new york | It was October 1973, the Yom Kippur War was raging and Israel was facing the abyss.
Kalman Sultanik, a World Zionist Organization executive, was riding through New York City with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, when Dinitz interrupted to call U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“Kissinger called him back right away,” Sultanik recalled. “They were like brothers.”
That relationship proved pivotal to Israel’s effort to convince the Nixon administration to airlift emergency military supplies to Israel, which helped save the Jewish state and launched a new era in U.S.-Israel ties — though Kissinger himself says that Dinitz’s efforts have yet to be sufficiently recognized.
“He was a superb representative of his country, whose role in saving his country in the 1973 war has never been adequately appreciated,” Kissinger said.
On Tuesday morning, Dinitz, 74, died of a heart attack at his Jerusalem home. His death sparked an outpouring of grief from friends and former colleagues who paid tribute to the Zionist leader from the generation of Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin.
Dinitz was “Mr. Diplomat,” said longtime aide and friend Zvi Rafiah. “I believe he was the best ambassador Israel ever had.”
His career of nearly 40 years in public service grew out of classical Labor Zionist roots.
Born in Tel Aviv, as a young man he joined the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, then fought with the fledgling Israel Defense Force in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. He studied political science at the University of Cincinnati, and went on to earn a master’s degree in international law from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1957.
Dinitz got his start at the information department in Jerusalem of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before heading the office of the ministry’s director-general.
In 1966 he was named Israeli envoy to Rome, and in 1968 he became information minister at the Israeli embassy in Washington.
In March 1973, Dinitz was named Israel’s top envoy to Washington, where he cultivated relationships with the White House, politicians, the media, and the Jewish community. During this era Congress began approving major annual foreign aid packages to Israel, which since have reached $3 billion a year.
Upon returning to Israel, Dinitz became vice president of Hebrew University, and in 1984 he was elected to the Knesset from the Labor Party.
In 1988, he became head of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization.
That’s when Norman Lipoff, a prominent Miami attorney, got to know him. Lipoff had joined the agency board and chaired its finance committee, which was about to make some crucial decisions regarding Soviet Jews.
After the Soviet Union crumbled and Jews could leave, it fell to the Jewish Agency to work out the massive plan of getting them to Israel, which became known as Operation Exodus.
By 1990, a massive flow of immigration from the former Soviet Union had begun, and would bring more than 1 million Jews to Israel over the next decade.
In another sea change, Dinitz shifted the way immigrants were absorbed into Israel, moving them directly into housing rather than placing them in absorption centers.
Dinitz also headed Operation Solomon, which airlifted 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in a single day in May 1991.
But his distinguished career came to an abrupt end in 1994, when Dinitz was charged with credit card fraud while heading the Jewish Agency. A 1996 conviction was overturned in 1998 by Israel’s Supreme Court, but the incident left a permanent mark on Dinitz, who remained troubled about the affair.
“It bothered him greatly,” Lipoff said. “He had great pride in what he was able to achieve, and it was a major personal burden to have that occur at the end of his career.”
Many who knew Dinitz spoke of his personal warmth, his rhetorical eloquence and his ability to find compromise in conflict.
“He carried out his mission with intelligence, indefatigable energy and constant good humor,” Kissinger said. “I trusted him even when we had occasional disagreements, and I considered him a close, personal friend.’
Dinitz leaves his wife, Vivian; their children Michael, Na’ama and Tamar; and eight grandchildren.
He was due to lie in state on Wednesday in Jerusalem and be buried on Mount Herzl in an area set aside for Israel’s leaders.