***
The Tel Aviv beach was crowded next day with elderly sunbathers, frisking children, and shouting teenagers playing volleyball and paddleball in steamy sunshine. On the terrace where Pasternak sat with his son, Amos, uniformed soldiers were eating falafels and drinking beer, or spooning up ice cream. Tanned and hard-bodied, Amos Pasternak looked like a soldier even in his red swimming briefs. He was completing his obligatory army years in the elite unit called Sayeret Matkhal (Staff Reconnaissance). “I’m for a swim before I eat something, Abba,” he said. “You really want a falafel right now?”
“Right now. I mean it. That’s what I feel like having, Amos.”
“Coming.” Soon the son returned with the falafel, and handed it to his father with a grin and a head shake. “Not diet food, Abba.” He vaulted off the terrace, loped to the water and dove in, reappearing far out beyond the bathers.
Pasternak wanted the falafel for the nostalgia the taste evoked. He had not eaten one in years, not since he had been as lean as Amos, and had skylarked on this same beach with girls like those gambolling on the sand below. Tel Aviv then had been a smallish seaside town of tree-lined boulevards, no tall hotels, few big buildings, more or less tranquil under the British Mandate. Sporadic Arab unruliness, occasional Haganah reprisal. Otherwise peace, sunlight, music, cafés, girls, water, dancing, fun.
He remembered, too, sitting with Yael Luria on this same terrace when their relationship was just a flirtation; magnificent figure she had had then, and he too had still looked passable. Nor had the city yet been much different. But what a change in the years that he had put on all the weight! A beleaguered metropolis with a long jagged skyline, choked now by army traffic, its crowded-together buildings boarded up and sandbagged, temporary air raid shelters garishly placarded, digging of more shelters still going on. Squadrons of enemy bombers minutes away in Sinai. At the border a colossal confrontation of more than a thousand tanks. A fragile anachronism, this carefree seaside scene!
“General, late despatches.” A runner from the Mossad. His office always knew where he was.
At 1000 tomorrow President de Gaulle will announce full embargo on arms to Israel. Delivery of planes and arms already paid for will be quote delayed unquote.
Bad, bad news, but not too startling, not from De Gaulle.
Cabinet resumes at 1300 hours.
End of beach interlude, but he would finish his falafel, and to all the devils, have a beer, too. Well, Motti Hod’s boys would be flying mostly French aircraft, upgraded to Israeli specifications, with some smart Israeli stuff installed. France had been a good friend for ten years. Ben Gurion was fond of saying, “Nothing is permanent in history.” Next despatch:
Order of the Day by Commander of Egyptian Forces in Sinai: The eyes of the world are upon you in your most glorious war against Israeli imperialist aggression on the soil of your fatherland…. Your holy war is for the recapture of the rights of the Arab nation. Reconquer anew the robbed land of Palestine…! By the power of your weapons and the unity of your faith…!
Old General Murtagi sounded like he meant business this time. On the other hand, the ultra-secret Cairo sources had not sent the code signal for WAR NOW, with time of attack; and the morning report had showed no unusual tank or troop movements overnight.
Downing his beer, Pasternak watched Amos disporting in the water. The beach was crowded with much darker Sephardic youngsters, “the second Israel” of the mabarot (transit camps), children of refugees from the Arab countries who had flooded in and almost overwhelmed the old Yishuv. So far the wars had been fought mainly by the sons of sabras and Europeans. These Sephardim with little grasp of historic Zionism, this huge lump of different Jews who hardly knew of Hitler and Auschwitz, had been absorbed into the army because bodies were needed. Would they be equal to machine war? Did they care enough about Israel to risk dying for it, these mabarot Jews?
He stood up and waved. Amos saw him, left the water, and came scampering up on the beach. “So soon, Abba? Had your falafel and you’re running off, are you?”
“Exactly. Amos, if I don’t see you for a while, good luck.”
“Hoping for the best,” said Amos, “but ready for anything.”
***
It was the showdown cabinet meeting. Every member knew it. On their faces was the foreboding look of the Zionist notables who had listened to Ben Gurion declare the State nineteen years ago. The historic pictures of that scene showed some of these same faces, now almost unrecognizably older.
