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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