by Elie Wiesel
As always, when Israel lives through a crisis I feel like the medieval poet Yehuda Halevy, who said that his heart was in the East though he himself lived far away, in the West. Though I reside in Manhattan, my thoughts are elsewhere, across the ocean, in the land of our ancestors.
I spend hours listening to the radio, reading the newspapers, watching television. I play with Elisha, sing him his favorite melodies, drink in his smile, but not even he can lighten my mood.
Less than a week before the start of hostilities, Palestinian terrorists had attacked an Austrian train transporting Russian-Jewish emigrants. Was it meant as a diversion? There were rumors to that effect. The incident forced Golda Meir to make a quick, unpleasant trip to Vienna to meet Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, who, she told us, didn’t offer her so much as a glass of water. Another rumor: An Israeli spy in Egypt was said to have sent secret information about a planned Syrian-Egyptian invasion. Were his Israeli handlers too preoccupied with the crisis in Vienna to react? Third rumor: The same spy or another highly placed agent of the Mossad was said to have sent on Yom Kippur eve even more precise information, specifying that the offensive would be launched on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. It appeared that a low-level officer, having misinterpreted the information, took the initiative to designate 6 p.m. as zero hour, which was four hours too late. It was whispered that the staff generals were still with Golda and Moshe Dayan when the Egyptian artillery opened fire on the defenses along the Suez Canal.
At the time these rumors were not known in Israel, at least not by the public at large. Overwhelmed by the gravity of the news coming from the battlefields, Israelis felt, once again, isolated and abandoned.
Western Europe was a disappointment. Not a single country—not even France, Great Britain, or Germany—authorized the giant American planes, crammed with arms, to refuel at their airports. An unforgivable stance. On every front the war favored the aggressors. There were terrible battles on the Golan, a bloody retreat in the Sinai. On land and in the air, Tsahal (the Israeli army) was enduring unprecedented losses in human lives and equipment. And the world let it happen.
One more rumor, a persistent one: It was said that Golda had given the order to ready the ultimate option. That was why the White House suddenly gave in to the Israeli government and established an aerial bridge for military use between America and Israel … to prevent the first nuclear conflict since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, Israel has always denied possession of atomic weapons.
A Socialist leader told me that he had witnessed a London meeting of the Socialist international leadership urgently called by Golda Meir, shortly after the Yom Kippur War. A frosty silence hung over the hall when she began to settle accounts with her ideological and political comrades: How could they have betrayed the only democratic state in the Middle East? How could they have turned their backs on the sole Socialist government of the region? She ended with a few words that sent shivers through the audience: “What did you think?” she asked. “That confronted with death, Israel would go down alone?” It seems nobody applauded Golda. Nobody came to pay their respects. Had she shamed or frightened them by alluding to the nuclear capacities of Israel?
In the end, after the tragic failures of the early days, Tsahal astounds the world with its military genius. The invading armies are defeated. After crossing the Suez Canal, Ariel Sharon’s tanks advance toward Cairo. And in the north, Israeli troops push to within thirty-seven kilometers of Damascus.
And yet the mood in Israel is oppressive. The evening news shows the handsome faces of the many fallen soldiers and officers. Never before has the State of Israel suffered such losses. Sadat’s surprise attack has shaken the Jewish state to its core.
At the very onset of hostilities I decide with Sigmund Strochlitz, my survivor friend from Connecticut for whom Bendin remains as alive as Sighet is for me, to show our solidarity by organizing a trip to Israel for a group of influential American Jews. The plan is to bring along medical supplies for the army, which, according to press reports, are dwindling fast. We draw up a list of some hundred names among the wealthiest and most respected of the American Jewish community. Forty decline immediately. Twenty promise to think about it. Thirty say: Maybe. In the end, Sigmund and I are the only ones. Marion would like to go, but then decides to stay with Elisha.
The El Al flight is filled with Israelis going home. The first rows are occupied by Abba Eban and his entourage. They work throughout the flight. From time to time a crew member brings them radio dispatches.
