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Ashkenazim — and their prominence and privilege had stoked increasing
resentment among Israel’s disadvantaged Sephardi majority, with their roots in
the Arab world and especially north Africa.
Begin not only sensed this. While he’d never lost the formal bearing — or the
accent — from his childhood in Poland, his long years in Israel’s political
wilderness mirrored the wider exclusion felt by the Sephardim. The last election
he had lost, in December 1973, proved too soon for the earth to part. But he told
his supporters: “Even though Labour has won these elections, after something
like the Yom Kippur War happens to a country, and to a government, they must
lose power. They wi// lose power.” He was right. Only twice in the four decades
that followed would a Labor leader defeat Begin’s Likud party: Rabin’s election
victory in 1992, and mine over Bibi Netanyahu in 1999.
During the first two years of Begin’s rule, however, I was 7,000 miles away.
Ten days before the election, I’d gone to see Motta, and he’d agreed that I could
return to Stanford, to finish what I’d barely begun when the 1973 war broke out.
I had been in the army, with the one hiatus as a sayeret reservist at Hebrew
University, since the age of seventeen. I did not regret committing myself to a
life in uniform. But Stanford offered an extraordinary opportunity to broaden
my horizons. Even in the few weeks I’d spent there before the war, I'd felt
reinvigorated. It engaged a different kind of intelligence, a different part of who
I was: the books, the professors. A chance to listen to, and at least try to play,
beautiful music. And to spend more than a few stolen evenings or weekends
with my family.
The timing had nothing to do with the election. Like most other Labor
Israelis, and many of Begin’s own supporters, I hadn’t expected the Likud to
win. It was because I felt I'd reached a natural punctuation mark in my military
career. I’d led Sayeret Matkal. I’d commanded a tank company, a battalion in
1973, and, more briefly than I’d hoped, the 401° Brigade after the war. I’d spent
the last two years in the kirva. The next step up the command chain would be to
lead a full armored division. But at age 35, I was probably too young, and I
figured I’d have a far better chance in two years’ time. I also feared losing the
chance to go to Stanford altogether. Motta’s term as chief of staff would end the
following year. Among those in the frame to succeed him was Raful Eitan.
Recalling Raful’s dismissive, almost sneering, opposition to my making the
Sayeret Matkal into Israel’s SAS, I wasn’t exactly confident I could count on
his support.
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