Despite our attempts to strengthen our Jewish family, some issues still threatened to tear us apart. I spent a great deal of time trying to manage the growing tension between Israel and the liberal streams of Judaism.
The Jewish Agency’s board of governors is known to be a particularly difficult body to lead. Its members are delegates from different Israeli political parties and Diaspora Jewish organizations. As a result, many competing agendas are represented around the table.
This mosaic, which made our board so frustrating to run sometimes, was also what made it so significant. Whenever the governors convened, this roundtable amazed me. I would think, “Where else in the Jewish world does such a broad variety of Israeli politicians and Diaspora Jews have direct dialogue and make decisions together?”
The participation of the leaders of non-Orthodox movements on the board of governors was particularly important. From my years in politics, I knew how difficult it was to organize any formal negotiations between Israel and the leaders of the liberal streams. Ultra-Orthodox politicians were ready to dissolve a coalition if they felt the government was recognizing liberal movements in any way.
From my first days at the Jewish Agency, I urged Netanyahu and his cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser to tap into this unique resource. We could try addressing some of the issues that kept popping up between the Israeli government and the Diaspora. Hauser and I cochaired an informal mechanism we called “the roundtable.” It included representatives of the Israeli government and members of the board of governors from the non-Orthodox streams.
We used this roundtable to push the Interior Ministry into talks with representatives of the different denominations. For too long, the Interior Ministry was a black box. Clerks there determined the validity of an immigrant’s conversion as the first step to citizenship. The criteria were mysterious and could change from clerk to clerk, minister to minister.
Our lobbying created a transparent process for granting citizenship to converts. We agreed on specific benchmarks for approving conversions and for appealing rejections. “This is how we should be working together in the new, more mutual, stage of Israel-Diaspora relations,” I thought. Not just building identity together, and not just sniping at one another in the media. This kind of problem-solving roundtable among equals had great potential.
Decades ago, when David Ben-Gurion made the status quo agreement with the ultra-Orthodox, he expected most religious Jews to disappear soon. His feeling that he was on the right side of history made it easier for him to compromise with his fellow Jews. Any concessions he made were temporary, he believed. Today, many Israelis assume that liberal American Jews will soon assimilate away into oblivion. Sadly, predicting their partner’s doom now has too many on both sides thinking, “Why bother accommodating them? It’s not worth risking any political capital.”
What changed? Decades ago, for all the ideological rigidity of Ben-Gurion, the ultra-Orthodox, and American Jews, they were all deeply insecure too. After the Holocaust, the entire Jewish world was reeling. After 1948, Israel was fragile and embattled for decades. Despite the many American Jews with creature comforts, it took decades before they truly felt at home in America and not on probation.
Today, Israel is robust. American Jews feel deeply American. It’s wonderful that so many Jews today feel secure in their own homes. But that unprecedented mass comfort has produced at least one unpleasant side effect: today’s arrogance epidemic. Arrogance may be the great character flaw of our time. It surges when we silo ourselves in social media echo chambers that define everything we say as good and everything they say as evil and offensive. Only a conversation that helps us know one another better can overcome this arrogance.
My hope that we could overcome our characteristic arrogance encouraged me when the prime minister called me a few years ago, during yet another violent confrontation over women praying at the Western Wall. Once again, Jews were fighting other Jews at the Jews’ holiest site. Once again, the world press highlighted photographs of these ugly clashes. “I can’t stand looking at these pictures anymore,” Bibi said. “You have ties to the various factions. Can you find out if they would be willing to negotiate?” Then he coined the phrase that became our guiding light throughout years of negotiations: “It should be one Wall for one people.”
The Western Wall was the right place to start. The issue of who could pray there and how was getting lots of attention and generating lots of emotion. But even though it touched on sensitive matters of religion and state, this challenge looked easier to solve than most. The questions involved practical arrangements regarding where to pray. They didn’t require sweeping ideological concessions or theological shifts from either side, as the conversion question and other flash points did.
At the same time, I believed that solving the issue could have major symbolic significance. The battle over the Kotel stirred fears of Jewish division, because this wall has symbolized Jewish unity for so long in so many ways.
The Western Wall—Kotel means “wall” in Hebrew—is the only surviving structure from the Jews’ magnificent Holy Temple, first built by King Solomon in the tenth century BCE. Today’s Kotel, the remaining retaining wall from the Second Temple, rebuilt 2,500 years ago, represents the two faces of Jewish identity: the religious and the national.
The Kotel is Judaism’s holiest place. Although Jews believe that God is everywhere, praying at that site gives a boost, a feeling of being extra close to God. Here is where the Jews parked the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, after wandering for so many years. Here is where the high priest used to enter the Holy of Holies, in a ceremony so significant we reenact it every year on Yom Kippur, our holiest day. Here was the pilgrimage place where Jews had the mitzvah, commandment, to “walk up” from all over the world three times a year, celebrated today by the holidays of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
This religious site is also the most potent national Jewish symbol. The Kotel represents King David’s power, King Solomon’s wisdom, the Maccabees’ heroism, the exile’s anguish, and the redemptive joy of our recent return to Zion, including the 1967 Six Day War miracle.
That religious-national duality makes the Kotel the world’s most popular Jewish attraction. It is the most well-attended synagogue and most visited national monument. It attracts ten million worshippers a year. The Kotel unites religious and secular Jews in shared memories and dreams. A number of the Israeli army’s best-trained soldiers swear their oath to defend our state there. New immigrants often get their identity papers in ceremonies at the Kotel.
Alas, the two sides of this one wall are often underappreciated. One American Jewish leader complained to me about all the uncivilized skirmishing surrounding the Kotel. “Why do you Israelis make such a fuss about that darned wall?” he asked. “In America, there’s no controversy around the Lincoln Memorial.”
I responded, “Well, no one tries inserting written requests to God into the cracks of the Lincoln Memorial, either.”
At the same time, I heard a constant complaint from ultra-Orthodox politicians. They grumbled, “What chutzpah! No one would dare mob the Vatican demanding a Protestant prayer space there.”
I often replied, “Saint Peter’s Basilica is a religious Catholic space. Garibaldi didn’t use it to build an Italian national identity.”
At the Kotel, we feel united as a nation, or at least we should. After Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967, the Israeli government quite naturally gave the Chief Rabbinate control over the Kotel. The rabbinate managed other holy sites too. The move followed the Ben-Gurion line of thinking, that the synagogue Israelis didn’t attend was an Orthodox one.
