On film
Signing for Israel in Washington
Gazit, then chargé d’affaires at the embassy, signs Israel’s accession to the Moscow Treaty — the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty — at the U.S. Department of State. The archive’s description explicitly identifies him at the ceremony.
Watch at the Israel Film ArchiveWatch on the archive’s website · Hebrew and English subtitles are available.
The interim agreement between Israel and Egypt
On 4 September 1975, Gazit signed the interim agreement in Geneva alongside Major General Herzl ShafirIDF major general; appointed with Gazit to represent Israel at the Geneva Peace Conference in 1975.What they wanted: Security arrangements that would hold on the ground.More on Herzl Shafir in “People and events” →. The family provided the link to footage of the occasion; his grandson identified his arrival at the ceremony in the film.Diplomatic record
View the Reuters archive itemThe signing is documented in UN records. The family identified the filmed moment.
Gazit speaks to the press
Topics in the interview
Gazit explains his recall as a protest over the Abu Daoud affair. He presents Israel’s allegation concerning the extradition agreement, discusses information not supplied to the embassy, and declines to speculate without specific information.
Topic guide based on an automatic transcript, not yet checked against the audio. Times are approximate. Select a topic to jump to that point in the player on this page.
From the original negatives · 1974–1975
Two moments at the White House.
Two photographs from the Ford Presidential Library, presented from high-resolution scans of the original negatives. The archive’s captions name Mordechai Gazit among the participants.
In the Oval Office, 1974
A meeting in the White House Oval Office, with participants talking near the fireplace. The Ford Library’s original caption names U.S. President Gerald FordPresident of the United States, 1974–1977.What they wanted: To continue Kissinger’s path: a second interim agreement between Israel and Egypt.More on Gerald Ford in “People and events” →, Secretary of State Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” →, Prime Minister Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” →, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” → and Mordechai Gazit, alongside other participants.
Photograph: William Fitz-Patrick
Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Before the meeting, 1975
A photo opportunity before U.S. President Gerald FordPresident of the United States, 1974–1977.What they wanted: To continue Kissinger’s path: a second interim agreement between Israel and Egypt.More on Gerald Ford in “People and events” →’s meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” → in the Oval Office. The original caption also names Secretary of State Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” →, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” → and Mordechai Gazit, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office and Political Adviser to the Prime Minister. The media appear in the background.
Photograph: William Fitz-Patrick
Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Names and roles follow the original archival captions; no face-by-face identification is implied. These web copies preserve each complete frame. The Library marks both photographs as public domain. About the collection
The National Photo Collection · 1972–1975
Across the years of public service.
Three photographs from the Government Press Office collection: a diplomatic ceremony and work at the Prime Minister’s Office. The dates and descriptions follow the archival records.
1975
During the years alongside Rabin
A visit to Police Headquarters and an encounter with the Governor of the Bank of Israel: two moments from Gazit’s years as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office.
D135-116
With Bank of Israel Governor Moshe Zanbar
Mordechai Gazit, Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, with Bank of Israel Governor Moshe Zanbar. The National Photo Collection caption places Zanbar on the right.
Photograph: Moshe Milner, Government Press Office. National Photo Collection, D135-116.
D85-070
With Rabin at Police Headquarters
Prime Minister Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” → meeting senior police officers at National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem. Mordechai Gazit is among the participants identified in the National Photo Collection caption.
Photograph: Moshe Milner, Government Press Office. National Photo Collection, D85-070.
21 January 1972
At the President’s Residence
The Norwegian ambassador’s credentials presented to President Zalman Shazar. Gazit’s name appears in the archive record’s keywords; the description retains that distinction.
D759-005
The Norwegian ambassador’s credentials
President Zalman Shazar holding the credentials presented by the new Norwegian ambassador at Beit HaNassi in Jerusalem. Mordechai Gazit is listed in the National Photo Collection record’s keywords.
Photograph: Fritz Cohen, Government Press Office. National Photo Collection, D759-005.
Embedded archive identifier: D759-005; supplied filename: D158-056.jpg.
Displayed for memorial and historical purposes under Government Press Office terms of use. Each photograph retains its original framing; display copies are resized only. Names are taken from the archive captions. Use and credit terms ↗
From the photographic archive
Between one frame and the next.
Two original contact sheets from Rabin’s visits to Washington. Each sheet brings together small photographs from a roll of film, preserving the sequence around the meetings.
