Dear Mr. Buffett_ What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street - Janet M. Tavakoli [113]
On May 8, 2007, three days after the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, I attended a dinner sponsored by the Jewish American Chamber of Commerce at Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel in honor of Eitan Wertheimer. Ralph Gidwitz, a Managing Partner of Capital Results LLC, asked if I would invite Warren, and I did, but he had to decline. Warren attends only one function per year for his senior managers and he had already committed to support one of Eitan’s Canadian charities.
I sat at the same table with Eitan and Ariel Wertheimer. Ariel explained that Eitan’s father, Steffie, settled in Israel after fleeing Nazi Germany as a 10-year-old boy. Stef Wertheimer seems to focus on hope and how he can improve the lot of others. The company he founded is a large employer of Arab Israelis, and Ariel said it provides intensive training and good working conditions. Ariel’s account of Stef reminded me of one of Winston Churchill’s maxims: “Live dangerously; take things as they come; dread naught, all will be well.”4
Eitan Wertheimer gave a speech detailing his vision for a Middle East renaissance including Arabs in Israel and neighboring Arab countries. Like his father, his belief is that wealth distribution via economic growth is the only viable avenue to produce lasting peace in Israel and the Middle East. His contribution is the stewardship of ISCAR and the creation of a pleasant work environment for the large number of Arab Israelis he employs. As Eitan talked of the goal of lasting peace, we were oblivious that in two months Israel would be embroiled in a bloody conflict with Lebanon.
It was not as if tensions were not a concern, but Warren publicly stated that the world in general was a dangerous place and that in the absence of war: “Most of the time Israel is no more dangerous than the U.S.”5 Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters is located in the Midwest as is Oklahoma City, the site of the deadliest home-grown domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack killed 168 people and injured more than 800 others.6
Israel during peace time is as safe as the United States, but Israel has tensions with Palestine’s Hamas Movement as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Iran and Syria back Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist organization, and although Iran does not actively support Palestine’s Hamas (as far as I know), it is sympathetic with its thinking. On June 6, 2006, shortly after dinner with the Wertheimers, but before the war, I sent Warren an e-mail about a Web site (http://iranvajahan.net/english) with a summary in English about international news about Iran. I noted it draws on media sources in English, German, French, and Farsi: “Print media compilations cannot compete with a well-designed Internet compilation.”
On June 14, 2006, I sent Warren a commentary I had written about our growing tensions with Iran. The U.S. media seem fixated on Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he does not control Iran, and he does not have a job for life. Iran’s president serves at the pleasure of the Ayatollah. Ayatollah Ali Khameni is the supreme leader of Iran, and his control in Iran is close to absolute. He controls the media, the judiciary, the military, and he effectively controls the legislature.
Iran has been deeply suspicious of the United States ever since we deposed its first democratically elected government. Iran elected Prime Minister Mussaddiq in the summer of 1953. One of his first acts was to force into exile the young Reza Pahlavi, son of a self-proclaimed Shah, a brutal despot and a commoner of nonroyal origins. Mussaddiq wanted to nationalize the British