A Missouri-Israeli Jew in King Fahd's Court

(Part Two)

    When you're a working stiff who makes a living hanging out with some of the world's most important people, you've got to be quick with the pen. Not necessarily for when a Mubarak or Peres or Arafat says something vital to the future of humanity, but when they say something they wish they hadn't.
    "Shamir was prime minister; Channel 2 was just starting," recalls The Jerusalem Post's long-time former diplomatic correspondent David Makovsky, "and there was a question of who would be appointing the director. So I said, is it wise in a democracy that the prime minister decides who's in charge of the television channel? And he said, 'Well, somebody's got to control the media.'" Makovsky grins. "You could see the steam coming out of the ears of his spokesmen. They started waving their hands at him, No! Stop! Stop! You can't say that! So he changed it to 'guide' the media. But that still wasn't good enough, so some guy yells out from the back of the room 'MANAGE! MANAGE! MANAGE the media!'"
    Shamir, a grim, humorless small man, and Makovsky, a bubbly, strapping fellow, got off on the wrong foot long before that. In 1990, shortly after Makovsky started working the peace circuit, he had the first interview with  Shamir after the new government was formed. "He said some very tough things, about who's eligible to be a peace partner. And James Baker read the interview, and he went on Capitol Hill that day, made reference to the Shamir quote, then said something like 'when they're serious about peace over there, here's our phone number.'
    "The White House got 9,000 phone calls, it was a huge thing. And Shamir calls me into his office. He slams his hand on his desk, and says, 'here's the guy who did all the damage.' I was new. I thought, it's really easy for these leaders to intimidate reporters, so I had to stand my ground. I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister -- I did the damage? Here's the tape! You said these things. You want me to play the tape?' He backed down, and smiled."
    Makovsky was the first Israeli journalist allowed into Syria, in 1994. His fourth and last trip there for the Post was on a Friday -- worrisome timing for an Orthodox Jew. "The Americans promised we'd be done by about noon, and back in Israel by about 1 p.m. Anyway, the meeting with Assad went on and on and on. You can't sit with Assad for less than eight hours. I should've known.
    "So I went to a senior American official, and asked if there's a way to stay somewhere for Shabbat. I was told Warren Christopher was coming back from Israel on Sunday. But at about three o'clock, another official says to me, 'David, we're done with business, we're not coming back here Sunday.' Wait a minute, I said, you mean if I stay here for Shabbat, there's no way out of Syria? He's said, that's right.
    "All of a sudden, I thought, staying in Syria with no way out was not a good idea.
    "Shabbat was only two hours later, but I flew back. The plane landed, I walked out of it, down onto the tarmac, and just kept walking -- until I got to a hotel in Yehud, eight kilometers from the airport.
    "Next thing I know, Hatzofeh puts this on the front page, and I get a call from Army Radio. I thought they were calling me about Syria. But they said, 'I want to talk to you about the halachic side of getting on an airplane before Shabbat and getting off after Shabbat has started.' Next thing I know, they bring on the chief rabbi of Israel! They told him what I'd done, and asked is this was like the Sputnik case in 1957 -- whatever that means -- and was this journalist doing the right thing. And he said, yes, he definitely did the right thing." Makovsky rumbles with mirth. "All I did was get on the plane, get off the plane and walk."
    Makovsky is proud to report that he put on tefillin in Saudi Arabia, and worshipped in Assad's palace.
    "I was in Saudi Arabia with Christopher, and once again, thanks to US intervention, I was the first reporter allowed to file stories to Israel from there. I had to patch it through on conference call via my Dad in St. Louis.
    "I was at the palace as their guest. You don't pay anything, and you can call anywhere in the world for free. But I wanted to pay for my phone calls, because I didn't want anyone to say, ah, an Israeli guy comes, and he takes advantage.
    "But there was one guy who traveled with Christopher who had a mother in Brooklyn, an eastern European Jew, and he told me that every time he goes to Saudi Arabia, on principle, he would use their phones, and talk to his mother -- in Yiddish."
    Makovsky wrote a book about the peace process, “Making Peace With the PLO: The Rabin Government's Road to the Oslo Accord” (Harper-Collins, 1996). But the lighter side of it all wasn't in it -- like attorney-general Elyakim Rubinstein exchanging Jewish jokes with the Jordanians for their Salt jokes. (Makovsky explains: "There's this city in Jordan, Salt. Like Jews tell Chelm jokes, Jordanians tell Salt jokes.")
    "During the Madrid peace conference, I went to the Palestinians' hotel. It was like a scene out of a Mel Brooks movie: there were all these Palestinians sitting at a bar ... and one hassidic man.
    "And I says to him, what are you doing here? And he says, 'Shoolem Aleichem, my name is Efraim Fryman, I am the halachic advisor of Faisal Husseini.' ” Makovsky rollicks at the absurdity. "What is this?! Can you believe this? Husseini's halachic advisor! Of course, he was from Netorei Karta [a rabidly anti-Zionist haredi sect].
    "And he says, come up to my room, I'll show you an autographed picture of Arafat. And I'm walking to his room, and suddenly I stop, it hits me, and I say, 'Wait a minute! The PLO is more Zionist than you, because they recognize a two-state solution, half of which you don't recognize -- which is the Jewish half!' And he says" -- Makovsky applies a thick shtetl accent -- "'it's taka a shayleh' [a point of debate]. Then he says, 'But we asked Tunis, and we were told [the recognition] is just tactics.'" Makovsky explodes in laughter -- the image of this fellow seeking a talmudic ruling, not from a rebbe but from Arafat's aides, is too much.
    But if you think about it, that's what the peace process is all about: Jews and Arabs, playing nicely together.