It was also logical for liberal Jews to start protesting their inability to pray in their own way at this most sacred national Jewish site. Since 1988, the Women of the Wall have been protesting the Kotel’s emergence as “an ultra-Orthodox synagogue.” For three decades, at Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of every Jewish month, this coalition of Orthodox and liberal feminists convenes at seven in the morning at the Kotel. Some women pray wearing kippot and tallitot, skullcaps and prayer shawls, which most Orthodox Jews believe are exclusively for men’s use. The women also demand the right to read from the Torah on the women’s side of the Kotel plaza, which, they note, is only one-fifth the size of the men’s side.
Some ultra-Orthodox have responded violently over the years. Sometimes, the police intervene to protect the women. Other times, they arrest the women for praying there, for violating minhag hamakom, the local custom.
At one particularly tense moment, the Kotel’s rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, insisted the police protect the local custom by arresting any woman who read the Hallel—the songs of praise—too loudly. The police did his bidding. When I heard about the arrests, I was furious. I called the local police commander, who quickly explained that it was up to the “Rav.”
I summoned Rabbi Rabinowitz to my office. He started justifying himself by quoting Supreme Court decisions, which he believed gave him the power to authorize such arrests for disturbing the peace. “I don’t care,” I exclaimed. “In a few hours, American Jews will start waking up. They are going to read that Israel, the Jewish state, is the only place in the world where women are arrested for praying ‘Hallel.’” He didn’t care.
Then I called Bibi. He cared. The police released the women immediately.
As the controversy escalated over the years, it came to symbolize the Jewish world’s religious schisms. It spilled over into the Knesset, the Supreme Court, one cabinet meeting after another, and the Jewish world’s pews, papers, websites, and dining room tables.
Following Bibi’s request, I took the issue to the board of governors. We started brainstorming, seeking common ground. It soon became clear that to get the ultra-Orthodox on board, we had to meet abroad, away from Israel’s crazy political dynamics. Jerry Silverman of the Jewish Federations of North America hosted an informal cabinet of religious leaders in New York, including ultra-Orthodox leaders and the heads of the liberal denominations. We decided to start there.
I flew to the United States to convince both sides that a compromise was in their best interest. “You don’t want your prayer disrupted,” I told the ultra-Orthodox leaders. “And you’re in the minority here. If we don’t solve this, public opinion in Israel and abroad will turn against you sooner or later, or the Supreme Court will force you to share the central prayer space with others. Why don’t you try calming passions now, while you still have control with the government’s guarantee? Otherwise, you risk losing it all.”
“Let’s be honest,” I told the Reform leaders, “you don’t have any political power in the Knesset. Your power in the New York Times does not mean all that much in Jerusalem. If you can get a proper, respectable place for prayer at the Kotel, which will be yours to run in cooperation with the government, this could be a breakthrough. You will have a toehold of legitimacy in the Jewish state.”
Violating the norms of Israeli politics, I openly put these arguments to both sides. It was important that we all knew from the start what was involved, without backroom deals. After three months, I told the prime minister, “I believe I can bring everyone to the table, provided we all agree in advance that any compromise would be based on two principles. First, the Chief Rabbinate will continue controlling the central prayer space. Second, the non-Orthodox will have an equally comfortable place for prayer at the Kotel, which they will run independently, with the government’s assistance.” Bibi accepted both conditions.
Nevertheless, finding a compromise took three and a half excruciating years. The negotiations, led by the cabinet secretary, eventually included me, Jerry Silverman, Rabbi Rabinowitz of the Kotel, and leaders of the major denominations from America and Israel, as well as the Women of the Wall. The leaders of the liberal movements in Israel and the Women of the Wall were permanent members of the negotiating team, bringing important pragmatic perspectives.
The process wasn’t pretty. Voices were raised. Tables were pounded. Walkouts were threatened.
What was under discussion? With ultra-Orthodox control of the Kotel’s main prayer space accepted, we were debating what kind of alternative space we could make for non-Orthodox prayer. What would it look like? Who would control it? Would there be a common entrance?
Previous Supreme Court decisions had forced the government to designate the area further south along the Western Wall, to the right when facing it, for egalitarian prayer. The entire section is called Robinson’s Arch, because in 1838 the biblical scholar Edward Robinson identified the stones jutting out of the retaining wall as part of a grand staircase Jewish pilgrims used to climb up to the Temple thousands of years ago.
The area set aside for prayer was small. Access had to be restricted to such a delicate archaeological site. Archaeologists dug down, layer after layer, until they found some huge sacred stones, knocked off the walls by soldiers, that had not been touched since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple 1,900 years earlier.
The stones of the continued wall were just as holy as the stones of the traditional Western Wall, but this area had no amenities. It lacked the basics an outdoor synagogue needed, from a place to store Torah scrolls and prayer books to bathrooms and easy access for disabled visitors. Some liberal Jews held services there occasionally, but it was not open 24-7 like the Kotel. You could only get there during limited time periods, with limited numbers of participants, by special permission secured through the larger Davidson archaeological park authorities.
This being the Middle East, any real development of the place faced great resistance. The archaeologists worried about the antiquities, while the Jordanians were still trying to convince the Arab world that they were protecting the entire Temple Mount area. When we started boosting Robinson’s Arch as an alternative, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan issued a special statement condemning my supposed attempts to establish a new “illegal” settlement at the base of the Muslims’ holy Al-Aqsa mosque.
No matter how much we upgraded the prayer space, it would never be equal in size or height to the traditional prayer space. It was sunk far too low, and the antiquities, while romantic in their own way, were not movable. The only way to showcase the equality the non-Orthodox deserved was to have one main, united entrance.
That, too, triggered a power struggle. Perhaps one gate should flow to the main plaza, with liberal Jews then searching for their marginalized space on the side? Or should there be separate entrance gates?
The question of visibility proved explosive. The liberal leaders insisted that people arriving had to encounter two equally legitimate, equally accessible choices. They didn’t want the “real Kotel” overshadowing some seemingly second choice. Liberal Jews demanded visibility as a mark of respect. Refusing to “sit in the back of the bus,” they maintained that they would not feel equal if it did not look equal.
At the same time, some ultra-Orthodox leaders demanded new barriers, so no religious Jews would have to witness the egalitarian prayer services. If liberal Jews entered furtively through a tunnel, that might work. As one rabbi told me, if such an “abomination” wasn’t hidden from the public eye, it could “harm the Jewish soul.”
Finally, intense clashes broke out over governance: Who would be in charge of the egalitarian prayer space? The ultra-Orthodox worried that the Reform Jews might start playing music on the Sabbath, ruining the day’s quiet atmosphere. Liberal Jews feared being dependent on the whims of ever-changing Israeli governments.
