The Last Aristocrat: Interview with Nahum Goldmann
The last aristocrat, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, is President of the World Jewish Congress, and was chief architect of the German reparations agreements. He was the founder, and for eight years the first...
...I said, "There is only one explanation, Dag: probably one of my ancestors must have had an affair with a Ham-marskjold...
...So things also went wrong with the Diaspora...
...Do you think, given the emphasis that's been placed on these things, that the American Jewish community could handle peace in the Middle East...
...from all sides bullets...
...A pity that he died so young—if he hadn't been chief of Golda's cabinet he would have been alive today...
...That's really all...
...I can imagine that if America begins to pressure, or whatever you call it—it's all words—to bring about a settlement, with great concessions on the part of Israel, that many American Jews will fight the Israel government for agreeing...
...He was religious, he was very cultured, he was an extraordinary man...
...It has to be learned, that's clear...
...She once said, "Why didn't you ever try to flirt with me...
...And I never arrange the meetings through an organization...
...Diaspora is more characteristic of the Jewish people than the state, but the normalization of Jewish life requires a state in the center and a big diaspora around the state...
...But American Jewry politically, because its leadership is not in the hands of people who understand political science, or intellectuals, is generally very much inclined to demagoguery...
...I am a great friend of Brandt, of Schmidt...
...My Israelis are sometimes angry...
...So he said, "Why...
...So I see the Secretary of State, the Assistant Secretary of State, the head of the Middle East Desk, Atherton, Saunders...
...I see the leaders of the Conservative and Reform and Orthodox movements, I see regularly the Secretary of State...
...It's very easy for them...
...As long as Israel said, "The main thing is money—we don't need your advice, we don't need your intellectual cooperation, we can do everything, we know everything better—all we need is money," it was natural for the fund raising organization to become primary...
...I am alone in the office...
...Political experience has to be learned...
...If Marx had been a multi-millionaire he wouldn't have written Das Kapital...
...Yosel, what about you?' And Yosel answered, 'I'll give full gas, blink to the right and go to the left.'" That's human rights-human rights is one thing, detente is another...
...Because of his character...
...I intend now to write a book on the philosophy of Jewish humor, with a hundred and fifty Jewish stories as illustrations, where my theory is that Jews have been able to survive their seriousness—the chosen people, one God, everything else—only by their humor, by making fun of themselves...
...The following is extracted from an exclusive moment interview with Dr...
...he collapsed when people were mad...
...One Sunday morning, at half past seven—I wasn't even dressed yet—my phone rings, and Hammarskjold says, "Nahum, can you come over...
...I was sitting once with him until three in the morning—it was a wonderful night—and Paula was sitting there, mixing in...
...Now, Ben-Gurion hated Hammarskjold...
...I tried to prevent it...
...It's clear—your father was prime minister, your grandfather was finance minister, you are the tenth generation of officials and ministers...
...He wanted Eshkol to do what he couldn't bring himself to do...
...And our record in state building is not very great...
...So they said to me, "How can you compare the Bedouin to the world's greatest empire...
...I didn't do enough, even though I don't think I would have achieved it against Ben-Gurion...
...and Jews have no political experience...
...We foresaw that without partition, there would be one war...
...When you come to this country, whom do you meet with...
...I'll end with a nice story, on Carter's fight for human rights...
...Hebrew a little less...
...I am your only real lover...
...If you ask me if he will die and be buried in a Jewish state, at best he has a fifty percent chance...
...So it was about half past twelve, she went to bed, he made coffee and sandwiches, we were sitting in his kitchen, and we had a heart-to-heart talk...
...I have been told by— I won't name them—people who were in Rhodes, at the time of the first armistice agreements, that with small concessions we could have had a real peace treaty...
...I can't judge that, because I wasn't there, but very serious people told me...
...And this convinced them...
...I come every morning at seven and now I have time—the office is closed—and I want to talk fundamentally about the Arab-Israel problem...
...I haven't seen him yet...
...Two things happened that we simply never foresaw...
...But I felt that I would lose the fight, because Ben-Gurion was much more a Jew...
...my son's office telephones, and they say that I will be here, can we arrange a meeting...
...Sharett was a wonderful man, but not a strong man...
