| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011652)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011652" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2660 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Ashkenazim - and their prominence and privilege had stoked increasing |
| resentment among Israel's disadvantaged Sephardi majority, with their roots in |
| the Arab world and especially north Africa. |
| Begin not only sensed this. While he'd never lost the formal bearing - or the |
| accent - from his childhood in Poland, his long years in Israel's political |
| wilderness mirrored the wider exclusion felt by the Sephardim. The last election |
| he had lost, in December 1973, proved too soon for the earth to part. But he told |
| his supporters: "Even though Labour has won these elections, after something |
| like the Yom Kippur War happens to a country, and to a government, they must |
| lose power. They will lose power." He was right. Only twice in the four decades |
| that followed would a Labor leader defeat Begin's Likud party: Rabin's election |
| victory in 1992, and mine over Bibi Netanyahu in 1999. |
| During the first two years of Begin's rule, however, I was 7,000 miles away. |
| Ten days before the election, I'd gone to see Motta, and he'd agreed that I could |
| return to Stanford, to finish what I'd barely begun when the 1973 war broke out. |
| I had been in the army, with the one hiatus as a sayeret reservist at Hebrew |
| University, since the age of seventeen. I did not regret committing myself to a |
| life in uniform. But Stanford offered an extraordinary opportunity to broaden |
| my horizons. Even in the few weeks I'd spent there before the war, I'd felt |
| reinvigorated. It engaged a different kind of intelligence, a different part of who |
| I was: the books, the professors. A chance to listen to, and at least try to play, |
| beautiful music. And to spend more than a few stolen evenings or weekends |
| with my family. |
| The timing had nothing to do with the election. Like most other Labor |
| Israelis, and many of Begin's own supporters, I hadn't expected the Likud to |
| win. It was because I felt I'd reached a natural punctuation mark in my military |
| career. I'd led Sayeret Matkal. I'd commanded a tank company, a battalion in |
| 1973, and, more briefly than I'd hoped, the 401 Brigade after the war. I'd spent |
| the last two years in the kirya. The next step up the command chain would be to |
| lead a full armored division. But at age 35, I was probably too young, and I |
| figured I'd have a far better chance in two years' time. I also feared losing the |
| chance to go to Stanford altogether. Motta's term as chief of staff would end the |
| following year. Among those in the frame to succeed him was Raful Eitan. |
| Recalling Raful's dismissive, almost sneering, opposition to my making the |
| Sayeret Matkal into Israel's SAS, I wasn't exactly confident I could count on |
| his support. |
| 181 |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_011652 |
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