The Minister for National Fears
Atlantic, The, May, 2007 by Gershom Gorenberg
Avigdor Lieberman is an oversized man in an undersized room. His beard, remorselessly trimmed to a narrow, graying stripe around his cheeks, frames a wide face with pale, icy eyes. As he speaks, he waves his tiger paw of a hand, holding a cigar the proportions of a small cannon. The cigar is not lit, but the laws of drama say it will be by the third act. In Russian-accented Hebrew, he is talking about his admiration for Peter the Great and Winston Churchill. Before World War II, he says, all the “lovely, liberal, progressive people” threw every insult at Churchill that they now throw at him—“warmonger, embittered, extremist”—except for having a beard and being Russian. He smiles at the thought.
On the small stage of Israeli politics, Avigdor Lieberman is a suddenly large figure. Little more than a year ...