During my many visits to Israel, I met dozens of important Israeli personalities in the political, academic and cultural arenas. A person whom I much admired was Ezer Weizman, who (when I met him for the first time in 1994) was the President of Israel.
Born in 1924, Ezer Weizman was the nephew of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the State of Israel, who had a major role in establishing the state in 1948. Ezer Weizman is a great historical figure.
In addition to our meetings at his official office in Jerusalem, I visited his home in Caesarea on several occasions. I remember that during my first visit there, I saw two side-by-side pictures on a table, one of which was of the former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the other was of his only son Shaul who was struck by a bullet fired from an Egyptian sniper across the Suez Canal.
On that day, I said to Ezer: two side-by-side photos, one of your son and the second of the supreme commander of the Egyptian army, one of whose soldiers fired a bullet across the Suez Canal from its western bank, hitting your son in the head while he was present as an Israeli soldier near the eastern bank of the Suez Canal!
Ezer's comment at that moment was: despite the accuracy of your comment, what Anwar Sadat did remains a legendary historical act, one which laid the foundation stone for peace between Israel and Egypt.
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