Davos Diary: Surreal encounters in the snow

Each year the world's machinators trek to a remote mountaintop where they slip and slide along icy alleys in search of parties and panels. But it isn't all absurd.

This weekend wraps up the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where participants like Antony Blinken and Tom Friedman were preoccupied with Israel’s war against Hamas. It got me thinking of the 2006 meeting, which was my first rodeo and where we were … preoccupied with Hamas.

There was no discernable confusion back then about the jihadi terrorist group. Everyone knew they had spent years staging suicide bombings to move Israelis to the right and kill the peace process, since they were fanatics. Now, of course, there is — yet more evidence that not all change should be embraced.

It was during “Davos” that we learned Hamas had won an election (the last to be held by the Palestinian Authority). The group took 44%, but splits among the others enabled it to outscore the moderate Fatah, win over half the seats and establish the popular false narrative that it was “elected” (the vote was for the legislature only).

There was a flurry of despair among the world’s assembled machinators, soon to be drowned in much booze and big ideas. These were present in equal measure: Davos has been for about a half century the marquee event of the WEF think-tank, and the legions of very important, somewhat important and merely self-important (it’s such a fine line) are briefly conjoined in a wobbly marathon of parties and panels. The haul themselves up the remote mountain by bus and train and taxi, and together they slip and slide on the treacherously icy alleys that crisscross an un-quaint town.

I was based in London for AP back then, and the city was on a global high; so was I, as I recall, and so I felt at home at Davos. More precisely: I knew I was a pretender, but soon realized that so was almost everyone. Attending Davos almost yearly for a time, I always managed to scheme a coveted “white pass” – which means one is an actual delegate and not an assistant, a hanger-on or (heaven forfend) a journalist.

In 2007 this enabled me to be part of a ceremonious dinner discussion on how to make the world “a better place.” There were about 100 tables, and mine – which included a man who circumnavigated the globe by balloon – chose me to lead the discussion on what was the biggest need in the world.