All this debate took place in an inflamed atmosphere. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, and even some government ministers, kept making public statements during the negotiations, insulting the “Reformim” as assimilators, heretics, hijackers of real Judaism, and threats to the Jewish future. Some questioned whether they truly were Jews. One influential rabbi even said he would rather see every stone in the wall destroyed than see one desecrated by “witnessing” Reform prayer there.
Some liberal leaders demanded the elimination of the Chief Rabbinate, accusing these rabbis of keeping Judaism in the Middle Ages. Liberals’ “separate but equal” and “back of the bus” rhetoric unfairly compared their legitimate grievances in free, democratic Israel with the fear, humiliation, powerlessness, and oppression African Americans suffered at the hands of white Southern racists.
As usual, the prime minister was caught within a democratic dilemma. While Israel’s silent majority probably favored an egalitarian space at the wall, the question wasn’t important enough to most Israelis to risk the government’s stability over. Only the ultra-Orthodox prioritized this fight. They cleverly and legitimately exerted their democratic leverage as a passionate minority of absolutely unyielding voters on this issue. They wanted their government partners worrying, aware that they would topple the coalition to protect the Kotel.
The negotiations dragged on. Elections came and went, as did the first cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser. The new cabinet secretary, Avichai Mandelblit, made me nervous at first. Mandelblit’s English was crude, in a situation that demanded finesse. He didn’t seem to grasp the complexity of the debate, which resisted simplistic slogans or solutions.
Fortunately, my first impressions were wrong. Mandelblit demonstrated patience and an impressive openness to all the different arguments. He kept us moving ahead, step-by-step, with his characteristic caution and wisdom. Even his leaving worked out well. When Netanyahu appointed him to become attorney general, Mandelblit’s pending departure created an artificial deadline that accelerated the negotiations.
Bibi took these negotiations very seriously. Whenever we risked hitting some dead end, we turned to Bibi, who proved remarkably creative. At one impasse over the access question, he invited the key leaders to come to Jerusalem. It was two days before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a terrible time for husbands or wives to be traveling anywhere, let alone halfway across the world. But everybody showed up, and Bibi’s ingenuity impressed us.
We were, however, still tangled about the entrance. Bibi suggested bringing in an architect. Then, harking back to his days as an MIT architecture student, he introduced his own ideas for managing the space. Feeling fanciful, he said, “What about a bridge in the air?” Proposing a flying staircase suspended over the Robinson’s Arch pit instantly created headaches for his team of mediators. They knew the ultra-Orthodox wanted the entrance sunk under the earth, meaning a tunnel, not something suspended flamboyantly high in the air.
This tedious negotiating process generated something that could have been revolutionary: newfound mutual trust between Prime Minister Netanyahu and liberal American Jewish leaders. They appreciated how much he invested in the process. He appreciated how willing they were to stretch and to pressure their communities to give the negotiations a chance. With everyone coordinating positions, periodically sending similar media messages to their constituencies to be patient, relationships flourished and common ground emerged.
It didn’t come naturally. I was working hard to strengthen positive feelings on both sides. I believed something unprecedented was happening. A new dialogue was developing.
Slowly but surely, we reached a four-part compromise. The agreement, which the ultra-Orthodox accepted silently, but agreed not to veto, stated:
1. The Chief Rabbinate would maintain its monopoly in the main, “official” area, running the wall as an Orthodox synagogue with no protests and no interference.
2. The liberal movements would get their Robinson’s Arch upgrade, with a major renovation establishing a comfortable, legitimate but alternative prayer space for as many as 1,200 people, where men and women could pray together as they chose.
3. Although other demands to broadcast equality proved impossible to meet, a shared entrance to the site would emphasize the notion that all enter the area as equals, regardless of where they might pray.
4. A special administrative committee would guarantee the liberal movements’ autonomy at Robinson’s Arch, even as governments changed. The committee would include representatives of the liberal movements in an unprecedented partnership with government representatives.
On Sunday, January 31, 2016, the government voted on the proposal. It was Mandelblit’s last day as cabinet secretary. He and Bibi wanted to wrap up the issue on his watch. Feeling the time pressure, Netanyahu held the meeting while I was in Los Angeles. In the spirit of compromise now afoot, he violated the usual security protocols. Bibi invited me to wake up at 3:30 a.m. and participate by Skype. Calling in like this was unprecedented; it required a laptop in the cabinet room, even though we usually weren’t allowed in with cell phones. I explained to the ministers how important this issue had become to Diaspora Jewish leaders. Ultimately, Netanyahu’s pressure determined the vote. Fifteen of twenty ministers voted yes.
At our next board of governors meeting, which began February 21, we celebrated our achievement. Our guest of honor, Mandelblit, had already started working in his delicate new job. As attorney general, he would eventually indict his old boss, Netanyahu, for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.
After the celebrations, Mandelblit called some of us aside, including the Reform and Conservative leaders, Rabbi Rick Jacobs and Rabbi Julie Schonfeld. “Give me two weeks more of quiet to let this settle in,” Mandelblit pleaded. “We need to lay the foundation here carefully. Please don’t celebrate too loudly.” Mandelblit understood that the ultra-Orthodox representatives needed time to sell their concessions to their people and try tamping down any rebellions.
We all agreed, including Rick and Julie, who then hurried to another meeting. The next day, I read jubilant headlines from the Reform movement describing the agreement as the “foundation” for a new pluralism and the start of a “quiet revolution.” So much for discretion, or “quiet.”
American Jewish organizations often plan back-to-back missions. Right after the Jewish Agency board meeting that February, some three hundred members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis visited Jerusalem. As a result, the morning after Mandelblit asked for a low profile, all three hundred Reform rabbis appeared at a special meeting of the Knesset’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs. The leaders of the movement naturally celebrated the Kotel compromise loudly and enthusiastically.
The ultra-Orthodox erupted. Newspapers publicized this “declaration of war.” One member of the Knesset proclaimed, “No one has succeeded in desecrating the Western Wall for thousands of years.” He would not allow this government to break the streak. Demonstrators gathered outside the houses of Haredi ministers, who were also harassed in synagogue.
The Reform movement’s giddiness allowed some bureaucrats in the Prime Minister’s Office to blame the Reformim when things soured. It was a pretext. It was obvious that the pressure on the prime minister would grow following the cabinet’s decision, especially because he had to implement the compromise.
