Benjamin Netanyahu chooses his words carefully. Which is why it’s clear he intended to send a message to the Israeli public and its supporters in the U.S. when he responded to President Biden’s threat to suspend certain arms transfers to Israel. “We are not a vassal state of the United States,” Netanyahu told his cabinet on Thursday, Axios reports.
This was surely an intentional invocation of the time Menachem Begin said these words to President Reagan’s ambassador to Israel, Sam Lewis. Both the context and the speaker are important here, but the latter may be more so: The Menachem Begin renaissance is now undeniable and in full bloom. It has been building for several years, but these days we see Begin’s words and spirit summoned daily. There’s good reason for that—Begin is the right beacon for these times, and not just because of the parallels between the current Bibi-Biden row and Begin’s rough early road with Reagan.
First, the context for the remarks echoed by Netanyahu. The story begins in 1981, with Begin’s visit to the White House. Although Secretary of State Alexander Haig admired Menachem Begin, the relationship between the two administrations didn’t fully take off until Haig’s successor, George Shultz, took the reins at Foggy Bottom. The president’s Cabinet was lukewarm on Begin, and they keenly disliked Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who was also present.
Begin’s purpose at this meeting was to secure an upgrading of the U.S.-Israel relationship; he felt Israel was too often treated as a loved but wayward child. Reagan called Israel a strategic asset; Begin suggested “ally” would be a better term. “Mr. President,” Begin said, “I sometimes get the impression that our relationship is a little like Heinrich Heine’s famous couplet about the bourgeois gentleman from Berlin who implores his mistress not to acknowledge him while walking in that city’s most fashionable boulevard, begging her, ‘Greet me not Unter den Linden.’ I fear there are some who would say much the same to Israel today.”
Reagan responded, “I’d be proud to acknowledge you in public anywhere, any time.”
Pleased, Begin argued for a signed memorandum to acknowledge the fact that Israel, while certainly in America’s debt, was no mere dependent. Reagan was open to it, and while Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was able to significantly water down the final document, he and Sharon did sign a memo of strategic cooperation. While Begin and Reagan had gotten off to a rocky start with Israel’s bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor that surprised and shocked the president, amends clearly had been made.
Later that year, in response to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s declaration that
