a kibbutznik, a labor leader, a planner of rural reclamation, a builder of new towns and factories, and finally, as Minister of Agriculture and then of Finance, the paramount overseer of Israel’s economic development.

By nature a ponderer, Levi Eshkol’s leadership style was that of a quiet persuader. He would spend hours talking problems through, collecting opinions, weighing their substance, and invariably easing tensions with droll Yiddishisms spoken in a lilting, singsong vernacular, charged with overtones and undertones and peppered with sentimentality, cupidity, and hilarity. His mixture of irreverence, affability, and authenticity was rooted in the soil of Oratova, the Ukrainian Chasidic
shtetl
near Kiev from whence his folksy banter and Yiddish witticisms sprang. Born into a family that traded in lumber, cattle, and fish, he spent his youth in cheder [elementary schools that taught the basics of Judaism and Hebrew], then in yeshiva, and then in a Jewish high school in Vilna where he ran with the Zionist socialists who spawned a generation of pioneer nation builders.

As a politician he cut a bland figure, caring little for either material possessions or appearances. And as a public figure he suffered from one gross handicap: he had no rhetoric, no eloquence, no charisma. Yet, in some enigmatic way, his unassuming demeanor, nimble mind and keen instincts endowed him with an unaffected affability and an artless honesty that invited a confessional trust. People instinctively sensed he was not the sort of politician who would try to sell coals to Newcastle or ice to Eskimos.

The letter which Mr. Eshkol had asked me to draft to Harry Truman expressed appreciation to the former American president for having lent his name to a peace research institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Eshkol extolled the choice of name as emblematic of Israel’s gratitude to the president for his moral and courageous decision to assert the power and prestige of the United States in his historic support of Israel’s founding in 1948, against the advice of cabinet colleagues.

On the morning I placed the letter on the prime minister’s desk for his signature he was receiving a delegation of fifteen or so of the top-ranking leaders of the Council of Jewish Federations
–
now the Jewish Federations of North America
–
who greeted him with zeal and pumped his palm with zest. Eshkol responded in kind, for he knew these American Jewish leaders were the genuinely dedicated ones, the ones who traveled tirelessly across the United States, elbowing their way into disinterested Jewish communities to fire them up for Israel, pounding on tables to demand a bigger slice of their funds, tearing up in disgust pledge cards they deemed inadequate, and sometimes even locking doors at fund-raising events so that no one could leave until more money had been raised for Israel
–
much more money.

If asked why they expended so much time, means, and prestige in doing what they did, most of these philanthropists would probably have said that the fate of the Jewish State was every Jew’s responsibility. Some might have confided that their fund-raising for Israel was their last
identifiable
attachment to Jewish devotion of any sort. And some might have confessed a sense of guilt at the appalling record of their elders
–
the American Jewish leadership of the Holocaust years
–
who, paralyzed by inertia, ignorance, apathy, and indifference, had done too little too late to save Europe’s Jews. Now, they were resolved that the Jewish State would not go the same way.

There was a predictable animated note to Eshkol’s welcoming remarks as he informed his guests that the National Water Carrier, for which some of the people present had raised considerable funding through the sale of Israel Bonds, was finally up and running. They congratulated him heartily, knowing that this immense project was his personal brainchild, vision, and passion.

The National Water Carrier was Israel’s largest development project to date, and to this day remains the hub of Israel’s entire water system. Fed by winter rains and melting snows that swell the upper reaches of the Jordan River before cascading into the Sea of Galilee, the National Water Carrier is a mammoth network of canals, tunnels and pipelines
–
some as wide as jeeps
–
that funnels surplus waters from the north to the arid south, integrating local water systems along its route into a single national grid. With understandable pride, the premier illustrated this enterprise with photographs and maps.

When he had finished his presentation, one of the delegates announced, with much emotion, that he would like to make a personal announcement in the presence of the prime minister. Everyone straightened up. The man, a Los Angeles magnate whom everyone knew as Ruby, spoke with a heavy European accent.

Ruby was elderly and short, with a skinny neck, a big head, and white tusks of hair that stuck out on the sides of his head, reminiscent of Einstein. He closed his eyes when he rose to speak, pulling his mouth in at the corners. He twiddled the lobe of one ear, blew his nose to blink back tears, and rolled up a sleeve to reveal a tattooed death camp number. Sitting down again, he chokingly announced that, as a survivor who had lived to see this day, he was doubling his pledge to a million dollars.

All applauded, and the prime minister leaned across to shake the man by the hand and wish him
“
a groise yishar koach
”
–
a hearty congratulation.

