Haaretz
Tishrei 28, 5765
In the backyard of an apartment building was a
cat in heat whose wailing kept the neighbors awake all night. They took it
to the vet and had it spayed, but to their surprise, the cat wailed louder
and longer than ever. "But you're not in heat anymore," one of the
neighbors asked it, "so what's all the racket?" "Now I'm a consultant,"
said the cat.
Since his move from head of the prime minister's
bureau to part-time consultant, Dov Weisglass likes to brag about the days
when he was Sharon's right and left hand, about how he was Sharon's
personal emissary to the White House and his full-time secret adviser on
matters that could make or break the future of the state. A kind of
Kissinger plus.
Weisglass has forgotten the rule that those who
bypass foreign ministers, defense ministers, cabinets and ambassadors, and
speak directly in the name of the government, have an obligation to be
discreet. Like Simcha Dinitz and Yaakov Herzog in the days of Golda Meir.
To paraphrase an old saying, when an adviser chucks a stone into the pond,
even a thousand spin doctors won't be able to fish it out.
In
telling Ari Shavit (Haaretz Magazine, October 8) that the disengagement
plan is a way of freezing the political process and preventing the
establishment of a Palestinian state, Weisglass has ultimately portrayed
Sharon as a cheat and a liar, and dragged the country into a whirlwind of
denials and apologies.
Dov, or Dubi, as his friends call him,
landed the job as Sharon's bureau chief, alter ego and buddy as a complete
surprise, thanks to a long-standing personal friendship. The guy does a
better imitation of Sharon than Eli Yatzpan. Until his appointment, the
relationship revolved chiefly around legal advice. It was Weisglass who
advised Sharon to sue Uzi Benziman and Haaretz over their insinuations
regarding his actions in Lebanon - a case he lost in every court it
reached. Weisglass's strength as Sharon's bureau chief lay not in any
special political savvy but in his knack for making friends with people
with the help of his sense of humor.
The same way that David Levy,
when he was foreign minister, used to boast that he and U.S. Secretary of
State James Baker were on a first-name basis, Weisglass boasted to Shavit
that Condoleezza calls him "Dubi" and he calls her "Condi." He describes
her as a fabulous woman: intelligent, honest, highly educated and also
incredibly nice. All he left out was whether she can cook and
bake.
But most of all, he can't stop marveling at how closely they
keep in touch. Sometimes they speak on the phone every day, and if not,
then certainly once a week. Once a month, they meet - he's made 20 trips
at last count - and they sit together for at least an hour and a half. Who
can top a relationship like that? "Ask Marit, who's been the secretary for
a bunch of prime ministers," he says. "For the Americans, it's convenient
to have someone sitting at the prime minister's throat." A weird way to
describe where he sits (or stands) as the head of an office, but probably
better than some other part of Sharon's anatomy.
Like the Israeli
writer Dahn Ben Amotz, who used to name-drop and then add "oh, they love
me," Weisglass can't get over how they're treating him. He walks around
the White House and everyone knows him, from the Marine posted at the door
to the secretaries and the girls in the office. In answer to Shavit's
question if he ever bumped into Bush, Weisglass is discreet: "I have, but
I'd rather not talk about it. What I will say is that the president is a
very charming fellow with a good sense of humor." In that department,
Weisglass knows his stuff. Not only does he tell jokes, he says, but
people repeat them. The question is whether the message comes through
intact.
One of the remarks that got people hot under the collar was
Weisglass's reference to the chemical solution formaldehyde. For the
uninitiated, this is the solution that cadavers and body parts are stored
in. Weisglass described disengagement as the formaldehyde in which the
president's plan will be steeped to keep the political process with the
Palestinians from advancing.
So Bush laughed at his jokes, but the
main thing is this invention he's come up with to freeze the political
process and keep a Palestinian state from coming into being. "The settlers
should be dancing a jig around the Prime Minister's Office," Weisglass
rightly says.
By the time the Palestinians turn into enlightened
Finns, we can be sure the Messiah will have arrived. And who will be his
adviser on earth if not Condi's friend, the inventor.