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 south-west 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 to 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 One. 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 in a whining howl, 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 was 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.
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sp; The journalists smelled a rat immediately. There were half a dozen of them 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 eighteen 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.”
“Bullshit!” 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 still one thing 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 the Egyptians intend 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 turned his head, bit his lips, and sat there perfectly still for a moment. “Blit vet zikh 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 na’ar” [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 leanest 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 had Menachem Begin been 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 t
he 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.
Photograph credit: Israel Government Press Office
Prime Minister Eshkol with Chief of Staff Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, accompanied by General Tal, during the crisis that culminated in the Six-Day War, 25 May 1967
Chapter 12
An Uncommon Proposal and a Disastrous Broadcast
The official prime minister’s residence, a two-story box of a house, stood in an inconspicuous street in the fashionable Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. The policeman at the garden gate, illuminated by the spill of light from a lamppost, stood stiffly to attention as Menachem Begin wished him a pleasant evening and made his way to the front door.
Levi Eshkol, his nose stuffed with a sudden cold and his eyes grave with anxiety, received Begin in his study. It was a room as unpretentious as himself – nondescript furniture, plain rugs, and dull paintings. There he briefed the leader of the Opposition on the latest menacing developments, and felt him out on the idea of establishing an emergency coalition of all the mainstream parties to unite the nation in this time of crisis. As Menachem Begin listened, Levi Eshkol thought he could detect sympathy in his eyes, for, like himself, Begin was a Jew from the old shtetl background, and despite their conflicting politics they got along well and understood each other.
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership Page 16