The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (28 page)

So she answered, in a deeply compassionate tone, saying, “I weep for your loss, just as I grieve for all our dead. I lie awake at night thinking of them. And I must tell you in all honesty, were our sacrifices for ourselves alone, then perhaps you would be right; I’m not at all sure they would be worthwhile. But if our sacrifices are for the sake of the
whole
Jewish people, then I believe with all my heart that any price is worthwhile.”

A faintly bemused smile tipped the corners of her mouth, and though her face was gnarled with age, a girl looked out of her eyes as she said, “Let me tell you a story. In nineteen forty-eight, in this season of the year, I arrived in Moscow as Israel’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union. The State of Israel was brand new. Stalinism was at its height. Jews as Jews had no rights. They had been cut off from their fellow Jews for thirty years, since the communist Revolution of nineteen seventeen. Stalin had proclaimed war against Judaism. He declared Zionism a crime. Hebrew was banned. Torah study was banned. One was sent to the gulag or to Siberia for far less.

“The first Shabbat after I had presented my credentials, my embassy staff joined me for services at the Moscow Great Synagogue. It was practically empty. But the news of our arrival in Moscow spread quickly so that when we went a second time the street in front of the synagogue was jam-packed. Close to fifty thousand people were waiting for us
–
old people and teenagers, babies in parents’ arms, even men in officer uniforms of the Red Army. Despite all the risks, despite all the official threats to stay away from us, these Jews had come to demonstrate their kinship with us.

“Inside the synagogue,” she went on, “the demonstration was the same. Without speeches or parades, these Jews were showing their love for Israel and the Jewish people, and I was their symbol. I prayed together with them on that festival. Oh, how I prayed. I was caught up in a torrent of love so strong it literally took my breath away. People surged around me, stretching out their hands, and crying,
‘
Sholem aleychem Goldele
’ [Yiddish for, ‘Welcome Golda’].
‘
Goldele, lebn zolstu
’ [Golda, a long life to you].
‘
Gutt yontev
Goldele
’ [Happy Holiday, Golda]. And all I could say over and over again was,
‘
A dank eych vos ir zayt gebliben Yid
n
’ [I thank you for remaining Jews]. And some cried back to me,
‘
Mir danken Medinas Yisroe
l
’
[We thank the State of Israel]. And that was when I knew for sure that our sacrifices are not in vain.”27

A day later, a despondent Defense Minister Moshe Dayan walked into the prime minister’s room, closed the door, stood in front of her, and asked outright, “Do you want me to resign? I am prepared to do so if you think I should. Unless I have your confidence, I can’t go on.”

Golda Meir shook her head from side to side. “No Moshe, under no circumstances do I want you to resign. If I wanted you to, I would have said so.”

Clearly relieved, Dayan proceeded to share with her what to him was becoming increasingly obvious: that this war was not going to be a short one. Even while the enemy was being held at bay and in certain sectors was even being pushed back, Israel’s casualties were mounting and its arsenals were rapidly being depleted.

“What we saw up north on the Golan Heights,” said the Defense Minister, “confirms my fears that the hostilities are going to continue for an extended period, and the attrition is enormous.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that unless our stocks are speedily replenished we won’t be left with sufficient arms to defend ourselves
–
there won’t be enough tanks and planes; there won’t be enough trained personnel.”

Golda, shocked at this prospect of national annihilation
coming
from the man who heretofore had embodied the Jewish State’s undaunted defiance, gasped, “Are you saying that we’ll ultimately have to surrender to the Syrians and the Egyptians for lack of arms?”

It was as if David had aimed with his sling and missed.

“What I’m saying,” said Dayan, “is that if our stocks are not replenished at a much faster rate we may well have to pull back to shorter, more defensible lines, particularly in Sinai.”

“Pull back? Retreat?”

Golda Meir’s face went ivory white. She looked despairingly at her defense minister, covered her face with trembling fingers, then rose to stare out of the window. The more she pondered, the more the color seeped back into her cheeks until, composure restored, she turned back to face Dayan and said, “Moshe, one way or another I’ll get you your weapons. Your job is to bring us victory, mine is to give you the means to do so.” Then, picking up the telephone, she instructed her secretary, “Get me Simcha.”

Simcha Dinitz was then Israel’s ambassador to Washington.

“But it’s three in the morning there,” said the secretary.

“Wake him up!” snapped the prime minister. And then, to Dayan: “Simcha is going to have to persuade Kissinger to persuade the president to speed up a massive airlift, otherwise I’ll go to Washington myself. The Soviet Union is replenishing the Arabs around the clock. And so, yes, the whole of the Arab world is aligned against us, but at the end of the day this war is not just between us and them, it’s a duel in the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union, and that surely Washington can understand.”

Her red telephone buzzed. “The ambassador is on the line,” said the secretary.

“Simcha
–
Dayan is here with me. I want you to call Kissinger immediately
–
”

“I can’t speak to anyone right now, Golda,” said Dinitz, suddenly wide awake. “It’s much too early. It’s three in the morning here.”

The prime minister refused to listen to reason. “I don’t give a damn what time it is. We are in desperate need of a military airlift. Call him right now. We need the help today because tomorrow may be too late.”

“So what do you want me to tell him exactly?”