Netanyahu seemed ready to stand up to the pressure—until he wasn’t. Throughout the next year, he kept asking for more time to implement the decision, while avoiding a coalition crisis. He promised me. He promised American Jews at their biggest, most public forums, the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. He kept promising he was just about to move ahead. Then, he surprised us.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to focus maximum attention on the way he betrayed his own good work on the Western Wall issue, while generating the most amount of ill will with the Diaspora, then he staged the events of June 25, 2017, magnificently.
First, his timing was superb. He made sure to freeze the long-negotiated Kotel agreement just as our board of governors conference welcomed hundreds of people from around the world who were anxious to see the compromise implemented. Second, he made his announcement at the only cabinet meeting of the year that begins with a presentation by American Jews, who emphasized how important the compromise was. Third, to feed sensationalist headlines, he sprang it all as a surprise, not even preparing most of his cabinet ministers for the switch. Finally, as if violating the Kotel agreement wouldn’t be inflammatory enough, he also tried resurrecting the divisive conversion bill that day.
The board of governors of the Jewish Agency meets every four months. June 25 happened to be the opening of our summer session in Jerusalem, which brought together more than two hundred leaders from all over the world whose patience with Netanyahu was draining away like sand in a dwindling hourglass.
Our opening panel featured four of the thirty members of Knesset whom the Jewish Agency had hosted in the American Jewish community on missions within the last year, many for the first time. The members shared their impressions about the Jewish Agency projects they had seen and the insights into American Jewry they had gained. During the question period, the governors harped on one issue, asking the same basic question in many different ways: When would the government finally enact the Kotel compromise? The government had done nothing with the plan for a year and a half. Bibi kept advising patience, caution, discretion.
For its second night, the board of governors had scheduled a festive dinner hosted by the Speaker of the Knesset to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification. Netanyahu would be the guest of honor. We assumed he accepted the invitation to announce the long-awaited launch of the Kotel renovation to a friendly audience that was celebrating the Western Wall’s return to the Jewish people in 1967.
That Sunday morning, June 25, as the board of governors convened, the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) presented its annual report to the government assessing the Israel-Diaspora relationship. JPPI’s cochairs, Stuart Eizenstat and Dennis Ross, had come from Washington, DC, to submit the report, which was the first agenda item of the cabinet meeting. I had to scurry across town for an hour after our session with the members of Knesset, because the head of the Jewish Agency is invited to cabinet meetings whenever any Diaspora-related issues appear on the agenda.
This leading Jerusalem-based think tank, which the Jewish Agency partially funds, presented a sobering analysis of Israel-Diaspora relations. I was briefed in advance about what its most pressing recommendation would be: implement the Kotel compromise quickly. The report warned that every day delaying the upgrade of the egalitarian prayer space alienated American Jews just a little bit more.
Cabinet protocols dictate that ministers receive an agenda and related briefing papers three days before every meeting. Surprises in politics are more often bad news than good. The Kotel question wasn’t even on the cabinet’s agenda that day. Still, when I arrived at the Prime Minister’s Office, the journalists hanging around outside asked me about rumors that Bibi was about to cancel the Kotel deal. None of the waiting ministers I spoke to knew more than I did.
In fact, the Israel-Diaspora issue they feared that day centered on the Ministerial Commission for Legislation session scheduled immediately after the cabinet meeting. The Shas leader and interior minister, Aryeh Deri, planned to propose a bill at that meeting making Orthodox conversions the only legitimate conversions in Israel. This was the same-old “who is a Jew” bill that had stirred so many bitter fights before. Putting a new spin on it, Deri was claiming it was necessary to stop illegal migrants sneaking into Israel. He had calculated that most of his fellow ministers were ignorant about our past battles over this issue. Still, Bibi had to know better. I was surprised that, having removed this volatile topic repeatedly from the agenda over the last twenty years, he agreed to open it yet again.
Netanyahu, as usual, was running late. When he entered the cabinet room with Deri, it was obvious something was up. The cabinet debate followed the first item, the JPPI report. As Jewish Agency chairman, I was the first respondent. Echoing the report’s analysis, I emphasized how dangerous the Kotel delay had become. It was frittering away the trust and goodwill we had cultivated for so long with our best Jewish friends around the world. The prime minister nodded his head in agreement. For a moment, I allowed myself to feel reassured. After all, we had been working closely on this issue for years.
But, across the table, I saw Deri and Bibi exchange knowing glances. Any seasoned observer of this scene could understand: the deal had been made. Netanyahu would be succumbing to ultra-Orthodox blackmail.
As sensitive yet confused political weather vanes, most ministers responded to the JPPI recommendations cautiously and circuitously. The same ministers, who a year and a half earlier had voted for the compromise, started lecturing me about its flaws, without quite repudiating the agreement.
Watching the growing confusion, Netanyahu finally put his cards on the table. “For me every Jew is important; all Jews are equal,” he said. “And I do believe that Israel is the home for all the Jewish people. But,” he sighed, “it’s essential, with all the challenges we face, that we keep our coalition together, so we can keep addressing our pressing problems, including guaranteeing our security. I still believe we reached a good agreement that should be implemented. But we have coalition partners who think differently. They demand that we cancel the agreement. I refuse to cancel it. Instead, I propose we freeze its implementation.”
Freeze? After eighteen months of repeated delays, an indefinite delay marked Bibi’s full retreat.
Once their leader had spoken, the ministers followed his lead. An ultra-Orthodox minister started with nasty remarks about how “all the Reformim are J Street.” This was code for “liberals who betray Israel.” Others were more cautious, echoing Bibi about how much they, too, valued coalition unity.
A Bibi loyalist, Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin, whom I had befriended during our struggle against the Gaza disengagement, declared, “Natan, I learned from you. You taught us that only a strong sense of Jewish and Zionist identities can save Diaspora Jews from assimilation. These people certainly are not Zionists. You more than anyone else know how small our aliyah figures from America are, let alone from American liberals. They are not even interested in Judaism. You told us how few of them send their children to Jewish schools. Assimilation is skyrocketing; they have turned intermarriage into a religion; and, when they vote, as their studies show, Israel is not their first priority. It’s not their second, nor their third. And during the last eight years, when it came to the most difficult issue where we need their help, stopping Iran’s nuclear program, they were not with us. Yet now we are supposed to risk our coalition for them?”
Levin was one of the better-educated observers of the Diaspora. He could back up each attack with American Jewish polls and identity studies. He did not dismiss the Reformim, as some others did, in ugly ways. Yet the research had been around for more than a year and a half. Why didn’t he and the others who voted with Bibi make this argument in January 2016, when the cabinet first approved the compromise?
Deri added, “I will say this here, but won’t repeat it outside. People who are not loyal to Judaism fully will never be with Israel fully either.”
