During the first few days of the war, the force under Eli’s command fired on the Egyptian forces in northern Gaza, providing cover for the soldiers of the 202nd paratrooper battalion and assisting them in conquering the Palestinian city. This was yet another juncture at which he ran into his old friend Zvika Levanon, who happened to be commanding another force which had also been designated to conquer parts of the northern Gaza Strip.
“On the way to the objective,” Levanon recounted,
I stepped on a mine and injured my leg, but I kept on going. I told my communications officer to request cover fire from the mortar unit and it was Eli who heard the voice of my communications officer. “I am now going to fire in the direction of my best friend,” he told his soldiers over the radio. “Woe to whoever misses!” The mortar fire struck the Egyptians and that is why I am sitting here today. Eli saved us. Without that mortar fire, I would not be sitting here.
Later, when Eli and his unit made their way down to the southern Gaza Strip, Eli encountered death face to face.
“In war,” he explained later,
People want to kill you. Sometimes they are extremely close by. When we were on the main road in the southern Gaza Strip, we found trenches dug by the Egyptians where we wanted to put our mortars. Just when I was about to enter the trench, an Egyptian soldier appeared with his weapon aimed at me. He fired a shot and so did I. The Egyptian dropped dead. I was the only one that hit anything, so the unpleasant deed was apparently my doing…. His bullet hit the command car that was standing behind me. I’m not certain, but I seem to remember that it took off the wheel.
Eli continued to serve in the reserves after the Six Day War and like many Israelis, he was gripped by the euphoria that flooded the country in the wake of the IDF’s remarkable six-day military victory. During the drawn-out War of Attrition fought in the years following the Six Day War, Eli was called on to serve even more days each year. He never regarded his senior status at Assia or his appointment as CEO of Teva as reasons for evading reserve duty. If anything, the opposite was true.
•••
The unexpected outbreak of the Yom Kippur War on October 6, 1973, found Eli in Ethiopia again. This time, he was visiting Shlomo Hillel, the Israeli ambassador who would later serve as an Israeli government minister.
“I was sitting with him in his office and he said that he thought war had broken out,” Eli recalled.
We turned on the television…. and we saw my brigade. “Don’t tell me you’re going,” he said and I answered: “I’m going to get my things now and go.” He immediately called the embassy and informed them, “Eli wants to get to the Eleventh Brigade.” Within minutes it was all arranged…. I boarded a plane and took off immediately…. I never found out exactly who arranged it all, but I assume it was the ambassador.
This time, unlike in the previous war, Eli went straight to the front, to the fighting in Sinai. On October 7, he boarded a plane that took off from Lod airport and landed at the military base at Rephidim, in the heart of the Sinai Peninsula. There, he joined his reserve division. It was only then that he understood the gravity of the problem facing the IDF and only then that he learned that the war had caught prime minister Golda Meir, defense minister Moshe Dayan, and IDF chief of general staff David Elazar off guard like lightening on a clear day. All the other government ministers and military officials were equally surprised. The Egyptians had managed to deceive IDF intelligence by portraying the massing of their forces along the Suez Canal as a series of military exercises. They then crossed the canal between the Israeli positions with five divisions, used the cover of night to prepare a defense against Israel’s expected counterattack, and began building 11 large transport bridges for Egyptian armored forces, anti-aircraft missiles, and artillery. In the Golan Heights, the Syrians had already conquered the Israeli position on Mount Hermon and penetrated the southern Golan Heights and the Israeli home front in the central Golan. Between October 7 and 10, the Suez Canal zone was the site of two failed IDF counterattacks, after which the chief of general staff ordered Israeli forces to halt all counterattacks and wait for the relocation of the IDF’s offensive strategic effort from the Syrian theater to the Egyptian theater.
“I took a machine gun I found on the table, which belonged to someone else,” Eli recounted. “Then I crawled into my sleeping bag and put it down beside me and fell asleep, like a good boy.”
