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In the fall of 1976, Bibi Netanyahu returned to the United States. On his passport it still said he was Ben Nitay, but he had spent the past few months as Binyamin, brother of Yoni Netanyahu, and his American name would soon fall out of use. Just before Yoni’s death, Bibi had landed a lucrative new job, and he was still working on a doctorate in political science. He would not stick with either for very long. The next few years would be a frustrating period as Bibi struggled to adjust to life in Yoni’s shadow. It would take him nearly six years to achieve some stability.
In June 1976, after a grueling series of tests and interviews, he had been hired by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In many ways it was his dream job. BCG, founded only thirteen years earlier, was well on its way to becoming one of the leading consulting firms. It had developed a reputation for its swashbuckling yet cerebral approach to management. Its consultants placed corporations in matrices of profitability and competitiveness, no matter what their core business was. This method fit Bibi, who employs broad-picture analysis in just about every conversation he has. What better place to work than in a company that not only dealt in those sweeping generalizations, but also rewarded the select few it hired with a handsome wage?
The plan was to work at BCG for two years, until Miki finished her doctorate at Brandeis, and then figure out their next step. But Yoni’s death had placed new responsibilities upon him and opened up new opportunities. There was growing demand for him to speak in Jewish communities across America. Benzion, who had returned to Cornell, was anxious not only to see a biography and collection of Yoni’s letters in print, but to found a think tank in his son’s name. Most of the organizing and fundraising would fall to Bibi.
Bibi enjoyed being the center of attention, with wealthy American Jews inviting him to meetings and lectures. Work at BCG may have appealed to his intellectual sensibilities, but he was merely another team member there, and the firm’s brainiacs regularly outshone him, as if he were an officer demoted to foot soldier.
Twenty-six years later, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who had overlapped with him at BCG, made a great deal of the time they had spent there together. Eager for Netanyahu’s support in the election, he told an interviewer that “we share common experiences and have a perspective and underpinning which is similar.”1 Netanyahu reciprocated, saying they enjoyed “easy communication” as a result of “B.C.G.’s intellectually rigorous boot camp,” and that they “employ similar methods in analyzing problems and coming up with solutions for them.”2
In 2012, Netanyahu was torn between his desire to see Romney beat Barack Obama and the need as prime minister of Israel to appear neutral. In a subsequent interview he downplayed their BCG relationship, saying, “We did not know each other that well. [Romney] was the whiz kid. I was just in the back of the room.”3 This was the more accurate depiction. The two never worked on the same team at BCG, and Romney left in 1977 for competitors Bain & Company, where he would make his millions. Netanyahu stayed on another year, but his career as a management consultant never took off, at least not until he was a former prime minister.
His time at BCG did leave a mark on him, or at least strengthen his tendency to regard issues from the widest possible perspective with scant regard for detail. He worked on a team advising national governments on how to overhaul their economies, including Sweden and Ireland (the team would also advise Israel, but by then Netanyahu had left). The team was led by Ira Magaziner, who would much later become a central policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. Their prior acquaintance would not help make Netanyahu more popular in the Clinton White House. Netanyahu speaks to this day of the influence BCG’s founder Bruce Henderson’s philosophy of competitive advantage had on him and how he has applied it in his management of Israel’s economy. But when he actually worked there, he lacked the drive and focus to endure.
MEANWHILE, A MOMENTOUS shift occurred back in Israel. On May 17, 1977, after eight successive defeats, Menachem Begin won an election. Likud’s share of the vote had barely increased, but Begin was the beneficiary of a gradual erosion of trust in the Labor Party, leading to a collapse in its support.
Infighting, lingering trauma from the Yom Kippur War, a sharp turn to the right of the once moderate religious community, and a series of high-profile corruption cases had all combined to end Labor’s uninterrupted run in office since Israel’s founding.
Forty days before the election, Rabin had announced his resignation. An illegal bank account in his wife Leah’s name had been revealed by Haaretz. Rabin had to choose between leaving office or having criminal charges brought. Israelis at the time were forbidden to hold foreign bank accounts. Diplomats were allowed to have them only when posted abroad. The account had been opened when Rabin served as ambassador in Washington, but they kept it when they returned to Israel in 1973.