Barely controlling my temper, I replied, “It’s true that if you look at J Street and harsher critics like Jewish Voice for Peace, almost all of them come from the non-Orthodox Left. But 85 percent of AIPAC supporters are Reform and Conservative Jews. Don’t you realize that a majority of American Jews affiliate with non-Orthodox streams?”
I added, “It’s fair to worry about their weakening connection and assimilation. But the best way to counteract this is by keeping them closer to Israel. This decision, as well as the attempt to bring back the conversion bill, distances them from us. So now we can’t just blame them when we wonder why they assimilate; we will have to share the blame too.”
I knew I wouldn’t change the minds of those who voted with Bibi then and were voting with him now. But I wanted my objections on the record.
By the time I returned to the board of governors meeting at the David Citadel Hotel, everyone knew that the cabinet had voted to freeze the compromise and that the interministerial judicial committee was advancing the conversion bill. This betrayal infuriated the governors. It was not the first time an Israeli prime minister had caved to religious party pressures to save his coalition. In fact, every prime minister surrendered at some point. But shifting so dramatically after all the negotiations, after all that trust building between the prime minister and the liberal leaders, really stung.
American Jewish leaders felt duped. Year after year, they had used their credibility to quiet their communities. Even when they had started feeling stupid during the months of delays, they had kept insisting, “The prime minister is with us,” requesting, as he did, “just a little more time.”
Members of the board of governors received furious emails and phone calls. Some donors suspended their annual contributions to Israel. Some local Jewish leaders canceled missions to the country. One board member even proposed boycotting El Al or shunning Israel’s leaders until they came to their senses. I had to dismiss such nonsense publicly.
Still, over the next few difficult weeks, I kept hearing echoes of the anguished cry I had heard from a Conservative rabbi when the Kotel compromise first ran into governmental trouble: “How can I fight against the delegitimization of Israel, when the government of Israel delegitimizes me?”
Our emissaries found themselves in a particularly delicate situation during this crisis. Forty-eight hours after the cabinet meeting, I spoke on an emergency conference call with 150 or so young Jewish Agency emissaries, who were serving all over the world. “We now face two struggles,” I told them. “First, as always, you’re on the front lines and the people you work with are angry. Convey to Israel what you hear. You should represent American Jews and express their feelings of disappointment.”
But I also reminded them of their main mission: “Speak strongly against those calling for boycotts of Israel or weakening their support of Israel in any way. Remind them of the core of our identity-building message. Supporting Israel is not some favor American Jews do for their poor cousins, but rather one way of continuing to be a part of the Jewish family. We’re a family that cannot divorce. You just cannot boycott yourself.”
Our first response was obvious. We voted, unanimously, to cancel the dinner with the prime minister and decided to spend much of our time lobbying in the Knesset against both of Bibi’s moves. The head of one of the biggest Jewish Federations proclaimed, “If anyone from home saw me applauding Bibi at this dinner, I would be fired from my job immediately.”
In another unprecedented move, the Jewish Agency took out big advertisements in the English and Hebrew newspapers condemning the Israeli government and demanding immediate implementation of the Kotel plan.
Bibi called me amid all this hullabaloo. He, too, was furious. “Why are you being so negative?” he asked me. “I only froze the agreement; I didn’t cancel it. And we can go ahead on the most important parts. We can turn the Robinson’s Arch area into the prayer space you feel you need. That’s what I promised,” he insisted. “I never promised to start recognizing the different religious streams.”
“Well, cancel or freeze,” I said, interrupting him. “That’s just playing with words. Who will believe your promises, now that you’ve canceled your own government’s decision? And there is nothing in the decision about recognition. It only says that representatives of those who pray in the egalitarian area will participate in running it. You not only agreed to it, but your agreement was a precondition to the start of these negotiations four years ago. All these years, it was the foundation of the compromise, and you never opposed it. How can you now say you never agreed to it?”
Bibi seemed confused by my remarks. I heard him consult with someone nearby. Then the line went dead.
A few minutes later, he called back even angrier. “You dare say, with your American friends, that we are anti-Zionist—while they, living in the United States, are somehow Zionist? Take those words back immediately.”
I guessed that some staffer had crudely summarized our full-page advertisements. Pulling one newspaper from my desk, I asked, “Do you mean this?” and read the text of the ad. It stated that these decisions by the Israeli government had “a deep potential to divide the Jewish people and to undermine the Zionist vision and dream of Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky to establish Israel as a national home for the entire Jewish people.”
“I absolutely stand behind those words,” I said, then ended the conversation abruptly.
While Bibi’s backtracking on the Kotel compromise destroyed five years of work, his government’s move that same day on the conversion issue reignited the now seventy-year-old “who is a Jew” battle. For months, we had watched the conversion question escalate dangerously. Twenty years ago, we in the Ne’eman Committee recommended guidelines to make the conversion of immigrants who became citizens of Israel under the Law of Return “welcoming and friendly.” Instead, now, the Chief Rabbinate was getting more rigid, demanding that these mostly Russian-speaking newcomers live a strictly Orthodox way of life, both during the conversion process and subsequently.
In response, a group of Orthodox rabbis involved with the inclusive Tzohar movement created their own conversion court, which they cleverly called Giyur k’Halacha, conversion by Jewish law. I hosted their founding meetings in my offices in Ben-Gurion Hall. I was consciously using the Jewish Agency’s double status here. This quasi-governmental institution could give them some legitimacy and resources, while as a representative of the Jewish people it could remain independent of the Israeli government’s dependence on ultra-Orthodox power politics.
Although all the members of this court were Orthodox rabbis, the government was too afraid of the ultra-Orthodox parties to recognize the court’s legitimacy. Further escalating, the Chief Rabbinate started questioning conversion decisions made by Orthodox rabbis abroad, when new immigrants from the United States and elsewhere sought their citizenship under the Law of Return.
Even some of the most prominent modern-Orthodox rabbis, including Rabbi Haskel Lookstein and Rabbi Avi Weiss, found themselves blacklisted; the Chief Rabbinate wouldn’t accept their conversions. Israeli authorities were negating some of the Diaspora’s most effective Zionist educators, who had prepared generations of young Jews for Zionist activism, including aliyah.
At a rally I attended in July 2016 outside the Chief Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, I felt like pinching myself. I now had to protest in the Jewish state for rabbis, like Lookstein and Weiss, who had led protests to get me into the Jewish state. While I could appreciate the historical irony, there was something grotesque about it. I did note with satisfaction that many of their former students now living in Israel joined this rally and others.