...When the day comes that the Arabs give us a Balfour Declaration, it will be ten times more important...
...and Truman was informed, and offered us his personal plane to fly...
...There is a problem of leadership everywhere, but in America it's worse, because there is simply no other country where money plays such a role...
...What's their responsibility...
...Chancellor, if I didn't know that you were such a religious and moral figure, I would be sure that Goldmann is your illegitimate son, you love him so much"—you know, you sometimes love illegitimate children more...
...I would lose my position in the Diaspora and the possibility of working here...
...I was violently attacked, by [Abba Hillel] Silver, by [Emanuel] Neumann, even a part of Hadassah, whom I finally convinced...
...at the beginning I talked about music, religion, and then I began to talk about tachlis—a few hundred new millions and so on...
...I'll give you an example: I was lately at a meeting where we were considering a grant to WUJS, the Jewish student organization, and one of the people objected to the grant because, he said, "WUJS is ready to accept a Palestinian state...
...I was for eight years president of the Presidents' Conference...
...So he said, "Tell her to go to bed—you tell her, she'll do it, me she doesn't listen to...
...It's really the Russians and the State Department, primarily...
...I don't believe that all the welfare organizations and the religious denominations will accept that the chairman of the UJA is the chairman of the Agency, because they know that Israel is built not only by Jewish money...
...That was Ben-Gurion's approach, too, until the last years of his life...
...But in general they are too stiff, not sure of themselves, insist too much, fight for small things...
...So they felt they didn't need the Diaspora and wanted a certain kind of domination over it...
...And in that book I say that two things went wrong...
...I am with you against Ben-Gurion on this issue, but you must understand: a persecuted people, that believes that every goy is an anti-Semite—and rightly so, after Auschwitz, after the way the democracies behaved—their experience is terrible, two thousand years of it...
...Isn't that the way the Israelis have wanted it...
...He knew it very well...
...I didn't really have that much influence, either...
...Photographed by Bill Aron...
...And that's why I declined the invitation to be in the first cabinet...
...I always said, "Moshe Sharett is the most first-rate second-rate man I ever met...
...If I live long enough I may write a book, Intelligence and Character in Statesmen...
...he couldn't make a constitution based on dictatorship...
...With all the mistakes and the corruption and the failures, whatever the state does is good...
...He used to say to me, "Nahum, your greatest sin is that you don't come to Israel and create a real opposition to me...
...And he knew that I admired him, and he admired me for my courage in standing up to him...
...I told my old friend Guido Rothschild just a few weeks ago, "It's fortunate we have only three Rothschilds, because if we had eight, we'd have to create five more organizations to be headed by Rothschilds...
...On the whole, they are even more extreme than Israel's Jewry today...
...The great eras of Jewish history were the prophets, and the Rambam, and Yochanan ben Za-kai, not Bar Kochba, the Maccabees...
...He was a very complex man, not a homosexual as some people have said, but asexual, a very complex and interesting man...
...I was sitting once with my friend [Maurice] Couve de Mur-ville, who is a very cultured man—not a great friend of Israel, pro-Arab, but very decent—so one day around the Six-Day War he said to me, "I know you don't like parties, and Israel is a small country while you are a citizen of the world, but you have to sacrifice, Nahum, you have to...
...So Nasser said, "All right, but then I want you to be on the Israeli side of the border as well as on my side, to be on their side for half a kilometer...
...Will you stop giving money to Israel...
...It will probably not make me any more popular than I am with many of them...
...With Jews, it's still the first generation...
...If you come, I'll fight you to the death, and I expect to win, but win or not, we'll have democracy...
...You remember the great statement, "A land without a people for a people without a land"—you were around in those days____How do you remember them...
...I spoke, and he said, "Now I understand...
...There were moments in the War of Liberation when I gave an order and I knew three hundred of our best young people would be killed that night, and you wouldn't have done it...
...Yes...
...I am a very spoiled child...
...Then I always see Dobrynin, for hours...
...So I would have fought for real democracy...
...I wouldn't say a world citizen, but I regularly, as far as I can, follow more or less the important productions of German, French, American literature...
...Same with Ben-Gurion...
...The Jews are not by nature diplomats...
