Editor's Notes: The bleak logic of Bennie Begin

To Begin the failure of peace is simple and obvious: The PLO leadership is bent on a two-stage plan to eliminate Israel, not a two-state plan for two peoples.

David Horvitz
Editor/JPost
03 December '10

Bennie Begin happens to be outside the Prime Minister’s Office, talking with some colleagues, when I arrive for our interview on Monday. He greets me warmly, and escorts me indoors, to the elevator and up to his sixth-floor office, his mandatory bodyguard in tow.

Outside his office, along the corridor from that of his Likud colleague and friend, the not always like-minded Dan Meridor, he bends down to pick up some errant, littering scraps of paper. There is no team of waiting aides here; no secretary. He doesn’t employ any. When he wants to write a letter, he tells me later, he takes out a piece of paper and writes a letter.

He unlocks his door to reveal a room remarkable for its bareness, and for furniture that plainly predates this government by several terms. The routine portraits of prime minister and president are there on the wall, along with some artwork, but many of his bookshelves are bare, and his desk is quite unsullied by paperwork.

There is no one to offer either of us a drink. Later in our interview, when his cold gets the better of him and he decides we both could use one, it is the minister himself who disappears to fetch two plastic cups of cold water.

There cannot be too many members of a nation’s most intimate ministerial decisionmaking forums who operate in this way, without a support staff. But then, of course, there are no politicians like Bennie Begin.

When I ask him, at the start of our conversation, what he feels he is doing in this government, he initially mistakes it for a critical, cynical inquiry, and immediately acknowledges that there are some who snipe at him for enjoying the ministerial good life at the public’s expense.

I have to quickly clarify, to explain that there was no such criticism intended. I simply want to know how he sees his role and how much influence and impact he feels he has.

(Read full story)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.