1.
When I entered the district court hearing room this week, I was struck by the incomprehensible gap between the small space that could accommodate only dozens of people and the historic significance of what was unfolding there. The defense attorney dissected the indictment clause by clause like a Talmudic negotiation. What were they thinking at the prosecution when they hastily attached what they called "evidence"? The mountains of arguments in the indictment hang by a dubious hair: the final 40 seconds of the "guidance meeting" (which has already been proven never happened), in which, allegedly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestured to the then-Director General of the Ministry of Communications, Shlomo Filber, as if hinting to favor Bezeq owned by Shaul Elovitch. This was enough to establish a bribery claim. For this, they've been dragging us for almost a decade through five election cycles and weakening society and the state, while spending hundreds of millions of shekels on investigations that have yielded almost nothing.
Netanyahu remained sharp throughout all hours of the discussion, even during the afternoon when eyes around me were closing. He had command of the details, and more than once forcefully and bitterly argued against the negligence and lack of intelligence in the arguments against him in the case; he called it "the skill of a lie industry." The disgrace is seven times greater against the backdrop of the campaign being waged outside the courthouse. Only in Yehupeetz, the Jewish town in the diaspora, would they summon someone leading a military and diplomatic campaign for the state's existence to discuss with him two or three times a week marginal news on a marginal news site – which at best were announcements distributed to all media, and at worst were intended to attack the prime minister – and claim they were proof of bribery relationships. A comparison (which wasn't made) to the coverage of other politicians on the same site would be enough to understand the magnitude of the farce.
It's not just Netanyahu standing trial there. All his voters are also standing trial with him. In his insistence on fighting for his innocence, Netanyahu is doing a historic service by exposing the bureaucratic system's use of investigations and indictments to remove elected officials who don't cooperate with the old power centers. It's important to go there to tell him he's not alone.
2.
Six foreign embassies sat before me in the impressive planetarium in Netanya for a conversation about women in the Bible on the occasion of International Women's Day. I said that the Bible is not just a religious or national book but a founding document of Western civilization. As an ambassador, I insisted that my office in Rome include a library containing the Bible, midrashim, six orders of Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar, Jewish philosophy, Bible commentary, moral and Hasidic literature, and books of questions and answers on Jewish law (alongside contemporary Hebrew literature). To those who entered – politicians, media people, artists, and intellectuals – I used to say that if they want to talk about Israel, it's important they know this is our "business card" as a people.
Israel is a relatively young state, but it represents a civilization thousands of years old that has built an enormous textual and intellectual skyscraper that no nation has provided for its descendants like it. And just as it's impossible to sketch a reliable psychological portrait of a person based only on external characteristics without the hidden and unconscious parts, so too with a nation: its dreams, beliefs, wounds and hopes, destruction and redemption are found in its magnificent culture – in its books.
And then we talked about the Book of Esther. Who do they think is the central character of the Bible, I asked. They answered: God (the more correct answer: the people of Israel). If so, this scroll is different from other Bible books, since it's the only book in which God is not directly mentioned. When we lived as a people in our land, prophets stood before us announcing God's word. But in exile, we had to operate without miracles or obvious divine providence.
The Book of Esther is our great political book in a world without revelation, where we are subject to the mercy of a drunk king and an antisemitic advisor who convinces him to declare the final solution to the Jewish problem. Our people dealt with this through ordinary means of political and personal stratagems. Esther's wisdom and courage led to a reversal: "On the day that the enemies of the Jews expected to dominate them, the opposite occurred – the Jews dominated their enemies." And God? He is behind the scenes of history . Esther in Hebrew (אסתר) is made of two words: the letter Alef (א) which stands for God, and the word "seter" which stand for hidden. The name Ester in that sense means: God is hidden , who directs events and his people in the valley of the shadow of death among peoples and nations, destruction and redemption.
I told the foreign ambassadors that Haman, who conceived the final solution, belonged to Amalek. Amalek attacks us when we're on the road from 13th century BCE Egypt to Canaan, from 5th century Persia to Jerusalem, and from 20th century Europe to the land of Israel. Both Haman and Hitler opposed our people's moral and spiritual message to the world and sought to stop the historical process of the return to Zion. If they didn't succeed, certainly their successors on October 7 won't succeed. The return to Zion is a historical law stronger than its opponents.
3.
The planetarium in Netanya is located one hundred yards from San Remo Square. During my tenure as ambassador, we prepared a huge event marking 101 years since the historic conference. In April 1920, representatives of the five victorious powers of World War I gathered in a villa in San Remo to discuss the future of the Middle East, which fell into their hands after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. They entrusted the mandate for Palestine – the historical land of Israel – to Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration regarding the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. In fact, they anchored the Balfour Declaration in international law. In San Remo, the embryo that would later be born as the State of Israel was created.
Balfour is commemorated countless times in Israel. San Remo is not. Why? This conference is immeasurably more important than the declaration. For the event, we wanted to name a street in Israel after San Remo. The only one I knew who could advance the issue quickly was Miriam Feirberg, the mayor of Netanya. I called her from Italy and told her about the event and its historical and political importance. She listened and said, "Not just a street but a square," and so it was. The ceremony in Netanya, in the presence of the Italian ambassador to Israel and the World Zionist Organization, was also broadcast on Italian television. Every time I pass there, my heart beats with excitement. A beautiful square, especially at night. Other mayors should adopt the idea, for the glory of the State of Israel and its historical memory.
4.
Don't underestimate costumes. Purim provides an opportunity to dress up, a kind of social permission to don a borrowed identity. In many cultures, this is a serious matter, sometimes fateful. The costume was perceived as a metamorphosis (change of form), equivalent to the chrysalis stage. The person in costume is absorbed into a borrowed identity, and for a while their previous identity disappeared. When they returned to their original identity, something of the costume (the borrowed identity) was absorbed into their personality. One can therefore learn about a person's personality from their choice of costumes. The costume is an expression of the search for identity (in Hebrew the word costume and search are derived from the same roots: חפש), a kind of womb of fictional identity, from which a new person is born, like the worm absorbed in the cocoon of the chrysalis and entering a state of hibernation resembling death, and then resurrected as a beautiful butterfly.