At 4:00 a.m. Eli was awakened by Haim Grinberg, who appointed him commander of the unit, which almost immediately came to be known as Eli’s Force.
Eli waited with his unit. Five days later, with the beginning of Israel’s recovery, Eli and his men moved westward toward the Suez Canal. On the evening of October 12, the Egyptians succeeded in transporting a large concentration of their armored reserves onto the east bank of the canal. Two days later, they launched a general offensive between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Suez aimed at advancing eastward some 40 to 50 kilometers and seizing control of the row of passes leading into the Sinai Peninsula. This time, the IDF was ready for the attack and by the afternoon, Israeli forces had stopped their advance and pushed them back to their fortified positions just east of the canal. The Egyptians lost 250 tanks in the effort, which marked the end of Israel’s defensive fighting during the war. During the battle, in which Eli took part, his unit fired numerous shells at Egyptian forces.
By the night of October 14, Eli was close to the canal. He was alongside the forces that began crossing the canal the following night as part of an offensive aimed at pushing the Egyptian army out of the Sinai Peninsula (Operation Stouthearted Men). By this point, a reconnaissance battalion from the division of major-general Ariel Sharon, who staunchly advocated an Israeli crossing of the canal, had identified the seam line between the two Egyptian armies in the Sinai. This meant Israeli forces could try to reach the canal without fighting to break through. The mission of crossing the canal was assigned to Sharon’s division and the engineering forces of the Southern Command, which established a bridgehead north of the Great Bitter Lake by transporting forces across the canal using rafts and rubber dinghies. Next, they constructed a temporary roller-bridge and the following day, a tank company advanced 10 kilometers westward, starting to encircle the Egyptian forces on the Sinai Peninsula.
•••
Eli was stationed near the canal on a road referred to by the Israeli military as Lexicon at a junction known as Spontani 28, approximately one kilometer east of the Suez Canal. The canal could be reached only by means of this junction and the two were separated by an artificial sand dune that had been positioned there years earlier to protect the canal from the east. Eli’s unit, which was attached to Sharon’s division, was charged with providing cover for the crossing of the canal. He understood that the 250-men force under his command would bear a large part of the burden of ensuring the success of the crossing. Using the 16 heavy mortars at his disposal and a small number of tanks and infantry, which helped secure the small, improvised base he had set up, he rained heavy-mortar fire nonstop on any Egyptian forces attempting to disrupt the crossing.
“I received artillery-cover requests from the fighting units and I carried them out,” he explained with simplicity.
The Egyptians also understood the importance of the cover provided by the mortars, and as soon as Eli’s Force started to dig in, an Egyptian MiG fighter plane attacked it. This was just the beginning. Later, after they began providing covering fire for the Israeli forces crossing the canal, they became the target of significant artillery fire as well.
“The Egyptians attacked us every day,” Eli related:
In the morning, planes would come to shell us and in the evening, soldiers would try to conquer the area. We were fighting for our lives…. I stood between two tanks, creating a position for myself with the rest of the force behind me…. Later, I went to great lengths to be on the highest dune in the area in order to issue fire or
ders. At first, I used a megaphone to speak directly to the teams. Then, they arranged a switchboard system for me that reached all our positions…. We covered the forces crossing the canal. During some of the battle, my force was the only force they had at their disposal. When we saw MiGs from afar, we devised a system by which we would run and climb up the dunes, as they didn’t shoot there… I visited a different firing position every 10 minutes…. It was an experience greater than all the wars a person can take part in. It was as if I was always in a thriller, in a war movie…. We were a disheveled force of sorts, with absolutely nothing to our name.
During the eight days that Eli’s Force spent alongside the crossing, Eli rarely closed his eyes. He was needed to coordinate fire requests, to constantly get new supplies of shells, and to protect his soldiers from attack. On top of all that, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, he made sure that the religious soldiers under his command had lulavs and etrogs so they could fulfill the religious rituals of the holiday.