Rabin has been lionized as a “Mr. Clean” leader who insisted on resigning just because his wife was accused of a technicality. In reality, the money in the account had been paid by American Jewish organizations for speaking engagements. As ambassador, he was forbidden to receive such payments, and they had not been declared to the tax authorities. Rabin’s misdemeanors paled beside the allegations of corruption that would be leveled at some of his successors, who clung onto office despite being the subject of police investigations. Nevertheless, he was the first Israeli prime minister to be tainted by Jewish American money.
Almost by default, Peres led Labor in the election. Likud’s campaign portrayed him as a shifty and corrupt figure who had “risen to the top climbing over his colleague’s body,” and downplayed Begin’s ideological positions, in the hope of allaying the voters’ fears. Instead, they highlighted his frugal lifestyle. Labor warned of an apocalypse for Israel if the voters ditched its tried and true leadership.
For the first time in Israel, a televised debate was held. Both Peres and Begin gave measured performances, without drawing each other into fierce arguments. It was judged a draw and a huge achievement for Begin, who finally appeared as Peres’s equal, a legitimate prime minister.
Twenty-nine years of Labor rule in Israel had come to an end, along with nearly half a century during which Mapai had been the dominant force within the Zionist movement. The disciples of Jabotinsky had finally fulfilled the words of his poem: “God, you chose us to rule.”
Begin was determined not to rule in the same manner as his Mapai rivals, who had kept the Revisionists out of the establishment. He shocked both his own camp and his rivals by insisting on not replacing senior officials of the previous government. Asked to stay on, Rabin’s diplomatic adviser, Yehuda Avner, answered, “But Mr Begin, I’m not a member of your party.” To which the prime minister responded, “This is the first time there has been a change of political administration in Israel and we have no intention of plundering power. There has to be continuity. This is a democratic transition. The world must see this; the nation must see this.”4
The old hawk was determined to prove to the world that he was no extremist. Begin’s insistence on not replacing the “old elites” with loyal Likudniks, however, would breed a bitterness within the right wing from its implication that its own leaders “don’t know how to rule.” It was a sentiment that would serve Netanyahu well in time as he convinced Likud members he had no such limitations.
In 1977, Begin’s victory did not bode well for Bibi’s budding political aspirations. Most of the appointments Begin did make were from the IZL veterans, the “fighting family,” and their sons, “the princes.” The close-knit group that had held together through the long years in the wilderness viewed Benzion as a pompous windbag who had preferred a comfortable life in the United States. With Labor’s defeat, the Netanyahus also lost their benefactor, as Peres languished in opposition.
WITH HIS PROSPECTS diminishing back in Israel, Netanyahu’s life in Boston was also starting to disintegrate. For the first four years of their marriage, Bibi and Miki had been close partners, as both focused on their studies together. Miki had a part-time research job at Brandeis, and Bibi had support from various wealthy Mileikowsky relatives. It was sufficient for a lifestyle comfortable by the spartan standards they had known back in Jerusalem. They expected to complete their PhDs in about six years and return together to Israel. Whether it was Yoni’s death that changed Bibi’s focus, or the temptations of life in the fast lane at BCG—or, what’s more likely, a combination of both—by the five-year mark of their marriage it was no longer a partnership.
Bibi’s absences became more frequent. He flew off to give lectures in other cities, and he returned to Israel to tend to Yoni’s commemoration. There were also distractions close to home. In early 1978, Miki, who was by then pregnant with their first child, discovered that he was having an affair. If their relationship had been stronger, she may have felt that it was worth fighting for, but they had already grown distant, and she insisted that he leave.
Distraught at the thought of losing his young family, Bibi tried to convince Miki to take him back, but at the same time he continued seeing his new girlfriend. He had always been dependent in some distant way on his family—his parents, Yoni, Miki. After losing Yoni, the thought of being cut off from Miki and his unborn child as well was unbearable. Miki, however, was adamant. She had decided to continue with her plans without Bibi.
