Epstein Secrets

nted in clear thinking and writing. At the center of the book is the fight for the revival of the State of Israel. The enemy is the Arab world, and Shlomo describes the developments, the threats, and the opportunities. Through his experiences we meet the Palestinians over and over again—as rivals, as

lows for the "ray of hope" that I have just described, were laid by Moshe Dayan and Shlomo Gazit, and of course by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan, and again Rabin and Shimon Peres. We must not allow the shortsighted populists that currently lead us to destroy this

eace deal with Syria’s then-dying dictator, Hafez al-Assad, a few months earlier. Yet these three dedicated men — Gili, who was by training a lawyer; Shlomo, an academic; and Danny, a former Mossad chief — had just been through dozens of hours of intricately detailed talks with each of Arafat’s top negoti

a motorcycle. It would be nearly three decades before the two of us actually met — shortly after the assassination of my longtime comrade and friend Yitzhak Rabin, when I had become Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and h

assumed a kind of historical inevitability of Israeli trtumph. Though we’d ending up prevailing in 1973, it was impossible not to wonder whether, as Shlomo suggested, we had missed the signs of a possible peace beforehand. Now, however, we were facing an escalating challenge from an enemy with no intere

ing replacements who were sufficiently experienced, but did not bear responsibility for the errors of the war. For Prime Minister, the choice fell on Yitzhak Rabin. He had strong military credentials, of course. But he had left the army and entered politics, and had been out of Israel for several years as Israel

hen I left the army. Also, Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Moroccan-born, Oxford-educated historian and diplomat who had run against me for the Labor leadership. Shlomo had a gift for systematic analysis and keen judgement, especially on security issues, which I highly valued. It did not escape the attention of Isra

share Labor’s vision of a socially just and democratic Israel. Especially after seeing far-right rabbis egg on the fanaticism that ultimately killed Yitzhak Rabin, I felt strongly that we needed to separate organized religion from our day-to-day politics. But I’d been raised with a deeper respect for our Jewish

eace deal with Syria’s then-dying dictator, Hafez al-Assad, a few months earlier. Yet these three dedicated men — Gili, who was by training a lawyer; Shlomo, an academic; and Danny, a former Mossad chief — had just been through dozens of hours of intricately detailed talks with each of Arafat’s top negoti

a motorcycle. It would be nearly three decades before the two of us actually met — shortly after the assassination of my longtime comrade and friend Yitzhak Rabin, when I had become Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and h

assumed a kind of historical inevitability of Israeli triumph. Though we'd ending up prevailing in 1973, it was impossible not to wonder whether, as Shlomo suggested, we had missed the signs of a possible peace beforehand. Now, however, we were facing an escalating challenge from an enemy with no interes

ing replacements who were sufficiently experienced, but did not bear responsibility for the errors of the war. For Prime Minister, the choice fell on Yitzhak Rabin. He had strong military credentials, of course. But he had left the army and entered politics, and had been out of Israel for several years as Israel