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were a regional superpower, with a military as effective as any in the world, and a
high-tech economic sector justifiably compared to Silicon Valley.

Every few weeks, Bibi, Lieberman and I would meet for a wide-ranging
discussion on the patio of the Prime Minister’s residence. Shortly after we’d
abandoned the idea of a military strike, I raised head-on my objections to the
skewed image Bibi was promoting of our country. It wasn’t just inaccurate, I said.
Especially when his rhetoric was in full flight, and he compared the prospect of a
nuclear Iran to a new “Holocaust,” it struck me as a betrayal of the core tenet of
Zionism: an state in which Jews were in control of their own destiny. “We are in
that position now,” I said. It was nonsensical to argue we were so threatened by
everything around us, for instance, that we couldn’t “risk” taking the initiative
required to disentangle ourselves from the Palestinians on the West Bank. “I don’t
get you,” I said, turning to Lieberman as well. “Your rhetoric suggests you have
spines of steel. But your behavior is living proof of the old saying that it’s easier to
take Jews out of the galut, than take the galut out of the Jews.” Galut is Hebrew for
the diaspora. “The whole Zionist project was based on the idea of taking our fate
into our own hands, and actively trying to change the reality around us. But you
behave as if we never left the galut. You’re mired in a mindset of pessimism,
passivity and anxiety, which in terms of policy or action, leads to paralysis. Of
course, there are risks in any action, or any policy initiative. But in the situation
where Israel finds itself, the biggest risk of all is being unable or unwilling to take
risks, as if we somehow on the brink of destruction.”

I was especially upset by Bibi’s increasingly use of Holocaust imagery. “Just
think of what you’re saying,” I told him. “You’re Prime Minister of the State of
Israel, not a rabbi in a shtetl, or a speaker trying to raise funds for Israel abroad.
Think of the implications. We’re not in Europe in 1937. Or 1947. If it is a
‘Holocaust,’ what’s our response: to fold up and go back to the diaspora? If Iran
gets a bomb, it’ll be bad. Very bad. But we’ll still be here. And we’ll find a way of
dealing with the new reality.”

Yet “fortress Israel” was irresistibly comfortable for Bibi politically. I now had
to accept that, while he and I had known each other for more than half-a-century,
nothing I could do or say was going to change that. With the next Israeli election
months away, in January 2013, I confided to Nili, and then to my closest aides, that
I was not going to run for a seat in the Knesset. Israeli military action against Iran

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