Gershom Gorenberg on the woman who just might be Israel's next Prime Minister.
One line of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's resume has always been an enigma. From 1980 to 1984, it says, Livni served in the Mossad. This week, some details of her work in the ultra-secretive espionage agency emerged in the Sunday Times of London. While based in Paris, an acquaintance told the paper, "Tzipi was not an office girl. … She blended in well in European capitals, working with male agents, most of them ex-commandos, taking out Arab terrorists." Her closest female partner was Mira Gal, who is now Livni's bureau chief at the Foreign Ministry, the Times said, hinting at a sisterhood of old spooks. You don't need a conspiratorial mind-set to assume that Livni, or an ex-spook close to her, planned the placement and timing of that report. Because it was published abroad, there was no risk of the Israeli military censor blue-penciling it, but it was quickly picked up by the Hebrew media. It came just as Livni was preparing for a political battle to replace scandal-tainted Ehud Olmert as head of the Kadima party and as prime minister. The intended message was: She may never have been a general, but Tzipi Livni knows about national security from the inside, and she is a very tough -- even cold-blooded -- woman. It was therefore also a statement about the added, conflicting demands a woman candidate faces in defining herself as she seeks to be a nation's leader in time of war. As if another reminder were needed this year.
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--The Editors