“Eli was a commander who could find his way into the hearts of his superiors,” one of his subordinates recalled,
but he would not hesitate to sit down with each and every soldier to play a game of backgammon. During the Yom Kippur War, while commanding a battery of mortars under heavy shelling, he would come to our support headquarters and steal our A.P.C. driver Dani, who was also a good singer, to have him perform for his soldiers and raise morale.
In light of his effective service, it is no surprise that at the gathering of division officers that took place after the ceasefire came into effect, Eli was received with the respect due someone who had successfully fulfilled a difficult combat mission.
I went back to the division and I could not understand why the division commander was being nice to me. All he could say to me was: “You can use this shower – it’s mine.” I must have stunk. I didn’t change clothes, because I didn’t have any with me. My duffel bag was the first thing to go [burned in the shelling] with the cigarettes. It was a tragedy…. Indeed, I took a shower, which I remember fondly…. There were officers, battalion commanders, and brigade commanders who thanked me and spoke the praises of Eli’s Force…. A tank commander hugged me and said: “You saved us”…. I was offered much thanks and shown a great deal of appreciation. The corps commander called me and said: “I’ll be there in a few days. I’m the one who gives you your rank, nobody else….” I did not want to leave my force for too long. They pinned my falafel on me [an Israeli slang term for the leaf-like emblem, which also is reminiscent of a falafel ball, used in the insignia of senior IDF officers – Eli was promoted from the rank of captain to the rank of major] and I went back to the guys.
For a few months following the war, Eli remained in the sand dunes of the Sinai Desert along with his unit and tens of thousands of other reservists. A large number of troops was left in the Sinai Peninsula after the war due to concern that despite Israel’s military victory and the presence of its forces just 101 kilometers from the Egyptian capital of Cairo and 40 kilometers from the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Egyptians would attempt to renew hostilities and take advantage of the fluid international situation stemming from the ceasefire. Life in the desert became routine and Eli began taking leave from time to time, typically in the middle of the week, in order to devote some time to Assia and Teva, which he continued to manage, and to spend the few hours that remained with his family. It was during this period that he made the week-long visit to the United States on Assia business mentioned above; after it, he returned to his unit on the Suez Canal.
•••
In the years that followed, Eli continued serving in the reserves. He may have been the only reservist to rise in the ranks from private to lieutenant-colonel in the course of his reserve duty. Toward the end of his service in the IDF, when he was already in his 50s, he was appointed a deputy brigade commander.
“When I received that appointment, I was already a much older man. I no longer ran or drove jeeps on my own. I had a driver and a radio operator,” he recalled.
For Eli, it was natural to remain active in the reserves, even at his age. After all, more than the uniquely masculine experience it offered him, reserve duty was something he believed in – part of his deeply ingrained sense of patriotism.
When I went to reserve duty, I regarded it as an existential element of my national, Zionist, and Israeli worldview. Our very presence in the country and our attempt to build a new nation depended upon an existential war for the new state, a war in which there could be no compromise. It is a war we fight without asking questions, simply because it is a war of survival.
Reserve duty was an experience that remained deeply ingrained in Eli’s consciousness until his dying day. At the beginning of the new millennium, he helped found the Business and Social Forum of Artillery Corps Veterans in cooperation with senior industrialists, such as Yaakov Erez and Oded Tira, who had all performed their final stints of reserve duty two to three decades earlier. Eli’s experiences in reserve duty played a major role in shaping his consciousness and his social, national, and cultural views.
Chapter 11
A Dutch Story
Toward the end of the 1960s, Eli made a strategic decision to minimize exports to Africa and, at the same time, to increase exports to the United States and Europe. He began by entering the American market with the production of Nitrovin for American Cyanamid, as recounted earlier. Successful marketing of these products required significant investments, the most important of which was the construction of a new plant (Chemonim Bet) in Petah Tikva. At the same time, he expanded the group’s production of nitrofurans, the antibiotics meant for veterinary use. One of the problems facing Teva’s leadership at the time was the growing number of pharmaceutical and chemical companies engaged in the production and marketing of nitrofurans. In Israel, the Abic Company specialized in nitrofurans.
