The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (59 page)

“How can it be otherwise?” he had said gloomily, in his top-drawer accent. “How can you save yourselves now? How can your small army withstand the combined might of all the Arab armies that are ganging up against you even as we speak?”

He cast an eye at the Old City’s walls, on whose ramparts Arab Legionnaires stood watch.

“And, besides, they have the Soviet Union behind them, in addition to the tens of millions of Muslims the world over, with their oil and other fabulous riches, while you have been abandoned even by your so-called friends.” His depressing assessment was getting to me. He continued, lamenting, “And even if you do somehow stave them off now, in ten or twenty years time the Palestinians will catch up with you numerically. Egypt’s population will have burgeoned to seventy-five million, and Saudi Arabia’s to twenty-five. Multiply that by the Arab birthrate overall and what do you get? You get a raging horde of Arabs, most of whom will be younger than thirty-five. There is no way Israel will be able to withstand that kind of hostile demographic pressure.”

He stared darkly into his empty glass, lips pursed in a frown of despondency, and ordered yet another drink. This last induced him to talk elliptically about “Nasser’s rabble” and “America’s perfidy,” and “Europe’s duplicity” and “plucky Israelis,” and “
IDF
grit,” and “we shall never surrender” and “silver linings.”

When we rose to part, he did something very uncharacteristic for his class. He put a hand on my shoulder and let it linger for a while, as he said, in a voice cracked with anxiety, “It’s simply bad luck, old boy. Bad luck has always stomped through the lives of you Jews. The balance is tipped against you. I’m flying home tonight. It will take a paradigm shift for you to survive this thing,” and off he went, his torso rigid, as though he couldn’t find the courage to turn around and bid a final farewell.

Now, twelve years later, in the stolid Victorian ambience of the Athenaeum Club, he was as tall and straight as ever, possessed of the rigor and energy which often went with Presbyterianism, and manifestly full of beans.

“Well, well, how things have improved,” he enthused, and he began to tick off our changes of fortune one by one with the tips of his fingers, “One, you’ve beaten off all the Arab armies every time. Two, your Mr. Begin has signed a peace agreement with the biggest, the strongest, and the most influential of all the Arab states – Egypt. Three, the Arab states are helpless without Egypt, so the war option is all but dead. Four, your other neighbors will have to make peace with you sooner or later. Five, your victories have clipped the Soviet Union’s wings good and proper. Six, the struggle for Soviet Jewry is bearing fruit and you’ll soon be bringing in tens of thousands of Russian immigrants, boosting your population by God knows how many. And to think” – this with an abashed, self-deprecating smile – “I was stupid enough to predict your tribe would go under. I was talking rubbish, utter bollocks! Mind you” – his jolliness momentarily lagged – “there’s still Iran and Iraq to reckon with. But, chins up, old chap! The tide is turning, nevertheless. The wind is at your back. Stand fast. Be strong and of good courage. Fear not – time is on your side!” And with this evangelistic flourish, he took a swig of his Black Label.

“Banjo, you old windbag, who’s this you’re yapping at?” I looked up to see a tall, balding fellow, with a sharp crooked nose and eagle eyes framed in square rimless spectacles. Banjo, I deduced, must be Sir Herbert’s nickname.

Sir Herbert introduced him as a Sir Charles somebody, and when Sir Charles heard where I was from, he grabbed a chair, sat himself down, stared hard at me, and said, “I used to come across your Mossad chaps. A crafty lot. Sneaky, too.”

I wasn’t sure whether the man was speaking professionally or prejudicially, but whatever it was, Sir Herbert jumped in to explain that his colleague was a retired
MI6
big shot, adding with the familiarity of an old pal, “Charlie’s reputation in the British Intelligence Service was so awesome his underlings would leave his presence by walking backwards. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”

The retired British spy saw nothing amusing in this. Combing a few strands of gray hair over the top of his balding head, he retorted ominously, “Tell your Mr. Begin to watch what’s going on in his backyard.”

“Which backyard is that?” I asked.

The retired
MI6
man leaned toward me, and in a conspiratorial manner whispered, “Iraq to begin with. And then there’s those bloody fanatics in Iran
–
those ayatollahs. They’ve deposed the Shah and they’ll go on a rampage one day throughout the whole of the Middle East if we don’t stop
’
em.”

A white-coated butler glided between the armchairs and potted palms toward us, affably holding up two liquor bottles, pausing to top up a glass of whisky here and bestow a drop of brandy there. His whisky refilled, the old spy rambled on.

“Western civilization has been locked in a historic war with Islam for a thousand years. We thought we’d settled it once and for all, thanks to our technological superiority. But see what’s happening now.

“The fundamentalists are on the rise, besotted with a holy jihad mission to export their brand of Islamism from Afghanistan to Sudan, and then beyond. Your Mr. Begin must watch out. As far as Banjo and I are concerned, Israel constitutes our front line.”

“Precisely,” avowed Sir Herbert, brooding over his Scotch. “The Mohammedans’ fanatical frenzy is as dangerous to a man as rabies is to a dog.”

“Mohammedanism was always a militant and proselytizing faith,” proffered Sir Charles, “and now that the Shiite zealots have taken over a whole country
–
Iran
–
they’re capable of setting the whole Middle East ablaze.”