...When I said that after the war, I was almost crucified, but many people today agree...
...Hitler...
...Even with the Russians...
...But Ben-Gurion said, "That's out of the question...
...The ambassadors are worse than the ministers, the consuls are worse than the ambassadors...
...at least she has one major supporter...
...And there was a hint—I got a message from the Egyptian embassy, not from the ambassador—that a secret meeting might be arranged between Sharett and me (we were the moderates) and Nokrashi Pasha, who was Fa-rouk's foreign minister...
...But the Executive of the Agency, under Silver—he had the majority, not me, and Rose Halpern, who was with me against Silver, was in this respect with Silver—voted it down...
...As a matter of fact, I tried to find it recently, and it's not so easy—many archives were burned...
...And from the yetzer hatov you don't go into politics...
...So a war, and another war, and another, and so on...
...I have always said that psychology is much more important than ideology...
...He had no effect...
...I'll tell you a nice story...
...That's not a very good answer...
...And so we started with a war...
...I don't blame anyone...
...They said, "Why should we be for a Jewish state...
...My friend [the late Jewish Agency Chairman Louis] Pincus did it the easy way: he went to the fundraisers and told them that they represented the Jewish people...
...When you say that you're a goy, is that true also at the cultural level...
...Not to get them to agree to a Jewish state—this they wouldn't have done—but to prevent a war...
...And it's true...
...Give them one or two generations and they will learn it, too...
...it was number one) was a great historical document...
...I don't see Arabs or others here—them I see in Europe, or I see the king of Morocco, I see Ceaucescu...
...I was a wunderkind...
...God promised us...
...I can understand that...
...two wars, three wars, and the whole thing would be different...
...Just Bedouin...
...I learn more from them than almost anyone— Kraft, Frankel, Brendan—first-class journalists...
...The one was the Holocaust...
...There was just one Arab state, Egypt, and Egypt did not want to be regarded as Arab...
...They concentrate everything on their own agenda...
...Ben-Gurion was for it, but he allowed me to do the fighting, because he was Chairman [of the Agency...
...Le Monde once called me "I'aristocrate du ju-da'isme mondial,'1'' because they felt that by nature, I am not really a democrat...
...and he wept...
...Erhardt once said to Adenauer when he was Vice-Chancellor, at a public reception, when Adenauer had just seen me and was saying very nice things about me, Erhardt said, "Mr...
...I don't speak on official business, or as a representative of any organization...
...Why should they make peace...
...At that time it was an honor...
...And he began to cry, and he said, "Do you say that to comfort the people, or because you really believe in it...
...I hope that detente will go on, but that's another story...
...You say that American Jewish life is governed by the very wealthy, that intellectuals are not adequately involved...
...My son Amos will be fifty in October...
...In French, it's called Ou Va Israel...
...Where is Israel going...
...Who would ever have dreamt that Israel would begin with a war...
...The World Jewish Congress came by nature—forty years and I can't get rid of it...
...And that's what happened...
...He nearly fainted...
...Let them give us some money, and we will do everything...
...So I am really a cosmopolitan...
...We thought we'd have millions of Jews as a reservoir, and then we'd never have had the problem of aliyah, which has brought us to a day when, in the United States, it seems there are more shlichim than there are oUftl, And then the war with the Arabs...
...Just after the Second World War, I said to him, "I believe we shall have a Jewish state...
...It took me two weeks, and then I felt I would be the opposition to Ben-Gurion, and I hate parties, I won't have the support of a party, he has Mapai, the strongest party at that time, and so I will waste my time...
...What do you do, Moishe?' Moishe said, 'I immediately lie down in the valley so the bullets shouldn't hit me.' So the commander said, 'Yes, but what will happen to the tank...
...Sometimes when you leave me, after offering all kinds of compromise, I ask myself how come you are not at all Jewish...
...So I said, "BG, how can you sleep at night being the Prime Minister with this prospect...
...My way has always been to establish personal relationships...
...And I said, "I believe in it, Stephen...
...You are tolerant, understanding, are ready to make a compromise...
...And that's the truth...
...So I said, "Look here, first of all Israel is a parliamentary democracy and I have no party...
...For him, it was a miracle...
...Hammarskjold was a close friend of mine...
