The speaker on the other side of the line was Alon Pinkas, 47, the former Israeli consul in New York and one of the sought-after speakers on Israel's behalf in the United States.  In 2009, Netanyahu met with Pinkas eight or nine times and spoke to him on the phone 15-16 times.  Their conversations were bilingual: Netanyahu insisted on speaking English to Pinkas.  This is the language in which he speaks to his confidants in the bureau, the people whom he truly trusts.  Pinkas insisted on replying in Hebrew.

   The first meeting between them was held about a month before the elections, at the home of Netanyahu's father on Haportzim Street in Jerusalem.  The quotes are taken from one source's memory, not from recordings.  "I'm happy you could make it," Netanyahu said, "I need your help."

   He explained why he needed help: "I speak Republican," he said, "you speak Democrat."  Netanyahu, it should be said to his credit, already understood then, while he was in the opposition, that there would be no love lost between him and Obama's White House.

   Pinkas was included in the first meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and in the preparations for the first meeting with President Obama in May.  "How did you see the meeting?" Netanyahu asked him after his return.  "Very bad," Pinkas replied.  "You had one goal in the meeting: That when Obama would speak to his aides afterwards, when he would speak to Michelle at night, he would say, I may have differences of opinion with this person, but we will be able to work together.  Instead, you ended up in a wild fight over freezing the settlements."

   "They ambushed me," Netanyahu said.

   "What kind of ambush," Pinkas said.  "Hillary told you in advance."

   "They are out to get me," Netanyahu complained.

   In the next conversations, Netanyahu said that he had identified the source of his trouble in the White House: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.  He is the man poisoning Obama's mind.  "You're wrong," Pinkas said to him.

   Netanyahu asked whether Pinkas would be able to arrange a meeting for him with Emanuel.  The two met when Emanuel was a political adviser in Clinton's White House.  "Yes," Pinkas said, "but if I don't have anything to give him, there won't be another meeting.  You have to give me something that will make him think that I am a serious and independent person.  He has to know in advance that I think you were wrong in your dispute with Obama and they were right, and now it's necessary to turn over a new leaf and move on."

   This was agreed upon.  Pinkas called his friend Fareed Zakaria, one of the editors of Newsweek.  He asked Zakaria to publish an article by him in the magazine.  The article praised Netanyahu on five issues, and on the sixth, the dispute with Obama, it criticized him.

   A week later, Pinkas received a call from Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser.  "Netanyahu is angry at you," Hauser said.  "Lauder told him that you were defaming him in the American media."

   In one sentence, two insights are revealed here.  The first is that prime ministers do not read much: They depend on what they are told by family members, associates and aides.  Their ear is always open to those who tell them how one person conspired against them or another shafted them.  They live in a state of paranoia.

   The second insight pertains to the current prime minister.  Two American billionaires, Ron Lauder and Sheldon Adelson, have a special relationship with him.  It is so special, that the two were his guests of honor in the first row of the VIP gallery in the Knesset on the happiest day of his life, the day of his reelection as prime minister.

   His predecessors also had problematic relationships, not to say scandalous relationships, with rich Jews around the world, but Netanyahu's second term is unusual.  When it comes to these two people, it demonstrates an unhealthy encounter between money that seeks power and a government that worships money.  We can only hope that it is clear to these two, and also clear to the prime minister, who works for whom.


   Shortly after the government was formed, Netanyahu and Pinkas met at the prime minister's office in the Kirya in Tel Aviv.  Netanyahu proposed that Pinkas serve as Israel's ambassador to the UN.  "A month ago, you spoke to me about the post of special ambassador to the Obama administration," Pinkas said.  "Why do you think I belong in the UN?"

   "Because only you can appear on American television like me," Netanyahu said.  "In the UN, the entire State of Israel is being attacked, not right wing or left wing policy.  This will be the most important arena in the coming years."

   Pinkas agreed.  He likes New York, he likes to appear, he likes all the shticks of the American media world.  He is witty, sharp, fast, direct, and speaks a language that the Americans like to hear.  Until the Newsweek article, the appointment was apparently in his pocket.

   He had another patron in the government: Avigdor Lieberman.  Two months ago, Lieberman announced that he had decided to appoint Pinkas as ambassador to the UN and Shai Bazak as consul in New York.  Bazak was Netanyahu's media adviser in his first term.  Then he was sent to be the consul in Miami.  He is a Likud member.

   Pinkas assumed that Lieberman had received Netanyahu's blessing for the appointments.  He starting carrying out the necessary formal procedures: He filed a wealth declaration, declared conflicts of interests, underwent security checks.

