by Yehuda
Avner
Editor’s
Note: Fifty-nine years since the Six Day War, the stupendous victory is
remembered; the panic and trepidation preceding it largely forgotten. The
author, advisor, diplomat, and
speech writer to five prime ministers, recalls that fraught time.
Syria’s stratagem
to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River, from November 1964 to May 1967, led
to a series of border clashes with Syrian forces and continued to menace Israel
like a floating mine. By late spring of 1967, the situation had deteriorated so
drastically that war correspondents began descending on Israel in droves.
With mounting audacity, provocation followed provocation
as Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser made common cause with Syria, moving
his vast army and air force into the Sinai, ousting the United Nations
peacekeeping forces, blockading Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat, closing the
narrow Straits of Tiran, and signing a war pact with King Hussein that put the
Jordanian army under Egyptian command. Other Arab states quickly adhered to the
alliance, which Nasser told cheering Egyptians was designed to “totally
annihilate the State of Israel once and for all.”
Even before this dire peril, Israel’s mood had been low.
The nation was suffering from an unprecedented economic slump that put tens of
thousands out of work. Record numbers had left the country, and the macabre
joke of the day told of a sign at Lod – now Ben-Gurion Airport – reading, “Will
the last one to leave please switch off the lights?”
As enemy forces mobilized in the north, the south, and
the east, and mobs in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus howled “Death to the Jews!”
and “Throw the Jews into the sea!” people spoke with chilling seriousness of
the possibility of total physical annihilation.
* * *
The Government Press Office, straining under the weight
of processing accreditations to the seemingly endless flow of arriving war
correspondents, asked me to pitch in, translating official communiqués and
giving pro-forma briefings in my spare time. This was what brought me to the
King David Hotel’s coffee shop on the afternoon of 27 May, to keep an
appointment with two correspondents, one from the Houston Chronicle,
and the other from the London Guardian. They were interested in
an overall review and a quick tour of the shattered frontier zone that had
sundered Jerusalem’s heart in the battles of the 1948 War of Independence and
which, ever since, had been a looming frontline, with East Jerusalem occupied
by Jordan.
The coffee shop was packed with journalists sitting
around like vultures, munching on peanuts, pretzels and potato chips, waiting
for the war to begin. They ranged in age from their twenties to their sixties,
and traded gossip at the tops of their voices in German, French, Spanish, and
English. By the looks of them, a good many might well have been plucked
straight from an Ivy League yearbook. Most were casually dressed in sport
shirts and jeans or safari suits, and their easy chitchat made it plain they had
met before in other war zones. The hum of the place gave it the air of a
theater bar crammed with critics waiting for the curtain to rise.
And rise it did.
The IDF reserves were fully mobilized, bringing normal
life to a standstill and transforming usually bustling thoroughfares into eerie
war zones. As we exited the King David Hotel onto St. Julian’s Way – now King
David Street – an air raid siren went
off. It was only a test, but it prompted the few pedestrians in sight to scurry
into the nearest sandbagged doorways. Posters on the shutters of the closed
shops advertised advice about civil defense, bomb shelters, and first aid. As
we reached the street corner, a military policeman on a motorcycle gruffly
stopped us to allow a number of armored vehicles to turn the bend leading to
the border area where Israeli west Jerusalem and Jordanian-controlled east
Jerusalem met.
There, rough concrete walls and high wooden barriers had
been raised to protect pedestrians and traffic from the eyes of Arab sniper
nests, observation posts, and gun positions perched on the Old City’s ramparts
and on its adjacent rooftops, some of which were only yards away. One such
anti-sniper wall blocked Mamilla Road which, until the 1948 war, had been a
graceless yet boisterous thoroughfare leading to the Old City’s Jaffa Gate. It
had once been lined with a hodgepodge of small shops and teemed with pushcarts,
loaded donkeys, and Arab and Jewish vendors and shoppers. Now it was a derelict
border street, strewn with rubble, trash, and the strange dark weeds that
always seem to sprout in the cracks of destroyed places. IDF soldiers in webbed
helmets and battle harness, some scanning the scene with binoculars, stood in
the shadow of the towering concrete wall, and as we approached, they waved us
back, one of them yelling, “Snipers! You might be spotted.”
So we retraced our steps along St. Julian’s Way to Yemin
Moshe, also a stone’s throw from the King David Hotel.
Yemin Moshe was a hillside quarter of red-roofed, chunky
stone dwellings incongruously topped by a windmill, facing the Israeli-held
Mount Zion and the Arab-held southwest corner of the Old City. This
neighborhood had been virtually abandoned since the 1948 war, and it gave off
the distinctive odor of dilapidation and decay. Its lower reaches were strung
with thick entanglements of barbed wire festooned with the irretrievable refuse
of no-man’s land – spiked newspapers, rags, and other filthy debris. Beyond the
barbed wire was a no-man’s land prowled by jackals and cats.