“Now, there you have it,” piped up the leader of the group. He was a slim, trim elder with a shock of silvery hair, a patrician authority, and piercing blue eyes that never left Eshkol’s face.

For the briefest moment the prime minister stared back at him perplexed. “Now there you have what, Henry?”

“There you have Ruby here doubling his pledge because he’s moved by your remarkable water project, and there you have the rest of us working with him night and day for the love of Israel.”

“And we certainly appreciate that,” said Eshkol.

“I’m sure you do, and we ask for no reward in return. However, with all due respect, how many other Israelis appreciate what we are doing? How many other Israelis know how hard we voluntarily work for Israel? We Americans are expected to know about every new kibbutz and every new moshav going up here, yet how many Israelis have the slightest idea about what’s going on inside our American Jewish community? What do they know of the problems we face trying to raise the funds you need? What do they know of our local needs? What do they know of our political lobbying for you, and of our other fund-raising commitments to aid the Jews suffering behind the Iron Curtain?

“Tell me, young fella, when was the last time you were in America?”

Henry
–
I don’t remember his second name
–
was talking to me.

“Me? Never.”

“Aha!” bayoneted Henry. “So there you have it. Here you have one of your own staff sitting here not knowing a thing about us, with no idea of the communities we come from, no idea how we organize ourselves, no idea how we volunteer our precious time, no idea what American Jewry
–
”

“So why don’t you give him an idea,” interrupted the prime minister, laughter in his voice. “Invite him. You have my permission.”

“Okay, we will. We’ll invite him on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t make a single speech. We’ll host him for a month or so and show him what the American Jewish community looks like. And you”
–
he was talking to me again
–
“you will observe, listen, ask as many questions as you like, and come back knowing a bit more about us than you do today. Is that a deal?”

“It’s a deal,” chuckled Eshkol on my behalf. “Will Independence, Missouri, be on his itinerary?”

“If need be. It’s close to Kansas City. There’s a generous Jewish community in Kansas City.”

“In that case,” said Eshkol, with a smile of satisfaction, handing me the Truman letter, “you’ll be my courier and deliver this in person to the president as a token of my respect.”

Head bubbling with anticipation, I thanked Henry profusely for his invitation
–
an invitation that took me across the continent to communities large and small, and which brought me, ultimately, to the front door of the former president of the United States, Harry S. Truman.

Two hundred and nineteen North Delaware Street, Independence, Missouri, was a spacious, rustic, white Victorian residence, with steep gables, corniced eaves, squared bay windows, and an elongated porch extravagantly decorated with elaborate ironwork.

The taxi driver who took me there was proud of its birthright, telling me in his flat-as-Kansas drawl that Bess Truman’s maternal grandfather had built the house in 1860. Mr. and Mrs. Harry Truman had been living in it for the best part of fifty years, he said, and between 1945 and 1953, when Truman was president, it was known as the Summer White House.

A trimly attired middle-aged black maid answered the door and, informed of my purpose, said I was expected and bade me enter. She led me into the front parlor, took charge of the prime minister’s letter, and told me to wait.

The parlor was a venerable repository of heirlooms. On the mantelpiece of the marble fireplace were all sorts of White House memorabilia, most notably a bronze miniature of Andrew Jackson on horseback. In one corner stood a piano, displaying the musical score of a piece called
The Missouri Waltz
, whose notes I tried to fathom.

“I don’t give a damn about that waltz, young man, but I can’t say that out loud in public because it’s the state song of Missouri.”

Harry S. Truman was standing in the doorway, his celebrated vim and vigor belying his eighty-odd years
–
though he did look his age. He was leaning on a cane, his famous face drawn and bony, his eyes disproportionately large behind thick steel-rimmed glasses. Buttoned up and scarved, he wore a dapper fedora on his head.

“I’m about to take my daily walk, young man,” he said sprightly, “and I’d be pleased if you would care to join me.”

A Secret Service agent maintained a discreet distance as Mr. Truman stepped out into the street and began walking with stiff, short steps. As I adjusted to his pace, he chuckled, “Old lady Anno Domini has been chasing me recently, so I have to take it a bit slowly.” Then, genially, “Very kind of Prime Minister Eshkol to send you personally to deliver his letter, and kinder still to give me such credit for your nation’s independence. But the man he really ought to be thanking is Eddie Jacobson, not me.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Because when I wavered
–
and I wavered a lot
–
it was Eddie who made sure I kept America’s weight behind Israeli statehood when it was most needed.”

He paused at the memory of the man, and muttered, “Dear old Eddie. Best friend a man could ever have
–
honest to a fault. May he rest in peace.”

