(JNS) Even for those who are old enough to remember, it may be hard to recall considering all that has happened since then. But four decades ago, Benjamin Netanyahu seemed like the answer to the problems that Israel had encountered in getting its message across to the world. During the 1980s, when he served for two years as deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy to the United States (1982-84) and then for four years as the Jewish state’s ambassador to the United Nations (1984-88), the future prime minister was his country’s leading spokesperson.
Speaking fluent, American-accented English that he had learned from spending many of his formative years growing up in suburban Philadelphia, and later, studying for bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Netanyahu was an eloquent advocate for his nation’s policies. And he was widely applauded by Jews and non-Jews on both sides of the political aisle. At a time when there were exponentially fewer venues for the discussion of foreign policy in a pre-Internet and cable media environment,...
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