Thirteen Days in September

by Lawrence Wright

  A distraught Begin listened to the report of the casualties on the BBC, which was followed by the playing of a funeral march. One of his aides, concerned about Begin’s mental state, removed a tube from the radio so he couldn’t listen anymore.

  Haganah ordered Begin to take sole responsibility, which he loyally did. Ben-Gurion then denounced the operation, although according to Irgun he had secretly authorized it. “The Irgun is the enemy of the Jewish people,” the prime minister publicly declared. “It has always opposed me.”

  Begin admitted that the fact that innocents were killed caused him “days of pain and nights of sorrow,” but his grief was circumscribed. “We mourn the Jewish victims,” he said on the radio afterward. “The British did not mourn the six million Jews who lost their lives, nor the Jewish fighters the British have murdered with their own hands. We leave the mourning for the British victims to the British.” He neglected to mention the other victims, including the Arabs, who made up the largest number of fatalities.

  During the manhunt that followed, Begin hid in a secret compartment in his house for four days without food or water. A wanted poster was circulated by British authorities with a photo of Begin, slightly frowning and staring evenly at the camera with an implacable expression. The poster described him as “5ft. 9in.”—he was actually about three inches shorter—“medium build, long hooked nose, bad teeth, wears horn-rimmed spectacles.” The search was confounded by the abundance of misinformation in the British files. “He may be a Soviet agent,” the British Foreign Office speculated. “He was made ‘better-looking’ by a German-Jewish doctor in Cairo,” a British newspaper asserted. “It is likely the flat feet and bad teeth have also been remedied.”

  As Begin had hoped, the King David bombing exhausted the will of the British people to continue the Mandate. They were already spending more on Palestine than on their own domestic health and education. In February 1947, Britain announced it was turning the problem of Palestine over to the UN, saying the Mandate had proved “unworkable.”

  Sensing victory, Begin stepped up the attacks—sixteen on a single day in March, including a bomb in a British officers club that killed twelve. When teenage members of his Irgun gang were arrested and flogged by the British, Begin warned that British officers would be treated in the same demeaning fashion, stroke for stroke. No doubt the childhood memory of Polish soldiers flogging Jews in Brisk flooded his mind. “For hundreds of years you have been whipping ‘natives’ in your colonies—without retaliation,” an Irgun message stated. “Jews are not Zulus. You will not whip Jews in their homeland.” Britain stopped this practice after four of its soldiers were captured and flogged. The news of this event went all over the world, in part because of the equivalence in human worth that Jews had dared to make with their British occupiers.

  Begin soon posed an even more insulting challenge to British authority. Early on the morning of July 29, the British hanged three Irgunists convicted of terrorist crimes. That very same morning, Begin’s men hanged two British soldiers and booby-trapped their dead bodies. Begin, the lawyer, justified the murders by saying that the soldiers, who had been randomly kidnapped, had been court-martialed for “anti-Hebrew activities.”

  Many Jews were appalled by this action, not only by the murder of the British sergeants but also by Begin’s legal sophistry. There was an immediate and virulent eruption of anti-Semitic attacks all over Britain—synagogues burned, shops looted. Outraged British troops went on a shooting spree in Tel Aviv, killing five civilians. And yet Begin’s strategy had worked. The hanging of the British sergeants tipped the scale of public opinion in the UK decisively against the Mandate.

  Terror was not the only reason that the State of Israel finally came into being, but the Irgun campaign was a critical factor in driving the British out of Palestine. Begin was the first terrorist to grasp the value of publicity in promoting his cause to an international audience. The transformation of terrorism from a primarily local phenomenon into a global one came about in large part because of the success of his tactics. He pioneered techniques that would become basic terrorist strategy, such as simultaneous bombings and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). He proved that, under the right circumstances, terror works. Many years later, American forces would find a copy of Begin’s memoir The Revolt in the library of an al-Qaeda training camp. Osama bin Laden read Begin in an attempt to understand how a terrorist transformed himself into a statesman.

  Begin always disputed that he had engaged in terror. He wrote that his object was “precisely the reverse of ‘terrorism,’ ” because the point of his struggle was to free Jews from their chief affliction—fear. He concludes, “Historically we were not ‘terrorists.’ We were, strictly speaking, anti-terrorists.”

  Day Three

  Jimmy Carter beside Camp David fish pond

  AFTER BREAKFAST on the morning of September 7, Carter and his top aides, Vance and Brzezinski, met with Begin, Dayan, and Weizman. Begin was in full fury. Carter tried to placate him by agreeing that Sadat’s proposal was “very tough.” He asked the Israelis if they could make some concession that would help change the mood of the summit; otherwise, it would all end very soon. Begin ignored his plea, insisting on going through the Egyptian proposal line by line, treating individual words and phrases as if he were spitting out poison. “Palestinians!” he exclaimed. “This is an unacceptable reference. Jews are also Palestinians.” “Conquered territory! Gaza was also conquered by Egypt.” Carter pointed out that Egypt was not laying a claim to Gaza, which was now under Israeli control. As Begin continued to tear into the Egyptian document, Carter realized how much the prime minister valued it as a foil to avoid addressing the issues.