Adjoining the lane overlooking Yemin Moshe was an olive
grove (now the Inbal Hotel and Liberty Bell Park) where an open jeep was
parked. Two dusty soldiers in the wrinkled uniforms of reservists were sitting
in the vehicle, and two more were leaning on it, rifles slung over their
shoulders, talking to a civilian. He was a man in his fifties and was immaculately
dressed.
“Who’s that?” asked the Houston Chronicle fellow
who, in contrast to his drably attired English colleague, was fitted out in
full western regalia – cowboy boots, blue jeans, western shirt, a string tie,
and a Camel cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Menachem Begin,” I said, “leader of the opposition.”
“Well kiss my rusty dusty, so it is. Hi there, Mr. Begin,
mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Presently, presently,” Begin called back. He continued
his conversation with the soldiers for a few more minutes and then, shaking the
hand of each in turn, stood stiffly as if at attention, while the driver revved
the engine, released the brake, and roared off.
“Inspecting the troops, Mr. Begin?” asked the Guardian’s
journalist, with an air of professional impudence.
Begin squeezed his face into something resembling a smile
and said, “Let me say, simply, I’m familiarizing myself with the lay of the
land.”
“And how is your land today?” asked the Englishman
darkly.
“Beautiful as always,” sparred Begin.
“Beautiful but critically imperiled, wouldn’t you say?”
said the Texan, aiming straight for the solar plexus. “Your tiny land is
outmanned, outgunned, out-planed, out-tanked, and outflanked. How on earth are
you going to survive the combined Arab onslaught Nasser is preparing?” He was
staring intently at Begin as if awaiting some exciting spectacle.
“People all over the world are demonstrating their
passionate support for you,” added the English journalist. “Nobel laureates are
lining up to sign petitions in sympathy for your plight. There is a fear this
could be a second Holocaust. Could it be, Mr. Begin?”
Begin was already shaking his head, but the Texan plowed
on: “Washington is asking Eshkol to hold back, to sweat it out until President
Johnson rallies international support to break the blockade of Eilat and remove
the causus belli for war. What say you to that?”
Defiance and melancholy harmonized strangely in Menachem
Begin’s voice when he said, “Gentlemen, what you call international support is,
I fear, illusory. It has the ring more of compassion than support – compassion
for a nation assumed to be on its deathbed. Well, let me assure you” – this
with quiet emphasis – “Israel is not on its deathbed. We do not want war. We
hate war. Premier Eshkol is doing his best to avoid war. But if war is thrust
upon us, the Arabs will be hurt more than we will.”
The journalists were scribbling, flipping page after page
as the opposition leader drove on. “The other day I told the Knesset that
Israel must speak with one voice and with total clarity, warning our enemies of
the dire consequences for them of their intended aggression. That, in itself,
might bring them to their senses.”
The Englishman looked up and asked, “Isn’t it a bit late
for words?”
“It is never too late. You may recall the famous story
about your fellow countryman, Sir Edward Grey. He was the British foreign
secretary on the eve of World War I. It was from his room that, as he put it,
he observed ‘the lamps going out all over Europe.’ Well, at the war’s end,
analysts queried whether Edward Grey had been sufficiently outspoken in
forewarning Germany of the consequences of its aggressive designs. Had he
spoken up with greater clarity, more explicitly on England’s behalf, that
terrible war might never have happened. I told this to our Knesset. I told my
colleagues that in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating into
all-out war we, Israel, must speak up loud and clear so that our enemies will
be under no illusion as to our resolve and capacity to protect our women and
children, come what may.” Then, peering at his watch, “Oh dear, forgive me
gentlemen, I must go. I have to return the car.”
He pointed with his chin to a dilapidated Peugeot
half-hidden in the shade of an olive tree and with a twinkle in his eye said,
“I’ve no car of my own, you see, and this one belongs to our Knesset faction.
One of my colleagues is waiting to use it – so forgive me.”
Walking to the vehicle, his gaze rested momentarily on
the decaying masonry of Yemin Moshe, now tinted gold by the long shadows of the
late afternoon sun. Pensively he said, “Gentlemen, what a beautiful city this
could be without all that ugly barbed wire dividing it,” and he folded himself
into the seat next to the driver and was off.
