Two Revelations

Two matters of Israel's political elites has bothered me over the years. The first is the weakness of right-wing politicians and the second is the clique phenomenom of the left-wing.

In a recent story on Gideon Samet's new novel (here), the two are revealed quite plainly.

First, right-wing weakness:-

In 1996, at the height of trying to deal with the pain of parting from Batya, Samet wanted to get as far away as possible. He reached an agreement with Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Ehud Barak under which he would be appointed Israeli consul general in Philadelphia.

"I did what many journalists do. I thought it would be right to accede to the possibility of going abroad for the Foreign Ministry on the basis of an existing quota for non-ministry people. There was talk of my becoming consul general in New York, but I rejected that out of hand, because it is a political post."

Everything was set: The apartment was rented and Naomi had taken a leave of absence from her job. And then Peres lost the elections to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud. David Levy took over as foreign minister and Samet's mission abroad began to look like a fading dream. "David Levy, a marginal politician in terms of his ability, as I wrote more than once," Samet says, "did not have enough self-confidence to do what he wanted others to do for the people he brought in during his previous tenure as minister - in other words, for the new minister not to touch them."

The word is that you toadied to him in order to get the appointment.

"There was no toadying or anything else. He tried to delay it, he pulled a few maneuvers, and then he wanted satisfaction, to receive me, as the protocol calls for: the candidates for the post come to a formal meeting with the president, the prime minister and the foreign minister. And then all kinds of spin people and lackeys said that I told him, 'Mr. Levy, I will be fine,' or 'I will behave nicely.' Well, I am certainly capable of coping with David Levy, finding the right formula and not falling into the very large trap of his sarcasm. All I told him was that I would act as required."

Samet's friends tried to talk him out of going and not demean himself by working for David Levy. "They told me it didn't look good," Samet says. "I told them that it was all very unpleasant for me, but that there are decisions - and this was one of them, which I am not proud of - that are not 100 percent good. I told only one person at Haaretz and my two best friends the real reason that it was so important for me to go."

Could Levy have canceled the appointment?

"If he had done that, a can would have opened and all his worms would have crawled out - all the lobbying and all his political appointments. It was not likely that he would take that risk." Samet returned to Israel a year later, the family tangles only partly resolved.

And the second. the clique (branja) phenomenom:-

Samet is not only a person of great loves; he is also a person of regular cafe tables and musical chairs. Over the course of his life he was a regular at many tables of longstanding friends, groups that have fallen apart in recent years. There is an expiry date, he says.

"These groups have a certain lifespan and their destiny is to be destroyed. That is the genetics of groups of buddies, unless they continue ad nauseam, pathetically, even though there is nothing holding them together and no reason for them to go on existing."

One such group consisted of four couples: the Samets, the Londons, former MK and cabinet minister Yossi Sarid and his wife, and Ehud Manor and his wife. Occasionally Amnon Dankner - the journalist, writer and until recently chief editor of the newspaper Maariv - would join with his wife.

"We met almost every week, each time in someone else's home, for a lot of years," Samet says. "It was very amusing, but little by little it came to an end. Nothing dramatic. I think we got tired of Yossi Sarid dominating things, even though it was not the Knesset. He is also a very funny raconteur who can be absolutely vicious. Every so often someone would tell him, 'Yosef shut up - I am talking now.' Once we all ganged up on him, so he put on an act, folded his arms and said, 'I will be quiet and you will come to me on your knees and beg me to talk.' But he couldn't keep quiet, because Yossi's thing in the world is not to be quiet but to talk. Then Ehud died, and the group broke up."