The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (30 page)

As he spoke, the packed assembly kept on shifting its gaze from his face to that of the prime minister’s, like a crowd watching a tennis match.

“The question every household in Israel is asking,” battered Begin in full stride, “is, why was it that between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur you did not mobilize the reserves and move our armor forward? What prevented you, Madame Prime Minister, from taking this most elementary of precautionary measures? You knew well in advance of the massive Egyptian and Syrian preparations for an imminent attack, and yet you did not even admit this to your own government, and you overruled your own chief of staff when he wanted to stage a preemptive strike.”

He abruptly dropped his voice from a high octave to a low one when he continued reasonably:

“Oh yes, I agree that to decide to launch such an all-out preemptive strike in such circumstances would, indeed, have been a momentous decision. One would have had to ponder it a thousand times. But with an enemy concentrating his forces before your very eyes”
–
again, he was up on the high ground, strident and harsh
–
“and still to do virtually nothing? And all the while, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur you were receiving confirmatory reports about those troop and weapon concentrations, yet you still did not take the most elementary precautions. How is this possible?”

He tossed up his arms in bafflement and stared hard at the premier and her cabinet ministers, searching their faces. Golda Meir sat there immersed in papers, as though engaged in other affairs. There was the blank, impassive face of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the intellectual, paunchy face of Foreign Minister Abba Eban, the closed expression of Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon; there were the veiled eyes of Minister without Portfolio Yisrael Galilee, whom some called Golda’s Svengali; the sharp and intelligent eyes of Interior Affairs Minister Dr. Yosef Burg, and the shrewd and clever gaze of Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir
–
among others.

“Just imagine,” said Begin to the people at that table, “and I say this with restrained yet indescribable frustration, that we had called out the reserves, say, four days before Yom Kippur, and at the same time moved our heavy weaponry forward. I’m speaking here of five hundred tanks to the Golan Heights and seven hundred to the Suez Canal, which would have still left us with an ample strategic reserve; just imagine those twelve hundred tanks readied in the north and in the south, the difference it would have made. One of two things would then have happened: either there would have been no war at all. Soviet spy satellites would have spotted our presence and Cairo and Damascus would have been forewarned by Moscow: ‘Don’t attack – the Jews are ready and waiting;’ or, yes, the enemy would have attacked, but the Egyptians would never have gotten across the Canal, certainly not with seventy thousand infantry, nine hundred tanks and hundreds of artillery pieces. The Israel Defense Forces would have fulfilled its vow: ‘They shall not pass!’ and we would not have had to pull back in the north, abandoning almost half of the Golan Heights, creating an intolerable threat to the villages in the valley below. We would have smashed the Syrian assault just as we would have routed the Egyptian aggressors, because we would have had the means to do so.”

Then, really letting go, he unleashed a mighty barrage with unreserved passion:

“But where, Madame Prime Minister, were those forces at noontime on Yom Kippur when our sworn enemies set out to destroy us? Where were those twelve hundred tanks? Where were their crews? Where were their gunners? I shall tell you where they were, Madame Prime Minister: the weapons were in the depots and the crews were at home.”

At this, several scores of voices exploded in a tumult of resentment: “All right, all right. We know about that. Sit down. Enough!” And there were some voices that were raised almost to a squeal: “Stop the demagoguery! You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t have all the facts! You’re imagining things!”

“Am I? I don’t think so,” snapped Begin, his inflection sarcastic. And then, every word plainly enunciated, “What I’m asserting is that our ability to have blocked the enemy at the very outset is not a figment of my imagination. It is an objective fact. And the proof is that, despite our not having mobilized the reserves in time, despite our not having moved our tanks to the front in time, despite the appalling chaos, and despite the resultant logistical breakdowns, despite all of these terrible things, when the actual crunch came
–
and this I say to the everlasting credit of the
IDF
–
our forces managed on both fronts, with that same approximate number of tanks, to trounce our enemies, grind them underfoot, and send them reeling.”

Assured even more than before, his finger jabbing the air like a prosecutor scolding a witness, he admonished: “Yet, Madame Prime Minister, you did not mobilize our forces in time. You did not move our weaponry forward in time. So I am compelled to ask you, from whence this irresponsible flippancy? Why don’t you just come out and openly admit to the nation that you made a mistake?”

Golda Meir looked up sharply, and returned Menachem Begin’s gaze with hard, fearless eyes, as if to say, You know very well the reason why. You know very well my hands were tied by the Americans who told me in no uncertain terms not to fire the first shot, whose Intelligence was as misguided as our own, and who, therefore, warned us against full-scale mobilization for fear it might transform what appeared to be enemy training maneuvers into an enemy offensive assault.