I looked for an opportunity to raise the issue with the government. When the minister of Diaspora affairs, Naftali Bennett, issued his annual report about new Israeli government initiatives to reach out to the Diaspora, I was invited to represent the Jewish Agency at the discussion. Complimenting the ministry for its many bridge-building efforts, I warned that what one hand of this government was building, the other hand was knocking down.
I noted that the cover of the minister’s report featured a photo from the wedding of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The rabbi who had converted Ivanka and officiated at her wedding was Haskel Lookstein. The rabbi who read the ketubah, the marriage contract, was Avi Weiss. “The conversions of both rabbis were rejected by the Chief Rabbinate,” I said. How well did we think our efforts with American Jewry would work when we were delegitimizing the very people we designated as their symbols?
It was clear that this absurd situation was untenable. We assumed that most ministers recognized that and were ready to correct it. But the leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties read the political situation better than we did. When they sensed Bibi’s weakness on the Kotel issue, they went for a twofer. Minister of the Interior Aryeh Deri decided to bully Bibi into giving the Chief Rabbinate its long-sought Knesset-approved monopoly, shutting down the “who is a Jew” conversation once and for all. Using a ridiculous fig leaf, claiming to fear “illegal immigrants” pretending to be Jewish, Deri served up the old law with the same language in a new package.
On the last day of the board of governors meeting, we took advantage of our presence in Jerusalem and lobbied the Knesset. Here, we benefited from the relationships with legislators we had nurtured since I became chairman by showing them our programs in Israel, America, and everywhere else. We proved to leading non-ultra-Orthodox coalition partners that the conversion bill had nothing to do with stopping migrant workers. Instead, it was a ploy to delegitimize non-Orthodox denominations.
When we met Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, I told them that, as an Israeli, I was embarrassed that he, as Diaspora affairs minister, and she, as justice minister, had supported this old conversion bill with a new spin without understanding it. They told me I was wrong, insisting, “There’s probably some misunderstanding here.” They had swallowed Deri’s absurd argument that this law was meant only to stop “illegal migrants.”
To their credit, they looked into it. A few hours later, after confronting Deri, Bennett called me back. He said, “You were right. This bill won’t solve our border problems and will cause all kinds of Diaspora problems. We won’t support it.” As more coalition partners refused to advance the bill, Deri threatened to bring down the coalition, but didn’t.
Two days after my angry exchanges with the prime minister, Bibi called again. As was always the case with him, after he had concentrated on the urgent problem of the moment, he pressed a kind of mental reset button. Our recent confrontation was pushed aside so he could push ahead.
“Look,” he said calmly, “I’ll do what I can with Robinson’s Arch. We can start renovations quickly. And I want to freeze the conversion bill. But the Reform and Conservative leaders want to change the religious status quo through the Supreme Court. No government can accept that. So I am willing to block the bill in the Knesset as long as they suspend their legal fight.”
“And what will be in the meantime?” I asked. “Must they always depend on your goodwill?”
“No. There will be a time limit to this cease-fire,” he replied. “I will form a committee with all the sides participating and give it six months to prepare recommendations that will be acceptable to everyone.”
My Ne’eman Committee experience taught me that if the “who is a Jew” question is fought in the Knesset or the Supreme Court, we all lose. Only a broad agreement in Ya’akov Ne’eman’s spirit could solve the problem. But now, as I had warned Bibi, without any trust left, it was hard to know how the liberal leaders would react. Still, I promised to take his proposal to them.
I spent the next two days in conference calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Interior Minister Deri, and Attorney General Mandelblit on the one hand, and leaders of the non-Orthodox movements on the other. Finally, on Friday, shortly before the prime minister left for Europe for a diplomatic trip, he declared at Ben-Gurion Airport that an agreement had been reached. The next night, after Shabbat, I flew for a long-planned visit to Jewish Agency–sponsored summer camps in Moscow. A camera crew from Arutz 9, Israel’s Russian-language TV channel, accompanied me. They wanted to interview me in various sites around the city for a documentary recounting the struggle for Soviet Jewry.
They brought me to the courthouse where, in 1978, Soviet judges had sentenced me to what ended up being nine years in the Gulag. I hadn’t been in the courthouse since. I did not even know where it was located. My captors had driven me there and back, day after day, in a windowless prison van.
Now, the courthouse was being renovated, stripped to its two-by-fours. The construction workers greeted us suspiciously. They warmed up after Googling me and understanding I was not connected to the Russian government. They directed me to the largest room, on the second floor.
Slowly, unsteadily, I recognized my surroundings. I became emotional as I remembered exactly where I had stood. I remembered the table where the judges sat, where my guards stood, where the hostile audience watched. I remembered where my brother, Leonid, sat, memorizing every word I said because the KGB forbade him from taking notes. I remembered speaking very slowly, knowing he would be my only channel for broadcasting my message through Western journalists, who were barred from the courtroom but waiting outside.
I recalled how big the room felt as I turned it into my platform to address the world. When the judge asked me what my final words would be before sentencing, my answer was: “To my wife and the Jewish people, I say l’shana haba’ah beYerushalayim, next year in Jerusalem. To the court whose only function it is to read a prepared sentence, I have nothing to say.”
Why did I use those words? I figured that, in the long years of isolation to come, the most important thing for me would be to remain fully confident that the Jewish people would continue our struggle. What could be a better guarantee of that than to go back to our ancient oath to Jerusalem?
At that moment, I had full trust in my people. As I was beginning my long journey in the Gulag, I knew I would remain in dialogue with these invisible partners. I would never be alone during our long struggle for freedom.
As I was lost in my memories, my cell phone rang. It was the Prime Minister’s Office. Benjamin Netanyahu’s assistants were asking me to intervene, because Reform and ultra-Orthodox negotiators were still squabbling over the timing and texts of the letters to be exchanged detailing the commitments of each side in the cease-fire. The liberal leaders no longer trusted the prime minister of the state of Israel, or his aides, enough to promise to suspend court proceedings without getting his written assurance beforehand. All confidence was lost.
Over the next hour, as I kept trying to describe my feelings in 1978 to the Israeli TV crew, the cell phone interrupted me three more times. I was toggling back and forth, commuting instantaneously between my memory of that exciting moment of global teamwork uniting millions of strangers, and the present plague of suspicion and fury among leaders who knew each other intimately and had worked closely on this issue for so many years.
With each piercing ring—shaken from this atmosphere of unity then and pulled into our disunity now—my anger at the prime minister grew. Most of the week, I had been on autopilot, reacting, speaking, strategizing, organizing, and protesting. Here, far away from the frenzy—but not far enough—and time traveling back to the 1970s, it suddenly hit me. I could feel the proportions of our loss, all the wasted good work and goodwill.
