On this occasion, the Duke of Edinburgh facetiously said to me, “Did you know Baron von Wechmar fought with Rommel’s Afrika Corps in the Western Desert during the war? He’s just been telling me about it.”
Again, the image of Begin entered my mind. The very thought of this German envoy, such a nice man, attired in a Wehrmacht uniform, was so repellent it must have shown on my face, for he instantly sought to reassure me, saying self-deprecatingly, “Don’t worry, Yehuda, I spent most of my time running away from General Montgomery, until I was captured by the Americans. And then I spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp studying for my degree to join the diplomatic corps of the new Germany.”
“How interesting,” yawned the Duke, and he turned to his wife. “My dear, time to retire, don’t you think? President and Mrs. von Weizsacker have had a long day.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the Queen. “And all these good people won’t leave until we do. So, time for bed everybody.”
Instantly, the equerry, accompanied by chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting, emerged out of nowhere, ready to escort their charges to their chambers. Whereupon, the red-coated toastmaster once more emitted a stentorian “Pray silence…,” causing all of us to bow and curtsy as Her Majesty, her consort, and her royal guests, bedecked in sashes, stars and crosses, glided through the gilded doors, nodding regally, and bidding everybody a good night.
Chapter 47
When Yet Another Holocaust Loomed
Not a week had passed since the prime minister had shared with the UJA young leadership mission his credo on the lessons of the Holocaust, when he and his fellow cabinet ministers spent a long morning listening in solemn and tense silence as the chief of army intelligence and the head of the Mossad reviewed the incontrovertible evidence that Osirak, the French-built installation outside Baghdad, was not a power plant, as the Iraqis had been claiming, but an almost completed nuclear facility, capable of being speedily converted to the manufacture of atomic weapons.
Three weeks later, on the eve of Shavuot, while busy with my pre-festival chores at home, the phone rang. It was General Poran. “We have an emergency,” he said in a supercharged voice. “Drop whatever you’re doing and come directly to the prime minister’s residence. He’s waiting for you.”
“What’s it about?” I asked, my stomach tightening.
“Not on the phone. Just come!”
When I panted through the doorway of Begin’s book-lined study, I found him sitting in shirt sleeves at his desk, immersed in a document. He threw me a perfunctory glance, and in a tone that was cold and hard-pinched, said, “Freuka will tell you what it’s about.”
I could tell by his tone, his sunken shoulders, and the ashen circles around his eyes, that whatever was afoot was taking its toll.
The red emergency telephone startled us with its shrill, piercing ring. Begin sat up sharply and locked eyes with Freuka, who had grabbed the receiver. The military secretary listened, nodded, said, “Repeat that,” nodded again, returned the receiver, and in a stony voice said to Begin, “The aircraft have just taken off. The chief of staff briefed the pilots personally. He told them that the alternative to success might be our destruction.”
“Hashem yishmor aleihem” [May God protect them], said the prime minister, with an air of consecration. I could see the veins throbbing in his neck.
Freuka took me aside to tell me what was happening. The world’s first air strike against a nuclear plant was underway. Our aircraft had taken off for Baghdad to destroy Osirak, which was estimated by our intelligence to be on the brink of going live, with the capacity to produce one or more bombs. The operation, code-named Opera, was highly hazardous. It required our pilots to fly 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) over enemy territory, skimming low across the desert floor in close formation, beneath Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, and Iraqi radar defenses. Within the hour – five o’clock – they would be over their target. My job, Freuka told me, was to assist the prime minister in composing the English text of the official communiqué, for cabinet approval.
“What does the cabinet know about this?” I asked.
“Most know nothing,” said Freuka. “It’s so secret, Begin instructed me to phone each member individually, to be here at five sharp. Each one thinks he’s coming for a private meeting. Some of the religious members grumbled that five o’clock was too close to the onset of sundown and Shavuot.”
“I advise you to take a look at this,” interrupted Begin, handing me the document he had been studying. “See what a brutal tyrant we’re up against – the Butcher of Baghdad.”
It was a psychological portrait of Saddam Hussein created by the Mossad, and when I read the opening paragraph my heart thumped against my rib cage. It read, “Saddam Hussein is a hardheaded megalomaniac, cunning, sophisticated, and cruel. He is willing to take high risks and drastic action to realize his ambition for self-aggrandizement. His possession and use of a nuclear weapon will enable him to threaten and strike Israel and, thereby, win supremacy over the Arab world. He is prepared to act at an early opportunity, even in the awareness that retaliation might follow.”
Rising stiffly to his feet, Begin began prowling the room, head down, face grim, arms behind his back, his lips moving almost imperceptibly in the manner of one muttering prayers to himself. Mid-stride, painfully, he growled, “Here we are awaiting news that could mean life or death for Israel, and Shimon Peres [still leader of the Labor opposition] has the temerity to ask me to desist from taking action. Have you heard of such a thing?”
He took a letter from his pocket, shook it open, and passed it to us. “See for yourselves.”