Silence falls over the plane as we land. Our first visit is to Sigmund’s relatives, children of survivors. He rings the doorbell. The door opens and, not expecting his visit, they almost faint. They mention names: This one is in the Sinai, another is en route to the Golan. As for me, I go to see no one: I call no cousin, no friend. I would be ashamed to tell them that I have come for just one day, one night.
We take rooms at the Tel Aviv Hilton. It looks empty and dark. In the morning we join a group of foreign journalists heading for the northern front. Our escort is a young officer I know only by name, the future minister Amnon Rubinstein. On the bus someone calls out my name. I look up and see André Schwarz-Bart. By a strange quirk of fate, we are always together, André and I, whenever there is reason to testify for those who live within us.
I whisper my impressions into my pocket recorder. They are meant for Elisha. If he listens well, he’ll also hear the sound of mortars.
I want to go up to Jerusalem to meditate at the Wall. Impossible. A quick trip to the Sinai? Impossible. Ask friends to intercede? Surely they are mobilized. The only planned visit of our lightning trip is to the military hospital Tel-Hashomer, to hand over the medical supplies to my friend Dr. Bollek Goldman, codirector of the hospital. Bollek takes us on his rounds. Before the severely wounded, he describes their heroic military feats. He introduces me to an officer from a prestigious tank division. From between his bandages his eyes are scrutinizing me. He whispers unintelligible words. Bollek leans over him. “He has read your books,” he says. “He wishes to shake your hand.” I hesitate. “Go on,” Bollek urges me. I step forward and hold something resembling a hand. The wounded man’s lips are moving. He whispers to me and no words have ever moved me so much.
Back in New York, I intently follow the aftermath of this war that the Israeli press has dubbed Hamekhdal, the war of incompetence. People are angry. Golda wins the elections but loses the confidence of her party. As a result she must resign to make room for her young ambassador to Washington, General Yitzhak Rabin.
The wounds of this conflict have never healed. Headed by Justice Agranat, president of the Israeli Supreme Court, a High Commission of Inquiry was named to assess the responsibilities of those who failed to foresee and prevent the aggression. This commission responds to a real need; the country is confronting a crisis of confidence. Every day it is shaken by a new “affair.” Politicians accuse one another, generals justify themselves. Israel no longer trusts its leaders. Did it also lose pride in its army?
• • •
Two years later, Marion, Elisha, and I are staying at the Sharon Hotel at the beach in Herzliyya. One day I get a call from General Eleazar, “Dado,” as Israelis fondly call him. I had met him at the home of General Haim Bar-Lev, his predecessor and faithful companion during the Six-Day War, but I hardly know him. The Yom Kippur War had marked the end of Eleazar’s glorious military career, the Agranat Commission having forced him to resign as commander in chief of the army. “Are you also avoiding me?” he asks. “Of course not,” I protest. “I respect your privacy, that’s all.” He wants to meet. “When?” I ask. “Right now,” he says.
Dado arrives a half hour later. It is the first time I see him in civilian clothes. He has an open face with deeply etched features. His gaze is direct. We sit down in a corner of the lobby. He comes straight to the point: “I don’t know whether you know what is going on here. But you should.” From his briefcase he pulls several files and lays
them out on the table. “Here are a few documents. Top secret. If any one of these had been submitted to me at the time, I would have had a clearer view of the situation. And the danger. These documents were received during the weeks preceding the start of hostilities by subordinates at Military Intelligence who gave them little credence. According to their chief, General Eli Zeira, the Arabs were neither ready nor capable of launching another war against Israel. I am not saying that he and his team should be blamed. I was their superior; I assume full responsibility for what they did. But why were my superiors whitewashed?”
For three hours, he pleads his innocence. Finally he bursts into sobs. After he leaves I tell Marion: “I have just seen a man with a broken heart.”
For a whole week I am ill, shaken by violent bouts of fever. My body aches; I hallucinate. What is wrong with me? Bollek Goldman, who has become a devoted friend, comes running from Tel-Hashomer. He can find no medical explanation for my ailment. Could it be psychosomatic? He comes to see me every day. His presence does me more good than his medications.