Only recently, we had all been sitting at one table. The prime minister could speak directly to the leader of America’s Reform movement by phone, and together they could coordinate their media strategies. Now, they didn’t even have faith in a written promise from one another.
Clearly, Prime Minister Netanyahu was to blame. He appreciated the Kotel compromise’s importance and its historic nature. Yet, with one decision on one Sunday morning, he had abandoned his own initiative, making a mockery of our efforts and his, including his eloquent statements and solemn commitments to so many. I felt betrayed.
Reporters kept calling me that summer, hoping, finally, to turn me against Netanyahu. But I held to the same line I had for years. I didn’t pull any punches when criticizing him on whatever issue might divide us—in this case the Kotel. But as disappointed as I was in him, I disappointed them too. I refused to attack him personally or be pulled into what often seemed to be many reporters’ personal vendettas.
On one level, my relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu is simple. He and I have been friends for over thirty years. His relationship with Avital goes back further, to when he served as a devoted strategist during our struggle. Politically, I admire all he has done to free up the Israeli economy. Geopolitically, I respect his wariness about going to war combined with his ability to withstand international pressure for yet another self-destructive unilateral withdrawal.
Yet, with all that, Bibi and I have had intense ups and downs, with moments of great anger and disappointment from both sides. Sometimes, I didn’t give him the political support he expected. Sometimes, as in June 2017, he turned on me.
Ultimately, we run on different engines with different fuels: he’s a true politician and I’m a dissident at heart. I have no need to detail all my frustrations with this giant, if flawed, historical figure, or to settle any scores here. That is not for this book. But it is fair to speculate about what makes Bibi tick to understand why he abandoned the compromise over the Kotel. The fiasco was yet another example of Bibi being Bibi, allowing the ruthless politician he felt he had to be to upstage the scholar statesman he was raised to be.
As the son of the famous historian who edited the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, Benzion Netanyahu, Bibi has a unique understanding of Israel’s historic role, its “place among the nations”—the title of his best-selling book. He sees Zionism as the Jewish people’s great game changer, having created Israel, the guarantor of our survival. He wants Israel to be a center for entrepreneurship and technology, a stable democratic foothold in the Middle East, and the free world’s grand strategic asset in the fight against terror and Islamist mayhem. He was far ahead of most people in recognizing the Iranian threat and far more effective at mobilizing the world’s economic power to slow the mullahs’ rush to go nuclear.
Moreover, he backs up his good gut instincts with thoughtful analysis and piles of books. Wherever I saw him relaxing at home, flying abroad, or working in the office, I could usually spy some half-read weighty tract about politics, economics, history, or biography that he was racing through. After working sessions on the prime minister’s airplane, everyone else goes to rest, relax, or, these days, text. Bibi reads.
Once, I came to talk to him, distracted by some ultimately forgettable controversy that everyone was yelling about so intensely that I couldn’t concentrate. Despite being in the center of this storm, he looked up calmly from the scholarly book he was reading, almost hypnotically putting me at ease. Instead of reacting to the shouts, he started discussing some deeper question regarding President Bill Clinton and the negotiations at the time.
Watching Netanyahu conduct lengthy strategy sessions is like watching an air traffic controller land and launch airplanes simultaneously, for hours on end. His concentration never breaks, he sticks to the conversation, and he keeps everyone on point, even as others fade. Ehud Barak rarely had the patience for these marathon meetings; he made up his mind before the briefings began. Ariel Sharon occasionally dozed off as the experts rattled on. Not Bibi.
On the afternoon of February 4, 1997, we were involved in a long, intense security cabinet debate about a pressing military matter. Suddenly, an aide handed Bibi a note. He read it, struck his forehead with his palm, and exclaimed, “Oh.” Watching our usually unflappable leader turn ashen, with a pained look on his face, then turn to resume the meeting, I feared some family disaster had occurred. I wondered if his eighty-seven-year-old father or eighty-five-year-old mother had died.
In fact, Zila Netanyahu lived until 2000, and Benzion Netanyahu lived until 2012, dying at the age of 102. The note informed Bibi that two Israeli Air Force transport helicopters had crashed in midair, killing all seventy-three soldiers. It was the worst air disaster in Israeli history. As I drove home that day, I marveled at how Bibi had calculated instantly that if he announced the news, we never would finish our discussion, because the next few days would be consumed by national mourning. He kept to his strategy, deftly accelerated the discussion, secured the decision we needed to make, then briefed us about this tragedy.
Twenty-three years later, I watched Bibi exhibit similar discipline, developing a thoughtful strategy while explaining it effectively to the public, as the coronavirus menaced the world. In the spring of 2020, facing trial, negotiating round-the-clock, seeking a national unity government, Netanyahu compartmentalized superbly.
While undoubtedly doing whatever he could to remain prime minister, Netanyahu kept functioning successfully as prime minister in a pinch. He toggled back and forth between parliamentary politics and coronavirus statesmanship seamlessly. His approach placed Israel way ahead of nearly every country when it came to closing the borders, shutting down the economy, imposing social isolation, and trying desperately to “flatten the curve” of this terrifying disease’s spread. And he proved to be his government’s best spokesperson, explaining to the public night after night why every individual needed to take the threat of this plague very seriously.
Even many critics who had called for his resignation, winced at his blatant self-promotion, and detested his parliamentary tricks acknowledged his effectiveness in shaping Israel’s response to this deadly disease and explaining it. Throughout the world, many experts saluted his ability to summarize their briefings, comparing him favorably to most other leaders.
Of course, like any politician, he tried to make himself look good too. But I kept defying his critics to identify any strategic steps in fighting the disease that were unwise because they were politically motivated.
Netanyahu fights to win in politics as aggressively as he fights to keep Israel safe. In fact, he equates the two. He believes his staying in office keeps Israel alive, an equation that only grows more significant the longer he stays in power. He is a politician who will do everything to guarantee his party’s victory and his coalition’s stability.
Netanyahu’s calculus as a politician essentially became, “My country needs me. To save my country, I need my coalition. And to save my coalition, I can permit myself to do things today I can correct tomorrow.”
I kept watching him cross red lines while campaigning, understanding that he was doing what he believed he needed to do. I had felt squeamish when our clever “nash kontrol” campaign in 1999 fed the us-versus-them divisiveness between Russians and Mizrahim. But that was nothing compared to Bibi’s harsh rhetoric on Election Day 2015, when he riled right-wing voters by speaking, demagogically, about the Arabs “voting in droves.”
