The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership

by Avner, Yehuda

  And then:

  Damn the oil! We can get it from other sources. We have to stand by decent nations in the Middle East. We will back you militarily, but the military escalation can’t go on endlessly. We must do something politically.25

  Added Rabin with self-satisfaction, “I, personally, don’t think any American president has ever uttered such a pro-Israel sentiment before.”

  “So, again I ask, how does that square with his Rogers ceasefire initiative which is tantamount to appeasing the Arabs?” pressed Begin.

  “It squares because he has to play it in such a way that the Russians will not be allowed to better Israel, while at the same time ensuring that America will not lose all of the Middle East to the Russians. So yes, he’s greatly expanded our military aid, which is excellent, while launching the Rogers initiative, not all of which is to our liking but which has placated the Arabs enough to bring about a ceasefire.”

  “Add to that,” said the prime minister, brimming with gratification at her ambassador’s first-class analysis, “in return for our accepting the Rogers package Nixon has promised us that we will not be expected to withdraw a single soldier from the ceasefire lines except in the context of a contractual peace agreement which we would regard as satisfactory to our security needs. Moreover, had we not accepted the Rogers initiative we wouldn’t be getting any more American arms, as Rabin has just explained. So how can you argue with that?”

  Begin dismissed this clincher with a perfunctory wave of the hand. “What do you mean we wouldn’t be getting American arms? We would demand them.”

  “You know, Begin,” said Golda sarcastically, “you sometimes make me think you’re a mystic. You’ve convinced yourself that all we have to do is to go on telling the United States that we won’t give in to pressure and that if we do this long and loud enough, then one day that pressure will vanish.”

  “My good lady,” responded Begin in an equally patronizing vein, “you trivialize Israel’s importance to the United States of America.”

  “Do I? I think that though the American commitment to Israel’s survival is certainly great, I’m afraid we need Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rogers much more than they need us.”

  “I disagree!” said Begin. “The Americans don’t give us arms out of the kindness of their hearts. Israel is doing more for America in keeping the Soviet Union at bay in the Middle East than what America is doing for Israel to defend itself. And I dare say Mr. Nixon is fully aware of that. Besides, you must never underestimate the voice of American Jewry.”

  “Oh, I don’t. But I’m afraid our policies can’t be based entirely on the assumption that American Jewry either would or could force Mr. Nixon to adopt a position against his will and better judgment, especially when he doesn’t like liberal-minded Jews.”

  “We shall see,” said Begin, rising, and turning to Rabin he said with a smile, “I beg of you, please, do not misconstrue this argument between the prime minister and myself as personal. Mrs. Meir and I differ on many issues, but I want to assure you that I view her with the highest regard as a proud and courageous Jewess.”

  “Stop being a shmoozer,” sniffed Golda, with a grin that greatly softened her craggy and aging features.

  “No, no, Madame, I say this not in flattery. I look back on my three years in the national unity government, first under Eshkol and then under you, as a very beautiful period in my life. I miss the camaraderie, and the deliberations we had together, sometimes on vital issues of life and death. To me you were always the first among equals. But now that I have returned to the Opposition I shall have to oppose you whenever I believe you are in error, just as I did in the Knesset today. But on a personal level my respect for you shall never waver.”

  With that, Mr. Begin shook Rabin’s hand, and said, “I wish you continued success in Washington for all our sakes.” And to Mrs. Meir, with a bow of the head, “Madame Prime Minister, I pray that all my predictions will prove to be unfounded. Yet I fear they will not.” To which Golda returned him a reprimanding stare as he walked off to join a table of fellow oppositionists for a glass of lemon tea.

  According to what Henry Kissinger subsequently wrote in his memoirs, Menachem Begin was perfectly correct in asserting that America’s backing of Israel at that juncture was not a matter of mere benevolence, and that Israel’s obstinate demands for U.S. support resonated among Washington’s decision makers. In his memoirs he wrote:

  Israel is dependent on the U.S. as no other country is on a friendly power. Increasingly, Washington is the sole capital to stand by Israel in international forums. We are its exclusive military supplier, its only military ally (though no formal obligation exists)…It takes a special brand of heroism to turn total dependence into defiance, to insist on support as a matter of right rather than as a favor; to turn every American deviation from an Israeli cabinet consensus into a betrayal to be punished rather than a disagreement to be negotiated. And yet Israel’s obstinacy, maddening as it can be, serves the purposes of both our countries best. A subservient client would soon face an accumulation of ever-growing pressures. It would tempt Israel’s neighbors to escalate their demands. It would saddle us with opprobrium for every deadlock…. Our relationship with Israel is exhilarating and frustrating, ennobled by the devotion and faith that contain a lesson for an age of cynicism; exasperating because the interests of a superpower and of a regional ministate are not always easy to reconcile, and are on occasion unbridgeable. Israel affects our decisions through inspiration, persistence, and a judicious, not always subtle or discreet influence on our domestic policy.26

  Chapter 21

  Once Upon a Sukka Time

  At one time or another we are most of us like Don Quixote, all more or less the dupes of our own illusions. Even the allegedly infallible Israeli intelligence community is not immune. Thus, when the headlines of 28 September 1970 blazed the news that President Nasser of Egypt had died of a heart attack, and that his successor was to be Vice President Anwar Sadat, the little that was known of this long-limbed, balding, joyless-looking, deeply religious model of anti-charisma suggested he was hiding spinelessness beneath his extravagant uniforms. It was thus widely assumed that Sadat would merely serve as a temporary standin until someone of more stellar rank would come along.