   He heard nothing from the Prime Minister's Bureau.  In his distress, he turned to his friend Education Minister Gidon Saar, and asked him to praise the appointment in the ears of the prime minister.  Let him see how he reacts.  Saar did as he was asked.  "The appointment is not with my consent," Netanyahu said to Saar.  "Lieberman pulled a fast one."

   The next worrying call came from Shimon Peres.  "It's very odd," the president said to him.  "Netanyahu was over here for dinner.  I praised the appointment, and he said, it's not with my consent."

   Pinkas called Lieberman.  "I may be making a mountain out of a molehill," Pinkas said, "but this is the impression that Peres and Saar received."

   The foreign minister expressed his opinion, adamant as always, about the prime minister and his credibility, and continued with the procedures.

   The next stage was an interview with Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander.  The commissioner warmly recommended, and Lieberman placed the names of Pinkas and Bazak on the cabinet table for formal approval.  The cabinet was supposed to approve the appointment in its meeting on November 29.

   This did not happen.  The cabinet secretary distributed the agenda of the meeting to the ministers on Wednesday, as is customary.  Netanyahu only read the paper at the last moment, minutes before the meeting on Sunday.  He instructed the vote on the appointments to be stricken [from the agenda], thereby launching a bitter quarrel with Lieberman, which is still ongoing.  One good thing came out of this shameful story: Since then, the prime minister has been careful to sit down with the cabinet secretary every Wednesday, to discuss the agenda.


   Sheldon Adelson, a gambling tycoon who own large casinos in Las Vegas and Macau, finances the Shalem Center, a right wing think tank based in Jerusalem.  Netanyahu took care to place the institute's staff members in desirable positions in his administration, from Natan Sharansky, who was appointed as Jewish Agency chairman because of the prime minister's insistence, to Moshe Yaalon, who was appointed as deputy prime minister, and Michael Oren, who was appointed as the Israeli ambassador to the US.  Natan Eshel, who managed a free newspaper owned by Adelson, was appointed as the prime minister's bureau chief.

   Ronald Lauder is one of the major donors to another right wing think tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  The president of the center, Dr. Dore Gold, is now being mentioned as a candidate for the post of ambassador to the UN.  Gold believes that American donors discussed him with Netanyahu.  That's the way it is in America.  That's the way it is here too.  Everyone, Gold says, talks to everyone.

   Pinkas does not know Adelson.  He has heard nothing but praise from Lauder.  All the testimonies about the involvement of the two in disqualifying or promoting candidates, are circumstantial.  The Prime Minister's Bureau has denied a report aired on Channel Ten that the Netanyahus were influenced by their American friends.  Regarding Sara, the denial was firmer.  "Certainly," the bureau states, "the prime minister's wife was not involved in the matter."

   Rumors attributed the opposition to Pinkas to a speech he gave in New York in mid-November, at an event in honor of philanthropist Harvey Krueger and the Tel Aviv Foundation.  Pinkas spoke mainly about Tel Aviv.  In an aside, he said that he did not believe that a Palestinian state would be established in the coming year, not exactly an earthshaking statement. [...]

   Other rumors speak about a campaign that described Pinkas as a leftist in disguise, who when working in the past as head of Shlomo Ben-Ami's campaign staff supported the partitioning of Jerusalem, or defamed Netanyahu or participated in a conspiracy for toppling him.  Right wing Jews of Adelson and Lauder's kind scented in Pinkas the hated odor of the Democratic Party.  There are crimes that they are willing to forgive.  Not that crime.

   It is ridiculous to attribute to such an open and transparent person schemes that are suitable for an al-Qaida agent, but whoever wants to listen to such things will listen to them.

   And perhaps Pinkas's great sin is that he was connected to too many people.  A prime minister, any prime minister, prefers exclusivity.

   The problem is not Pinkas, or Gold, or Bazak, who lost Netanyahu's affection over the years, or Yehiel Leiter, who failed as Netanyahu's bureau chief and is now a leading candidate for the post of consul in New York, or the prime minister's wife, whom everyone tiptoes around.

   The problem is that in Israel of 2010, those who pay the piper call the tune.  It is ridiculous to deal with the possible influence of wealthy individuals such as Lauder and Adelson on the appointment of a bureau chief or an ambassador to the UN, when one of them invests huge sums of money every day in promoting a prime minister, cultivating his personality cult and supporting his reelection.

   Netanyahu enjoys the gift he has received, but is afraid of the price.  He learned the lesson from the negative reactions to the embrace that the two gave him in the Knesset.  Since then, he has been doing his best not to be photographed with them.  When one of them visited here recently, Netanyahu canceled at the last moment his participation in two events held in his honor.  He sent a video clip to one, and his wife attended the other.