Truman’s voice mellowed when he spoke thus of his World War I buddy and longtime business partner. It mellowed even more when he confided, “Except for one time when he wanted me to see a Zionist leader I was not anxious to see, in all our thirty years of friendship there was never a sharp word between Eddie and me
–
and we had been through some tough times together, believe me. There was the Great War, and then our haberdashery venture, which was no howling success.”

Edward Jacobson was the son of impoverished Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who moved from New York’s Lower East Side to Kansas City. His biographers describe him as short, cheerful, and conscientious, with glasses and rapidly thinning hair. The haberdashery store, “Truman and Jacobson,” specialized in “gents’ furnishings”
–
shirts, socks, ties, belts, underwear, and hats. Harry kept the books, Eddie did the buying, and both took turns with the customers. The store opened for business in November 1919 and went under in 1934, crushed by the Great Depression.

“Good morning, Mr. Truman. Nice day, wouldn’t you say?”

The ex-president looked up at the clouds scudding across the pale sky, sniffed the air and, tipping his hat to the elderly lady passing us by, amiably replied, “It sure is a nice day, Betsy. My best to Jim.”

“Betsy’s an old neighbor,” he explained affectionately. And then, “So when Eddie came barging in to see me unannounced one day at the Oval Office
–
it must have been sometime in March forty-eight
–
I was surprised. In all my years in Washington he had never ever done that
–
never had he asked me for a thing. But on that day in the White House he was visibly upset. He said he wanted to talk to me about Palestine.”

We were walking down a tree-lined street flanked by homes built with traditional Victorian-era elegance, much like his own. Suddenly, he halted, appalled. “Just look at that!” he snapped.

In the gutter lay two empty beer cans. President Harry S. Truman crouched down, scooped them up, tossed them into a wastebasket, dusted his hands, and groused, “Most mornings I have to do that nowadays, pick up litter. It’s the Kansas City folk swallowing up Independence.”

The rueful acceptance of this unhappy circumstance seemed to
trigger
a sensitive nerve, for he suddenly turned on me and crisply exclaimed, “Let’s cut out the crap. I’ll tell you exactly why I was upset with Eddie when he came barging into my Oval Office
–
because his Zionist friends had been badgering me no end. Some were so disrespectful and mean to me I didn’t want any more truck with them. Many chose to believe that their Zionist program was the same as my U.S. Palestine policy. It was not. They wanted me to engage America to stop Arab attacks on the Jews in Palestine, keep the British from supporting the Arabs, deploy American soldiers to do this, that, and the other. And all the while the British were putting it about that my interest in helping the Jews enter Palestine was because I didn’t want them in America.”

He pressed his lips together, showing his pique and, throwing me a piercing glance, went on, “I’ll teach you an important lesson young man: never kick a turd on a hot day. And those were hot days. My patience was being drawn so tight I issued instructions that I didn’t want to see any more Zionist spokesmen. That’s why I had put off seeing Dr. Weizmann. He had come to the States especially to meet me. But Eddie was insistent I see him right away. I told him that if I saw Dr. Weizmann it would only result in more wrong interpretations of my Palestine policy. I’d had enough of that.”

We had reached a bench at the end of the street, under a large and spectacular tree. “This is where I usually catch my breath,” he said, sitting down.

I had the distinct impression he was trying to contain his cross feelings about those American Zionist activists who had come banging on his White House door, but his fixed eye and contracted brow showed that the sting of his recollection was too sharp to suppress.

“Because of them I had words with Eddie,” he said vehemently. “He knew that the fate of the Jewish victims of Hitlerism was a matter of deep personal concern to me. The extermination of the Jews was one of the most shocking crimes of all times. Hitler’s war against the Jews was not just a Jewish problem, it was an American problem. I had been seized of the issue from the day I became president. And now things had reached a point when I wanted to let the whole Palestine partition matter run its course in the United Nations. That’s where it belonged.”

He was sitting hunched on the edge of the bench, his chin resting on the handle of his cane, the picture of small-town genuineness. This man from the rural Midwest who had never been to a college, nor made a pretense of erudition, was giving me a taste of his celebrated reputation for relentless talking in a language that was plain, straightforward, decisive and honest.

“Let’s go,” he said, stiffly getting to his feet. He leaned hard on his cane, looked up at the lofty branches that canopied the bench, and clucked, “What a fine tree this is. It’s a gingko.” Whereupon, he gave the trunk a little pat, and said to it affably, “You’re doing a good job.”

For the next ten minutes we walked in total silence, interrupted only by two schoolgirls who asked for his autograph. A clutch of tourists was waiting for him outside his house and they clapped as he approached. With enormous good grace he posed with them for snapshot after snapshot.