All the latest intelligence tended to gloom. An exchange of vice presidential visits between Washington and Cairo was in the wind. It was said in Cairo that the American ambassador had assured Nasser his government was not on Israel’s side. French arms shipments to the Jewish State had been halted at the dock. Iraqi forces were on the march toward the Jordanian border. Eshkol sat like a Buddha, nodding and writing notes, while Dayan shifted in his chair, yawning.
Pasternak knew that Eshkol, Dayan, Allon, and Foreign Minister Eban—the players who mattered—had already met at midnight and decided on war. By their looks the rest of the cabinet members either knew or sensed that. But they were Israeli politicians, and they were going to have their say. One after another they talked and talked and talked. At last it ended. Eshkol looked to Abba Eban, who raised his hand.
“Foreign Minister?” said Eshkol.
In his unique Oxonian-accented Hebrew, the plump young Eban put forward a motion very convoluted in language, in effect delegating the government’s warmaking power to Moshe Dayan, with Eshkol as consultant. Eshkol called for a vote. Laggardly, sixteen hands went up over sixteen grave faces. Two ministers of the far left, who had been holding the dove line with the Foreign Minister, stared in dismay at the sprouting hawk’s talons on Eban’s upraised hand, and they abstained.
When the meeting broke up, Dayan called Pasternak aside. “Sam, I pledged to the Rafi executive committee that I would stay linked to Ben Gurion. He was right there in the chair. I had to.” Rafi was the splinter party that Ben Gurion had formed, and Dayan had needed the party’s approval to accept the Defense Ministry.
“I’m aware of that, Moshe.”
“Well, are you returning to Tel Aviv now?” Pasternak nodded. “Good. Drop in on B.G. and tell him what’s been decided. Say I’ve got a lot to do now, but I can come and see him for five minutes.”
Sam Pasternak was not under the Defense Ministry, but bypassing protocol was Moshe’s way, and he was back in charge. “B’seder, Minister.”
***
Ben Gurion opened the door of his flat himself. His glad smile dimmed as he said, “Come in, Sam, come in. I thought it might be Moshe. He’s due to report to me after the meeting. Sit down. How about tea?”
“Thank you, Ben Gurion. I have to get on to my office, and—”
“You’re doing fine work, Sam. I told Eshkol you were the man for the job. That’s one time he did listen to me, the fool. He’s not cut out to be Prime Minister. He’s a number-two man. I never made a bigger mistake, pushing him forward.”
Ben Gurion sat down behind a desk, the one place where he looked and evidently felt natural. Pasternak would not argue about Eshkol with the Old Man, whose enmity for his successor was unshakeable.
“I’m waiting anxiously to hear Dayan’s report. They’d better not vote for war!” Ben Gurion rapped the desk. “I told Moshe that this isn’t 1956. Without at least one big power on our side we can’t fight the Arabs. That time we had the French and the British. And it isn’t 1948, when we had to fight or die. Our losses were terrible, terrible. It must never happen again.”
The worn face, thinner now and with sunken eyes, settled into a strong withdrawn expression. Pasternak hesitated to speak. All at once the Old Man brightened. “Well, Abba Eban’s been keeping his head at least, and that’s crucial. They won’t go to war against the Foreign Minister’s advice. Eshkol has no head, so he doesn’t count. Moshe pledged to stay linked to me, so that’s all right
, too. The others will follow his lead. I could have been Prime Minister again, you know. Even Begin was for me—Begin!—but it’s best this way. I’ve served my time.”
“Ben Gurion, the committee meeting ended an hour ago. I came straight here from there.”
“So?” An alert look flashed from the dulled eyes. “What was the upshot?”
“Dayan will decide what resistance to make to Egypt, according to military necessity, and consulting with Eshkol. The Foreign Minister made the motion, and it passed.”
“Eban made the motion? But that’s a motion for war.”
“Yes.”
“What was the vote?”
“Unanimous. Two Mapam abstentions. They told me afterward that they’ll change their vote to yes.”
