Forecast Highs

Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief David Horovitz and I interviewed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday. Since then I’ve been asked quite frequently about my impressions of the man.

Everybody wants to know about Lieberman. What’s he like, this “Russian King” as a friend called him [actually he's Moldovan]. When I posted photos of our interview on Facebook, I got comments and questions ranging from disgust [try get the stain off your hands Lady Macbeth!; ewwwww!; when is he going to be indicted?; shame you didn't barf on him; did you ask him if he really believes the bullshit coming out of his mouth or does he just like the perks? why doesn't the jpost punch people in the stomach anymore?]. “How bad is he,” another concerned friend asks.

So his image is not so great. I think he knows that by now. He’s now hired a very experienced media adviser in Tzahi Moshe [former spokesman for Tommy Lapid, himself not an easy guy to sell, as well as Haim Ramon], and up-and-coming media professional Sivan Raviv to handle the foreign media. His deputy foreign media, the skillful and connected Danny Ayalon, is deployed onto the airwaves to put out the fires that his boss has started.

We sat in Lieberman’s plush office for 90 minutes, him smoking a thick cigar. An angry-looking Shabak guard standing by the door, darting his eyes between our pens, notepads and the spot between our foreheads and our eyes [the third eye?] stood watch. I felt like, given the chance, the guard would shoot me straight in the chakra. Livni’s guards were much more relaxed. We spoke in English, he wanted it in English, he insisted. Why did he do that? To practice? To show us that he can? To show himself that he can. I think it’s more than that. I think he takes himself very seriously, and if he’s going to be the foreign minister for the next 4 years and 9 months, he needs to improve his language skills, push himself, better himself. This is also his most prestigious job yet, and he got it through this kind of determined self-betterment. His English is pretty good, better than I expected. His English is no better or worse than Tzipi Livni’s or Silvan Shalom’s was when they became Foreign Ministers.

Is he smart? Undoubtedly. You have to be smart to start out as a bouncer in a Moldovan nightclub and end up as the Foreign Minister of Israel. You have to be smart to outfox Israel Police International Crimes Department interrogators determined to nail you for corruption, for over 10 years. He’s intense, calculated, and speaks in a very measured way. And he speaks so softly. So very different from his public appearances. So not the firebrand he makes himself out to be when he’s in front of a crowd, barking threats into microphones, or shouting insults to world leaders from the Knesset podium. Sitting only a meter away from him, you almost have to strain to pick up his voice. I had to lean forward and really listen.

Is he charming, someone asked? I wouldn’t use that word on a former Moldovan bouncer. I think once you’ve had that job, for whatever reason you took it, you’ve pretty much forfeited the chance to ever be ‘charming’. After much contemplation, I think the word I’d use is ’serious’. He’d never force his tongue down a female soldier’s mouth minutes before a War Cabinet meeting, like Haim Ramon did. He won’t talk about imaginary peace plans with ‘powerless’ Palestinian leaders like Tzipi Livni did. He’s a man who likes to get things done, to move money to projects, hire and fire people, move things along. He started off his political career as Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office when Netanyahu was first Prime Minister. The DG of the PMO is, besides the PM himself, the only other person in the Israeli government who can move massive projects along and get things done. This is why he’s so uncomfortable right now in the Foreign Ministry, where there is a tradition of not getting much done. The Foreign Ministry is a place for talking a lot, and shaking a lot of hands in front of the photographers. So now he’s talking a lot, because that’s what a Foreign Minister is supposed to do. He’ll shake things up in the ministry, but he’s really proud of his new position [and his constituents are really proud of him] and he doesn’t want to fail there. But, and this could surprise you, he really doesn’t like talking much – and that’s why he’s getting himself into constant trouble. He told us he says what he means and means every word that he says. So I ask myself why one day he says one thing ["I see no need to talk to the Syrians right now they're very much a part of the axis of evil"] and the next day he says something completely different ["I would begin negotiations with the Syrians tonight without preconditions"].

And here’s where Foreign Minister Avigdor confuses himself with Prime Minister Lieberman.

Instead of talking and getting in trouble with Bibi, Avigdor Lieberman would much rather just be getting things done, actual things. So now he’s calling meetings at 07:30 [and don't be late] and meetings at 22:00 [we're done when I say we're done]. He wants to take down Hamas in Gaza and then Hamas in the West Bank and then maybe Hizbullah in Lebanon, and assuming that all goes well he wants to convince Syria to play nice and also forget about the Golan, and depending on that he maybe wants to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. He wants to make the Palestinians really rich so that they’ll forget about a state for the time being and focus on getting richer [who can make peace with a divided and impoverished people who are led on one side by evil Hamas Islamists bent on destruction, and the incompetent, impotent, and corrupt Fatah on the other side?]. He really does want prosperity for the Palestinians – he says he talks to many of them who live around where he does, deep in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim. He says they tell him they’re much more interested in jobs, stability and prosperity than they are in politics. He wants little Arab schoolchildren to take an oath of allegiance to the Jewish state every Sunday morning at assembly. He wants to build roads, bridges and dams. In short, he wants to be the Prime Minister.

But he can’t get any of that done because he’s the foreign minister, not the prime minister. Only the PM can really get things done, or give others permission to do things. I get the feeling that he feels the Foreign Ministry is too small for him – he wants the Prime Minister’s Office. He doesn’t like feeling answerable to somebody; beholden to some party line, caged into some perceived diplomatic protocol. He’s not happy with the fact that he needs to call Bibi and ask for permission before he can do something really big. So sometimes he feels the need to talk big – as if he can really affect the things he’s talking about, as if he can make them happen. One day he’ll talk up war with Syria, and the next day he’ll talk up peace with them. If he were Prime Minister, that’s probably what he’d do: defeat Syria in a day, and then invite them to negotiate terms.

Enough with all the pussy-footing around; enough with all the tip-toeing and holding of tongues; if everybody said what they really meant and really meant what they said, like in the jungle, like in a Moldovan nightclub, the world would be a less complicated place, and Avigdor Lieberman could get things done.