* * *
Early the following morning I traveled by bus to Tel Aviv
to keep an appointment with another clutch of journalists lodging at a
beachfront hotel. The bus disgorged its passengers – many of them reservists – at
the central bus station, from which I continued by foot. As I drew near the
hotel, I caught sight of a hearse pulling up at the gateway of a small park
overlooking the beach. Out of it tumbled half-a-dozen black-caftaned,
pie-hatted, bearded members of the chevra kadisha – the burial
society – one of whom, the driver, I recognized. He had been a member of the
Jerusalem chevra kadisha team for as long as I could
remember. He stood out because he was older than the rest, was a head taller,
had a physique like an ox and skin so weathered it looked like leather.
Immediately, two of the undertakers began pacing the
park’s grassy area, calling out distances to a third, who wrote down the
measurements in a notebook. The other three began striding around the park’s
periphery crying out incantations, and while they were thus engaged, the brawny
driver stood leaning against the bonnet of his hearse, twirling his sidelocks
and humming a chasidic melody, as if this sort of thing were everyday fare.
A sudden shock of black premonition shot through me.
Anxiously, I asked him what it was they were doing, and he coolly replied that
his Jerusalem chevra kadisha had been instructed to help the
Tel Aviv chevra kadisha consecrate city parks for
cemeteries. Rabbis all over the country were consecrating parks for cemeteries.
He himself had seen a warehouse stockpiled with tons of nylon rolls for
wrapping bodies. Timber yards had been instructed to ready coffin boards.
“We’re preparing for ten, twenty thousand dead,” he
remarked in an expressionless voice. “Some say forty thousand – who knows?”
I remonstrated with him not to spread such pernicious
rumors, but as I continued on my way to the hotel, my every nerve leaped and
shuddered. The journalists smelled a rat immediately. Half a dozen of them were
sitting around a lobby table, bored stiff. One of them, a woman with an Irish
accent, shot me a look that could freeze water, and said, “You’re nervous.
You really are nervous. Why?”
“Performance anxiety,” I blustered. “I’m new to the job.”
“So, what do you have that’s new to tell us?” asked a
paunchy fellow in a linen suit. “Anything happening we don’t know about?”
I extracted the official briefing paper that had been
handed to me that morning and read it out verbatim: “President Johnson has
phoned Prime Minister Eshkol and has promised international action to lift the
blockade of Eilat. Foreign Minister Abba Eban is to meet the president in
Washington this afternoon when it is expected he will be given details of the
plan to send an international flotilla through the Tiran Straits that lead to
Eilat, thus breaking the Egyptian blockade.”
“That’s old news,” snapped an upper echelon type,
contempt in his eyes. “Our own sources have given us that already.”
“There’s not a chance in hell Johnson will be able to put
together an international convoy,” piped up a small thin man with a flashy bow
tie. “He’s asked 18 nations to sign on, and only four – Iceland, New Zealand,
Australia, and the Netherlands – are on board. It’s a non-starter. Johnson is
just one big hulking Texan wishing he could help you out but can’t. He’s too
bogged down in Vietnam. The whole thing is pie in the sky.”
Squiggling in my seat, I managed one more sentence: “I’m
instructed also to say that Israel has received assurances from the president
that on no account will he compromise Israel’s national security.”
“Bull---it!” spat one.
“You’ve come all the way from Jerusalem just to tell us
that?” said another. “I don’t believe a word you say. I think your people are
hiding something. I think you guys are going to jump the gun, fire the first
shot, and go to war.”
“I’m not authorized to say anything more,” I stammered,
and made a hurried, graceless exit, leaving my briefing paper behind.
* * *
Three hours later, back at my desk in Jerusalem, still
shaken and dismayed, I was sitting slumped, staring out of the window at the
summer flowers, when the intercom rang like an alarm bell. It was the prime
minister’s secretary, telling me Eshkol wanted to see me. Assuming a calm
exterior, I walked down the corridor into the elegantly carpeted hallway
leading to the outer office of the prime minister’s suite.
“He wants you to handle his letters of support,” said the
secretary, immersed in her typing. “They’re coming in by the sack-load.”
Two cartons the size of tea chests stood at the side of
her desk, filled with envelopes.
When I walked into the premier’s room, his head was bent
low over a document, but it was easy to see that he looked more wan and sallow
than I had ever seen him before.
“We’re getting lots of letters and telegrams from some
very important people,” he grunted, hardly looking up. “Go through them and,
where necessary, draft individual replies for my signature. Consult Yaakov if
you’re not sure what to say.”
Dr. Yaakov Herzog was one of Israel’s commanding
intellects, possessed of a subtle and powerful mind, who was as equally at home
with Bach as he was with the Bible. An impeccably dressed man, he had about him
a quiet yet compelling charm, and his shrewd face showed the sensitivity of a
scholar and the charisma of a cosmopolitan. A devout Jew, he was the son of a
former Chief Rabbi of Israel and the younger brother of a future president.
