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the settlements on the West Bank. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of
thousands of Russians had also flowed into Israel. Most were Jewish in culture
more than religious observance, but they were instinctively inclined to support
candidates – Rabin in 1992, and Bibi the last time around – who they felt were
likely to take a tough line in any peace negotiations with the Arabs.

I was never going to get the backing of many West Bank settlers, or of core
supporters of the Likud and parties even further to the right. But I would need to
make at least some dent in Bibi’s hold on the Russian voters who had supported
him by a wide margin in 1996. I focused first on Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, the main
Russian immigrant political party. It had been set up by the iconic Soviet-era
refusenik Natan Sharansky – or, as he was then known, Anatoly Sharansky. He’d
been an ally of Andrei Sakharov, an outspoken human rights advocate and, until he
was finally released and allowed to leave in 1986, a political prisoner in the gulag.
Though Natan’s party was not going to offer a formal endorsement for any
candidate, I met with him to press the case for “security and peace,” the message
I’d tried to advance with Shimon three years earlier, and to emphasize the need to
bring unity and shared purpose back to the country. Though I think he would have
been receptive anyway, it didn’t hurt that he, like me, was a mathematics graduate
– from Moscow’s Physics and Technology Institute. He was also a chess
aficionado. When I was rash enough to face him across the board, as I recall, it
took him all of five minutes, and seven moves, to checkmate me.

But I also made dozens of visits to Russian community groups, and met with
individual families whenever I could. Often, I found myself talking to older men
and women among the immigrants about the military details of the Great Patriotic
War, as the Russians called World War Two. On a number of occasions, I accepted
the invitation to sit down and play on a sitting-room piano. I think the first time I
got a sense that any of this might be having an impact was in a quote from a
Yisrael Ba’Aliyah official in an Israeli newspaper. Though still stopping short of a
formal endorsement, the official was quoted as saying: “A month ago, young
Russians thought Barak was a boring, left-wing socialist party leader who doesn’t
look good on TV and mumbles a lot... Today, they see him as a high-ranking
Israeli general who knows how to play the piano. The Russian immigrants like
strong, cultured people.” Except for the bit about mumbling, I couldn’t have
wished for more.

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