To which Sir Herbert grunted, “There’s a lot of combustible stuff lying out there. Charlie and I visited a number of Arab countries a few months back, and wherever we went, people were blaming you Israelis for all the blemishes of their own societies. To them, the peace treaty with Egypt is a disaster
–
”

“Begin should have no illusions
–
it’s not peace between peoples, just between governments,” butted in the
MI6
fellow.

“
–
and nowhere did we encounter any form of introspection, self-criticism, or moral inquiry
–
nothing but a culture of victimhood,” said Sir Herbert, rounding out his thought. “And Arab governments are deliberately promoting this scapegoat nonsense because they need an external enemy so they can retain their power.”

It was at this point that I mentioned the prickly exchange between Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Prime Minister Begin over lunch at Downing Street, to which Sir Herbert replied, “I can read the minds of those foreign office blokes like an open book. Not a one of them, least of all Peter Carrington, is capable of grasping what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the future of our civilization and all they can think about is trade and oil.”

“The problem is,” said Sir Charles, “we don’t have enough intelligence on what’s bubbling beneath the surface even in our own country. It’s not like Northern Ireland, where we can do our undercover work like fish in water. Even the most diehard Irish Republican nationalists crack under a little bit of coercion, or the promise of some cash. But your average Muslim fanatic, even if he’s born here – he’d kill himself first, and take you with him. And as for what’s happening where the fanatics gather in Muslim countries, all our state-of-the-art technology isn’t worth a damn farthing. Deploy as much high falutin’ satellite surveillance and computer decryption as you like, it won’t track them down in a month of Sundays. The only way to go after him and his sort is by going back to the most elementary methods of intelligence: human intelligence collection; personal counter-espionage.”

Added Sir Herbert, enigmatically, “Allah will not be mocked. He toys around with our clever gadgets and laughs in our faces. Islamists wage their holy war by simply outflanking our technology.”

“So what we need,” said the
MI6
man, “are first-class operatives
–
people who look like Arabs, talk like Arabs, and think like Arabs. Your blokes are champions at that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean, my blokes?” I asked.

“You Israelis
–
you’re past masters at duplicity.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

Sir Herbert stepped in, placatory, “Your Mossad and Shin Bet chaps have any number of agents who can pass convincingly as Muslims
–
patriotic Jews from families born in Arab countries, who speak native Arabic and can adopt Islamic disguises at the drop of a hat.”

“Dead right, Banjo,” interjected the other fellow. Then to me, “Your intelligence is superb. You get your man into Arab lairs almost every time
–
through infiltration, dissimulation, and deception.”

I was beginning to feel that this Athenaeum encounter with Sir Charles Thingamajig was no mere coincidence.

“But you’ve got lots of Arabic-speaking communities right here in Britain,” I averred. “Why not recruit your agents from them?”

“Don’t trust
’
em,” said Sir Charles dismissively.

Sir Herbert concurred. “Islam has such a powerful hold over its believers that the difficulty of recruiting Muslim undercover agents is acute.”

“So what does all this have to do with me?” I asked.

“You’re close to Begin. Tell him we could do with some of his intelligence assets,” answered Sir Charles, knocking his liquor back and wiping his chin with the back of his hand. “Tell him from us we need people like yours
–
types who can pass muster as Arabs, win the trust of fundamentalists, understand their mindsets, gather for us hard intelligence. Will you tell that to him?”

“I shall do no such thing,” said I, rising to leave.

“Why not?” asked Banjo, seeming peeved.

“Because you both know there are channels to pass such sensitive messages along, and I’m not one of them. Besides, you’re both retired, with no authority to make any such proposal.”

Their faces fell. I found myself gazing upon two well-meaning, withered old fogies, at home in an antiquated setting.

Grimly, with almost existential angst, Sir Charles brooded, “England has never had a security problem like this before.” His words were slurred by the whisky, and he began to nod off even as he spoke. So I gathered up my belongings and, escorted by Sir Herbert, descended the stairs to the Athenaeum’s exit, and stepped out into the street.

“Good Lord, look at that!” barked Sir Herbert, halting in his tracks.

Propped up against a nearby wall, an
Evening Standard
billboard bellowed: IRANIANS STORM U.S. TEHERAN EMBASSY
–
TAKE 52 AMERICAN DIPLOMATS HOSTAGE.

Sir Herbert, his face white with anger, blew out his cheeks and exclaimed, “God knows where this is going to lead,” and off he marched at a defiant pace.

Flying home, I shared with the prime minister the essence of my Athenaeum encounter. He listened attentively, and remarked, “At least it reflects well on our intelligence community.” A mere mention of Lord Carrington, however, ignited a deeply-felt fiery anger. “The insolence of the man,” he growled. “He talks as if he were still a colonial governor, and we his natives.” Of Margaret Thatcher, he said, “She is a strong woman of strong
convictions
, and is basically well-disposed toward us. True, her ignorance of the Holocaust particulars is appalling, but that is true of many other world leaders.” And then, morosely, “I don’t think I shall visit England again. It places too much of a burden on their security people.”

It was true that wherever Begin went, the cordon of protection around him was unprecedentedly large. But whether this was the real cause for his decision, or merely a pretext
–
not wanting to have dealings with Carrington and his ilk
–
was something he never disclosed. The fact remains, he did not travel to England again.

Photograph credit: Israel Government Press Office

Prime Minister Begin with General Ephraim (Freuka) Poran, 28 December 1980