At the same time, however, Adelson was sending bills, and no money was forthcoming. To make matters worse, by January 1997, barely six months after their initial conversation with Netanyahu in New York, Josephson and Adelson had already seen two chairmen of the Israeli committee resign. Several months later, their $12 million budget was cut in half.

“What was happening was, we started out with a whole list of things we wanted to do, and every time there were problems, we’d eliminate something. So we kept paring down and paring down until finally you say, ‘Hey, there’s really nothing left except the television special we’re doing in Los Angeles.’ “ (The two-hour special, To Life! America Salutes Israel’s 50th, produced by television veterans Don Mischer and Gil Cates and with a writing staff headed by M*A*S*H creator Larry Gelbart, ran on CBS last week.)

To make matters worse, while Josephson and Adelson were going through this excruciatingly disappointing process, negative items began to appear about them in the Israeli press. First they were portrayed (incorrectly) as major contributors to Netanyahu’s campaign who were rewarded with these “plum” jobs as heads of the international anniversary committee.

Then they were accused of submitting fictionalized expense reports. corruption, screamed a headline in the Jerusalem Post. “We went through a period,” says Josephson, “where the implications were that here were these well-off American Jews flying first-class, staying in the best hotels, and trying to get the Israeli government to pay for it. Well, the truth is, we did fly first-class and we did stay in the best hotels, but we paid for it ourselves.”

The accusations had enough traction that the Knesset actually voted to send three auditors to Los Angeles to go through Adelson’s books. At issue was $300,000 he submitted in expenses. “They went to my accountant’s office and looked at checks, who was at what lunch. They got into very minute details,” he says. “They came over with a hostile attitude and left apologizing.”

Though Adelson was livid that his integrity and his credibility were being challenged, he wasn’t surprised. “I’m not naïve. I knew beforehand that because of my relationship with Bibi, somebody might take a shot at me because they wanted to embarrass him. I had $150,000 in legitimate expenses that I didn’t put in because I felt they could be criticized as personal, even though they weren’t.”

And finally, Israeli resentment, which had bubbled below the surface, began to seep out. Quotes appeared in Israeli newspapers charging that the Americans were throwing their weight around and trying to Americanize the celebrations. “I don’t think it’s true completely, but there was some of that feeling,” Adelson says. “With the Ramat Gan stadium show, we discussed the plans endlessly and the Israelis agreed that having David Wolper and Gary Smith involved, given their experience in this area, would be a positive thing. We always planned to do the show in Hebrew and have a co-producer in Israel. But I can’t deny there was a feeling on the part of those involved in Israel that this was a show they should produce themselves.”

In the end, that’s exactly what happened. Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, outraged that a significant symbolic event like this was going to be held in Tel Aviv, demanded that the show be moved to Israel’s capital. It was. It was also significantly scaled down in size and scope and will no longer be televised around the world on Independence Night. For all their time and effort, and their admirable determination to hang in despite the disappointments and the indignities, Josephson and Adelson finished up with very little in the way of tangible results.

“The reason Americans wanted a big celebration,” says Dr. Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, the intellectual center of America’s modern orthodox movement, “is Americans have a greater need for the psychological dimension of the event. We are a community in distress. Except the Israelis recognize their distress better than we recognize ours. The trouble is we have the American tendency to try and cover things up with a great deal of pseudo-optimism.”