Like any political leader worth his or her salt, Margaret Thatcher earned a number of enemies along with her friends.
We’re not talking about the obvious foes that opposed the British prime minister — those attached to the once dominant British labor movement whose power and contracts she methodically diminished and dismantled in her determined quest to put the UK back on the world’s economic map.
We’re talking about the Israel supporters who occasionally found her heavy handed in her dealings with the Jewish state.
For example, Thatcher wasn’t particularly fond of Israel’s prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin, going so far as to call him the “most difficult” man she had to deal with in the region.
She was also among the most strident critics of Israel’s 1981 decision to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak.
But who, it might legitimately be asked, hasn’t had occasional disagreements with Israel in its 65 years of existence?
Much of the Western world, not to mention the non-Western world, condemned Israel’s Osirak decision as aggressive and unwarranted. They, like Thatcher, were proven seriously wrong a decade later by Saddam Hussein.
And Thatcher certainly wasn’t the only world leader who found Begin tough to deal with. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan certainly had their moments with him, and we long ago lost track of all the presidents and premiers who used the word “intransigent” in describing him.
Begin’s historic Camp David signing with Anwar Sadat helped those pundits redefine the word.
None of this is to suggest, even remotely, that Thatcher ever qualified as an enemy of Israel. The fact is, despite her occasional tiffs and disagreements, she was as staunch a supporter of Israel as any player on the 1980s world stage.
She recognized the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to regional stability and pushed hard to help make peace happen. That this possibility has not advanced since the years of her leadership — indeed, many in the region believe it to be even less possible now — is due to other dynamics and has nothing to do with Thatcher’s long tenure as prime minister.
On a larger scale than Israel, Thatcher was indisputably a friend of the Jews.
She kept many as personal friends. She appointed Jews to important government positions, including cabinet posts. At one point, no less than a quarter of her cabinet ministers were people of Jewish background.
When one considers Britain’s traditional attitudes toward Jews, especially the views of the sort of Englishmen most likely to affiliate with Thatcher’s Conservative Party, Thatcher’s philo-Semitic policies were no less than remarkable.
Ultimately, of course, Thatcher will be judged on the central struggle of her leadership, the conservative battle that she led so consistently — critics might say relentlessly — against British liberalism.
We’ll leave that final judgment to the Britons who were, and are, affected by it.
We can only say that we, like so many others, found the Iron Lady worthy of respect not always for the substance of her words and causes, but certainly for her fearless directness and forthrightness in expressing herself.
She was always very good, and remarkably effective, at that.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