Described by Ben-Gurion as a genius in foreign affairs and acknowledged by his
peers as a prodigy in Talmud, philosophy, and theology, Levi Eshkol had
recruited him early on as his most trusted foreign policy adviser. It is hard
to overstate Yaakov Herzog’s influence on my own worldview. To me he was a
tutor, a guide, a counselor, and a mentor. Often, he took me into his
confidence in explaining his opinions and what shaped them, and his subtle and
powerful mind left an indelible imprint on my thinking as a religious Zionist
and public servant.
As I was about to leave the Prime Minister’s room, Herzog
strode in, followed by Colonel Yisrael Lior, Eshkol’s military secretary.
Herzog had obtained his early schooling in Dublin, where his father had once
been Chief Rabbi, so his Hebrew was brushed with an Irish brogue, and this was
greatly amplified when he told Eshkol that President Johnson had just sent a
message through our Washington Embassy warning Israel not to fire the first
shot. If Israel did spark a war, the Jewish State would have to go it alone.
The United States needed more time to assemble an international flotilla to
break the Egyptian blockade of Eilat and remove, thereby, the causes for war,
said the message.
Eshkol listened glumly but did not say a word.
“There’s more,” continued Herzog, holding up another
cable. “It’s from the Soviets. The operative paragraph reads: ‘If the Israeli
Government insists on taking upon itself the responsibility for the outbreak of
armed confrontation, it will pay the full price of such action.’”
The Prime Minister still did not say a word. He just
faced Herzog without looking directly at him.
“And there is something more,” his chief adviser went on,
a chilling tone creeping into his voice. “Field Intelligence reports that
poison gas equipment has been spotted in Sinai. There is a possibility that
Nasser intends to use it. Nasser has used poison gas before, in his recent war
with Yemen.”
“And we have no stockpiles of gas masks,” added a very
pale Colonel Yisrael Lior.
“No gas masks?” asked the Prime Minister, his eyes
locking onto Herzog’s.
“Nothing to speak of,” confirmed Herzog, his usually
urbane manner distorted into extreme anxiety.
The Prime Minister jerked his head, bit his lips, and sat
there perfectly still for a moment. “Blit vet zich giessen vee vosser –
Blood will spill like water” he whispered to himself. And I, full of
foreboding, moved to the door and closed it on them as the three leaned their
heads together, speaking privately. The only words I caught were those of
Eshkol saying to Herzog, “Ikh darf reden mit’n der gelernter nar – I must
speak to the learned fool.” He meant Foreign Minister Abba Eban.
That’s how things now were between Eshkol and Eban, the
South African-born and Cambridge-educated foreign minister. He was adored by
Jewish communities the world over for his Churchillian eloquence, applauded at
the United Nations for his brilliant and insightful oratory, highly sought
after by high society for his erudition and sophistication, and lauded in
virtually all capitals as a world-class statesman. Yet at home he existed on
the least of power bases and, however unfairly, was seen by his own down-to-earth
cabinet compatriots as an incongruous and pretentious outsider. These people
gave little credence to Abba Eban’s decision-making acumen. To them he was more
a mouthpiece than a mind. No one questioned his exceptional diplomatic gifts
and dazzling powers of communication, but few trusted his strategic thinking.
Levi Eshkol didn’t, Golda Meir didn’t, Yitzhak Rabin didn’t, and if Menachem
Begin were asked, he probably would have said he didn’t either. Sardonically,
Levi Eshkol once said of him: “Eban never gives the right solution, only the
right speech.”
“The Prime Minister must speak to Eban,” called Yaakov
Herzog to the secretary, sticking his head around the door. “He’s due to meet
President Johnson soon. Track him down in Washington.”
As the secretary fussed with a phone directory, I lifted
the first of the two cartons of letters to carry them to my room. When I
returned for the second one, I could distinctly hear Levi Eshkol’s voice
through the half-open door, yelling into the telephone: “You hear me, Eban?
That’s right – poison gas. Write down what I’m saying. I’m telling you to
remind the President what he promised me. He promised me that the United States
would stand by us if we were threatened. Yes, yes, in all circumstances – that’s
what he said. And remind him what he said to me when I asked him what would
happen if one day Egypt attacked us and the United States had other problems on
its head – what would be then? Write down that he said the same thing. And tell
him this is what is about to happen, and with poison gas, too. Tell him the
question is no longer freedom of shipping to Eilat. The question is Israel’s
existence.” Then, totally beside himself with anger and frustration, he
shrieked in Yiddish, “Zug dem goy as mir haben tzu ton mot chayes. Ir hert
– chayes! – Tell the goy we’re dealing with animals. You hear – animals!”
I all but dropped the carton in fright as the prime
minister slammed the phone down in anger.
Reproduced with permission from The Prime Ministers by Yehuda Avner; The Toby Press. Available on
