The meeting convened in a large room with solid concrete walls and mechanical ventilation. Prime Minster Levi Eshkol sat at one end of a long table, his thick eyeglasses on his forehead, his eyes buried in a document. The IDF chief of staff, General Yitzhak Rabin, sat at the other end, puffing on a cigarette. The rest of the seats around the table were taken by IDF generals and the civilian chiefs of Shin Bet and Mossad, all much younger than Eshkol. Plastic chairs lined the walls, occupied by aides and advisors.
On the opposite side of the room Tanya noticed Elie Weiss, diminutive and brooding. His wool cap covered his ears. He beckoned Tanya to an adjoining seat, but she sat near the door.
General Rabin approached a large wall map, the cigarette dangling from his lips. “
Boker Tov
,” he said.
A few voices replied, “Good morning.”
“What morning?” the prime minister asked, looking up from his papers. “It’s still the middle of the night!”
Rabin smiled. At forty-five, he was a handsome man with reddish-brown hair and a healthy tan. “As I see it, our goal is to avoid war. But our duty is to prepare for one.”
Several generals nodded. They seemed accustomed to Rabin’s slow, deliberate manner of speech.
“The tension on the borders,” Rabin continued, “is growing. In the north, Syrian bombardments rain down from the Golan Heights. In the east, PLO terrorists infiltrate from Jordan and kill civilians. In the south, Egypt is building up its forces in Sinai. In the west, terrorists attack us from Gaza. The daily casualties on every front erode our citizens’ morale.”
“It’s a chronic disease,” the prime minister said, “like bronchitis, or cataract.”
Everyone laughed, knowing that he was suffering from both.
“It’s becoming a fatal disease,” Rabin said. “The Arabs smell blood. They’re finally strong enough to overrun Israel.”
“The world won’t allow it,” the prime minister argued. “The UN will confront the Arab leaders. I sent Abba Eban to urge General Bull.”
“Our intelligence reports,” Rabin continued, “indicate that Egypt might block the Straits of Tiran.”
“Impossible!” Prime Minister Eshkol shook a finger at Rabin. “We have guarantees from the Americans. That’s why we agreed to withdraw from Sinai after the ’fifty-six campaign! Egypt will never have the chutzpah!”
“The Soviet Union is arming the Egyptians and Syrians in hopes of creating another Vietnam here. But our eastern border is the longest. To succeed against us, Egypt and Syria need Jordan.” With the point of a long stick, Rabin traced the meandering border down the middle of the Sea of Galilee to the mouth of the Jordan River and inland toward the Mediterranean Sea, where it ran parallel to the coast, creating a narrow strip where Israel was less than ten miles wide. Near the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv, the border veered east to the Judean Mountains. It sliced Jerusalem in half, with the Old City on the Jordanian side and the Jewish neighborhoods in a small peninsula. The border immediately dropped back west, circling the southern bulge of the West Bank, under Jordanian control, then east again to the desert valleys below the Dead Sea. The southern part of Israel, almost two-thirds of its odd-shaped territory, was the Negev Desert. It was dotted with isolated kibbutzim, collective farms that defied the harsh desert with green islands of alfalfa, carrots, and tomatoes.
General Rabin’s pointer returned to the narrow coastal strip north of Tel Aviv. “Here is our soft belly. Unlike the south and the north, where we have a bit of territorial depth to fight, a massive Jordan bombardment of West Jerusalem and the coastal strip will destroy us.”
“They won’t dare!” Prime Minister Eshkol leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “It would be a violation of every UN resolution!”
Drawing long from his cigarette, Rabin took his time. “If diplomacy fails, we’ll have to fend off King Hussein, or war will be lost on the first day.”
“I can’t spare any troops,” said General Dado Elazar, CO northern command. “The Syrians sit in their bunkers on the Golan Heights and shoot down at our kibbutzniks in the valleys. We have casualties every day. How long are we going to tolerate it?”
“My lines are stretched to the max,” said General Gavish, CO Southern Command. “Three hundred kilometers of desert. I have gaps wide enough for an entire Egyptian battalion to march through. We operate a phantom division in the middle section—three old tanks driving back and forth, raising dust to fool the Egyptians about our size. But if they actually attack, we’d better prepare white flags and learn Arabic.”
“Imagine that,” said a voice from the corner, “the Israelites going into Egyptian captivity all over again.”
Tanya had not noticed him before. General Moshe Dayan, veteran IDF chief of staff, wore plain khakis and his black eye patch. He joined his fingers, forming a peak. “We’d better pull out the old blueprints for the pyramids.”