  Imagine then the shock on the Yom Kippur day of October 1973, when Sadat dispatched his army in a massive surprise attack across the Suez Canal, in coordination with a Syrian invasion of the Golan Heights, sending the Israel Defense Forces scrambling on both fronts. Israel’s highest echelons had seemingly taken a holiday from reality – less than a month earlier they had estimated that hostilities were not in the offing. They were still saying as much twenty-four hours before they began.

  As head of the Foreign Press Bureau I had no reason to doubt their assurances. On the eve of that Yom Kippur I closed my office early – as does everybody on that day – and, making my way out, bumped into a British correspondent, Eric Silver, who represented the London Observer and the Guardian. He wanted to know what would happen in the event of a national emergency, all services being shut down on the Day of Atonement, including the radio.

  Full of self-assurance, I answered, “But what could possibly happen? It’s Yom Kippur.”

  “Yes, but what if something does happen?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know – a war, maybe.”

  “A war? There will be no war!”

  “But what if there is one?”

  “How can there be a war on Yom Kippur?”

  The next day, on this holiest of holy days, war came, accompanied by an inexpressible astonishment as people heard in horror the wailing of air raid sirens filling the sky. Military vehicles violated the awesome silence of the sacred day as they sped along normally empty streets on errands of high emergency, and radios blared out code names for instant mobilization. The cantors’ chanting of the brokenhearted liturgical, U’netaneh tokef – “Who shall live and who shall die” – was fol
lowed by rabbis telling their congregants, wrapped in prayer shawls, that they were to report forthwith to their reserve units, and that those mobilized may break this most stringent of fast days.

  A postwar Blue Ribbon commission of inquiry – the Agranat Commission – would conclude that had Israel’s leaders put their ears to the ground they would have heard the rumble of the approaching chariots of war long before the juggernaut came. Yet even those who were listening were so duped by their own preconceived notions that they misread what they were hearing. The very idea of an Arab onslaught was an affront to Israel’s enshrined military doctrine which expressed certainty that neither Egypt nor Syria was capable of waging renewed all-out warfare at this time. And much as actors at dress rehearsals reassure their anxious producers, “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right on the night,” so did Israel’s military reassure Prime Minister Golda Meir, “Don’t worry, the idf will be ready on the day, if such a day should ever dawn.”

  Yet dawn it did, and the idf was not ready. The thinly held lines in the north and in the south were sent bleeding and reeling under the hammer blows of the combined Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack, splintering and crushing the army’s defenses. A combination of highly effective preparations and deceptions, astutely planned to appear to be training maneuvers, allowed the Egyptians and the Syrians vast opening-day victories.

  Along the Suez Canal, four hundred and fifty Israeli soldiers with fifty artillery pieces tried in vain to stop one hundred thousand Egyptian troops crossing the waterway under the covering fire of two thousand artillery pieces, and under an umbrella of one of the most expansive SAM missile umbrellas in the world, just as Menachem Begin had predicted. The SAMs quickly knocked fifty Israeli aircraft out of the skies, and within a few days two whole Egyptian armies had occupied the entire Israeli-held east bank of the Suez Canal. Simultaneously, in the north, fourteen hundred Syrian tanks hurled themselves against Israel’s one hundred and sixty. The defenders fought ferociously at point blank range, lurching and roaring and dying in an unequal entanglement of tanks and armored personnel carriers and howitzers and other lethal paraphernalia that culminated in a contest of wills which left Israel hemorrhaging.

  The bloodiest and most desperate battle of those very first days was fought on the Golan Heights, in a place called the Kuneitra Valley, dubbed by those who fought there the Vale of Tears. Golda Meir wanted to see this frightful place with her own eyes, so on her insistence, a last-minute inspection tour was arranged on the seventh day of the war. It included a six-man foreign media press pool under my care. She wanted the world to know the odds Israel was up against.

  “Mrs. Meir, may I put a question to you?” asked one of the pool members as the prime minister was about to board her helicopter.

  “If it’s about the war the answer is no,” she replied impatiently.

  “It’s not about the war. It’s about Africa.”

  “What about Africa?”

  “Well, word has it that, because of the war, your whole assistance enterprise in Africa, which you initiated as foreign minister, has collapsed; that under Arab pressure African leaders are severing diplomatic ties with Israel, some even branding you a war criminal. Surely, you must be saddened, disillusioned, by this.”

  “Saddened, yes, disillusioned, no.”

  “But don’t you feel it was a waste of time and effort?”

  “Nothing is cheaper than that sort of blanket, after-the-fact ridicule.”

  “Yet you have to admit that you took your bighearted African policy too seriously. You were almost messianic about it.”