...That was easy with Kissinger, who was an old friend...
...It was only later that they became friendly...
...He was the head of the UN division when I represented the Agency...
...But these are unproductive directions...
...They wouldn't give me full power...
...So it's all personal relationships...
...the whole discussion of partition was between the two of us...
...but he broke down when he came to Israel...
...I know a bit of Jewish history, but I'm far from a scholar...
...When you meet with State Department people, how do they relate to you...
...He said, "I'll be, in two-three months, seventy...
...He knew better than I that without a settlement with the Arabs there cannot be a Jewish state...
...So he said, "Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un goy...
...Kissinger is because of my son, who was his assistant...
...I am looking for a successor...
...I was one of the great fighters for partition...
...So I came to Nasser—I was a mediator between Nasser and Ben-Gurion, who weren't on speaking terms—and he said, "All right, but if they're only on my side of the border, then I must have the right to recall them...
...I didn't do enough...
...So my main fight would have been on that...
...Otherwise you cannot create anything...
...That's the trouble of Jewish diplomats to this day: they're interested only in their own problems...
...They don't go to war, they pay only with money...
...Well, I may say a word about this, too...
...So I would in two or three months get disgusted...
...I established it and I am President until today...
...So I said, "The fact that you don't know what goy means means that you are a super-goy...
...So he blushed...
...What has that to do with the Arabs...
...And American Jewry supported him...
...I've written a book which hasn't appeared yet in English...
...You will attack Israel, but they will accept it one day...
...Sunday morning...
...You say that's a problem of Jewish diplomats, but the fact is that outside the Israeli foreign service, you're the only Jewish diplomat there is...
...Naturally, everybody wants peace...
...I was one of only eight people that he was per du with...
...First of all, real democracy...
...He said, "If you ask me why I want arms and strength, it's simple...
...What is it their business...
...Nobody else, neither Rabin nor Golda, would have been able to do that, nor did they have the authority...
...But even the first victory, in the War of Liberation, created a problem...
...Not so much in France, because of the Rothschild tradition, which holds that every organization must be headed by a Rothschild...
...Some people say that we couldn't function without the ever-present crisis that has become so familiar...
...If God forbid detente fails in a cold war, I tremble for the future of the Russian Jews...
...I said...
...The best proof is—I said it once in the Actions Committee in a eulogy—that when he was no longer Prime Minister, he was for retreat, for giving back everything—except Jerusalem, which I wouldn't give, either...
...and many I know, especially Americans, have a very poor impression of Israeli diplomats...
...When the Russians also voted for a Jewish state, the Arabs were in the same position that Israel is in today, except that today at least America is for Israel...
...You touch on a very delicate problem, but since I am now out of the competition—anyway, I never paid much attention to public opinion or to reactions to what I said—I can speak frankly...
...So give them some time...
...But that won't go on for very long...
...Ben-Gurion, even though in his heart he was also for partition, couldn't say much—he was Chairman of the Agency, and he had to be careful...
...It was during the Sinai Campaign, when Eisenhower and Dulles were threatening us with sanctions...
...I mean I don't want to boast, I cannot prove it, but I would have made peace ten or fifteen years ago...
...1 believed in a state even before that war, and Ben-Gurion believed in it, but very few people believed in it...
...I know it, I was for 20 years one of the leaders of American Jewry...
...I'm not keen on it...
...He said, "Israel will accept such a thing...
...He always said to me, "Paula is in love with you, not with me...
...I had discussions on the Jewish state with Litvinoff, Gromyko, ten or fifteen of them...
...Doesn't that make it easier for them...
...And I said, "Sure...
...I once supported the Independent Liberals, but I never ran for the Knesset...
...The best they had here was Yaa-cov Herzog...
...We very often had talks until three in the morning...
...I could prove it with many...
...The Memorial Foundation...
...A man like Dobrynin, a man with whom I am friends, tells me often, "I call together my whole staff every two or three months and warn them against becoming anti-Semitic" because of the yelling, the picketing, the scandals and so on, Kahane and all that...
...I'll never forget it...
...He used to write open cables: "What does the Nazi want us to do now...
...I know my weakness...
...So why didn't he make peace...
...He was very, very funny in these things...
