It had promised to be the most hostile of audiences; several of the guests, like Streisand, supported Peace Now, which favored dramatic compromise with the Palestinians and partial withdrawal from the occupied territories—policies that Netanyahu had adamantly opposed. And he had adapted his spiel to the locale.
At one point he stared out the window, over the affluent Los Angeles neighborhoods of Westwood and Brentwood. When peace with the Palestinians broke out later that year, history seemed poised to pass by Netanyahu, who proved far better at criticizing the pact between then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat than at offering an alternative. Netanyahu eventually started to recoup his popularity, only to fall once more last autumn when Rabin was assassinated and his widow blamed him for helping to foment the hatred that preceded the murder.
Suddenly pundits were no longer speaking of Netanyahu as an Israeli Clinton, the man who successfully imported American-style political culture to his country, but as an Israeli Dukakis instead. But Netanyahu, now 46 years old, always has an ace up his sleeve against Shimon Peres and anybody on the Israeli left: terrorism. Netanyahu, who has been faulted in the past for exploiting terrorist incidents for political gain, generally maintained a statesmanlike silence.
Good taste was now good politics. Normally, character is not an issue with Israeli voters; their leaders hang around forever and are known inside out.
By these standards Netanyahu is almost a stranger. While they know him best, his closest friends are just as unsure about Bibi Netanyahu as everyone else—maybe more so. Kennedy comparisons may be hackneyed, but in the case of the Netanyahu family they are simply too tempting to resist.