Of Netanyahu’s three wives, Miki is the only one who seemed to be “perfect for Bibi”—at least that was the consensus among all those who knew them at the time. They shared the same background and similar political beliefs, they were at ease in each other’s company, and they were both highly intelligent and ambitious. Miki made up for any social awkwardness on Bibi’s part and had made their home a hub for the Israeli students in Boston. She had shared in the crushing blow of Yoni’s death and knew how to handle his parents. But as forceful and driven as he was in his political career, Netanyahu has always been much more passive in his private life, especially in his relationships with women, where he was rarely the initiator. It was Miki who had pressed him to finally get married, and she was the one who decided to end the relationship. Netanyahu has over the years frozen out hundreds of former friends and associates, but he always tried to cling to the women in his life.
Much has been made of his relationship with Fleur Cates, the other woman who would become his second wife, but neither ex-wife has ever given an interview on their years with Bibi. In a way they have come to symbolize his separate Israeli and American sides. This is, of course, a crude oversimplification of both relationships, not least because Miki lived with Bibi for over five years in the United States, and Fleur was prepared to follow him back to Israel.
They met studying in Harvard Business School’s Baker Library. The British-German Fleur had graduated from Cambridge University in England and went on to her master’s in business administration at Harvard as a Baker Scholar. The socially accomplished and attractive Fleur represented a different world from Miki’s, a world Netanyahu aspired to belong to as well. One friend of Netanyahu’s who knows all three of his wives observed that, while “both Miki and Fleur are highly educated, Miki was always going to be her own woman and put her career first. Fleur could have been the perfect politician’s wife.”
Fleur initiated their relationship, and Bibi could not end it, even when it threatened his marriage to Miki. He continued to hanker after Miki and tried to dissuade her from divorce. On April 29, 1978, their daughter Noa was born in a Boston hospital. Miki allowed him to visit a few hours later, and in the years since never tried to prevent him from seeing his daughter. But there was no way back. Three months later, her PhD completed, Miki returned to Jerusalem. Once again Miki Weizmann, she was soon to remarry, and she went on to become one of the few women to serve as a director-general of a ministry. Their relations remained cordial; nearly forty years after they separated, Netanyahu appointed Miki, by now a respected scientist, to the prestigious and sensitive position of head of Israel’s nuclear safety board.
Bibi spent the next four years between Boston and Jerusalem. Drifting between denial over the end of his first marriage and indecision over the relationship with Fleur, he left BCG and searched for work in Israel. He continued to tend to the ever-expanding commemoration of Yoni. In 1978, a collection of Yoni’s letters was published. The book, which included letters from the time Yoni was sixteen and the family left for Philadelphia until just before his death, became an immediate bestseller, and it remains in print to this day. A staple of Zionist youth groups, it has endured in the age of social media as an inexhaustible source of motivational quotes on love of the Jewish state and the importance of service.
In June 1978, Netanyahu took part in a televised panel on Boston’s WGBH station’s Advocates show. In response to the question, “Should the United States support ‘self-determination’ for Palestinians in a Middle East peace settlement?,” he said no. In ten minutes of serving as a “witness,” he put forward what would become over the decades his classical arguments against the establishment of a Palestinian state, or, as he called it, “a PLO state.”5 He was presented as Benjamin Nitay, an economic consultant and an Israeli, not an American. In the recording, Bibi can be seen coming into his own as a public speaker, not just as Yoni’s brother.
At twenty-eight, he spoke with the authority of a man much more senior in years, and his core argument was the same as it is today. The only obstacles to peace in the Middle East, he said, were the Arabs’ determination to destroy Israel and the lack of democracy in the Arab world. He came furnished with a long list of well-rehearsed quotes proving this proposition and spoke with all the self-confidence—though not yet the swagger—that he would bring over the years to hundreds of similar appearances. Not yet tutored in the art of television, his movements are a bit jerky; he fails to hold the camera’s eye and most of the time remains scowling. But he was already the emphatic and fluent performer. Comfortable in his skin, he didn’t seem to feel out of place in the grand Faneuil Hall. Interestingly, he stressed his Israeli identity a number of times. For all intents and purposes, he was speaking on behalf of Israel. The topic of the discussion was Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s policy toward the Palestinians, but he didn’t mention Begin even once.