Ben Gurion’s large white-fringed head drooped on his chest. He heaved two thick sighs, shaking his head. “It is the gravest mistake in our history. The cost in Jewish blood will be horrendous. Our cities will be bombed, our soldiers mowed down—”
“It may not happen that way, Ben Gurion. A big air strike can catch them by surprise, and—”
“No, no.” Ben Gurion waved impatiently. “All this talk about air strikes! Don’t you suppose Nasser’s on highest alert? Is he crazy? Anyhow airplanes are wasps, they can sting and hurt, but you fight a war on the ground, with guns, tanks, blood. Look at Germany! Pounded to pieces from the air for two years. Not one stone left on another, and what beat Hitler? Ground forces! Tanks, infantry, Russians, Americans, British, smashing in from east and west, fighting and dying by the tens of thousands. Well, I’ll be hearing from Moshe any minute. He listens to me, I can control him, that was why we had such a success in KADESH. If it must be war, a limited action will be enough. So—”
“Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan sent me to talk to you.”
“He did?”
“The message he gave me was that he’s got lots to do now. He can come and see you for five minutes.”
David Ben Gurion looked thunderstruck. After a moment the thin resolute mouth curled in a slow smile. “Five minutes? Well, Sam, you tell Moshe Dayan that that will not be necessary. We can’t accomplish much in five minutes.”
Sam Pasternak knew Dayan had sent him to tell the Old Man that he was politically extinct, only a few days after a popular call to bring him back to power. A cruel message, but it was bracing to see the way Ben Gurion took it, with a dour smile and a few light words. For all his faults great and petty, this was the Lion of Judah who had led the Jews back home.
“Sam, you’ve also got a lot to do. Maybe more than Moshe.” They both stood up. Ben Gurion offered his hand across the desk, then heavily sat down. “Rabin has his plans, and good generals. They’ll fight the war and win. Goodbye.”
At the door Pasternak stopped to glance at B.G. The Old Man sat there with a calm timeworn face and a faraway look, as though he were peering back across the years to his boyhood; or perhaps across the centuries, to the fall of the Second Temple.
36
Midway
Monday, June 5, 1967.
A broad sandy plain at the Sinai and Gaza borders is shaking and rumbling as though in an earthquake, as the diesels of General Tal’s three hundred tanks turn over in dawn warm-up. These obsolescent or secondhand tanks—British Centurions, French MX-13s, and American Shermans and Pattons—are a far cry from the advanced postwar Soviet tanks massed in Sinai; but beefed up and smartened up by Israeli technology, they are the best the Jews can field.
Tal’s mission, if war comes, is to break into Sinai in the north in great force, achieve surprise, and panic the enemy. Armor attacks in the center and south will follow. The northern roads into Sinai are mere narrow ribbons through towering sand dunes and deep wadis, terrain considered impassable by tanks, hence the chance for surprise. Nevertheless Russian-style defenses behind the borders—belts of minefields, trenches, earthworks, and artillery batteries, all heavily built up during the long Wait and manned by crack Egyptian armor forces—will confront Division Tal. In a late-night talk Tal has warned his senior officers that Moshe Dayan’s comment to the international press about Israel going to war, “Now is not the time. It’s too late, or too early,” was just a quick-witted obfuscation. RED SHEET can in fact come at any moment, and since Israel has no strategic depth at all, Division Tal’s battalions have no place to go but forward, and no option but to win. They are making the main thrust. The existence of Israel may well turn on how they fight.
In his level drawl, his face scored with lines that show black in the green kerosene light, the short gnarled general sums up so: “In war, nothing goes according to plan, and yet the plan is everything. Whatever happens, remember the plan! Remember your objective! Break through to the objective, fighting if necessary to the death, for the last chance for the Jews on earth. There will be no halt, no retreat. There will be only the assault and the advance.”
***
Don Kishote is scrambling eggs on a spirit stove under paling stars, when Lieutenant Colonel Ehud Elad comes bumping up in a jeep through choking gray-blue exhaust clouds. He shouts over the earsplitting racket, “Yossi, why the devil doesn’t your signal sergeant answer?”
“She doesn’t? The cable must be grounded again.”
