1968 – Ambassador of Israel to the United States
At the beginning of 1968, following 27 years of military service, Yitzhak Rabin was honorably discharged from the army and appointed to his first civilian position: Ambassador of Israel to the United States. His first year in office coincided with the US presidential election. Rabin took advantage of this to learn the mechanisms of American government, as he became acquainted with the prominent media personalities in the US, and developed relations with the Jewish communities and heads of the leading Jewish organizations.
Contrary to the tradition of Jewish support for the Democratic Party, Rabin openly supported Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate for president. A prior acquaintance between them, and tracking his positions during the election campaign, reinforced Rabin’s estimation that Nixon would be the better ally for Israel. Nixon’s victory and the nomination of Henry Kissinger as Head of the National Security Council created the conditions for Rabin’s great achievements as ambassador. Despite the tremendous tension at this time between Israel and the United States, surrounding US government plans for arrangements in the Middle East to which Israel objected, Rabin managed to cultivate special relations between the two nations. His efforts on behalf of the agreement of Golda’s government to the ceasefire in the Suez Canal contributed to cancellation of the American embargo on the shipment of Phantom jets to Israel.
In September 1970, Nixon asked Israel, via Rabin, to assist King Hussein of Jordan to foil Syrian and Palestinian attempts to threaten his rule. Rabin supported the request and acted to convince the prime minister to honor it, even at the price of war with Syria. Hussein succeeded, ultimately, to suppress the revolt on his own, but the willingness of Israel to help substantially strengthened cooperation between Israel and the United States, increased American economic assistance for Israel, and improved the king’s relations with Israel.
Golda, like her predecessor, Levi Eshkol, regarded Rabin as an ambassador with special status, and opened a direct channel of communication with him.
In the second half of his term, Rabin consolidated his status as a diplomat and as a candidate for senior political roles in Israel. He learned to appreciate American democracy and the accomplishments of its free economy. His connections with the government leaders and the Jewish communities expanded and he became highly esteemed.
The death of the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, in 1970, and the election of Anwar Sadat changed the political reality in the Middle East. The American government saw this as a window of opportunity for promoting arrangements between Israel and its neighbors and intensified its actions to reach interim agreements. Rabin supported the idea of promoting peace in stages and was aware of the hidden potential in Sadat’s offers of an agreement with Israel. He believed that the withdrawal of the IDF from deep in the Sinai desert and the opening of the Suez Canal would open the way to an arrangement with Egypt, which would also reinforce the alliance with the United States. He warned the Israeli government that its refusal to accept the American plan would result in an imposed agreement if not renewed eruption of war. But Golda’s government stuck to its positions.
The election campaign for the eighth Knesset was imminent, and Rabin expressed his interest in returning to Israel.
In March 1973, after a five-year term as ambassador, Rabin returned to Israel and joined the Labor Party. In anticipation of the elections in December, the party’s “Electoral List Committee” assigned him to the 20th place on the party list headed by Golda Meir. About a month and a half before the upcoming elections, it turned out that Israeli was not facing elections, but war.
Taking Israel by surprise, the Yom Kippur War broke out on October 6, 1973. For the first time in years, Rabin held no position or authority. His attempts to attach himself to this or that commander failed. On the fourth day of the war, he accepted the offer of Minister of Finance, Pinchas Sapir, to head an “Emergency Support Drive,” to raise funds for the war expenses.
In the elections held in December, immediately following the war, the Labor Party’s power was diminished, yet, it still managed to put a government coalition together. Rabin was appointed as Minister of Labor in Golda’s second government. On April 2, 1974, the Agranat Commission published its report of inquiry into the failures of the Yom Kippur War. The Commission refrained from discussing the performance of the political ranks and placed the blame on the military ranks only. Rabin publicly took exception to the decision to place the responsibility for the failure in its entirety on the shoulders of Chief of Staff David Elazar.
Public opinion was ill at ease with the conclusions of the report. Demonstrations that started with just a few participants became progressively larger and a call was heard for judgement to be passed regarding the political ranks. Under the pressure of the events, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned, and the Labor Party was required to appoint her replacement. Rabin was a surprising candidate for this senior position, but he was clean of involvement in the failures of the war and enjoyed support from a distinguished group of veteran Labor Party members resulting in his being pushed forward, over the other candidates. He was nominated by the party to fill the place of Golda Meir as prime minister.
“I was convinced that the value of our relations with the United States and with Jewry in the strongest country in the western world would become progressively stronger.”
