Natan Sharansky: Thank you for saying it because it was just a topic that I wanted to raise and there was no time. There’s so many people who died in the Holocaust in my family, and I am the chairman of the Babi Yar Memorial. I’m dealing all the time with the victims. And I hear all the time from very good people and some of my close friends that they have sympathy to the suffering of every child. But they cannot make themselves feel solidarity with Ukraine as a state or Ukrainians as a nation knowing what a terrible history there was there, first with the Chelminitsky pogroms, which were terrible, and of course with the Holocaust. And I can tell you my answer.

First of all, antisemitism is not something which was specific for Ukraine or any other land. Antisemitism is the most ancient hatred, which rises regularly whenever people need to hate the other.

So even if you think about some nice places in the Alps in Switzerland, remember that the whole Jewish community were burnt alive in order to avoid plague there. And if you enjoy traveling to Spain, the thing that you see is Ferdinand and Isabella, big heroes of today’s history of Spain, who exiled half of the Jewish people. Or think about Provence, a great place, I enjoy it there very much. Only think of what Crusaders did there, the terrible massacres of entire Jewish populations.

So if we Jews will start building our relationship with the world on the basis of what they did to us, we should move to another planet.

Second, our sages are giving very good advice. I am not a rabbi, but I was advised to read this comment of Rashi on the chapter when Hagar and Ishmael are sent to the desert, and Ishmael almost dies from thirst. He has no water.

And then God says to Hagar, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll help your son as he is,” and he helps Ishmael. And then the comments of our sages is that the angels of the heavens revolt and said, “Ah, you’re helping him? Don’t you know how many awful things his people will do to our people?” And God says to them, “Now at this moment, is a child innocent or guilty?” And they say “innocent.” So I’ll judge everybody in his time and that’s our way. It means that we have to deal with the people at this time.

The people of Ukraine at this time, not only, as Bernard said, by the way, have the lowest level of neo-Nazis in Europe. You have to understand that when these neo-Nazis that Putin speaks about so much, when they tried to go to election, they didn’t get 1%. They didn’t get one-tenth of 1% of the vote.

And think about many countries in Europe where it is different. And of course half of the Ukrainian government is Jewish, and openly Jewish. And Zelensky is not only speaking about his Jewishness, but about his deep love for Israel. And they were all elected in free elections.

And above and beyond all this, it so happened that God, providence, history, has put Ukraine and its people in the unique position of being defenders of the free world. So let’s judge Ukraine in this time, as God told us.

Questioner: I agree totally that we have to close an eye about the past of Ukraine, because today what is very important is freedom and democracy.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: No, no, no. That’s not enough. Of course, the questions of democracy and freedom are important. But if the Ukrainians were still the antisemites of the past, which they would have been if they did not have done the work of memory, of mourning and of sorrow, which they did do, I would certainly not support them as much as I do. One of the reasons why I support them with all my heart is because they did the work. Because they looked in front of their past. They considered the crimes of their grandfathers or fathers. They decided though difficult and painful as it is, to look at them in the eyes and to do the work that ensures that such crimes will not to be repeated.

“I’ll do it,” was my immediate reply. I figured he was surely looking for someone to type his upcoming book.

While waiting for Netanyahu to get back to me, I asked my eldest son, “Don’t you think I’m maybe a bit overqualified? Besides, decoding Netanyahu’s shorthand and being on call for him 24/7 was something I did back in 2006, when I worked for him on a previous book.”

“Dad,” my 18-year-old said, “it’s like taking rebounds for Michael Jordan. You gotta do it.” My son, a professional basketball player at the time, was right and I knew it.

The following evening, Netanyahu handed me 10,000 words that he had handwritten earlier that morning and asked me to give it a go. I did my best to quickly return a typed version.

Basketball fans out there can appreciate that, before the ball hit the floor, I had to return the typed text. He seemed satisfied and handed me an additional 10,000 words. At first, things were technical but over time I asked questions and occasionally commented on some of the shots. He welcomed that. A few shots were challenged and altered but Netanyahu’s eyes were firmly focused on the rim.

It was a frenzied period of collaboration during which Netanyahu was to write, edit, and rewrite some 230,000 words, while back-seat driving down Israel’s rural roads and even while sitting in court hearings. In parallel, we were going through new COVID outbreaks and political battles to bring down the Bennett-Lapid government. A little over nine months from its commencement, a book was born. A book that tells the story of Netanyahu, his family, and his people.