  “What do you actually want for Israel if peace is signed?” Carter said, nearly shouting in frustration. “How many refugees and what kind can come back? I need to know whether you need to monitor the border, what military outposts are necessary to guard your security.” He added, “My greatest strength here is your confidence—but I don’t feel that I have your trust.”

  “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have confidence in you,” Weizman protested.

  “You are as evasive with me as with the Arabs,” Carter responded. He said it was time to stop “assing around” and put their cards on the table. “Throw away reticence. Tell us what you really need.” The discussion got out of hand. Carter accused Begin of wanting to hang on to the West Bank, and said that his offer of autonomy was really just a “subterfuge” to keep the territory under permanent control.

  Begin bridled at having his integrity questioned. Then he turned again to the Egyptian proposal, claiming it would force Jews to become a minority in their own country. That’s the kind of peace Sadat was seeking, he contended—with an Israel doomed by the very terms of his offer.

  “Sinai settlements!” Begin continued, in his endless refutation of the Egyptian proposal. “There is a national consensus in Israel that the settlements must stay!”

  At the outset of the Camp David summit, Sinai had seemed to be the issue most easily resolved, but Carter would come to the conclusion that it was, in fact, the most difficult of all. It was where the trouble all began.

  THE BIBLE AND THE QURAN tell very similar stories about the origin of the conflict between the Egyptians and the Israelites. For four centuries, large numbers of Israelites were living and prospering in Egypt, growing into a great nation. Then a new pharaoh arises who is suspicious of the Israelites. Worried that they are becoming too numerous and pose a threat, Pharaoh turns the Israelites into slaves and orders that every male child born among them be thrown into the Nile.

  One day, Pharaoh’s daughter (in the Quran, it’s Pharaoh’s wife) discovers a beautiful child floating in a wicker basket among the reeds of the river. This is Moses. The daughter is enchanted and adopts Moses into the royal household. Because the baby refuses to suckle at an Egyptian’s breast, the child’s actual mother is summoned to act as a wet nurse. Moses i
s raised as a prince, but he is always aware that he is a Hebrew. When he witnesses one of his enslaved kinsmen being beaten by an Egyptian overseer, he strikes the assailant and kills him. He spends the next four decades in exile, fleeing the wrath of Pharaoh, living as a nomadic shepherd in the land of Midian, across the Red Sea.

  While tending his flock at the base of Mount Sinai, he investigates a strange fire on the slope. He finds a bush aflame, and yet it is not consumed by the blaze. “Moses,” a voice cries out from the flames, “I am God, the Lord of the Worlds!” The Lord tells Moses that he has taken pity on the Israelites. For the first time, God has decided to actively shape human history by taking the side of the Jews. “I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” He appoints Moses to lead his people out of Egypt.

  Moses returns from Sinai to confront Pharaoh. “Let my people go,” he demands. When Pharaoh refuses, Moses and his brother Aaron cast a spell, turning the Nile into a river of blood. God sends a series of devastating plagues—frogs, boils, lice, flies, wild animals, hailstorms, locusts, and days of darkness—to harry the Egyptians until Pharaoh relents. Again and again, Pharaoh promises Moses, “If you remove this plague from us, we will truly believe in you and let the children of Israel go with you!” The Quran says that each time a plague is lifted, Pharaoh changes his mind and rejects his pledge to free the Israelites. The Bible says that God intentionally hardened Pharaoh’s heart, telling Moses that he is doing so in order to make a point, “that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your son’s son how I have made sport of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them; that you may know that I am the Lord.”

  Finally God instructs Moses and Aaron to tell their people to slaughter a yearling lamb and smear its blood on their doorways. “I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast,” he says. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” In memory of this miracle, Jews celebrate Passover each year. At the Seder, a drop of wine is spilled for each of the ten plagues, to signify that the joy of the Jews because of their liberation is diminished by the suffering inflicted on the Egyptian people.

  When Pharaoh awakens to find his own first-born son among the dead, he summons Moses and entreats him, “Go forth from among my people, both you and the people of Israel.” The Israelites quickly gather their belongings, but also take the time to demand jewelry and clothing from the ruined Egyptians.

  But God isn’t finished with Pharaoh and his people. Once again, he hardens the heart of the ruler and causes him to summon his chariot and marshal his entire army. The Egyptian force chases the Israelites and catches up to them on the shore of the Red Sea. The cornered Israelites cry out to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Moses responds by lifting his rod, whereupon a great wind rises up, parting the waters of the Red Sea. The Israelites cross into Sinai, but when the Pharaoh and his army pursue them, the Lord causes the waters to return and swallow them up. Not a single soldier survives. Moses and his people stand on the far bank and marvel at the sight, and they sing out,

  My strength and my refuge is the Lord,

  and he has become my savior.

  This is my God, I praise him;

  the God of my father, I extol him.

  The Lord is a warrior,

  Lord is his name!