...Sharett was for it, no question...
...Second...
...Now I didn't have this character, so it was easier for me...
...They know a lot...
...Generally, I'm afraid, as long as there's no peace in Israel, the main effort of Jewish life will be directed to helping Israel...
...All the energies of the Jewish people, the great energies and the great resources, must today be concentrated on saving Israel and the Russian Jews...
...he didn't want the conditions of peace...
...I was a great friend of Sumner Wells...
...I have a knack to be very friendly...
...The Russians in a certain way were fooled...
...Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but I hope that if there should be peace, and we won't have to worry every day about Israel, other energies will be released for much more creative purposes...
...And miracles go to people's heads...
...When I come here I see my people of the World Jewish Congress, naturally...
...Before that I saw Dean Rusk, whom I hope to see again next week— he's still influential, close to Carter...
...In addition, he was a very strong personality...
...Ben-Gurion always wanted to leave all his options open...
...I don't say this critically...
...I really think that American Jews are wonderful for Israel...
...So I said, "You are right, but I have a different advantage...
...I'll give you another example: after the Sinai Campaign, when Eisenhower agreed with Khrushchev regarding withdrawal, Ben-Gurion showed his greatness by changing his own policy in twenty-four hours...
...I used to say it often in his presence...
...I don't want anything from you, not to marry me, not to make love to me, not to take me on trips...
...I always say I am a goy...
...That's what happened to the Jews: Hitler, the climax of Jewish lack of power, and then, suddenly, a state, and power...
...Once he said, "I'll tell you, Nahum, why you cannot lead the state, despite all your great qualities...
...Begin once came to me and tried to make a coalition with me to bring down Mapai, where I would be number one and he would be number two...
...I wrote then that the Balfour Declaration, given by the greatest empire in the world (England after the First World War was not England today...
...First of all I want a little bit to reduce my traveling, and second it begins to bore me, fifty years of diplomacy—but this was always the case with me...
...You must understand Jewish psychology...
...I made speeches at fifteen and sixteen...
...And even if I could bring all the Jews to Israel, I would prevent it...
...All right, Masada is very nice, it's wonderful to write good books about, it's a very dramatic thing, but what maintained the Jewish people was not our performance in war or in state building...
...So they withdrew, and Hammarskjold wanted the border to be guaranteed by UN troops that could be called back only by the UN...
...I learned Ge-mora a little as a young man, but I couldn't learn today a blat Gemora...
...And he was right, but I didn't go—because I knew I would lose...
...The question is, what are you ready to pay for it...
...I said, "Moshe, for years I've been telling you the Russians will be for a Jewish state, to get rid of the English...
...For most people, it was a miracle...
...How much of Israel's abandonment by the world is realpolitik and how much of that is residual anti-Semitism...
...I remember when it was, although usually I have no memory for dates, because he mentioned his seventieth birthday...
...And the Jews were so enthusiastic about this miracle that everything the state did was sacred, as it is even up to today...
...you fall into a trap with the Egyptians...
...He was the founder, and for eight years the first president, of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations...
...It takes time to gain influence...
...I was convinced that the Russians would vote for a Jewish state...
...You know he had a throat condition...
...I'm the only one who really loves you...
...why should he allow the Diaspora to mix in...
...First, they take themselves too seriously...
...When I met Adenauer, I never talked agenda at the beginning...
...When I tried to create an enlarged Jewish Agency, I wanted it to include the political organizations—the Committee, the Congress, and so on—and I failed...
...And I was right...
...Brandt was here, and he is a good friend, and then he came to Paris and I had him and Mendes-France in my home in Paris, and he said, "Well, Carter's fight for human rights is wonderful and so on, but whenever I think about this I am reminded of a story which Goldmann told me...
...So when Israel became pro-Western, because the [Jews in the] East didn't exist any more, they felt they'd made a mistake...
...I understand it...
...He wasn't for such things, but he didn't really care that much about galut life...
...He was much stronger...
...They honestly want Israel, because otherwise they're finished: all the Arabs would be pro-American...
...And Rabin wasn't bad...
...If you ask me if I will die and be buried in a Jewish state—I will live ten more years, maybe 15—I think yes...
