Eitan Haber, a former journalist and close adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin (Labor), succumbed to a long battle with cancer on Wednesday and left our world at the age of 80.
Haber had covered military affairs for Yediot Aḥaronot for 25 years and also appeared on local television and radio before becoming an adviser to Defense Minister Rabin in 1985. When Rabin became prime minister in 1992, Haber served as his bureau chief and speechwriter.
Haber is best remembered for his dramatic November 4, 1995 announcement of Rabin’s death from the gates of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
Eitan Haber’s death comes less than a month before the 25th anniversary of Rabin’s assassination.
Despite the years of blame attributed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) by many journalists and Rabin’s political allies for creating a divisive political atmosphere that led to the assassination, Haber expressed more understanding than hostility towards Netanyahu.
As leader of the opposition, Netanyahu had often attacked Prime Minister Rabin for advancing the Oslo Accords imposed on Israel by the United States, and for legitimizing PLO leader Yasser Arafat as a partner for peace.
During a 2013 interview with the Times of Israel, Haber responded to David Horowitz’s questions about Netanyahu’s contribution to a climate of bitter hostility to Rabin by stating that “Netanyahu opposed Rabin when he didn’t know anything.”
Eitan Haber insisted in the interview that Netanyahu has since learned firsthand the extent to which Israel is dependent on the United States and must adhere to Washington’s demands.
“Many people, very many people, ask me what happens to political leaders when they enter the Prime Minister’s Office. Is there something in the ventilation system? Is there a special odor that causes dizziness? And I say, no. The people who make it to the second floor of 3 Kaplan street in Jerusalem — only there, only there and not a moment before — is it understood to what extent the State of Israel is dependent on America. For absolutely everything — in the realms of diplomacy, security, even economically — we are dependent on America.”
“When I sit opposite him [Netanyahu] in the Prime Minister’s Office, I see what he carries on his shoulders and how he came to understand over the years the extent to which his steps are constrained and that there is no connection between these incendiary gatherings — where they say, ‘We’ll tell America,’ and ‘Who is America to tell us what to do?’ — and the truth.”
“Slowly your tone changes, because you understand that without the spare parts [from the US], your entire air force is grounded. And when you have no air force you have no defenses. You can barely do anything without America. Her diplomatic support, defensive support, economic support. We are in America’s little pocket.”
Eitan Haber’s sober analysis of the US-Israel relationship and his blunt explanation for why Israeli leaders all too often sell out on Jewish national interests when they reach higher office should alert us to the urgency of detaching the State of Israel from the United States.
Any self-respecting Israeli should desire national independence, but because the US currently appears to be an empire in rapid decline, the urgency is even more salient.
Even those who subscribe to David Ben-Gurion’s exilic “superpower patronage” doctrine and argue that Israel’s survival requires a powerful friend on the international stage should probably start looking elsewhere for that friend – and preferably one less abusive and exploitative than the United States.