“Happy Passover,” someone said, and the room erupted in laughter.
“War is coming,” Dayan said, suddenly serious. “The IDF must attack first, or we’ll all die.”
“Madness!” Prime Minister Eshkol was red in the face. “We are a tiny country, an island of Yids in an ocean of Goyim! The United Nations guaranteed our sovereignty. It’s General Bull’s responsibility!”
“What’s he going to do?” Dayan smirked. “Order his thousand UN observers to observe more closely?”
“We can’t fight alone.” Eshkol’s voice trembled. “We need America. Or France. Alone, we’ll be squashed!”
A wiry, tall man leaped from his seat and went to the map. “My team has prepared plans for a first strike.” Ezer Weitzman, nephew of Israel’s first president, had until recently commanded the air force. He was now CO operations, second only to Rabin.
Weitzman grabbed the pointer from Rabin. “A first-strike by the Arabs would disable our airfields, blast the Dimona nuclear reactor, and destroy our cities.” The pointer moved rapidly between different spots on the map. “The north and south will be cut off from central command.” He tapped the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and the Negev. “No supply lines. No reinforcements. No spare parts, ammunition, or oil refills. Our tanks and infantry will be disabled and wiped out. End of story.” Weitzman threw the stick on the table, and it slid lengthwise until it stopped, the pointer touching Prime Minister Eshkol’s white shirt. “Authorize a preemptive air strike on them, or prepare for a second Holocaust!”
Having kept the defense portfolio to himself, Eshkol was now stuck with the challenge of reining in the military brass. Tanya saw him scribble something in a little notebook. “Here we are,” he said, “an ancient nation with a great military force. But still, the people of Israel are afraid. We’re like
Samson the nebishdicker
.”
They laughed, and Tanya understood Eshkol’s clever metaphor of the biblical superhero,
Samson the nerd
, Israel being simultaneously mighty and meek, ferocious and fearful. In contrast to the Israeli-born sabra generals, who were confident and eager to fight, Eshkol belonged to the older, Diaspora-born politicians, whose worldview had been formed in Eastern Europe, where Jewish men cowered under kitchen tables while the Goyim ransacked their homes and raped their wives and daughters.
“We should avoid both complacency and hysteria,” General Rabin said. “If the Egyptians blockade the Straits of Tiran, our oil supplies from Iran will be cut. Our factories will stop. Buses and trains too. And our reservists won’t be able to reach their units.”
“We could,” Eshkol said, “ask the Iranians to ship the oil around Africa to Haifa.”
“The real wild card is Jordan,” said Moshe Dayan. “King Hussein doesn’t want to risk losing East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but he can’t appear disloyal to his Arab brothers.”
“Which is fine,” General Weitzman said. “We’ll capture Temple Mount and reunite Jerusalem!”
“We don’t want the West Bank, though,” Rabin said.
“Why not?” Weitzman asked. “The hills of Judea and Samaria are filled with the biblical sites where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived. Imagine the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the first piece of land Abraham bought in the Promised Land. Jericho, which Joshua captured upon returning from Egyptian slavery—”
“And imagine,” Rabin said, “ruling over a half-million Arabs.”
“They’ll run away,” Weitzman said, waving his hand, “like they did in ’forty-eight.”
“I don’t think so,” Rabin said. “The IDF is a defense force. The military occupation of a large Arab population will be morally problematic.”
Prime Minister Eshkol pointed at Elie. “Weiss, tell us about the Jewish fundamentalists. Will they be grateful to the government if we capture the holy places?”
“They’ll be grateful to God.” Elie stood up. “I estimate that capturing the biblical sites will cause a rise in religious nationalism centered on old ruins and ancient tombs. Thousands of observant families will pick up and move to Hebron, Jericho, and Bethlehem. Depending on your political leaning, this could be viewed as a wonderful new wave of laudable Zionist pioneering or as a power grab of territories needed for a future bargain with the Arabs. I believe that if Israel conquers the West Bank and East Jerusalem, future governments will face a political
fait accompli
—no withdrawals and no peace with the Arabs.”
There was a long silence, broken by Ezer Weitzman. “That’s a bunch of nonsense. Who is this guy?”
The chief of Mossad, Meir Amit, cleared his throat. “Until recently, our assessment was that the Arabs would not be ready for war before 1970. However, six months ago the Soviet Union began shipping massive amounts of arms, accompanied by thousands of military personnel, including field commanders, tank officers, and fighter pilots. They’re acting as advisors, but they’ll fight, just like in Vietnam.”
