All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [172]
She offered me a deal: I would come less often to UN headquarters and she would personally supply me with information. Who could ask for a better source? That very evening I presented myself at the Essex House, where she usually stayed. She greeted me warmly, gave me dinner, and let me look through her papers. The same scene took place again the next day and the day after that. Gideon Rafael, one of her advisers and himself a future UN ambassador, walked in on me one night as I pored over confidential documents. He expressed astonishment, but Golda simply said: “I trust him.” As a result, while I was better informed than my colleagues, they were more effective, for I practiced a rigorous self-censorship so as not to betray Golda’s trust. My competitor from Maariv took advantage of leaks I knew about but kept to myself. Golda appreciated that. I became one of her confidants.
In 1967, while she was out of office (a situation that was commonly referred to as being in “the wilderness”), I was among the few New Yorkers to visit her at her hotel. Even Israeli officials considered her a has-been and were too busy to come and say hello. Pointing to the flowers on the table, she told me to guess who had sent them. The consulate, the UN delegation, the UJA? No, Golda said, laughing—the hotel management. Her humor spared no one, not even herself. Over time our friendship had grown stronger, and that fact was known. When she succeeded Levi Eshkol as prime minister, her entourage of courtiers and flatterers became very friendly to me. As a consequence, during my visits to Israel I noted—not without pride—that all doors were open to me. The honeymoon lasted until 1973.
It was also in 1957 that the Old Man, Yehuda Mozes, died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-five. From now on I would visit the tombs of the Kabalists in Safed alone.
His widow, Manya, told me of his last weeks and days. “He liked you very much,” she said. “And because he liked you, so did I.” She lowered her voice. “I have to admit that at first it bothered me. My husband was too fond of you and Dov. I was jealous, not for me but for my children. But I always followed him in everything he did.” She expressed her desire that his heirs make me a present of a symbolic, founding share of the newspaper: “It’s what my husband would have wanted.” The heirs refused, but no matter. One share would hardly have made me rich, and in any case I always thought of Yedioth Ahronoth as “my” newspaper.
“My” paper was keeping me busy. I covered Ben-Gurion’s second quasi-official visit to Boston, Washington, and Ottawa. I attended his historic meeting with Konrad Adenauer. I also covered Ben-Gurion’s meeting with the newly elected American president, John F. Kennedy, on the eve of Kennedy’s trip to Vienna to meet Nikita Khrushchev. The young leader seemed better prepared than his visitor. It was reported that Kennedy had deliberately raised an unexpected issue. (Too busy to meet with the Israeli leader, Kennedy had been pressured into reconsidering by his Jewish supporters. He reportedly wanted to take revenge.) He demanded that Ben-Gurion give an immediate answer to the question “How many Arab refugees is Israel prepared to take back?” In short, that meeting between the two men was not auspicious.
In Ottawa, Ben-Gurion attended a Shabbat dinner at the home of his ambassador, Yaakov Herzog. The correspondents were invited for coffee with the prime minister. Since he looked tired, I suggested we discuss philosophy rather than more politics. Everyone in Israel knew it was his favorite subject apart from the Bible. He loved to comb bookstores for obscure philosophical works, and read Plato in the original. He seemed pleased by my suggestion. “You know philosophy?” he asked. “I’ve