  “Utter nonsense! A setback is not a failure. A disappointment is not a ruin. A frustration is not a catastrophe. Not every enterprise can give immediate returns. Nothing ever goes to waste. Time will tell.”

  “But how can you be sure the Africans will want you back after giving you such a slap in the face?”

  “Because what I did for Africa was not just a policy of enlightened self-interest. I did it for the benefit of the African peoples, and deep in their hearts they know this to be true. It was an expression of my deepest historic instincts as a Jew, and a demonstration of my most profound and cherished values as a Labor Zionist.”

  With that, she was assisted into the helicopter by her veteran minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, and her ruggedly handsome chief of staff, General David (Dado) Elazar. Less than an hour later these two warriors, faces gray for lack of sleep, watched with expert eyes as squads of dusty men, some staggering with fatigue, loaded tanks with shells, refueled their engines, and waved them off, clanking and snarling, back to the slaughter of the shifting front. Other metal brutes clawed and ripped at the rock-strewn path up the slope to the plateau designated as the tank replenishment depot, where the prime minister and her entourage were standing. Centurions, much the worse for wear, were parked higgledy-piggledy, taking on ammunition and fuel before returning to battle.

  From this vantage point, Golda Meir, her face deeply scored, stared out across the Vale of Tears, and her eyes reddened. It was one of the intermediate days of the festival of Sukkot. The distant thud of heavy guns pounding the road to Damascus could be distinctly heard. The chief of staff propped up a map of the Golan Heights on the hull of a battered tank, and with sweeps of his pen, resurrected the lines of battle for the benefit of this knotted old woman whose ignorance of things military was absolute.

  Moshe Dayan handed her his binoculars the better to view the distant valley floor strewn with the hideous debris of war: pulverized howitzers, blown-out trucks, banged up armored personnel carriers, burned-out tanks punched through with bull’s eyes, some still smoldering – and the dead. The stench of death, cordite, diesel, and exhaust, was overwhelming.

  As she scanned this cadaverous landscape through the binoculars the creases in her face sharpened, and she fumbled for a pack of cigarettes from her black leather handbag. Dado struck her a match and she inhaled deeply, sparking a blaze of photo flashes from the accompanying journalists who were in my charge.

  Given the improvised and sensitive nature of the trip it had been agreed that there would be no press conference, but one journalist pugnaciously called out, “Share with us, if you will, prime minister, what’s going through your mind as you look out upon this battlefield?”

  Golda stared back at him, her features livid, and with a dismissive wave of the hand as though brushing away a fly from her plain gray suit, she turned to Dayan and Dado, and said, “Come, I want to talk to the men at the sukka. I want to hear what they have to say.”

  She moved off in the direction of an armored personnel carrier which, incongruously, was canopied by a sukka – a booth – in honor of the festival. The sukka was thatched with palm branches in imitation of the fragile huts the Israelites lived in during their wanderings in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. And as she walked toward this mobile field sukka, pigheaded photographers walked backward, shooting pictures of her every stride.

  Photograph credit: Ron Frenkel & Israel Government Press Office

  Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan speaking with soldiers on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War

  Prime Minister Golda Meir with Israeli troops on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War

  Photograph credit: Ron Frenkel & Israel Government Press Office

  Inside, about fifteen soldiers were chanting a prayer, their backs toward Golda and her companions. Each was draped in a prayer shawl, and each clutched a lulav and etrog, hadassim and aravot – the Four Species. They were shaking them gently, first forward to the east, then right to the south, over their right shoulder to the west, then left to the north, and then up, and then down, in replication of the ancient Temple’s Sukkot ceremony, symbolizing that God is everywhere. Only when they had completed their ritual did they notice who was silently gazing at them.

  “Chag sameach!” [Happy Holiday] called Golda, and the soldiers returned the festive greeting with wide-eyed astonishment. T
hey were reservists, plucked from their synagogues on Yom Kippur to reinforce the desperately stretched line that was holding back the Syrians along the crest of the Golan Heights, in a frenzied effort to stop them from capturing the highway below, which would have opened the road to Haifa. While their tanks were being hastily refueled, rearmed, and serviced, they had taken the time to pray and recite the blessings over the Four Species, the Arba Minim, in this makeshift sukka.

  Straightening her skirt, Golda Meir asked the men about their families, her countenance that of a concerned grandmother, and learned by-the-by that she was talking to lawyers, bakers, teachers, falafel vendors, accountants, shopkeepers, and hi-tech executives. Other soldiers were drawn into the circle, and the prime minister asked them many questions. Then she wrapped the session up with, “Now, is there anyone who would like to ask me something?”

  One tank crew member – he seemed to be in his mid-twenties – raised his hand. He was caked with black basalt dust from head to toe, and his only contrasting feature were the whites of his eyes. “I have a question,” he said, in a voice throaty with exhaustion. “My father was killed in the war of forty-eight, and we won. My uncle was killed in the war of fifty-six, and we won. My brother lost an arm in the sixty-seven war, and we won. Last week I lost my best friend over there,” – he was pointing to the Vale of Tears – “and we’re going to win. But is all our sacrifice worthwhile, Golda? What’s the use of our sacrifice if we can’t win the peace?”