Ezer Weizman was a legendary Israeli figure who reached heights in the military (commander of the Israeli Air Force), government (Defense Minister) and state (President), with stories abounding of his patriotism, foresight and force of personality.
Several people who worked closely with Weizman praised him for something else: his heart.
Moshe Shahar, Weizman’s driver for the latter’s year-plus as Science Minister and seven years as President, calls him “one of the most special people I ever met.”
When, as President, Weizman visited Israelis recovering from Palestinian terrorist attacks and made shiva visits to families of those murdered, he refused to ride there in the armored vehicles his security staff preferred.
“I won’t travel in such a car while Israelis are being blown up on buses,” Shahar remembered Weizman telling him. Shahar said he instead drove Weizman in a standard presidential vehicle.
“He wanted to be like everyone else,” Shahar said.
Arye Shomer, the chief of staff of Weizman’s presidential office, pointed to a tragic national disaster that occurred during his term, when two Sikorski choppers collided in the Galilee panhandle on February 4, 1997, killing 73 Israel Defense Forces soldiers aboard.
Weizman was determined to make shiva visits to families of all 73 victims — and did just that. Shomer, who worked for Weizman for three decades, called that commitment “a true expression of participating in the families’ mourning.”
“He wanted them to know how much he understands them, feels for them,” Shomer said.
Weizman could identify with the families’ grief, having suffered the deaths of his son Shaul and daughter-in-law Rachel in a car accident in 1991.
Weizman passed away in 2005 at age 80. June 15 marked a century since his birth and is an opportunity to recall the public figure and the man.
He was one of Israel’s most powerful and interesting personalities: a high achiever and confident, but secure enough in his own skin not to crave adulation.
From the start, Weizman’s heredity stood out. He was the nephew of pre-state Zionist leader and Israel’s first President, Chaim Weizmann. (The Weizmans were the first family to spawn two heads of state, the second being the current President, Yitzhak Herzog, and his father, Chaim.) Ezer Weizman’s widow, Reuma, who in August will turn 99, is the sister of Rachel Dayan, who married future Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
Weizman made his greatest impact on the Israeli Air Force as one of its founders, rising to become IAF commander from 1958 to 1966. He commanded the Ramat David Air Force Base in the Jezreel Valley, which later was named for him.
Many credit Weizman with laying the groundwork for Israel’s lightning-quick destruction of most of the Egyptian Air Force while its planes were still on the ground in the opening hours of the Six-Day War.
“Weizman will always be identified with the Israeli Air Force from its inception through its astonishing victory in the Six-Day War and its contribution to current times, having supremacy in the skies,” said Tel Aviv resident Jeffrey Weiss, who co-authored a 2022 book on the nascent IAF.
Shomer said Weizman explained to him that he shifted to flying while serving in Africa in the mid-1940s with Great Britain’s Royal Air Force. As a truck driver in the RAF, Weizman nearly was killed by a bomb dropped from a RAF plane.
“That’s when I decided to become a pilot,” Shomer said Weizman told him.
In later years, Weizman regularly got together with other IAF commanders. It was inconceivable for a gathering to take place if Weizman — who’d nicknamed himself “The Duke” early on as a pilot — couldn’t make it, Shomer said.
During the War of Independence, Weizman was one of only two native Israeli pilots in the 101st Squadron, Israel’s only fighter squadron then, and “was beloved by the men who flew with him,” nearly all of them Americans, Canadians, South Africans and Britons, said Weiss.
Weiss related Reuma Weizman’s telling him that she first met her future husband when he was driving a car bearing a 101st Squadron logo — a car another pilot had stolen in a prank typical for the group.
“He was a fun-loving guy, rowdy,” Weiss said.
But Weizman was all-business in matters of security and diplomacy. He became a key figure in the negotiations leading to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979. He was Defense Minister then, and as a speaker of Arabic he developed a strong bond with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
By that point, Weizman was in the midst of a two-decade stint in Knesset and served as a minister in governments of the right and then the left as his political leanings evolved. (Accepting financial gifts late in his political career came to light years later and led Weizman to resign as president.)
Arriving at Beit Hanasi (“The President’s House”), the Weizmans strove to hire people of diverse backgrounds to reflect Israel’s multiethnic population, and did so “for meaningful jobs,” said Ziona Rosental, who worked there for 37 years.
“They were a special couple,” she said.
In an interview for this article, Shomer related several stories about Weizman’s empathy as President, like helping to arrange for dental work for a gardener at Beit Hanasi and dedicating scores of Torah scrolls to the memories of fallen soldiers.
One story was less consequential but revelatory. It involved the Weizmans’ state visit to London in 1997. He was seated at a state dinner next to the Queen Mother, whose daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, was the evening’s hostess.
Something about the discomfort of the Queen Mother, age 96, registered with Weizman. He summoned a waiter and asked that another chair be brought over for her.
The request was carried out. Several people clapped.
Said Shomer: “He was very human.”
Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com.