A short time later, swimming in his pool, Dado has a heart attack. He dies instantly. His military funeral is almost a state funeral. Did the government suddenly feel guilty? In Israel as everywhere else people mistakenly believe it is possible to make up for injustices with pomp and circumstance.
Later I question several members of the Agranat Commission: Why had they been so severe with Dado and so indulgent with his superiors? If one is to believe them, the commission’s charter forbade them to go beyond the military and to implicate the politicians. This was mined and dangerous terrain. I insist: “Was it just? Was it fair?” Their embarrassed replies do not satisfy me.
As for Golda, I saw her only one more time. Bitter, frail, she did not forgive those who had pushed her out. As a rule, Golda never forgave. As Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel observe in their excellent book Le siècle d’Israël: “Everything she believes in is white, everything she rejects is black.”
Now that she had fallen, did she expect me to defend her against her many political adversaries? Unfortunately, I could not. For I believe that because I am not an Israeli citizen, I must not interfere in Israel’s internal affairs. Moreover … Golda had not convinced me. Surely she was not the only one responsible for the disaster of the early days, but she should have borne some of the onus. The Agranat Commission should not have whitewashed the government. One day I said to Golda: “At war’s end, why didn’t you offer your resignation? The people of Israel would not have accepted.” Golda did not see it that way. She resented my question. In any case, since the Eban affair we had been less close.
I ask Moshe Dayan if he had agreed with the Agranat Commission’s conclusions. Yes, he had. And does he not feel responsible for what happened? No, he does not. And after a moment he adds very quietly: “If I had felt guilty, I would have put a bullet through my head.”
Dayan remained a stranger to me as long as he was commander in chief or minister of defense. Only later did ties develop between us. With rare exceptions I tend to appreciate political men and women more when they are out of office. I felt closer to David Ben-Gurion after he left office to live at Kibbutz Sde Boker. He seemed more human, more vulnerable. The man who had hated the “Stern Gang” to the point of throwing its leaders into prison now became a close friend of Yehoshua Cohen, the old Stern Gang member with a legendary “terrorist” past.
I remember my first encounter with Moshe Dayan. He was in the United States on a lecture tour and called me from Miami to invite me to lunch. “Just you and me,” he said. “We’ll be able to talk quietly.” We made an appointment at the Regency Hotel in New York. The purpose? He explained: “As you know, all my life, I have fought against the enemies of Israel. Now I want to work on behalf of the Jews outside of Israel.” He told me his plan: to study from multiple angles this Jewish community that had survived, to understand the reasons for its endurance. If it were possible to discover which elements had saved it from extinction, we could apply this knowledge whenever the Diaspora found itself in difficulty.
The idea was bizarre. The destiny of a people cannot be reduced to a sociological or scientific formula; it contains mysterious, if not mystical, factors. But he believed in it. He gave up this project only when Menachem Begin, acceding to power in 1977, named him minister of foreign affairs. Later, if Begin was able to conclude a peace treaty with Sadat, it was largely due to Dayan.
The annual UJA conference is to take place in late 1973. For the second time its director, Irving Bernstein, invites me to give an address. His argument is almost the same as in 1972, after the massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich: “The Jewish community is going through a moral crisis. It is therefore important that …” He is right; the Yom Kippur War still weighs heavily on our individual and our collective consciousness. What to say to our distraught friends from Israel? The theme becomes clear: “Against despair.” To be a Jew means not to despair, even when it seems justified.
An example: In a sealed cattle car an old Jew cries out: “Today is Simhat Torah, the festival of the Law. We must rejoice.” He pulls a small Sefer-Torah from his bag and begins to sing. Another example: In a barracks, over there, men are wondering how to celebrate the festival of the Torah without a Sefer-Torah. One of them glimpses a young boy and signals him to come over: “Do you remember what you learned in heder?” “Yes, I remember Shma Israel,” the boy replies. “Then recite it.” “Shma Israel, adoshem elokhenu, adoshem ekhad….” Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One…. “Good,” says the man, lifting up the boy, as if he were the Sefer-Torah itself, and he begins to dance and sing the traditional prayers.