Sad but true: this appalling act worked—so he kept repeating it. It was a winning political weapon. That’s why he is an effective politician. Bibi knows polls better than the pollsters and politics better than the political consultants. When he was on the political warpath, he would do practically anything, including, if pressed, insulting Arabs or trying to rehabilitate Kahanist bigots to attract more votes for his coalition allies, as he did in the April 2019 elections.
As the political stalemate dragged Israel into three parliamentary elections from April 2019 through March 2020, Bibi’s polarizing strategy kept mobilizing his base. In the March election, he surprised the doubters by winning five more seats than in September, returning Likud to its longtime status as Israel’s largest party. It was a stunning comeback, considering that Netanyahu had been indicted and declared politically dead by so many commentators.
Bibi pulled this off, however, not only by running on his impressive economic and diplomatic achievements but by demonizing his opponents. He called every rival a leftist, spitting out the label as if it were a dirty word reserved only for collaborators.
While boosting him, his polarizing tactics boosted the opposition too. The fury against him united forces from extreme left to centrist right. And his anti-Arab rhetoric spurred the usually squabbling Arab parties to get out their vote, big-time. By March, the Israeli Arab party Joint List had an astonishing fifteen seats, becoming Israel’s third-largest party.
Yet, in the end, who eked out a “national emergency government,” with himself starting off in charge? Benjamin Netanyahu.
Clearly, Israeli society was as polarized as much of the Western world. And Israeli politicians across the spectrum have long shown themselves to be grand masters in demonizing one another. As we have seen, from the moment he won his first election in 1996, Netanyahu was the Israeli media’s favorite target. Still, as Israel’s leader for a decade, he had a choice. He could have resisted such partisan bullying or exploited it. It’s a mark against his historical record that he worsened our divisions rather than trying to heal them.
In fairness, Netanyahu focused on results, not process—viewing politicking as a form of theater and governance as real. He counted numbers—per capita revenues, unemployment statistics, budgetary outlays—and often discounted questions of tone, spirit, and atmosphere. As far back as his 1996 win, Bibi believed in a cleansing day after. You win the contest, then lead; you trash-talk when campaigning, then deliver the goods when governing.
In 2015, April 2019, September 2019, and March 2020, he continued his long-standing policies of working with those he bashed politically, including the Arabs and the “evil” leftists he demonized—the day after. He also continued investing money generously in the Arab sector and pushing affirmative action in education and employment. He did what he believed Israel needed to do now that Israel again had the leader it needed.
That’s how he and most successful politicians I have watched justify their harshness. They may sin along the way, but they get the job done of defending the Jewish people and the state of Israel. So they give themselves permission to politick aggressively, regardless of the damage they might cause. And, the day after Election Day, they start cleaning up their own mess.
With Bibi, I saw this ability to flip so quickly, not just with sectors but with people, from fury to full cooperation, from one meeting to the next. His reset button is constantly on. The man who broke David Ben-Gurion’s record of 4,872 days as prime minister has spent over nine years of his life managing more crises in a day than most people face in a lifetime. He oversees Israel’s foreign relations and domestic relations. He has to grow the economy, steady a boisterous society, and field every problem or idea any minister might raise at a given moment. He deals with staffers, rivals, party members, the public, and the media while occasionally taking a breath. He must be on all the time, facing the weightiest of decisions, the toughest of choices. Even his private life became increasingly public, politicized, and scrutinized. It’s an awful job. I cannot understand how he has done it for so many years. Or why he keeps wanting to extend it.
Amid such constant bombardment, you need to zero in on the pressing need of the moment and handle it the best way you can. Inevitably, that risks crowding out what you did, what you said, who angered you, or who pleased you two, three, or four weeks ago, let alone months or years ago. So turning on a dime, from friend to foe or foe to friend, does not mean Netanyahu is fickle. It just shows how he focuses on the crisis of the moment.
Bibi is not in the world of moral lectures or delicate sensibilities, but of crude politics for a noble purpose. If you believe you can do better for everyone, you will do almost anything to anyone because it’s for their sake, for the common good. That is why, when he decided it was time to backtrack on the Kotel, he retreated without regrets, writing off his own considerable investment in the deal as collateral damage.
So why did he cave in to blackmail? The ultra-Orthodox demands had not changed for decades. When Netanyahu had fought so stubbornly to pass the government agreement, he knew what he was in for. His readiness to resist the inevitable ultra-Orthodox pressure was built in to his actions, unless his patience ran out.
Cynics have an easy explanation for his turnabout: “What’s the difference between January 2016 and June 2017?” they ask. In January 2016, they’ve decided, Barack Obama was president and Bibi needed to woo the liberal Jews who supported Obama. By June 2017, President Donald Trump was clearly in Israel’s corner, liberal Jews were losing power, and Netanyahu was free to roam.
The cynics are wrong. Not everything he does is calculating. In this case, Bibi is a true Zionist. Keeping our Jewish family together around Israel has always been an important component of his worldview. He is still the same leader who gave the political green light to Taglit-Birthright before most others in the government did and who pushed for the Ne’eman Committee’s “who is a Jew” compromise.
He’s also a realist. Netanyahu never indulged in some naive hope that he could influence Obama by charming liberal Jews. He could see the glint in most American Jews’ eyes from the time Obama won the Democratic nomination in 2008. By June 2009, when, as a new president, Obama visited Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—with no plans to visit Israel—Netanyahu knew relations would be rocky. Throughout much of the Kotel negotiations, Netanyahu worked with leaders of the liberal denominations despite his growing resentment over their lack of support during his confrontations with Obama. Putting his frustrations aside, he focused on “one Wall for one people.”
Other cynics claim the mounting scandals made Netanyahu ever more dependent on his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners. But in the summer of 2017, I saw no signs that the corruption scandals were distracting him. Bibi has been under such scrutiny for years. It was only in early 2018, when two former advisers turned state’s witness that the police pressure started to affect Bibi’s politics.
All the political calculations had been there all along; the two sides of Bibi had always been in a tug-of-war. So what happened? Why did Netanyahu—who had resisted Haredi leaders’ blackmail over the Kotel since 2013, who in January 2016 forced the ultra-Orthodox leaders to accept the Kotel compromise—jump ship?
It was especially confusing because many of us believed Aryeh Deri and his allies were bluffing in June 2017; they didn’t seem ready to resign. In the coming months, I kept returning to that mystery, wondering what had changed in the year and a half between pushing the compromise through the cabinet and giving it up.