The delegation in the Oval Office
Open the full sheet A contact sheet from Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” →’s Washington visit. The official photograph log names Mordechai Gazit among the meeting’s participants for the frame ranges listed here.
Photograph: David Hume Kennerly
White House Photographic Office · Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
A conversation in the Cabinet Room
Open the full sheet The Israeli delegation’s frame ranges record conversations in the Cabinet Room. The photograph log names Gazit among the participants. This sheet also contains photographs of other events.
Photograph: William Fitz-Patrick
White House Photographic Office · Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Reading the contact sheets
These are complete contact sheets, rather than individual portraits. The logs identify groups of frames and note that not every participant appears in every exposure; they do not provide a face-by-face identification. The dates above follow the event logs. The 12 June stamp on sheet A5018 is its processing date; the delegation’s photographs are recorded under 11 June 1975.
Public domain. Collection details and rights at the Ford Library
In his own words
I forgot to tell you that I was wounded in the chest (lung) and that I am going well and that it is just a question of days until I’ll be quite well.
As whole you see that nothing is as terrible as you thought and that I am well cared of.
There is no short road to peace with the Arabs […] the road to peace is long and is not strewn with roses; on the contrary, it is a road of suffering, and yet […] a road to peace exists.
We diplomats claim that we conduct a dialogue, and perhaps we are even convinced of it, but it is not so. In fact we conduct two monologues.
We found out we were dealing with a very serious government, bent on a settlement.
Serving the new state rather than minding my own little shop.
You can offer the discipline of political science a different angle as a practitioner rather than a theorist.
Diplomacy by automation.
It sounds trite, I know, to say that affairs of State consume much more than the regular working hours of the day and that I have too little time for the personal things I care about. This, however, is the truth.
There should be nothing ‘unthinkable’ regarding any of our policy problems.
The quotations of 1963, 1979 and 1987 are translated from Hebrew by the site. Square brackets mark an omission.
Following his thinking through his words
The path to dialogue
In a conversation with Sarah Rehavi and Yehudit Reifen-Ronen, Gazit returned to the Gunnar JarringSwedish diplomat, UN envoy to the Middle East, 1967–1971.What they wanted: A peace agreement based on Security Council Resolution 242.More on Gunnar Jarring in “People and events” → mission, the Rogers initiative and the preparations for talks. He discussed the work of the teams and what turns diplomatic contact into substantive negotiations. This is his retrospective testimony and interpretation.
“How can Israel say no?”
Testimony before the Agranat Commission
After the war the government appointed a state commission of inquiry, chaired by Supreme Court President Shimon Agranat, to examine why Israel had been taken by surprise. On 6 December 1973 Gazit, Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, testified before it. He testified at the commission’s eleventh session, in the afternoon, from 15:45 to 18:05.
He described the limits of his advisory role and the influence of reassuring assessments. He presented diplomatic reports assembled after the war and favored a national estimate and reconsidering responsibilities. The commissioners questioned his recollections and distinguished receiving information from assessing it. This is testimony, not the commission’s findings. Two files in the commission’s archive bear his name.
“Every Jew must ask himself where he erred.”The testimony in full: quotations, topics and pages
Read the testimony in the official archiveA diplomat returns to scholarship
A profile of Gazit as a fellow at Harvard, by Daniel Benjamin. The article is freely available.
Read the articleThe conversation with Ken Stein
An interview on his year as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office under Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” →: the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War and Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” →’s diplomacy that followed. In it, Gazit says he was the one who proposed that Israeli and Egyptian generals negotiate face to face at Kilometre 101. The introduction is publicly accessible; the complete transcript requires a subscription.
Stein interviewed him in Jerusalem, and later quoted the interview in an article on the superpowers in the 1973 war. Two of Gazit’s recollections appear there. In the first days of the war, he said, Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” → urged Israel not to hold back while it waited for American supplies:
“Kissinger told us — hit them, don’t spare your ammunition. You’ll get everything back.”
And during the generals’ talks at Kilometre 101, by the same interview, Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” → told Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” →: “You don’t seem to understand that they are making mistakes. Let me do it.”Testimony
Read the introduction and interview detailsSeen up close
How did Gazit look to those who worked beside him? Meron Medzini, who directed the Government Press Office and in 1973–1974 was also spokesman of the Prime Minister’s Bureau, gave him a page in his biography of Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” →. When Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” → left for Washington, Meir chose Gazit as Director-General of her office and her senior political adviser. She knew him from the years when he headed her bureau at the Foreign Ministry, and, Medzini writes, “respected his intellectual prowess highly”.