The courtside seat gave me an opportunity to see how Netanyahu addresses big issues like the threat of a nuclear Iran, free-market reforms, and peace in the Middle East. I also saw how he appreciates the small things, like a walk in the park or on the beach, freshly squeezed lemonade, an evenly sliced Snickers chocolate bar and yes—an occasional cigar.

I also saw a more seasoned leader, since the last time I worked with him over a decade ago. Beyond being a gifted speaker and writer, he became a much better listener, and after adapting to the TikTok and Twitter era, he even developed a sense of humor.

The process of assembling the book was straightforward. Netanyahu would jot down a chapter title, a timeline, and would start writing. He would send me handwritten text, I would type it into Word, including questions and comments when applicable and send it back to him via WhatsApp. It would also be printed out for him in double-spaced, size 14 font. He would edit the chapter and address the comments, on the hard copy, when relevant. Once he felt comfortable with the text, I would send it to his brother Iddo and two of his trusted friends, Ron and Gary, for feedback while Sharon did the fact-checking. Once that was done, we’d send it to Max at Simon & Schuster.

On one of his drives to Caesarea from a late-night meeting in Jerusalem he stopped by my home for a “short session” to “tighten up the text.” While waiting for the laptop to boot up, he looked over the living room bookshelves and seemed pleased to see one of his books between Yoni’s Letters and Jabotinsky’s biography. That night, from midnight until the sun peaked over the nearby Samarian hilltops, he aligned paragraphs and cut commas, indulging only on leftover popcorn from my 8-year-old’s birthday party, with black coffee to wash it down.

As Netanyahu dove deeper and longer into the text his inner circle expressed growing concern that he “preferred being a writer than a prime minister” and was investing the lion’s share of his time on the book rather than getting reelected. I have no doubt that he enjoys the writing process more than the political process. As he once wrote, “Writing consumed me. On a good day, writing forces you to distill ideas, to order them logically and to breathe life into them with unexpected language. For me there is no more satisfying intellectual exercise.”

But he knew when it was time to pivot to the campaign and then “left it all on the field.”

Of all his idiosyncrasies, his ability to focus and prioritize was most impressive. He could focus on fine-tuning a speech with Yonatan and Hagai while simultaneously listening to the news on channels 11, 12, 13, and 14. When someone said something important on one of the channels, he would switch from the speech to the screen and back to the speech without losing a beat.

Netanyahu seldom raises his voice, but you can clearly see when he is disappointed in you. I got that strong impression when he thought I had not properly incorporated into the text the iconic “eye to eye” exchange he had with Rabbi Leibovitch in 1988 before returning to Israel from his United Nations mission.

“You know it takes a lot of time and thought to put the right words on paper,” he told me.

The problem was he had not given me the text.

“You are probably right seven to nine times out of 10 but this time you’re wrong. You didn’t give me the text,” I replied.

Once the script was found in his folder, he half jokily retorted, “I might have been wrong this time, but the odds are closer to 99 out of 100.”

Fixing footnotes and picking photos for the book were the most Sisyphean and sensitive parts of the project. My wife wisely told me not to touch the latter. Netanyahu is one of the world’s most photographed people and the publisher’s willingness to include 106 photos, while generous, didn’t make the selection process much easier. Michal and Topaz carried most of that burden.

Netanyahu seemed to like the ones of him and his son Avner walking on the beach, the “get well soon” painting his son Yair drew for an ailing King Hussein, the one with his daughter Noa at his grandson’s bris and the ones with Yoni most. He also liked the ones with his wife, Sara, strolling on the Golan Heights, and with Ronald Reagan at the White House’s red room.

Netanyahu wrote his most moving chapter in a Netanya hotel room in the middle of the night after celebrating Yair’s 30th birthday. The chapter was initially titled “Yoni,” and it was the only one I had trouble transcribing. Like Netanyahu, I was also raised by a brilliant professor father and similarly smart and sensitive mother. They also lost a beloved son in his youth. Netanyahu’s candid portrayal of the endless drive from Boston to Ithaca and how his parents coped with inconceivable grief hit home.

The book goes through the major life events of a “young man in a hurry,” who became the youngest prime minister of Israel in 1996, to the intersections he crossed on his way to becoming the longest serving prime minister in 2021.

The most interesting part for me was watching him make decisions.

Seeing decisions made that can immediately impact your nation is drastically different from reading about them in the news or studying about them in university. Netanyahu’s ability to listen, ask the right people the right questions, “trust but verify” the answers and weigh the options have helped him realize opportunities, avoid unnecessary risks, and most importantly, save lives.