AT THE TIME of his return, the Israeli private sector wasn’t a particularly welcoming job market for an applicant with a master’s degree in business management but no real experience in management. Likud, with its more free-market-orientated approach, had been in power for over a year, but most of the national economy was still dominated by state-owned corporations, or those controlled by the Histadrut, a trade union federation. Privately owned companies were relatively small and mostly managed by the families who founded them. Friends and relatives helped set up job interviews for Bibi, but despite doing his research on prospective employers, most were looking for candidates with specific knowledge of their line of business.
Bibi experienced long and fruitless months searching for work. Benzion had recently reached retirement and finally returned with Tzila to Jerusalem. Bibi lived with them for a while, back in his small childhood house. His parents went through the same routines—Benzion closed in his study, working on his great book on the Spanish Inquisition, Tzila diligently typing his handwriting. Over the house hung the heavy air of Yoni’s absence. A large bronze bust in his likeness dominated the living room. It was a claustrophobic and gloomy atmosphere and no way for a man nearly thirty to live. But his old friends still living in Jerusalem had families of their own by then, and he lacked the social graces to make new acquaintances. With Miki working long hours at Hebrew University, he spent many of his days taking care of baby Noa, in the forlorn hope of a reconciliation.
At meals in the Netanyahu home and when guests arrived, the main topic was criticism of Begin.
LIKUD’S VICTORY DISMAYED the Carter administration. Jimmy Carter had already clashed with Begin’s predecessor when he had departed from the assurances that Ford had given Rabin in 1975 that the United States would not pressure Israel into negotiating with the PLO or coordinate peace proposals in advance. Carter was the first US president to put the establishment of a Palestinian state at the center of his Middle East policy. Begin’s election could only mean further clashes.
Begin was committed to “integrity of the homeland” and the Jewish people’s inherent right to Judea and Samaria. A year before his election, during a tour of the West Bank, he had promised “there will be many Elon Mores,” referring to one of the first settlements that the Labor government had initially tried to prevent but eventually authorized. “The new government will call upon young people to come and settle the land.”6
There were also signs of pragmatism. Begin had given up his demand for the East Bank of the Jordan in 1965, as part of Herut’s joint platform with the Liberals, in order to present a more moderate image. Likud’s 1977 platform included a commitment to United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, which spoke of Israeli pullbacks. To the two most senior posts in his new cabinet, instead of veteran hardliners he appointed Labor’s Moshe Dayan as foreign minister and, as defense minister, Ezer Weizman, who was always more of a pragmatic opportunist than an ideologue.
As Begin arrived in Washington for his first meeting with Carter, both sides launched charm offensives. The two leaders in their public speeches praised each other as men of faith. Flattering Begin’s sense of Jewish pride, the first-ever fully kosher state dinner was held at the White House in his honor. But beneath the bonhomie of their first meeting, the differences between Carter and Begin were deep. The sole ray of light was Carter’s insistence that in return for Israeli pullbacks, the Arabs would have to agree to peace and full diplomatic relations.
Before heading to Washington, Begin had sent Dayan on a secret mission to meet Egypt’s vice president in Morocco, in part to avoid Carter’s Palestinian initiative. Begin was not prepared to make concessions on historic Eretz Yisrael. Sinai was another matter. The secret messages had a positive result. In the Egyptian parliament in November, Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat said he was “ready to go to the ends of the earth, and even to [the Israelis’] home, to the Knesset itself, to argue with them, in order to prevent one Egyptian soldier from being wounded.” Begin issued an invitation, and ten days later Sadat landed at Ben Gurion Airport.
After thirty years of bitter enmity and four bloody wars, the leader of the largest Arab nation had arrived in the Jewish state, and it was a prime minister from the nationalist Revisionist wing of Israeli politics who was making peace. It would take another difficult eighteen months, including seventeen dramatic days of negotiations at Camp David, until the peace agreement was signed on the White House lawn on March 29, 1979.
