12/7/99

Arafat's blond Jewish stand-in

Today's subject is ... the peace process.
    No, wait -- come back! (you were about to look for something else to read, eh?) Remember, this is Not Page One, and not page one.
    David Makovsky has been hanging around the peace process for the last decade. Formerly the Post's diplomatic correspondent (he's now working for, uh, Another Newspaper), Makovsky has scribbled quotes from four prime ministers, presidents, kings, negotiators. He's been to almost as many Arab countries as Arafat. But he and his colleagues on the peace beat don't give us much about the real stuff, like...
    "We were in Oman with Peres, and the sultan, Qaboos, wanted him to see his Arabian stallions. I thought we'd be seeing a horse or two. They brought out 100 horses. I figured he'd say 'that's very nice' and leave. But Shimon Peres went to every horse and talked to the trainers. A hundred different trainers! It was like the headquarters of the Labor Party, he was shaking hands with every horse trainer in Oman."
    Makovsky loves this stuff. He's big, burly, bearded, bespectacled, 37 years old, knitted kipa atop curly blond hair, back-slappingly amicable. Loves baseball (St. Louis Cardinals, nebich), believes in by-the-book journalistic integrity. He's as quick as Santa Claus with a ho-ho-ho.
    He gets laughs, too: Makovsky's got a shtik that has 'em rolling in the aisles of diplomatic shuttle flights.
    "Once, a senior American official was meeting with Uri Savir, and things were getting a little giddy and the official started doing imitations of political leaders -- no, I won't say who -- and Savir says, 'nah, that's not so-and-so, that's you doing David Makovsky doing so-and-so!'"
    Someone once told Peres that Peres does the second-best imitation of Peres. "Big Mak" recalls that Peres once challenged him on a plane from Alexandria. "He said, 'C'mon, get up and do your Shimon Peres.' In front of all the passengers. I said, 'Anuther-r-r tiyme, Mistayr-r-r For-r-ren Ministayr-r-r.' Peres laughed heartily."
    He also does a great Shamir, Rabin, Arafat and Mubarak. Not Netanyahu. "Too American! I need people more distinctive -- I can't do Americans, I guess because I'm from there. I miss the old guard. I'll take Polish Jews and Arabs any day of the week."
    Arafat doesn't know he has a blond Orthodox Jewish stand-in. "I told Ehud Barak that Arafat had said, "Ahh-I waaaarn'd Raaabeeeeenn, ahh-I waaaaaarn'd heeeeem ... dat Baraaaaak, Baraaaaak, eez one of zee beeeeg bosses ... of zee OAS" (a secret organization of military officers in France that plotted to undermine de Gaulle in granting independence to Algeria). Yeah, Arafat believes he's the only one who knows there's a secret organization [comprised] of ex-IDF army officers and Hamas. Barak assured me that 'I will tell him I am not the head of the OAS here, there is no OAS.'"
    Makovsky rattles off a machine-gun laugh.
     "I interviewed Arafat once, and I was tempted to interview him in his own accent, but I didn't thing it would be polite."
    The thing about Makovsky is, he's got a commanding vocal presence. (That's a nice way of saying he's got a loud voice.) During our interview, you could see the surprised reactions of fellow lunchers at Kapulsky's in Jerusalem's German Colony, when Makovsky performs his favorite Peres lines: "Ve vill tek ... de solt ... out of ... de vater. De deser-rt ... out of ... de lend [land]. And de het [hate] ... out of ... de pipple. Fr-r-rom an egg ... you ken mek ... en omlet. But fr-r-rom en omlet ... you kennot ... mek en egg. It's en IR-R-R-R-rever-r-rsible piss pr-r-rocess."
    Makovsky stresses that "I'm an equal-opportunity caricaturist. It's such a sensitive job. Somebody actually tried to scrutinize the guest list at my wedding, in a letter to the editor in the Post." He shakes his head in dismay. "It's taken to absurdities in this country. There was an item in Grapevine that mentioned a few of my guests. And on the basis of this very partial list, someone tried to say I had more guests on the Left than the Right, which wasn't true. 
    "Israel is a very intense country, and I write about the one issue that people feel most intensely about. Really, the only way to keep your sanity is to have a sense of humor."
    He smiles as another recollection comes to mind. "Right after Peres had been named prime minister, in 1995, they signed a free-trade agreement with the Europeans in Brussels. Several Israeli ministers thought it was a bad agreement, since it did not reduce the trade deficit. I said to the president of the European Community, at a press conference in front of 500 people, 'you present this as basically a peace concesson to Israel, but many people in Isrel believe your trade surplus is going to grow. How can you portray this as helping Middle East peace?' He was really angry, and Peres gets up and says, 'Vit oll doo r-r-rispekt, ower-r-r fr-r-rend fr-r-rom de Jiroslm Posst is NUT de spokk-sman of Isra-el! Ve vill SIGN dis eggriment -- r-r-right NOW!'"
    Then there's the one about David Levy and the off-the-wall comment. "We were in Beijing, a very historic trip. And we get to the Great Wall of China. Aryeh Golan, of Kol Yisrael, puts a microphone in front of David Levy's face, and says, 'as a former construction worker -- kacha bonim homa?!' (a popular Israeli catchphrase meaning, literally, this is how to build a wall?) The whole trip we were buzzing about that.
    "Then later, there was a lunch given for David Levy in Beijing. I couldn't eat anything, they had all this creepy crawly seafood. I went to the Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, and asked, now that David Levy's been to China, is there a chance you'll pay a reciprocal visit? And he taps his temple. To us, it means 'are you crazy?' But maybe in Chinese it means I'm thinking about it."
    Peres won appreciation from the Chinese, but for the wrong reason. "Peres's best line is when he reportedly said at the University of Shanghai, in front of 1,000 Chinese students, he said, 'Togethayr-r-r, ve shell gr-r-row tom-eytoss -- BEEGer-r-r then Toyo-tass.' And a thousand Chinese students laughed because they thought it was against the Japanese!"