  “We saved the Children of Israel from their degrading suffering at the hands of Pharaoh,” the Quran concludes.

  For the secular Jews who created modern Israel, the story of the Israelites’ presence in Egypt, and the Exodus, and the arrival in Canaan three thousand years ago is a testament to Jewish title to the land. History and archeology combine to tell a different story, however. There may have been Jews in Egypt, but there is no documentation by the ancient Egyptians—scrupulous record keepers—of their presence. It is possible that the biblical chronology is wrong. There was a Semitic people called the Hyksos who invaded and occupied part of Egypt before they were forcibly expelled more than a hundred years before the Exodus is supposed to have taken place; however, Israel is not cited in the inscriptions from the Hyksos period. A national trauma such as the drowning of a pharaoh and his army is not mentioned in Egyptian records.

  According to the Bible, the Israelites who followed Moses numbered 603,550 men above the age of twenty, plus their wives and children, livestock, and a multitude of non-Israelites who accompanied them—a horde of at least 2.5 million people. Marching ten abreast, they would have stretched more than 150 miles. That would span the entire width of the peninsula. Many miracles supposedly occur on the journey. In the barren desert, God provides fresh water and provisions—in particular, manna, a divine substance that falls from heaven each night and sustains Moses and his people for the forty years that they wandered in the Sinai wilderness. The Lord instructs them not to eat more than their daily ration, except for the sixth day, when they are to gather enough for two days, so that they can rest on the seventh.

  As the Children of Israel attempt to reach the Promised Land, they are set upon by the Amalekites, a tribe of nomads, who prey on the stragglers. The Lord is so infuriated that he instructs the Jews to annihilate the Amalek tribe entirely: “Do not spare him; kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.” In Jewish lore the Amalek came to be seen as a mythic enemy of the Jews that is eternally recreated. In the first evening of the Passover service, when Jewish families around the world recite the story of the Exodus, they are reminded that in every generation there is someone that will rise up in order to destroy the Jewish people. Menachem Begin would be guided by this admonition. In his parents’ generation, it was the Nazis; for him, it would be the Arabs.

  Three months after the Israelites escape from Egypt, God calls Moses to meet him atop Mount Sinai, the place where He first revealed himself in the burning bush. When the Lord descends onto the mount, heralded by lightning and thunder and trumpet blasts, the summit blazes, and the people quiver in fear. The Lord speaks to Moses, issuing the Ten Commandments, followed by a long list of ordinances, such as how to treat slaves and sorcerers and cattle thieves. Twice God reminds Moses to be generous to strangers, “for you were once aliens residing in the land of Egypt.” In addition, the Lord promises to send an angel to lead the Children of Israel into the land of milk and honey—which inconveniently happens to be occupied by a number of other tribes. “Little by little I will drive them out before you,” the Lord pledges, “until you have grown numerous enough to take possession of the land. I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines [i.e., the Mediterranean], and from the wilderness [Sinai] to the Euphrates.” Elsewhere in the Bible, God specifically awards the land of Canaan to Moses, describing its boundaries as roughly encompassing those of modern Israel, but including much of southern Lebanon and the West Bank of the Jordan River.

  The vast migration through Sinai that the Bible describes—millions of people tramping about for forty years—should have left some archeological residue, but not a single scrap of evidence exists to prove that the Exodus ever happened. The archeological record seems to show that the ancient Hebrew people were a Bronze Age tribe native to the Canaan region—a province of Egypt at the time the Exodus is supposed to have taken place, a fact the Bible does not mention. That would give Egypt an equal claim on present-day Israel with that of the Jews, if antiquity is the yardstick used to measure territorial rights.

  The Quran accepts the premise that God awarded the Holy Land to the Israelites, but asserts that the people were disobedient and God turned against them, revoking their special status as the Chosen People. “But they broke their pledge, so We distanced them and hardened their hearts,” God says of the Jews; “you will always find treachery i
n all but a few of them. Overlook this and pardon them.”

  AT TEN THIRTY on the morning of the third day at Camp David, Carter and Begin walked together to Aspen Lodge just in time to meet Sadat coming from the other direction. Begin, with his granitic sense of protocol, refused to enter the cabin before the two presidents, which caused a rather comic and awkward start to the proceedings. Carter began by asking Begin if he could make a generous concession that would respond to Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem. The prime minister brushed this overture aside, saying that the Israeli people had already rewarded Sadat by their warm reception. It should not be forgotten, Begin continued, that only four years before, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Sadat had launched his surprise attack, “knowing we would all be in the synagogues.”

  “It was strategic deception,” Sadat responded.

  “Deception is deception,” Begin said. He then took up Sadat’s proposal, going through it once again point by point, ridiculing the language in brutal fashion. The men seemed unable or unwilling to understand each other. Begin contented that the Egyptian document laid the groundwork for a Palestinian state. “We will not allow the establishment of a base for Yasser Arafat’s murderers within our borders, including the redivision of Jerusalem. There can be no agreement on the basis of these demands.”

  “No! I said already yesterday that there is no need to divide Jerusalem,” Sadat protested.