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The Ambassador exchange, part 1: Behind the scenes with a candid Israeli diplomat

[additional-authors]
January 6, 2015

Tova Herzl, a retired Israeli diplomat, was her country's first single, female, sabbath observant ambassador. Her twenty-one year career began in 1983 and included two stints as congressional liaison in Israel's embassy in Washington DC. She was Israel's first ambassador to the newly independent states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and took early retirement after a tumultuous ambassadorship in South Africa, which included the infamous UN anti-racism conference in Durban in 2001. In Israel she worked, inter alia, in the bureaus of foreign minister Arens and president Herzog. She lives in Jerusalem and is a first year law student.

The following exchange will focus on her new book, Madame Ambassador, Behind the Scenes with a Candid Israeli Diplomat (Rowman & Littlefield, November 2014), an intimate description of diplomatic life and work.

***

Dear Ambassador Herzl,

Reading your surprisingly entertaining book (apparently the lives of ambassadors can be quite quirky) I kept thinking about the following questions:

Why should anyone but – maybe – Israelis care about the work and the lives of an ambassador of a little country in the Middle East? Why would this be of interest to the American reader? Don't they have their own ambassadors? Aren't you drawing too much attention to Israel?

Another way of asking my question would be as follows (and this is, admittedly, a question that I often ask my authors in my role as a non-fiction books editor): describe your reader please. Is he someone trying to figure out Israel, is he necessarily Jewish, does he need to be someone that cares about Israel (in a positive or a negative way)?

Thank you,

Shmuel.

***

Dear Shmuel,

Bottom line – why did I bother to write it, and why would anyone bother to read it, right?    

Well, you kindly describe Madame Ambassador as 'surprsingly entertaining'. To me, that would be a perfect recommendation to read a book, any book.

My secondary expectation of a book is that it should broaden my horizons. You go on to write that 'apparently the lives of ambassadors can be quite quirky'. Presumably that was a minor revelation of sorts; obtaining such insights would be another good reason for me to read a particular book.

Yes, America has its ambassadors and some write memoirs. To the best of my knowledge, they inevitably focus on the envoy's role in making policy, and not on what diplomats actually do all day and on how and why they do it.

In showcasing the person behind the persona, my book draws on my twenty-one year career in an attempt to demystify the profession. It does so by responding to  questions and comments I heard during my working years, and still do, eleven years after taking early retirement:

A diplomat? Lucky you! It sounds fascinating (most of the time). Did you choose your posts (two out of four) or does someone decide for you? How do you cope if you don't know the local language (it is challenging, but possible) or must you learn a new one every time? Were you lonely (sometimes) and can you make real friends? It must be fun, going to all those receptions! What are credentials and how does immunity actually work? Can you separate your personal agenda from your professional responsibilities? Must you?

Let me therefore presumptuously suggest that anyone who is interested in this oft-mentioned but little-understood profession will enjoy my humble tome.

Readers interested in Israel will have the added bonus of those chapters which are more specific to us. They share my memories of the hostility we encountered at the Durban anti-racism conference in 2001 and also of the incompetence with which we faced it, recount how this child of holocaust survivors functioned where it happened, and address the challenge of keeping kosher in a trade where communal eating is an important way of doing business.

By the way, I was amazed at the response of a Latvian friend to the chapter I had considered to be of least general interest. Reading of my dilemmas concerning Jewish identity and its interface with Israeli diplomacy, she exclaimed: That is just like Latvia! Seems that questions like 'who is a (name the nationality)' and relations between the diaspora and the home country are not unique to representatives of the Jewish state.

As for your question on drawing too much attention to Israel (as though it is otherwise not the limelight….) – if my first book were to gain that kind of prominence, that would indeed be a miracle.

Regards,

Tova.

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