the settlements on the West Bank. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of

/ BARAK / 27 the settlements on the West Bank. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Russians had also flowed into Israel. Most were Jewish in culture more than religious observance, but they were instinctively inclined to support candidates — Rabin in 1992, and Bibi the last time around — who they felt were likely to take a tough line in any peace negotiations with the Arabs. I was never going to get the backing of many West Bank settlers, or of core supporters of the Likud and parties even further to the right. But I would need to make at least some dent in Bibi’s hold on the Russian voters who had supported him by a wide margin in 1996. I focused first on Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, the main Russian immigrant political party. It had been set up by the iconic Soviet-era refusenik Natan Sharansky — or, as he was then known, Anatoly Sharansky. He’d been an ally of Andrei Sakharov, an outspoken human rights advocate and, until he was finally released and allowed to leave in 1986, a political prisoner in the gulag. Though Natan’s party was not going to offer a formal endorsement for any candidate, I met with him to press the case for “security and peace,” the message I’d tried to advance with Shimon three years earlier, and to emphasize the need to bring unity and shared purpose back to the country. Though I think he would have been receptive anyway, it didn’t hurt that he, like me, was a mathematics graduate — from Moscow’s Physics and Technology Institute. He was also a chess aficionado. When I was rash enough to face him across the board, as I recall, it took him all of five minutes, and seven moves, to checkmate me. But I also made dozens of visits to Russian community groups, and met with individual families whenever I could. Often, I found myself talking to older men and women among the immigrants about the military details of the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians called World War Two. On a number of occasions, I accepted the invitation to sit down and play on a sitting-room piano. I think the first time I got a sense that any of this might be having an impact was in a quote from a Yisrael Ba’Aliyah official in an Israeli newspaper. Though still stopping short of a formal endorsement, the official was quoted as saying: “A month ago, young Russians thought Barak was a boring, left-wing socialist party leader who doesn’t look good on TV and mumbles a lot... Today, they see him as a high-ranking Israeli general who knows how to play the piano. The Russian immigrants like strong, cultured people.” Except for the bit about mumbling, I couldn’t have wished for more. 313 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028161