Dated 10 May, it was classified “Personal” and “Top Secret,” and it read:
At the end of December 1980, you called me into your office in Jerusalem and told me about a certain extremely serious matter. You did not solicit my response and I myself (despite my instinctive feeling) did not respond under the given circumstances. I feel this morning, however, that it is my supreme civic duty to advise you, after serious consideration, and in weighing the national interest, to desist from this thing. I speak as a man of experience. The deadlines reported by us (and I well understand our people’s anxiety), are not realistic. Materials can be changed for other materials. And what is meant to prevent [disaster] can become a catalyst [for disaster]. Israel would then be like a thistle in the desert. I am not alone in saying this, and certainly not at the present time under the given circumstances.
Repocketing the letter, Begin said, “We’ll have elections soon, and I’m convinced Peres will claim I launched this attack for my own electoral purposes [this did indeed prove to be the case]. Would I risk the life of a single one of our pilots for electoral purposes, I ask you? I’m convinced that if we lose the election, Peres will be incapable of deciding on such a raid, and then I would never forgive myself for not having acted when I could. The future of our people is at stake. All the responsibility is on our shoulders.” He glanced at his watch and asked dourly, “How much longer?”
“They’ll be over the target within ten minutes,” said Freuka softly.
“Time to inform the cabinet,” and out he strode to the adjacent lounge, which was filled with puzzled ministers surprised at seeing one another. When he broke the staggering news there was a stunned silence, followed by a cacophony of questions. Some wanted to immediately consider what options to take in the event the attack should fail, but Begin insisted that such discussion was premature.
“I am awaiting a call from the chief of staff, and then we shall debate how best to proceed under the circumstances, whatever they are,” he said.
Back in the seclusion of his study, he walked over to the window, pulled aside the curtain which was perpetually drawn for security reasons, and said, “The sun is beginning to go down. It will be Shavuot within the hour. I don’t want to keep the cabinet here after the festival begins, and yet I can’t allow them to disperse before the mission is over – one way or another. Ther
e must be no leaks.” Again, he retreated to the privacy of his thoughts, his lips moving mutely.
An excruciating silence descended on the room. There was no movement, and not even a whisper of sound. The man’s expression was undecipherable; it revealed nothing of what he was feeling. This was a moment much more given to private prayer than to conversation.
And then, RING! RING! RING!
With glacial slowness Menachem Begin turned from the window as Freuka dived for the phone.
“Yes? When? How long? Are you sure? Can you totally confirm that?” Thus Freuka, his voice sharp. Then, arms rigid, Brigadier-General Ephraim Poran turned to face Prime Minister Menachem Begin, stood to attention, and stated, “Sir, I am able to report on behalf of the chief of staff that our aircraft have just destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor, Osirak, by direct hits. Our planes are now on their way home. The raid took fewer than ninety seconds.”
“To what extent destroyed?” interrogated the premier.
“Totally,” answered the general.
“Baruch Hashem! ” cried Begin, clapping his hands in jubilation. “Oh, thank God! Oh, thanks to the Almighty for having blessed us with such fine sons as pilots.” Then, to me, “Please connect me with the American ambassador.”
When Ambassador Samuel Lewis came on the line, I automatically picked up the extension to record the exchange.
“Sam, I would like you to convey an urgent message from me to the president,” said Begin, desperately trying to restrain the exhilaration in his voice. “Our air force has just destroyed Osirak. Please transmit this news as quickly as possible to the Oval Office.”
“Completely destroyed?” Lewis sounded shocked at the audacity of the deed and its stupefying success.
“Yes, direct hits.”
“Well, I hear what you say, Mr. Prime Minister, and I’ll get in touch with Washington right away.” And then, following the briefest of pauses, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about this?”
“Not now, Sam. Our military people will give a full briefing to your military people.”
“I understand. I shall faithfully convey your message to the president. Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Then Begin began to stride around the room again, but this time at a much slower pace than before. He asked Freuka what dangers the aircraft still had to confront on their return flight home.
“Anti-aircraft fire, SAM ground-to-air missiles, interception by Saudi, Iraqi, or Jordanian fighters, some technical hitch perhaps.” Freuka spelled this out with the dispassion of a housewife going over her grocery list.
As he paced unhurriedly to and fro, the prime minister grew progressively more pensive until, by degrees, his features became firmly set, and I could tell he had begun to mentally organize what he wanted to report to the world about the raid. Eventually, his voice tranquil, he began to dictate to me the language of the communiqué, for the approval of the cabinet.
“On Sunday, 7 June,” he began, “the Israeli air force launched a raid on the atomic reactor near Baghdad, Osirak. Our pilots carried out their mission fully. The reactor was destroyed. The atomic bombs which the reactor was capable of producing, whether from enriched uranium or from plutonium, would have been of the Hiroshima size. Thus, a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose – ”
The red telephone shrieked again.