Carter and Sadat’s joint insistence that the peace agreement also include a deal on the Palestinians almost scuppered the talks. In the end, Begin agreed at Camp David to “a framework for peace in the Middle East,” a general outline for future talks with the Palestinians and Israeli concessions that was much less specific than the framework for the Israeli-Egyptian agreement. That part of the deal was meaningless. Ultimately, both sides got what they wanted: Sadat restored Egyptian sovereignty to the entire Sinai Peninsula, including the dismantlement of Begin’s cherished settlements there, and Begin got a full peace deal with Egypt, separate from the empty promises on the Palestinian issue. It was a “cold peace,” but Israel no longer faced a powerful enemy on its southern border. Egypt became another American ally in the Middle East.
Many Likudniks saw Begin’s decision as an ideological betrayal, and only 29 out of the party’s 43 MKs voted in favor of the Camp David Accords; the overall vote was 84 in favor and 13 opposed. Some Likud members broke away to form the far-right Tehiya (Revival) party.
Since the Netanyahus had never joined Likud under Begin, they had no option to leave, but they certainly were not in favor of the agreement with Egypt. Benzion had feared since 1967 that the Labor government would squander the territorial gains of the Six-Day War. Now, in doing so, Begin had proved himself an unworthy successor to Jabotinsky.
Moshe Arens, who remained in Likud, was an opponent as well. An occasional visitor to the Netanyahu home, he later remembered that they agreed that “Israel should have held out for a compromise on Sinai,” adding, “It was clear that Egypt could not fight another war and there was no need for Begin to give up every grain of sand. Benzion believed that and Bibi shared his beliefs.”
Netanyahu has always been wary of either endorsing or criticizing the agreement with Egypt in public. By the time he entered politics it was consensus. In his book A Place Among the Nations he tiptoes around the subject, merely observing that “no winning side in history” had ever retreated from all the territory it captured in war.7 Twenty years later, Benzion still could not abide Begin, blaming him in an interview of “losing all this massive territory and massive power we had without receiving anything substantial in return. They don’t want a real peace with us. Egypt hasn’t yet changed its fundamental position. Today they still don’t want a strong Jewish state here and are trying to obstruct us in every possible way. So the peace with Egypt is an incomplete peace.”8
Neither Netanyahu, father or son, lent their names to the movement opposing withdrawal from Sinai. At the time, they needed the endorsement of the country’s leadership for the first international conference of the “Jonathan Institute.” Remaining quiet paid off. In July 1979, the Israeli establishment gathered at the Jerusalem Hilton, not just the Likud government, but also Labor luminaries—President Efraim Katzir, Peres, Rabin. Begin came, too, for once putting aside his differences with Benzion. In his speech at the conference’s opening session, he called him “the father of our nation’s and mankind’s hero.”9
High-level international conferences were a rare occurrence in Israel at the time. It was a stellar lineup of politicians, academics, pundits, and military and intelligence veterans. The star speaker was former CIA director George H. W. Bush, who had dropped out of the Republican presidential primaries a few weeks earlier and would soon be selected as Ronald Reagan’s running mate. Bush lectured on “The U.S. and the Fight Against International Terrorism.” A majority of the speakers were on the right politically, including both Republicans from the United States and members of conservative parties in Europe. The few Democrats who attended from the United States were “Cold War liberals,” such as Senator Henry Jackson, who spoke on “Terrorism as a Weapon in International Politics.”
The message of the conference was clear. Terrorists were on no account to be regarded as “freedom fighters,” or as representing any form of legitimate cause. Neither were they acting on their own accord. Speaker after speaker claimed that the Palestinian organizations were part of a global network orchestrated by the Soviet Union, which assisted them with arms and training. The commander of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Shlomo Gazit, claimed the existence of terrorist training camps on Soviet territory. The message generated headlines in major American newspapers at a time when many in both American political camps were criticizing the Carter administration for going soft on the Soviet threat.
The conference was a harbinger of themes that would serve Netanyahu well ideologically and politically throughout his career. He has always had a tendency to see security threats to Isreal as part of a wider campaign, and to draw every conflict into very stark sides of good and evil. The conference brought together those who shared these views, not only from Israel, but also from America and Europe. There were no dissenting or alternative views, no Muslims or other non-Western voices.
Bibi, at twenty-nine, didn’t yet have an impressive enough CV to be one of the speakers. But as executive director of the conference, he was everywhere, meeting and greeting the VIPs. A childhood friend who had been hired to work on the conference staff later remembered bumping into him. “Don’t call me Bibi,” he was warned sternly. “I’m Binyamin.”