In Europe, a number of companies gained prominence in this field. Eli set his gaze on two of them: a Hungarian firm named Biogal Pharmaceutical Works and a Dutch company named Orphahell, which specialized in chemical products. Eli had long been aware of Orphahell and regarded its acquisition as an important goal. In the early 1960s, he paid a visit to its plant in a rural area outside of Amsterdam. During the visit, he met Heinrich and Betsy Hollinghauser, the company’s affable owners. They had founded Orphahell in the early 1950s as a family-owned plant specializing in the production of nitrofurans. However, the significant health-related effects of these substances led Heinrich, a talented chemist by profession, to examine alternative syntheses for the production of similar materials. He found alternatives, patented them, and began producing Furazolidone, a substance similar to what Assia was producing. The Dutch couple’s effective management and the patents they had registered made the company an attractive acquisition, leading Eaton, a subsidiary of the American pharmaceutical giant Norwich Pharmacal Company, to take over the company yet leave management in the Hollinghausers’ hands.
By the 1970s, running the plant had become a burden that the childless Dutch couple could no longer bear. Production was causing severe sewage pollution and the Dutch authorities demanded that the couple either find an immediate solution, which would require new investments, or shut the plant. The American directors of Eaton concluded that the company had no future and decided to sell its shares. Although many potential buyers expressed interest, the Hollinghausers wanted to sell the plant to someone who would preserve its dedication to chemistry and continue producing Furazolidone or alternative chemical substances.
Eli was aware of the Dutch couple’s feelings on this matter. During the years he had known them, they had become friends. This is what ultimately motivated them to select Teva to acquire their company.
“When I met the Dutch couple,” Eli said, recounting the acquisition of the company,
people told me that the man was a Nazi. I checked and discovered that he had not been a Nazi, but a me
mber of a rightwing Dutch underground…. They produced the substance that we were making [Furazolidone]. When I got to the Dutch plant, I met a couple that was not at all young and had no children. I also saw that the employees were all extremely dedicated, but they all had their limitations…. I assumed that one day, the plant would be put up for sale and I cultivated a relationship with its owners. Every time I went to Holland, I got together with them.
In the course of 1977, his contacts with the Hollinghausers became more frequent.
I was in Amsterdam on Yom Kippur. I was staying in a hotel near the Portuguese synagogue so that I could walk to prayers. In the evening, after the holiday ended, I got together with the couple. They took me out for dinner, to break the fast, at an exceptional restaurant located in the hotel itself and made it clear to me that they preferred having Teva acquire the company because Teva would continue its chemical production.
During dinner, Eli and the Hollinghausers agreed on the terms of the acquisition. The Teva group would acquire the plant in exchange for its continued full operation, payment of its debts, placation of the Dutch authorities with regard to land drainage issues, and $1.2 million, which the older couple asked be paid in cash. All that remained was for Eli to find the funds for the purchase, as Teva lacked sufficient liquid assets to close the deal at the time.
As fate would have it, just a few days earlier, Dan Susskind, who had just become Teva’s senior financial official, met a young Jewish man named Mark Allenberg, who was a senior official of the Pierson bank in Holland. After the deal was initialed by Teva, the owners, and their American partners, Susskind called the Dutch banker and asked him to facilitate credit to fund 80 percent of the transaction. The rest of the financing would come from Teva’s sources. Eli and Susskind knew that bank financing “would save us a great deal of trouble and bureaucracy,” as Eli put it. Eli was not at all certain that an Israeli bank would provide Teva with the financing necessary to purchase the Dutch plant. Moreover, the Bank of Israel was bound by law to authorize all foreign currency expenditures, a process which might take more time than the Dutch were willing to wait.
Eli Hurvitz and the creation of Teva Pharmaceuticals: An Israeli Biography Page 19