To ensure surprise, total blackout and radio silence have been clamped on Tal’s division, so communication is only via webs of cables lying on the sand. Farther south the other armor forces are freely using their lights and radio networks, amid much helicopter coming and going. This strategic deception appears to be working, for intelligence reports the Egyptians deploying for a main opening battle in the south.
Kishote dishes the smoking mess into two tin plates. “Have some eggs, Ehud.”
“Thanks. I’m famished. But what’s the matter, you have no cooks at headquarters?” Kishote is now the Seventh Brigade’s deputy commander.
“Those clowns? Ha! Taste this. I slice bully beef into the eggs, with onions and tomatoes and avocado. It’s great. We’ll be eating out of cans soon enough, and living like animals. Why were you calling me?”
“I want you to address my men.”
“What about?”
“What you told me last night after Tallik spoke to us.”
“You tell them.”
“I want them to hear it from you. Eat up and come along, Yossi.”
The rising sun strikes Lieutenant Colonel Elad’s mustached crimson face as he confronts his battalion, hands on hips. The fiery sunburn comes from riding in his turret exposed from the waist up amid the fumes and dust of tank maneuvers, for which war game umpires have more than once ruled him killed. Elad maintains that to fight, or even to pretend to fight, you have to see.
“Battalion, give close attention to Lieutenant Colonel Nitzan.” His loud voice drives the words over the field noises of morning.
Stepping forward to face the battalion, Kishote notices Colonel Gonen, his brigade commander, standing with General Tal behind the seated semicircle of tankists. He does not like talking while his boss, Gorodish—that is, Gonen—listens, but there he is. Gorodish’s Hebraized name, Gonen, has never stuck. To soldiers and generals alike he is Gorodish; a bullet-headed perfectionist, short-tempered, tough to the edge of cruelty, capable of demoting a soldier for an open button.
“Seventy-ninth Battalion, we still don’t know when or if we go to war,” Kishote begins, perceiving in their bored slovenly postures the low morale of the Hamtana. “What we know is that the enemy is out there”—he gestures toward the border—“and that’s why we’ve been out here for weeks, waiting. Just waiting. I told your commander last night, and he’s asked me to tell you, that only a European Jew like me can appreciate fully what it means to be an Israeli tank man. I spent years running and hiding from the Germans. Another year in a British detention camp on Cyprus. You’ve only read about such things. You’re a new generation.”
The languid young faces start to show some interest: most of them babyishly pink and smooth, a few bearded, all top
ped with thick shocks of hair that stir in the breeze.
“You’ve heard the question asked, over and over,” Kishote goes on. “Why did the Jews of Europe meekly wear those yellow stars, and go into the trains like lambs to the slaughter? Why didn’t they at least put up a fight?”
He pauses, his face grave. The silence in the semicircle of green uniforms becomes heavy, amid the clanks and screeches of tank maintenance all over the bivouac ground.
“Well, I told Ehud Elad last night about three cousins of mine in Warsaw, fellows just about your age, who wore those yellow stars and climbed up the train ramps without resisting. Why? First of all, because the Germans lied to them, said they were being resettled in work camps. Was that so hard to believe? How could they believe instead that civilized Europeans, even if they were anti-Semites, actually were packing them into the train just to take them away and murder them? Now we know that that was the horrible truth, but then it was inconceivable.”
Kishote has their attention now, all eyes on him.
“But even supposing they had suspected the truth, how could my cousins fight? With what? They had no weapons. They were European Jews. They relied on the gentile authorities for law and order. When a few Jews did find out the truth and took to the forests, or like the Warsaw Jews tried to fight back, it was all too late.
“Well, what I said to your commander last night was simply, thank God we’re different. We’re the Israel Armor Force!” He gestures at the rows of rumbling tanks. “We’ve got these, and we’re trained to use them! We count on no government but our own government, our own Zion, our own tanks, ourselves!
“And that is why—”
A distant hum makes him break off. The faces of the soldiers are turning to the sky. The far-off specks in the blue rapidly grow into planes flying seaward in groups of four. The motor noises rise to a drumming thunder. With confused yells and cheers, the soldiers jump to their feet, waving arms and fists as the planes flash by overhead, four by four, glinting in the sun and casting fleeting shadows, flying so low that the blue Star of David shows clear on each fuselage.