Dan Raviv was in Berlin when the wall crumbled, in Lockerbie within hours of the Pan Am air disaster and in Beirut immediately after the U. S. Marine base was bombed.
Over the years, the CBS foreign correspondent and author has witnessed the highs and lows of Israel: President Clinton shedding tears at Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral and a beaming King Hussein driving into the parade ground to meet Rabin and sign the 1994 peace agreement.
There isn’t much that has happened in the past 20 years that Raviv has missed.
In 1979 and 1982, Raviv was also there when Israel turned over part of the Sinai Peninsula.
“I saw how difficult that was for Israel — yet for peace the Israelis did it,” he said in a phone interview from his Washington, D.C., office. “I have been scarred for life having seen some of the violence, too.”
The only thing Raviv hasn’t seen is the downhill side of his 40s.
On Thursday, the writer will be in San Francisco to give an insider’s view of “Israel at a Crossroad” sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
Raviv will offer his insights, which have been captured not only in his reports for CBS but in three books about Israel, all co-written with journalist Yossi Melman. They include “Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community,” “Behind the Uprising” and “Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance.”
But Raviv’s professional ties to Israel are only part of the story.
“My parents are Israelis who left in 1950, always intending to move back,” said Raviv, who was born four years after his parents arrived in New York. Although his parents never did move back, they made sure their son learned Hebrew and was well versed in Israeli culture.
In fact, that knowledge landed Raviv the plum assignment as CBS’ Israel correspondent in 1978. He was 23 and had been working at the CBS desk in Washington.
“They needed someone in a hurry. I knew the country and I knew the language.”
It’s a story Raviv likes to tell when he speaks at Jewish day schools to emphasize the advantages of learning Hebrew.
At his San Francisco talk, Raviv will focus on the upcoming elections.
“A lot of people are wondering what [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s chances are,” he said. With Kosovo dominating the foreign news, Israel’s upcoming May 17 elections haven’t gotten much attention. “It will be close between the left and right and the new centrist party. That’s what makes it difficult to predict.”
Having said that, Raviv agrees with Israeli opinion polls indicating that Netanyahu will come in first and that the other parties will split the anti-Netanyahu votes. But he does not expect Netanyahu to win a majority of the vote. As for a run off, scheduled for two weeks later, Raviv isn’t making any predictions.
For American Jews, the big question is how the ultimate outcome of the election will affect U.S.-Israel relations.
“The dynamic between the U. S. president and the prime minister is always important,” said Raviv. “When Bibi replaced [Shimon] Peres, that changed Washington’s reaction a lot. Washington would prefer a Labor victory. Clinton hasn’t gotten along with Bibi.”
As for religious pluralism, so important to Reform and Conservative Jews here, it is “not a large issue to the Israeli electorate,” he said. When Israelis go to the polls, according to Raviv, their main concerns are security, the peace process, the economy and then the charisma and leadership style of the candidates.
Discussing American Jewish concerns about pluralism, he said, “Israelis in general don’t seem to get it. They feel Jewish is a nationality. Most don’t think too often about religion. They don’t have the identity issues Americans seem to have.”
But now that the courts have intervened, Raviv said Israelis are becoming more aware of the issue, although it will never be as important to them as it is to the American Jewish community.
In spite of his family ties to Israel, Raviv tries to keep his reporting fair and evenhanded. As a reporter he has had much contact with Arabs and understands their positions, too.
During his talk, Raviv will discuss how events in Israel play out in the American political arena, through voting patterns and campaign contributions.
When he’s not interviewing world leaders and covering historic events, he and his family are active members of a Conservative synagogue in the Washington area. Last year they celebrated his son Jonathan’s bar mitzvah in Jerusalem so that family in Israel could attend.
“I’m a great father,” said Raviv, adding that even his wife of 16 years, Dori Phaff, would agree. Before his recent move to Washington, Jonathan, 14, and daughter Emma, 10, attended a Jewish day school in Florida. “When I’m not on the road, my broadcasting schedule has me in the studio from 5 a.m. to noon. I’m home in the afternoon when the kids get home from school.”
He even took his son to see the Baltimore Orioles play — in Cuba.