...But I don't think it's of lasting importance—once Israel accepts, in three years American Jews will also be happy...
...Sure, and even in Israel, there are very few...
...Anti-Semitism plays a minor role...
...This was never official, of course...
...We came and stole their country...
...At the age of 82, he is one of the preeminent Jewish leaders of the century...
...But politically, I think they have had a positive and a negative effect...
...Sharett was sitting next to me...
...So he said, "I'll tell you...
...I think it is Arab oil, it is for many the recognition that the Palestinians deserve a part of the country, and it is the anger at Jewish stubbornness, that whatever they grab they don't want to return...
...Who are the Arabs...
...In Europe it is a little better...
...Paula was my greatest hasidah...
...And there were discussions, to meet in Malta, or Cyprus...
...I understand why we concentrate on raising money and on political pressure...
...We are a sovereign state...
...And in Russia there is growing anti-Semitism...
...A tank commander in Israel was instructing his troops and said to them, 'Imagine you are in a war...
...He wasn't a man who could make concessions, either to Jews or to Arabs...
...I think the victory in the Six-Day War was a catastrophe for Israel...
...I am a man who hates parties...
...He was a little lawyer in a small town...
...So I always had this idea—it was my one consistent line—but I blame myself for not having fought for it enough...
...1 remember my great friend, my greatest friend in America, [Rabbi] Stephen Wise...
...one is not supposed to criticize...
...I jump down, crawl under the tank and save my life.' So the commander said, 'That's very irresponsible...
...Let's say Adenauer...
...So he said, "Who told you I sleep at night...
...And that's why the Six-Day War happened, because Bunche gave in to Nasser's demand which he shouldn't have done...
...But you know how it works—a shammes is always worse than a gabbai...
...If I were an Arab, I would accept Israel...
...I edited the Encyclopaedia Judaica, but I wasn't the scholarly editor...
...That was Klatzkin and Ellenbogen and so on, and now it's the people in Israel...
...They were laughing at me...
...Otherwise they wouldn't have survived it psychologically...
...It's not that Ben-Gurion didn't want peace...
...But may I ask you a personal question...
...So I sent Sharett to Israel...
...That was nonsense, the business of a sovereign state...
...I once said to Golda, "The difference between us is that I never believe that I am a hundred percent right in anything, and you believe that you are, in everything...
...I might have prevented the war more easily than you...
...It took England a hundred, two hundred years to learn how to handle world politics...
...It's true we want to get rid of the British, but the Jews will be pro-Western...
...I wouldn't have won in Israel...
...I never fought for any position...
...Today there is no democracy...
...he really never slept very long...
...Nietzsche said it: great victories are more dangerous to a people than great defeats...
...Germany is also a sovereign state, and lives with occupation, and trembles that maybe, God forbid, the Americans will cease the occupation...
...If you had accepted Ben-Gurion's offer way back, what would the opposition have been about...
...Jews take themselves too seriously, and are stubborn, and insist on every little point...
...He was an extraordinary fellow, one of my two or three closest friends...
...My yetzer hara is very easily satisfied...
...So I got dressed, and I came over, and I tried to explain to him...
...The Russians are not anti-Semites...
...I don't think it is because of anti-Semitism...
...But in England and in other countries, it's not just rich people who lead the community...
...But I argued—this was before Auschwitz—"the manpower, which is not less important for a Jewish state, will come from the East, so Israel will have to be neutral, with people from the East and money from the West...
...They may become anti-Semites if this goes on, this violent campaign against them...
...Callaghan wants to meet me...
...Rabin was a good ambassador...
...I myself have made hundreds of fund raising speeches...
...Then I like to see important journalists...
...Hammarskjold would never have done it...
...Israel has to invest its main efforts in war, in the army, because first of all you have to survive...
...You have to learn how to manage that...
...they have five thousand years of culture...
...That is what Jewish diplomats often lack...
...I suggested that the proclamation of independence be postponed...
...He had much more strength, specific gravity, than I. And you know he was in his heart...—it's worthwhile American Jews should know it—in his head he agreed with me...
...So I was shuddering, and I said, "How do you see the situation...
...Ben-Gur-ion's father...
...I try to be objective about myself—I don't belong to those who always think they're a hundred percent right...
