The past as prologue: The Galant affair

Truce (COMFORT). He bitterly despises Anderson because of the senatorial respect and prestige Anderson enjoys and for Anderson’s conservative views.

With the nomination at an impasse, Van Ackerman receives an anonymous tip that Anderson, while serving in Hawaii during the Second World War, had a homosexual affair with a fellow soldier. That former solider, now living in New York, provides Van Ackerman with a few letters he and Anderson had exchanged during the war, giving a clear indication of the nature of their relationship.

Van Ackerman and his liberal COMFORT allies begin a whispering campaign about Senator Anderson. Van Ackerman, using the letters, then tries to blackmail Anderson into forwarding the nomination to the full committee.

Anderson, his past secret about to be exposed, commits suicide in his office. After his death, the Senate unanimously censures Van Ackerman for contributing to Senator Anderson’s death; after the vote, Van Ackerman leaves town for an “extended vacation,” his standing in the Senate all but gone.

2. The past

The pragmatists:

• Moshe Dayan (b. 1915) — foreign minister, 31 May 1977 - 23 October 1979
• Eser Weizman (b. 1924) — defense minister, 31 May 1977 - 25 May 1980

The hawks:

• Menachem Begin (b. 1913) — prime minister, 31 May 1977 - 15 September 1983
• Rafael Eytan (b. 1929) — IDF chief of staff, 16 April 1978 - 7 April 1983
• Ariel Sharon (b. 1928), minister of defense, 30 June 1981 - 14 February 1983
• Yitzhak Shamir (b. 1915), foreign minister, 10 March 1980 - 10 October 1983

Menachem Begin and his right-wing Likud Party came to power in Israel in May 1977, after twenty-nine years of Labor rule. To give his government a more moderate image, Begin appointed a Labor defector, General (ret.) Moshe Dayan, as foreign minister, and General (Ret.) Ezer Weizman, a former hawk but now a pragmatist, as defense minister.

Following the November 1977 visit by Anwar Sadat to Israel, the two countries signed a peace agreement requiring Israel to vacate the Sinai Peninsula and take concrete measures to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Israel fulfilled the first part of the agreement, but in the view of Dayan and Weizman, Begin was dragging his feet on the second part of the agreement, thus not only prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also making it impossible for Israel to use the Israel-Egypt peace agreement as a platform for improving Israel’s relations with other Arab countries.

Frustrated, both Dayan and Weizman resigned from the government — Dayan in October