I hardly know any of Israel’s current representatives abroad, yet not a day goes by that I don’t imagine the challenges they now face. The profession carries an aura of prestige and pleasure, as if it were all luxury and socializing. However, for an Israeli diplomat, especially at times like these, image and reality are far apart.
True, ambassadors live in fine residences, are driven in elegant cars, and may attend several receptions a week – to mark a national day, the opening of a parliamentary session, or the inauguration of a new museum wing. Yet this is not the pleasurable mingling it seems, and I was always relieved when such mass events ended without mishap.
This is because while one can, more or less, prepare for an individual meeting, be it with a senior official, a legislator, or a business leader, receptions bring together hundreds of people: from government and opposition, media and culture, religion, academia, and the diplomatic corps.
You never know who you will meet or what questions may be thrown at you. I cannot imagine how our representatives manage in these gatherings since the current government took office at the end of 2022.
Can Israel remain a democracy?
In its first months, Western interlocutors must have asked how Israel could remain a democracy if judges were to be appointed by the government, effectively abolishing the separation of powers. Israeli diplomats were surely also asked about policy.
Previously, as professionals trained to present shifting policies while withholding personal views, they could point to precedents and statements, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Bar-Ilan speech,” as proof that Israel was open to compromise within a negotiated settlement.
However, the current government coalition’s guiding principles declare that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” effectively excluding any compromise. How does a diplomat answer the follow-up question: What future do you envision for the Palestinians?
Everything changed
After October 7, 2023, everything changed. I imagine that even as waiters approach guests, offering drinks in crystal glasses, an Israeli ambassador is asked by a political commentator why Israel accepted US President Donald Trump’s plan, having declined earlier ones that were virtually identical, even as its soldiers continued to kill and be killed in Gaza.
Moments later, an economic minister may ask about Israel’s plans to cope with the emerging brain drain, and what exactly Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich meant in his recent remarks, for example, when he stated that if the Bank of Israel doesn’t lower interest rates, he will lower taxes. This publicly undermined the independence of Israel’s respected national bank, and invited criticism not only from the bank itself, but also from others, including the hi-tech sector, which is Israel’s economic engine.
In my experience – unlike the glamorous diplomatic dinners depicted in films and television dramas – this is where most public diplomatic contact probably ends. I served as ambassador to South Africa at the beginning of the century. Even earlier, under white rule, Israel’s conduct was compared by opponents, both of the South African regime at the time and of Israel, to apartheid.
The comparison intensified
During the Second Intifada, the comparison intensified, and I was its face. Unlike receptions, which more or less follow rules about who must be invited, a dinner is a private event designed, among other things, to enhance the host’s prestige and status. What about Israel’s ambassador? She did not qualify.
To my dismay, even some Jews, including community leaders, acted this way, despite their oft-repeated helplessness over South Africa’s deteriorating relations with Israel. I suggested: When you host leaders of the new black elite in your homes, those whose friendship you mention so often, perhaps you could invite me too? Meeting them in a relaxed setting would help; it is far better than sitting for 30 minutes across the table in their offices, assuming they even agreed to meet me.
Yet, concern for Israel was one thing, and cultivating important contacts another. Fresh ties with the new elite were one matter; opening doors to me was something else. Frankly, I understood them, but I still remember with gratitude the few who included me in small gatherings with local VIPs.
Now I wonder: In whose homes, and in whose company, are Israel’s ambassadors welcome today?
Yes, an ambassador may have a fine residence and a polished car parked outside. Still, spare a thought for the current plight of Israeli diplomats, warriors of a different kind, far from home and family, struggling with an impossible task.
The writer was Israel’s first ambassador to the Baltic states after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, ambassador to South Africa, and congressional liaison officer at the embassy in Washington. She is a graduate of Israel’s National Defense College.