The head of the minister’s bureau, Medzini writes, held a central position in the Foreign Ministry, second only to the director-general: he knew her thoughts and her order of priorities, and decided who would see her, what she would read and who would take part in a discussion. Late at night Meir sat with the head of her bureau over the cables and reports, making terse notes in the margins, and he had to divine from them exactly what she meant. Over the years the post was held by Yohanan Meroz, Mordechai Gazit and Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” →.
“Gazit, whose mind was like a cultivated garden, demanded of his subordinates orderly thinking and clear oral and written expression.”
Medzini describes a man of reading and writing. He “disliked slovenly thinking and speech and sought perfection. Above all, he was loyal to Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” → and never criticized her even privately.”
The portrait is not only flattering, and that is its strength. Over the years, Medzini writes, Gazit became more introvert and taciturn. Unlike Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” →, who was full of life, he did not mesh easily into the circle around the Prime Minister and had to fight for time with her, and his insistence on clarity and attention to detail on occasion exasperated her. In some respects he resembled Yaacov HerzogA diplomat; Gazit’s predecessor as minister at the Washington embassy.More on Yaacov Herzog in “People and events” →; to some, Moshe Sharett. Yet once she had appointed him, she was determined that he would run her office until she retired. He found understanding and solace with Yisrael GaliliMinister without portfolio and one of Golda Meir’s closest advisers.More on Yisrael Galili in “People and events” →, mainly in drafting position papers and speeches.
Medzini also credits him with influence on what she said. Her last statement on the Palestinian question, in April 1973, was made, he writes, under the pressure of Gazit, who feared she was getting the image of one who denied the Palestinians’ right to their own identity and their own statehood. And more: attempts by Simcha DinitzIsrael’s ambassador in Washington from 1973.What they wanted: American arms and support, during the war and after it.More on Simcha Dinitz in “People and events” → and Gazit, and even by Moshe DayanDefence Minister, 1967–1974, and Foreign Minister, 1977–1979.What they wanted: Defensible borders; and after 1977, as foreign minister, peace with Egypt.More on Moshe Dayan in “People and events” →, to set up a body that would let her reach decisions in a more orderly manner were rejected by her. After her death, he writes, only three of her former officials came out in her defence and described her efforts to reach an accommodation: Galili, Dinitz and Gazit, in his book on the peace process and in his articles.Book or article
And from outside? Walworth Barbour, the former American ambassador to Israel, said of him in a 1981 interview that he was “a very able fellow” and “a very good friend of the United States”, and marvelled that he still looked too young to have been one of the defenders of Jerusalem in 1948. In the same interview Barbour was asked about Gazit’s thesis, that the John F. KennedyPresident of the United States, 1961–1963. Gazit wrote a book on his policy.What they wanted: To prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, including at Dimona, and to build ties with the Arab states as well.More on John F. Kennedy in “People and events” → administration was the turning point in relations between the United States and Israel. “I think Gazit’s right,” he said, and asked whether the thesis as a whole holds, he answered: “Oh sure.”Testimony
The dinner and the old telegrams: Barbour on their friendship →
The smile that remains
In April 1975, two weeks after Henry KissingerU.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.What they wanted: To push the Soviet Union out of the Middle East and make the United States the only broker, through step-by-step agreements.More on Henry Kissinger in “People and events” →’s shuttle had failed, Dutch Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel visited Israel. The Netherlands was then Israel’s closest friend in Western Europe, and because of its stance in the Yom Kippur War the Arab states had placed it under a full oil embargo. Van der Stoel met President Ephraim Katzir, Foreign Minister Yigal AllonDeputy Prime Minister, and Foreign Minister in Rabin’s government.What they wanted: Defensible borders, and a territorial compromise with Jordan (the “Allon Plan”).More on Yigal Allon in “People and events” → and Prime Minister Yitzhak RabinPrime Minister, 1974–1977; earlier Deputy Chief of Staff and ambassador in Washington.What they wanted: To move step by step, through interim agreements, in return for American guarantees and arms.More on Yitzhak Rabin in “People and events” →. At the meeting with Rabin, Gazit, Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, sat beside him, and the camera caught him smiling.Photo or filmRabin Meets the Dutch Foreign Minister — The Historical LinkPhoto or filmIsrael: Dutch FM recvd by President and working session with Allon
To us, Grandpa Motke
Alongside the roles and dates are his grandson’s words about missing him, and about searching for a few more seconds in which he can be seen.
Read the family remembrance