9/4/97
The glib gladiators
Did you catch the prime minister's press-conference
performance on TV from Washington late Monday night? Beautiful,
wasn't he? Velvety smooth, amiable, convincing even when he
launched into agenda-driven speechifying. Said all the things
you'd hope to hear, hope the world heard, or at least whoever
was watching CNN or BBC at the time.
Then, when the CNN studio presented
that grinning arch-nemesis, Hanan Ashrawi, for rebuttal, well!
How could she follow such a sterling act? What could she say
in the face of such baldly obvious truths?
ג€Methinks he doth protest too much,ג€
she purred, and continued to tear apart Netanyahu's discourse.
And she was velvety smooth, amiable, convincing. Dammit, she's
good, I thought, and wondered if Palestinian viewers could help
but think the same about Netanyahu.
It doesn't matter to the wider world who was right
or wrong, who contrived deceptions, told half-truths or full
lies, misrepresented honesty; Palestinians might have respected
Netanyahu's style but brayed at his content, and Israelis could
have admired Ashrawi's artfully subtle condescension yet raged
at her words - but no one else other than we know which one
of them was full of crap.
It was like the good old days (PR-wise) during the
Gulf war, when Netanyahu spoke to the universe so eloquently,
representing the rest of us taped into our sealed rooms.
In 45 minutes on Monday night he seemed to make up
for Israel's shamefully destitute PR effort: decrying the cynical
David-and-Goliath flip-flop; exposing the PA's malevolent manipulation
of violence; averring that Israel, and not the Palestinians,
have stuck to Oslo; countering the Palestinians' swelling gush
of footholding on claims to Jerusalem; telling the world - too,
too late - that Har Homa and the Tunnel have been inflamed into
issues of World War III proportions (and inferring blame on
the media he was facing for not giving the issues contextual
proportion. ג€How can you do this, as journalists?ג€ he implored.
ג€How can the reality I just described elude your eaders?ג€).
OK, so he went on for too long at times, and a few
of his attempts at self-deprecating humor fell flat. And maybe
his audience, whoever cares enough to analyze his words, will
bemusedly wonder how the Israelis could have been so perfectly
behaved, and the Palestinians so naughty, and four billion people
so misled into believing the opposite.
But to most viewers, his mesmerizing finesse made
him difficult to refute. He was not your typical glazy-eyed
politician responding to questions from the Book of Familiar
Nonquotations (ג€I cannot comment at this point in timeג€; ג€we
are studying the matterג€; etc.) He was passionate rather than
mechanical, riveting, and expressive in his body language -
which, as a colleague of mine noted, was at times reminiscent
of Mussolini's posturing.
Netanyahu and Ashrawi are two of the best graduates
of CNN U, polished sound-bite artists (Netanyahu even, twice,
made cutely sassy references to sound bites during the press
conference). Both are quick-witted, with potent English vocabularies
and a mastery of the language. They have convincing rhetorical
talents and Western mentalities.
Makes you wonder if Netanyahu would be serving his
country a lot better as a spokesman rather than a clumsy prime
minister.
A tangential contemplation occurred to one observer
of this Middle East Talk Show: What if, instead of these two
glib gladiators, we had Arafat and, say, Arik Sharon, or David
Levy, or, egads, Yitzhak Shamir articulating their respective
people's causes? Not a pretty thought.
(Which brings up a further tangent: is Levy aware
he's foreign minister? Not strictly relevant, I know, but I
couldn't resist.)
In the end, though, slick oration is not going to
make a difference: it may impress everybody but those who count.
If the Palestinians and Israelis are going to stop our lemming-like
march to the precipice, we need to veer away.
How?
Put on your seat belts. I have an idea.
A Netanyahu-Ashrawi debate. Live. On TV. But with
a difference.
They would have to adopt the classic debating-class
procedure of arguing one side of an issue - and then with equal
dedication, embracing the opposite viewpoint.
Yeah, that's right: let's see Ashrawi speak for the
Israelis, and Netanyahu the Palestinians. I guarantee, for the
first time, everyone they speak for would listen.
Maybe it's the only way we can come to understand
each other. If nothing else, it would get the most intractable
Jews and Arabs cheering for someone from the other side.