“Tell him he must speak to the president. Tell him what he already knows
–
that huge military transports of Soviet aid are being supplied by sea and air to the Syrians and the Egyptians. Tell him that we’re feverishly shopping around for foreign carriers to transport materiel to us, but they refuse. Tell him that European governments, notably the French and the British, have chosen to impose an arms embargo on us when we are fighting for our lives. Tell him that we are losing aircraft to the Soviet
SAM
s at an intolerable rate. Tell him I’m ready to fly to Washington incognito right now to talk directly to the president myself if I have to.”
28

But Golda did not have to. Washington understood only too well that the direction this war was taking could drag America into a perilous confrontation with the Soviet Union, with consequences too terrible to contemplate. For as much as it was primarily a gory conflict in the Middle East it was, indeed, becoming an increasingly menacing confrontation between the world’s two superpowers. So, on 14 October, soon after Golda had spoken to Dinitz, and after she herself had spoken to Washington personally any number of times, President Richard Nixon telephoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from his retreat in Key Biscayne, Florida, where he was taking refuge from the ever-mounting legal and congressional pressures brought to bear on him because of the Watergate scandal.

Pundits claim that by this time the president was drinking heavily, was losing sleep, and was so distracted by the shadow of possible impeachment that he was not fully focused on the Middle East inferno. It was, in fact, rumored, that he was leaving it all to Secretary of State Kissinger to handle. And while this was mere speculation, the reader might be forgiven for concluding that he was indeed under the influence, given the slurred and rambling nature of some of his remarks. Whether this was so or not, once it came to the decision-making crunch he was absolutely categorical: he did not want Israel to lose this war, but neither did he want it to win outright.

This is how the transcript of that 14 October telephone conversation
–
on the ninth day of the war
–
reads:

Nixon:
Hi, Henry, how are you?

Kissinger:
Okay.

N: Anything new this morning?

K: Yes, the Egyptians have launched a big offensive and it’s hard to know exactly what is really going on in an early stage of an offensive.

N: Of course.

K: The Israelis have claimed they have knocked out one hundred and fifty tanks and that they’ve lost about fifteen of their own. But that, in itself, would not prove anything
–
it depends where the Egyptians go to. The last information we have, that is not absolutely firm, is that they may have reached close to the Mitla Pass, which is about thirty kilometers beyond the Canal, and which would be the key Israeli defensive position. There are two possibilities: One
–
the Israelis are trying to draw the Egyptians beyond the
SAM
belt in order to knock out a lot of their forces, and in that case the battle could be fairly decisive [in Israel’s favor]. Or two
–
the Israelis are really in trouble and we should know that by tonight in any event.”

[…]

N: Look, we’ve got to face this…we’ve got to come off with something on the diplomatic front. If we go the ceasefire route, the Russians will figure that we get the ceasefire and then the Israelis will dig in and we’ll back them as we always have. That’s putting it quite bluntly, but it’s quite true, Henry, isn’t it?”

K: There’s a lot in that.”

N: They can’t be in that position, so we have to be in a position to offer them [the Russians] something.

K: Well I…

N: Because we’ve got to squeeze the Israelis when this is over and the Russians have to know it. We’ve got to squeeze them goddamn hard. And that’s the way it’s going to be done. But I don’t know how to get that across now [to the Russians]. We’ve told them before we’d squeeze them and we didn’t.

K: Well, we are going to squeeze them; we are going to start diplomacy in November right after the Israeli…[elections].

N: I know we were, but…

K: And we have made all the preparations for that, but that’s now water over the dam. I think what we need now
–
if we can find a [
UN
] resolution that doesn’t flatly say the sixty-seven borders, but leaves it open
–
something that invokes the Security Council Resolution 242 that speaks of withdrawals, and that’s something everybody has agreed to once. Plus a [peace] conference or something like that. Then perhaps by tomorrow we can move it to a vote in the Security Council.

N: Yeah, yeah. Certainly a conference would be fine.

[…]

K: By the end of the day this thing will be a lot clearer because the battle now in Sinai, whatever happens in Syria, the battles cannot be extremely protracted because supplies from both sides have to come a fairly long distance.

N: Desert battles are not protracted
–
we know that, that they move quickly. The other point I want to make, what are we doing on the supply side [to the Israelis]?

K: I could call you in an hour…

N: All right.

K: …when I can give you an accurate report. Basically what we are trying to do is to stop military planes and put commercial charters in.

N: Yes, yes. As I say though, it’s got to be the works. What I mean is
–
we are going to get blamed [by the Arabs] just as much for three planes as for three hundred
–
not going to let the Russians come in there for
–
with a free hand. On the other hand, this is a deadly course, I know, but what I mean is, Henry, I have no patience with the view that we send in a couple of planes, even though they carry sixty some…My point is, when we are going to make a move, it’s going to cost us out there. I don’t think it’s going to cost us a damn bit more to send in more and – I have to emphasize to you that I think the way it’s being handled in terms of our things – we are sending supplies, but only for the purpose of maintaining the balance [with the Russian resupply to the Arabs] so that we can create the conditions that will lead to an equitable settlement. The point is, if you don’t say it that way, it looks as though we are sending in supplies to have the war go on indefinitely, and that is not a tenable position.