Weizman's Digs

At Begin, Dayan and others

Few figures in Menachem Begin's Likud coalition have been as colorful as Ezer Weizman, 56, a onetime British Royal Air Force pilot who served for three years as Begin 's Defense Minister. He noisily resigned last May in a dispute over defense spending and the future of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Last week Israeli readers pored over selected controversial passages from Weizman's soon-to-be-published book, The Battle for Peace, a salty, 395-page memoir of the period straddling the 1978 Camp David accords. Excerpts:

On Begin: He invests words with magical properties. Begin is absolutely convinced that he holds the truth in his back pocket. Consequently, in addressing others--including the heads of great nations--he adopts the manner of a teacher talking to his pupils. There is something overbearing about his manner, and I suspect it has infuriated certain key figures in Washington, Cairo and elsewhere.

No sooner had the [Camp David] treaty been signed than Begin gave up promoting the peace process. He withdrew into his pipedreams. At the same time he began to treat this peace we had struggled for as something banal, almost despicable.

On Moshe Dayan: I admire [his] individualism. He displays the wiles of a peasant and the deep roots of the sabra. Dayan can be compared to a demolition charge designed to bring down the wall of a house: placed incorrectly, it is capable of collapsing the whole structure.

On General Ariel Sharon, Begin's Agriculture Minister: He is a great strategist; he may be the greatest combat commander of our time. In war, I'd follow him through fire and flood. But political life has different values. Sharon has lost sight of the distinction between his own personal good and the good of the state. This human bulldozer is capable of crushing whatever lies in his path.

On President Jimmy Carter: As far as I know, no American President has ever helped Israel as much as Jimmy Carter. I cannot claim that Israel has responded with appropriate gratitude. On one visit to the White House, I noticed that Miss Lillian wore a Jewish medallion.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"From a Jewish rabbi in Miami."

Her son added: "You see, the American Jewish community treats my mother far better than me."

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