It was an impressive event, furnishing Bibi with contacts that would come in use over the years. In the minds of a small band of Netanyahu loyalists, it was “a turning point” in the struggle against terror. Conspiracy theorists reference it online as an early coming together of the devious cabal of neo-con warmongers. Both views, of course, are highly exaggerated. The Jonathan Institute did not become the prestigious think tank that Benzion envisioned. The conference’s lectures and papers were collected in a book, with an introduction by Bibi, and over the years he has referred to it as “my book,” but there was no follow-up for another five years, until the second and last conference. Perhaps if Netanyahu had thrown himself into fundraising, it could have become the sort of institution his father dreamed of; but as the illustrious guests departed, Bibi was focused elsewhere. He had finally found a job: he would be marketing director of a furniture manufacturer. To make things better, Fleur had agreed to move to Israel, where she had found a job at a high-tech firm.
The first few months of the 1980s were promising. Bibi threw himself into his new job, computerizing the company’s distribution system and launching an American-style incentives scheme for the sales reps. With a live-in girlfriend, who had few acquaintances or distractions in a new country, he was also enjoying life with Fleur at his side. Had the timing been a bit different, or Netanyahu more inclined to “civilian” life, thirty could have been his age of settling down to a business executive’s career, making a success of marriage, and we may never have heard of Benjamin Netanyahu the politician.
But 1980s Israel still wasn’t that place. Israelis were skeptical of cheap, mass-produced furniture. It wasn’t just the old-fashioned customers. Israel was still paying for massive rearmament after the Yom Kippur War, and the first Likud government was hapless in its attempts to transition from the socialist economy its predecessors had built. Inflation sky-rocketed. By 1979, it stood at an annual rate of 111 percent; in 1980, it was 133 percent. Israelis, if they were purchasing furniture at all, were buying it to last. Instead of expanding his efficient distribution system, Netanyahu found himself dealing with irate customers who demanded to speak to the manager when their new cupboards fell apart. Private companies in Israel were permanently on the brink.
Israeli life remained spartan. For anyone moving there from a Western country in the early 1980s, the dip in the material quality of life was immediately noticeable. Israelis lived in hot, cramped apartments without air-conditioning. On television there was one black-and-white channel, and a years-long waiting list for telephone lines. In the fetid grocery markets you could choose white or yellow cheese. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, there were only a handful of semi-decent restaurants, and the department stores were still making a brisk trade in kibbutz-style khaki. Israel was no place for anyone who was used to the basic creature comforts of Western middle-class existence.
Fleur didn’t last long, and Bibi wasn’t prepared to commit. By 1981, she was back in Boston. His CEO was sympathetic, allowing him to spend a week each month overseas, but Bibi’s enthusiasm for the job was waning. After a few months of flying back and forth, he finally broke down. In May 1981, Fleur and Bibi married and returned to Jerusalem together. For a while calm was restored, but Netanyahu soon began searching for a job that would allow them to live in the United States. When the offer came in early 1982, he didn’t think twice.
ON JUNE 6, 1982, Israel embarked on Operation Peace for Galilee, a major invasion of Lebanon and offensive against the Palestinian and Syrian forces there. It would be known as Israel’s First Lebanon War. As in the Yom Kippur War, Sayeret Matkal temporarily shifted from its special operations role, and teams of its officers and soldiers, along with hundreds of Matkal’s reservists, joined the armored columns as infantry units. Captain Binyamin Netanyahu didn’t join them this time.
Major Omer Bar-Lev was at Matkal’s temporary base in Damour, by the makeshift landing strip south of Beirut, as a helicopter landed. “Bibi got off the chopper with two Americans, wearing suits. He saw me and grinned, ‘Hi Omer.’ I shouted back, ‘What hi? Why aren’t you in uniform? Why haven’t you signed out a gun and kit?’”
Netanyahu wasn’t reporting for duty. Unexpectedly, he had been offered a role that would allow him to do what he did best: he would be an Israeli on the American stage. He had already gone on to a new phase allowing him to utilize his skills in the service of Israel while pursuing his own aspirations.