Tuesday, January 01 2008
By Beth Reinhard (
MiamiHerald.com)
Rudy Giuliani's ties to the cigar community is a Miami tale that epitomizes the city's appeal to old Havana and New York personalities.
In the spring of 1996, during a nighttime tour of Jerusalem's old quarter, then-mayor Ehud Olmert offered Rudy Giuliani a Cuban cigar.
Giuliani's aide, a Cuban Jew whose family had escaped Fidel Castro's communist government, grabbed the Dunhill from Olmert's lips and demanded to know how could he support a repressive regime that had backed Palestinian terrorists.
The next day, an apologetic Olmert presented a gift: a Dominican Dunhill.
The New York City mayor had given up smoking. But in the story Giuliani tells, he started dreaming of cigars. He couldn't resist any longer, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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