...And I explained that what I meant was that I am not stubborn, I am not a fanatic, I am flexible, I understand the other fellow's point of view, I am tolerant, and that's not the Jewish character...
...Ben-Gurion simply wanted to have the right to march in when he wanted to...
...I knew the guy...
...I was for years a friend of Dean Rusk, for twenty years...
...the smaller the official, the greater his vanity, and when you told Ben-Gurion that the consul in Philadelphia or Atlanta was mixing in too much, there wasn't much he could do...
...He didn't let the Israelis mix into policy...
...He's a very decent man, Begin,---- So I said, "Suppose they were to invite me as a foreign minister...
...We give 50 percent of our budget to Israeli institutions...
...I would have fought for a different and better relationship with the Arabs...
...When I was at the League of Nations in Geneva, when I told them, "you are Arabs," they said, "No, we are not Arabs, we have a much older culture...
...If you'd been here, with people fainting in the streets, dancing all night, crying, you'd have done the same...
...What's the great achievement...
...He was the one great personality Israel created, with all his weaknesses—after all, a great man also has great weaknesses...
...Not of Cordell Hull, who was an anti-Semite and a terrible guy...
...To come back to the Arab question, it's part of the conventional wisdom these days that the early leaders of the Yishuv simply ignored the fact that there were Arabs to deal with...
...And in his time, democracy in Israel was a joke—and he knew it...
...Why should the Arabs make peace with us...
...When Gromyko made his famous speech at the UN...
...When the Balfour Declaration was published, in 1917, I was twenty-two years old, and I wrote an article in a German-Jewish paper...
...He said a constitution would lead to a kulturkampf with the religious, and there was some truth in that...
...What will you do, Chaim?' 'I will tell you the truth,' answered Chaim, 'I am married and I have five children, so to hell with the tank...
...Yes...
...I would resign in two months...
...When I came to Ben-Gurion four weeks later, I said, "Gazlanl Why didn't you postpone it for four weeks and give us a chance...
...So I told her, "Go, do me a favor, we have to have a very serious talk...
...You know Ben-Gurion never made a constitution because it would have limited his power...
...Today they're not for the destruction of Israel...
...So I said, "My dear friend, what will you do when Israel will accept a Palestinian state...
...So the Israelis, after the miracle, felt they didn't need the Diaspora...
...Begin is a joke...
...I am a democrat by conviction, not by nature...
...It's not Ben-Gur-ion's fault, with all the mistakes he made, nor is it Golda's or the others...
...The trouble with the Jewish people is—you know the old Lord Acton saying, "power corrupts"—it's worse still if a powerless people becomes powerful overnight...
...You say you are a better statesman than Ben-Gurion...
...He was a man of wonderful character, decent...
...It was satisfied in my youth already...
...We were really close friends and close opponents...
...And Israel has encouraged it and will encourage it until there's peace...
...So far, Israel has encouraged the emphasis on money, and of course that feeds the American tendency to have rich people play too much of a role...
...I never wanted to be president of the Zionist Organization—Ben-Gurion forced me into it, and I regret that I ever took it...
...they have a generosity which no other community has...
...Today it's not a great thing to be a Jewish minister in Israel, but the first after two thousand years...
...Kissinger was ruined by his character despite the brilliance of his mind...
...They have stolen our country...
...Or if I come to London, I see Wilson...
...I do what I want...
...I said, "Because you may know that Israel is a Jewish state, and I am a goy...
...So, I was attacked: a crazy, they said...
...He was the shrewdest politician there was— and a statesman, too...
...The State Department was enthusiastic about him...
...He said, "Look here, Nahum, you, sitting six thousand miles away in New York, could have a cool head...
...every two hours he had to drink...
...So what's the point...
...But the main thing was that he really didn't want it...
...Crazy...
...Intelligent Jews will not accept such blind obedience...
...And that is a disaster for the state...
...It is a weakness of mine...
...Jews are a very stubborn people...
...Second, he had not only a theoretical pretext...
...His character prevented him from doing what his intelligence told he him he had to do...
...all the money will come from America...
...This is a personal relationship...
...I was the first to fight for partition...
...they have good judgment, too...
Vol. 2 • September 1977 • No. 9