In our tradition celebrating life is more important than mourning the dead. The law is strict: When a wedding procession crosses a funeral procession, the former has the right-of-way.
Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav—you may remember my love for his teachings—often said: “Gvalt yidden, seit eich nisht meyaesh….” For the love of heaven, Jews, do not despair…. In his memoirs, the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum refers to a Bratzlav shtibel inside the Warsaw Ghetto. Over its entrance was the same inscription: JEWS, DO NOT DESPAIR. For a Jew, who bears a four-thousand-year-old memory, despair is equivalent to blasphemy.
Invited soon after to address the annual FSJU (French UJA) conference in Paris, I develop the same theme: the struggle against despair. The speaker who follows me to the podium is the Israeli ambassador, Asher ben Nathan. I did not know that he had just lost a son in battle. Had I known, I would have remained silent.
In 1974, after the Yom Kippur War, Israel is constantly shaken by revelations of scandals linked to the military debacle of the early days of the war. In the United States it becomes impossible to open a newspaper without feeling shame and distress. Israeli morale is at its lowest, and it affects ours in the Diaspora. Irving Bernstein comes to see me several times, accompanied by other leaders of the Jewish community, urging me to speak up. One morning Irving arrives with an invitation to address the board of governors of the Jewish Agency, which is about to meet in Jerusalem. “It is a kind of a superparliament of the Jewish people,” explains Bernstein. “It includes Israelis and non-Israelis. For you, for us, it is the ideal platform.” I ask Golda’s advice and that of my Master, Saul Lieberman. Both urge me to accept, though Lieberman warns: “They will be sure to criticize you. But that is the price one pays for living in the Diaspora.”
As I prepare my speech I strive to be frank without hurting my listeners. How am I to put my questions so as not to offend them?
After arriving in Jerusalem the same day as President Nixon—you can imagine the traffic!—I call Golda and read her my text. She is not pleased and admonishes me: “Is that all you have to say to them? Why don’t you remind them of what they did to me?” Taken aback, I reply: “Golda, I haven’t come here to fight for you, but for those of us in the Diaspora.”
To say that my words were well received would be not an exaggeration bu
t a lie. Of course the listeners applauded, but out of courtesy, with little enthusiasm. The next day the Israeli press settled its score with me: “How dare someone who lives in America tell us what to do! Since when is a Jew from the Diaspora entitled to preach to us?” The following is part of what I managed to say:
There are questions we must ask ourselves at times, and we must do so without complacency. They may well irritate you; would you prefer self-censorship? Pushkin claims that a beautiful lie is superior to a debasing truth. I don’t agree: Truth alone elevates man, even when it hurts. The task of the writer is, after all, not to appease or flatter, but to disturb, to warn, to question by questioning oneself.
All this, as you may have guessed, is the prelude to a few criticisms. I dislike having to articulate them; it is a role that does not suit me. Yes, such is the price I must pay for living in the Diaspora: I never criticize Israel outside Israel.
We are Jews, you and I. You are Israeli; I am not. You represent a state, a group, a nation, with its structures and institutions; I represent no one but the characters I have created or who have created me. You have found; I am still seeking. You have been able to make the break; I have not. As a Jew assuming his Judaism, why have I not settled in the land of our ancestors? That is a question you have asked me often. It annoys you, and I understand why. The Diaspora troubles you. Just as Israel challenges its validity, it represents a challenge to Israel. We are united by the past, divided by the present. Whose fault is it? We blame nobody. We each have our contradictions. Each solves them or claims them in his own way. Yet you show your disapproval in periods of crisis, while we tell you of our concern in periods of calm.
What is this all about? Our arguments are well known. Let us start with yours. Opposed as you are to the Diaspora—historically, philosophically—you say that its Jews are riddled with complexes and paradoxes. In spite of being personae non gratae for centuries in numerous countries, they still choose to stay there—to cling to what? What was it that prevented us in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from following a Rebbe Gershon Kitiver or a Rebbe Mendel of Vitebsk to the Holy Land? Between one pogrom and the next, one massacre and the next, we knocked at exile’s every door rather than return to our home.