Man on a Mission, Part I

Review of Bibi: My Story by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is the Israeli Donald Trump. Perhaps that’s why they get along so well. Both put the interests of their own nations above all others. Both are adored by their salt-of-the-earth voters, but despised with a spiteful and deranged passion by globalist elites. Like Trump, Netanyahu’s opponents have subjected him to an unending series of politically-motivated criminal investigations. Also, as with Trump, all these investigations have turned out to be frivolous. So far.

At more than fifteen years, Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister is the longest in Israeli history. It exceeds even that of founding PM David ben Gurion (thirteen years). Indeed it covers 20% of the nation’s life. Despite the controversies that have swirled around him throughout his career, Netanyahu is clearly doing something that appeals to the citizens of the oldest democracy in the Middle East, and the only one that’s not dysfunctional.

Insight into both the appeal and the controversy can be gleaned from his new autobiography, Bibi: My Story. In this book review, I’ll try to do just that, as I summarize the highlights of his career and of the ideas that drive him.

With a print length of 736 pages, Bibi is a long book, but eminently readable. It is written in an engaging style and chock full of humorous anecdotes that held my attention. We are treated throughout to lifelike portraits of the many colorful characters and world leaders whose lives intersected with Netanyahu’s. In his accounts of conversations with Bill Clinton or Donald Trump I can practically hear their voices.

Netanyahu was born in 1949, one year after the State of Israel. So his lifetime spans that of the nation itself, and the book gives a first-hand account of what life is like there, and how it has changed over the decades, from the astonishing military triumphs, “spartan austerity”, and desolate landscapes of its early years, to the go-go urban high-tech industries of today living under the constant threat of Hamas missiles. It’s a small country, where everyone knows each other, and the book gives a flavor of this. I lost count of how many times he talked about someone he grew up with who went on to serve in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) or other prominent places in society. When Bibi and his father wanted to give Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin advice on standing up to Henry Kissinger, they were able to arrange a meeting because Bibi knew Rabin’s daughter.

In addition to being the story of a political career and a nation, Bibi delves into the history of Zionism, the case for a Jewish State, Israel’s war on terror, the nature of power, the benefits of free market economics, the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and the Iranian threat to both Israel and the world. It is a book about ideas.

But then, how could it be otherwise? Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was a prominent intellectual, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and author of several volumes about the Spanish Inquisition. Bibi grew up surrounded by books, and read them. He hobnobbed with other prominent intellectuals who came to visit. In this respect, at least, he is most definitely not the Israeli Donald Trump.

Benzion literally means “Son of Zion,” and, true to his name, the elder Netanyahu was an ardent Zionist, a protégé of Ze'ev Jabotinsky. The soldier/scholar/activist Jabotinsky was the guiding light of something called Revisionist Zionism, a militant splinter group that had broken off from mainstream Labor Zionism. It stressed armed Jewish self-defense and opposed the partition plan. An undivided Palestine, according to the Revisionists, should have been made into the State of Israel from the beginning, including the West Bank and what’s now Jordan. The movement eventually evolved into the conservative Likud Party, of which the younger Netanyahu would become chief decades later.

Of course it was Labor Zionism that dominated the early years of the Jewish State. I grew up on tales of their larger-than-life figures like David ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. When assigned to write a paper about one of our heroes in seventh grade, I chose Golda Meir. To the extent that Revisionists like Menachem Begin (before he became PM) were mentioned at all by the adults in my life, it was in dark whispers about how they were extremists and terrorists and how the ben Gurion government had to send the army to rein them in shortly after Israel declared its independence. So it was quite interesting to me to learn the other side of the story from the account in Bibi, especially since Bibi himself had learned it from people in the inner circle.

Benzion’s career included stints at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, and Bibi was therefore brought up both in Israel and the United States. Upon graduating Cheltenham High School in 1967, he returned to Israel for his military service, during which he was recruited to the elite Sayeret Matkal. He completed many missions as a team leader in “the Unit,” often grueling, with an occasional brush with death. The most famous operation he took part in was in 1972 when Sabena Flight 571 was hijacked by four Black Septembrists, two men and two women, and a standoff on the ground at Lod Airport ensued.

Netanyahu chose this incident for the opening chapter of Bibi; like every great book, it begins with an action scene. A team of sixteen Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, including Bibi, approached the plane disguised as mechanics, stormed it, killed the two male hijackers, captured the two female, and rescued all but one of the hostages alive. Bibi was wounded in the shoulder by an accidental discharge from another soldier’s pistol, but there was no permanent damage.

The operation was under the command of future Prime Minister Ehud Barak, while Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Transportation Minister (and future Prime Minister) Shimon Peres, and Bibi’s brother Yoni, who was also an officer in the Sayeret Matkal, monitored anxiously from a nearby hangar. Dayan’s nephew Uzi Dayan was on the team as well. See what I mean about Israel being a small place where everyone knows each other.

After completing his military service, Netanyahu enrolled at MIT, where he studied architecture and business. When the armies of Egypt and Syria invaded in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he briefly interrupted his studies to fight for his country, before returning to Boston.

There he joined a pro-Israel group at MIT. “I was now sent by the student organization to give lectures defending Israel to anyone who would listen,” Bibi writes.

Since I was the new kid on the block, I traveled to the less-desirable locations. My first speaking engagement was at the Shabbat Breakfast Club at a synagogue in the town of Hull, thirty miles from Boston. The club consisted of ten elderly Jewish men who ate Shabbat breakfast at the back of the shul. The youngest was in his late seventies.