“Why?” The question came from Rabin.
“Dimona,” the Mossad chief responded without hesitation. “The Kremlin considers our nuclear program to be a direct challenge to Soviet influence in the Middle East. By early summer, June or July, they’ll have Egypt, Jordan, and the Syrians, as well as supporting brigades from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, ready to attack Israel.”
“They won’t!” Prime Minister Eshkol sat back, removed his glasses. “The UN will stop them!”
The Mossad chief glanced at Tanya. “A very telling conversation took place when the General Bull called King Hussein to wish him a happy birthday.”
“Some neutrality,” Prime Minister Eshkol said. “He didn’t call on my birthday!”
Amit smiled. “They’re friends. The young king is a flying enthusiast, so Bull treats him as sort of a protégé. He invited Hussein to tour the new UN radar station at Government House. We’re still gathering intel on it. But when Bull told King Hussein that his family will be visiting Jerusalem in the spring, the king offered his villa in the south of France instead.”
Tanya had her notes ready. “The king responded that it’s going to be a very hot spring in the Middle East, but by summer they’ll be able to vacation together in Tel Aviv.”
The prime minster swiveled his chair to face Tanya. “What was Bull’s reply?”
She quoted from her notes. “
It’s a date!
”
L
emmy woke up to an explosion of banging and knocking that made him sit up in his bed fighting for air. The room was completely dark, and it took him a moment to realize the noise was coming from his alarm clock. He hit it, and the noise died.
The apartment was not heated during the night, and the sweat on his forehead was icy. The wind rattled the window. He turned on his reading light and sat for a moment. His body ached. He wished he could stay in bed. He had slept for less than two hours, having finished a novel about young Italian lovers whose passion led to tragedy.
Lowering his feet to the cold floor, Lemmy resisted an overwhelming desire to slip back under the warm blanket. In a moment, he would be late for morning prayers. He dressed quickly, grabbed the black hat from the hook, and rushed out of his room.
The small sink by the bathroom had a single iron faucet. He used the copper cup to rinse his hands three times as prescribed by Talmud. He splashed cold water on his face and dried his hands and face on a towel while reciting the blessing: “
Grateful I am before you, Master of the Universe, for giving my soul back to me in your mercy. I believe in your grace.
”
His father had already gone to the synagogue for an hour of predawn studying. Lemmy passed by the kitchen without stopping, crossed the foyer, and reached for the door handle.
“Jerusalem?” His mother’s quick footsteps sounded, and she appeared in the foyer. “Here. Drink it.”
He took the mug and filled his mouth with sweet, hot chocolate. It was always at the right temperature, soothing away the bitter residue of a restless night without burning his palate. He gulped it, looking at his mother over the mug. The vapor between them softened her untimely wrinkles.
“Thanks.” He handed her the empty mug.
“May God bless your day,” she said while he headed down the stairs.
He knew she was watching from the window as he ran through the rain, holding his hat, his shoes splashing through puddles.
He entered the synagogue foyer and brushed the drops off his coat. Monotonous chanting came through the open doors of the main sanctuary. In the far corner of the foyer, Benjamin stood with Redhead Dan and his study companion, Yoram.
Lemmy approached them. “What nasty weather!”
“It’s better than famine,” Benjamin said. “You want us to starve?”
“Why starve?” Lemmy waved his hand. “Couldn’t God create a better irrigation system? This rain gets everything wet—buildings, roads, dogs, roaches. Even the sea gets wet! It’s stupid, isn’t it?”
Redhead Dan said, “God isn’t stupid!”
“He didn’t say it about God.” Benjamin said. “Just about getting wet in the rain. Surely our merciful God knows best how to run the world He created, right?”
“That’s a given,” Lemmy said. “But God should deliver water where it’s needed—olive groves in the Galilee, orange trees near Jaffa, and so on. The current system—”
“Are you questioning God’s wisdom?” Redhead Dan folded his arms on his chest. He was in his early twenties, burly and freckle-faced. His red hair, spiraling payos, and bushy beard created a blaze that kept his head constantly boiling. His young wife had given birth a few days earlier to a baby boy—their first child. “God will punish the sinners! The filthy Zionists will pay for their abortion law.” His voice grew louder. “We’ll destroy their Knesset, flush their law books down the toilet, and drown their heresy in a bath of blood!”