when it seemed that Israel had become a pawn in world politics, and might be abandoned at any moment if it served the purposes of oil-poor America, Israel’s only friend with the capability of providing the necessary weapons for Israel’s defense.
Only twice in the course of his upbeat correspondence, and not once during the five days he spent in Buenos Aires, does Jonathan Netanyahu give any hint of the revival of the Holocaust mentality that came close to overwhelming that other Jewish hero, Jacobo Timerman, in Argentina in the same period. Alluding to the support from abroad that came to embattled Israel in the Six Day War, Jonathan writes: “Deep in their hearts they knew that Israel is the only haven they can escape to—poor wretches!” And later, facing up to the possibility that Israel might “lose the war, if not the next one, then the one after.” he adds that the Israeli armed forces are “the only thing that stands between ourselves and the slaughter of our people as in days gone by.” Why then did not Timerman. a life-long Zionist who knew this just as well, escape to Israel—until he was forcibly ejected from Argentina after his two years’ imprisonment and torture by the Argentinian military?
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