The upshot of the story was that the “alte kakers” were far more interested in the bagels and lox than what Bibi had to say. It must have been quite humbling for this decorated combat veteran, a hero in his country, who knew all the top government officials, to be just some “kid from Boston.” He concludes the episode, “Such was my introduction to public speaking. I never had a tougher audience. It took me a while to learn a simple rule: You have to start with the bagels.” By which he meant: connect with your audience.

I got a kick out of the story because I’ve been to that synagogue. My cousins go there.

Netanyahu earned his MS in June 1976. Before the month was over, a tragedy began to unfold which changed the course of his life.

On June 27, Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France jetliner en route from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens. The plane eventually made its way to Entebbe, Uganda with 248 passengers; the hijackers had learned their lesson from the Sabena experience: don’t land in Israel. A couple days later, non-Israelis were released, leaving 94 passengers and 12 flight crew as hostages in an abandoned terminal building. The Israeli government decided to mount a rescue. It was July 4, 1976. While those of us in America were preparing to celebrate our Bicentennial, an Israeli assault team hit the ground in Entebbe under the command of Bibi’s older brother Yoni.

In his book, Bibi (who was still in the US and not part of the mission) tells the story of the planning and execution of Operation Entebbe in detail and IT. IS. THRILLING.

The raid was a huge success. A hundred and four hostages were rescued and flown to Nairobi, where the planes refueled for the flight back to Israel.

(A TV movie, Raid on Entebbe, which aired the following year, gives a fun and exciting, albeit not entirely accurate, portrayal. It’s streaming on Amazon—for ninety-nine cents you can’t go wrong. There are some well known actors in it—Charles Bronson, Robert Loggia, Martin Balsam. It’s worth seeing just for Yaphet Kotto, who James Bond fans will recognize as Kananga from Live and Let Die. He puts in a marvelously unctuous performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who is elated that the hijacking thrust him in the role of international diplomat and is taking every opportunity to ham it up on the world stage. The look and feel of the movie is somewhat dated—very 1970s. But then I’m nostalgic for a bygone era when the Israelis were the undisputed good guys.)

Operation Entebbe was not without loss. Four hostages were not rescued. Two were killed in the crossfire, another was wounded and died later, and one elderly woman, who had fallen sick and been taken to a hospital before the raid, was subsequently murdered on the orders of a vindictive Amin. Several Israeli soldiers were wounded. And there was one more casualty. Bibi quotes Chief of Staff Motta Gur’s secretary about the scene at IDF HQ in the aftermath of the raid:

When the last plane took off from Nairobi, there was a wave of rejoicing at the Kirya headquarters. The Chief of Staff’s driver brought in a few bottles of champagne and everyone celebrated. After they left, Motta Gur and his aide Hagai Regev stayed alone. I went to the kitchen to make some coffee. Suddenly the other secretaries rushed in. They grabbed me and said: ‘Yoni was killed.’ I dropped everything and went to the Chief of Staff’s office. I opened the door of the room I’d left two minutes before, which had been full of rejoicing over our success. I saw the Chief of Staff sitting, face fallen, terribly sad. Hagai was crushed. In one minute, all the joy had been erased.

It is impossible to understand Bibi without understanding Yoni, so let me say a few more words about him. By all accounts, Yoni Netanyahu was remarkable. A fierce warrior, admired by both his commanding officers and the men who served under him. He was obviously the best Israel had or they wouldn’t have put him in charge of this operation. He was also a thoughtful man, who studied philosophy at Hebrew University and held endless discussion with his brothers about a plethora of intellectual topics. Yoni’s letters, which were published by his family after his death, reveal a deeply ingrained awareness of the place of the State of Israel in the history of the Jews, and the history of the world. He wrote to his father,

We must cling to our country with our fingernails and with all our strength. Only if we do so will Israel remain the State of the Jews. Only then will they not write in the history books that once indeed the Jews roused themselves to action and held on to their land for two decades, but then they were overwhelmed and once more became homeless wanderers. That is why I have to be here now.

But while he wrote of the necessity of war, he yearned for peace in a way that only those who have suffered the horrors of the battlefield can: “I want peace very much. I don’t like to live by the sword, a life of killing and trying not to be killed.”

At the time of the Sabena Airliner rescue, Yoni had attempted unsuccessfully to take Bibi’s place on the assault team. While they were arguing over this, Yoni said something which Bibi later wrote he would never forget: “My life is my own and my death is my own.”

The effects of Yoni’s life and death on his younger brother were profound:

Yoni was my extraordinary older brother, and for my younger brother Iddo and me he was our North Star, guiding us through life’s labyrinthine paths and serving as a model to be emulated. In so many crossroads in my life, I benefited from his advice and support. Yet his influence on me was even deeper than that. Israel’s very existence was continuously challenged. I felt that as long as Yoni was alive, he would rise to great heights and help secure its future.

When the news reached me that Yoni had died in Entebbe, I felt as if my life had ended. I was certain I would never recover…Yoni’s sacrifice and example helped me overcome inconsolable grief, thrust me into a public battle against terrorism, and led me to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

Netanyahu does not exaggerate here. Yoni’s martyrdom really did lead him into his political career. As he writes in the book’s final chapter,

When I look back on my childhood in Jerusalem with Yoni and Iddo, my years in America, my service in the Unit and my escapes from near death, I realize they were all somehow woven together to prepare me for my life’s mission.

This concept of mission, to “cling to our country with our fingernails,” is deeply ingrained in Netanyahu. He returns to it over and over again in the course of the book. How he embarked on that mission, I’ll describe in Part 2: Slick Willie Strikes Back.

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Michael Isenberg likes ribeyes, bourbon, and writing historical novels set in the medieval Muslim world. Please check out his latest, The Thread of Reason, at http://amazon.com/dp/0985329750.