“Wonderful!” said Freuka into the receiver, after listening for a few seconds. He turned to the prime minister. “All our aircraft have just landed without a scratch.”
“Add that to the last paragraph,” Begin said to me spiritedly. “Write ‘All our aircraft returned safely to base.’” Then he continued, delving into the military, moral, and judicial justifications for the raid, ending with a warning that was to become a doctrine. “Let the world know that under no circumstances will Israel ever allow an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against our people. If ever such a threat reoccurs we shall take whatever preemptive measures are necessary to defend the citizens of Israel with all the means at our disposal.”
When the news got out, there was uproar worldwide. Ronald Reagan, president of the United States, was said to be “thunderstruck” on receiving Begin’s message through Ambassador Lewis. This is confirmed by the entry in his diary:
June 7 – Got word of Israeli bombing of Iraqi nuclear reactor. I swear Armageddon is near. PM Begin informed me after the fact. Begin insists the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel. If he waited til the French shipment of ‘hot’ uranium arrived he couldn’t order the bombing because the radiation would be loosed over Baghdad. I can understand his fear but I feel he took the wrong option. He should have told us and the French; we could have done something to remove the threat.76
Begin had told the Americans how perilous the situation was becoming, but the outgoing Carter administration had failed to inform the incoming Reagan administration of what was afoot. No one in the upper echelons of the new U.S. government had been aware that Begin had more than once warned the American ambassador, “Either the U.S. does something to stop this reactor or we shall have to!”
As Lewis himself put it, “I contacted Washington informally to make sure that a full paper on this subject was prepared by the transition team. The paper was prepared, I was later told, but with such a high classification and such extreme restrictions on its distribution that neither Secretary of State–designate Alexander Haig nor any of the key incoming White House officials ever saw it. That real bureaucratic ‘glitch’ during the change of administration meant that President Reagan apparently had never been properly briefed on the history, and was both astounded and ‘blind-sided’ by the Israeli action.”77
The UN Security Council condemned Israel, and the United States suspended its delivery of military aircraft to Israel on the grounds that they were supposed to have been procured for self-defense purposes only. U.S. lawyers and senior officials questioned whether Israel’s attack fell into this category. If not, the U.S. was required by law to suspend all military deliveries to Israel.
Menachem Begin parried this salvo of international condemnation with defiance. He fumed over what he described as “Western do-gooders who never once raised a voice against Saddam Hussein’s murderous intent.” Scrutinizing a file of press reports one morning, he told us, his personal staff: “Listen to the thrashing Margaret Thatcher is giving me. She says, ‘Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified; it represents a grave breach of international law.’ Tut tut – what a naughty boy I am.” His voice was scathing. “And here’s a New York Times editorial which says, ‘Israel’s sneak attack’ – note: sneak attack – ‘was an act of inexcusable and shortsighted aggression.’ And Time magazine is informing its readers that I have ‘vastly compounded the difficulties of procuring a peaceful settlement of the confrontations in the Middle East.’ Oy vey! It’s all my fault! But best of all is French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson. He says: ‘France doesn’t think Israel’s action serves the cause of peace in the area.’ Well, well. Really! Our action does not serve the cause of peace! And what about” – a corner of his mouth twisted upwards – “the action of French president Giscard d’Estaing, who equipped the Iraqis with the nuclear reactor in the first place – did that serve the cause of peace in the area?”
Snapping the file shut he leaned toward us, dropped his voice to a mock conspiratorial whisper, and murmured, with a rascally glint in his eyes, “I’ll share a personal secret with you. Whenever I have to choose between saving the lives of our children or getting the approval of the Security Council and all those other fair-weather friends, I much prefer the former. But keep that to yourselves. Now I want to write a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who I’m told has been particularly keen on punishing us. Yehuda, take this down:
“Dear Mr. Secretary, I feel I have the moral obligation to ask you that in any of your actions and judgments you consider the following: At a time whe
n your children and grandchildren live and continue to live in the big country of America, my children and grandchildren will keep on living in small Israel which has many enemies that would like to see her be totally destroyed and disappear. Does Israel have to be punished by a weapons embargo because of this? …After you read this letter, when looking at pictures of your children and grandchildren, you might think that a million like them are living in Israel. It is about them that I write.”
A secretary stuck her head around the door to tell us that Max Fisher had arrived.
Begin rose to greet a powerful-looking, heavy-set man of advanced age who was a head taller than any of us in the room. He had made his millions from oil and real estate, and in recognition of his philanthropic largesse was chairman of the Jewish Agency board of governors. But more importantly for Mr. Begin on that July afternoon, Mr. Fisher was known to have clout in Washington’s Republican circles, most notably in the White House, being a longtime contributor and a trusted adviser on Israel and Jewish affairs to every Republican president since Eisenhower.
“Take a seat, Max,” said the prime minister affably, gesturing toward an armchair in his cozy lounge corner.
“I’d like a word with you alone, if I may,” said his guest, lowering his well-tailored bulk into the chair.
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership Page 60