But whether Menachem Begin knew this or not, he was not to be assuaged. He had reached the very pinnacle of his speech and having climbed there, his eyes still riveted on this old woman whose face was obdurate, he said to her in an almost intimate fashion, without malice or spite:

“Mrs. Meir, you know full well that a government which fails in a matter so fateful to the life of a nation
–
and certainly to our nation, surrounded by enemies bent on our destruction
–
such a government inevitably loses the trust of the people. So I ask you, by what moral authority do you stay in office after being responsible for such a misfortune? How can you possibly think you can continue to conduct the affairs of our nation in light of the fateful decisions that still lie ahead? I am compelled to say to you, not as a politician, not as a party member, but as a father and a grandfather, that I can no longer depend on your Government to ensure the future of my children and grandchildren. So, with all the respect and the regard I hold for you, I have to say to you, please go now
–
right now. Go to the president and hand him your resignation. You are duty-bound to do so in the name of truth. Please go!”

Cries of “Yes, yes! Resign! Resign!” rose from the opposition benches, but Prime Minister Golda Meir paid no heed to them. And when Menachem Begin stepped down from the podium and returned to his seat, the whole House in an uproar, she stared at him with disgust in her eyes as he passed her bench.

She was disgusted too, nay furious, at her fellow socialist comrades, leaders of European governments, who had refused to allow the fighter aircraft to land and refuel in their territories as part of the airlift which America was rushing through to replenish the crippling
IDF
losses. So she phoned Willie Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany and a highly respected leader of the Socialist International, to ask for a meeting of that body.

“I have no demands to make of any one of them,” she told him stiffly. “I just want to talk to my friends, my fellow socialists. For my own good I want to know what possible meaning socialism can have when not a single socialist country in all of Europe was prepared to come to the aid of the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Is it possible that democracy and fraternity do not apply in our case? Anyhow, I want to hear for myself, with my own ears, what it was that kept the heads of these socialist governments from helping us.”

In a word, she wanted to look them straight in the eye.

The requested conference convened in London shortly thereafter, and was attended by all the heads of socialist parties, those in government as well as those in parliamentary opposition. Having been the one to ask for the meeting, Golda was the first to speak. Rising to do so, she had to impose an iron control on herself: lifelong Labor Zionist that she was, she understood that she was about to face a moment of quintessential truth. Was the Jewish State a rightful member of this socialist fraternity, or was it irredeemably the odd state out in the family of nations?

She began by reminding her fellow socialists how Israel had been taken by surprise, fooled into misinterpreting Arab intentions, and how it had been touch and go for days until the enemy was driven back and the Jewish State emerged staggering but victorious.

And then she laid it on thick: “I just want to understand, truly understand, in light of what I have told you, what socialism is really about today. Here you are, all of you. Not one inch of your territory was put at our disposal for refueling the planes that saved us from destruction. Now suppose Richard Nixon had said, ‘I’m sorry, but since we have nowhere to refuel in Europe, we just can’t do anything for you, after all.’ What would all of you have done then? You know us and who we are. We are all old comrades, long-standing friends. What do you think? On what grounds did you make your decisions not to let those planes refuel? Believe me, I am the last person to belittle the fact that we are only one tiny Jewish State and that there are over twenty Arab States with vast territories, endless oil, and billions of dollars. Of course you have your interests. But what I want to know from you today is whether these things are decisive factors in socialist thinking too?”

“Would anybody like the floor?” asked the chairman when Golda Meir sat down. Nobody did. The silence was palpable. It was broken only by a man’s voice behind her who said audibly, “Of course they won’t talk. They can’t talk. Their throats are choked with oil.”

“I never found out whose voice that was,” she told a colleague on her return home. “I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and look at him for fear I might embarrass him. But that man, whose face I never saw, said it all.”
31

To which Menachem Begin, had he been present, might well have said, “Golda, old friend, welcome to the Jewish people.”

Meanwhile, for all her disappointments and setbacks, Golda Meir had absolutely no intention of resigning. In her mind she still had work to do. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Cairo, and then between Jerusalem and Damascus, painstakingly hammering out separation-of-forces agreements and prisoner of war exchanges. Not only that, but Egypt was in such dire straits that the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough toward peace seemed possible for the first time
–
and she wanted to be around if and when it happened.

So she carried on, and surprisingly to some, her Labor Party won the postwar general election
–
the election Golda Meir had told Oriana Fallaci would be her last. Labor was returned to office again, albeit with a reduced number of Knesset seats. Still, public doubt and criticism were growing over the very questions which Menachem Begin had raised in his Knesset speech: the mistaken Intelligence assessments, the failure to implement a full-scale mobilization in time, and the misplaced confidence in the ability of the
IDF
regular forces to hold the line while the reserves were being mobilized. Who was responsible for these fatal errors? The government, surely! More than that, the Yom Kippur War seemed to debunk the popular delusion that the spectacular victory of the Six-Day War was proof positive that the
IDF
was invincible. In Golda’s mind it was. Israel’s performance in the Yom Kippur War, she contended, exceeded its military successes in the Six-Day War. Many an expert tended to agree.

But, inevitably, once the electoral dust settled the public protests began in earnest, and what started as a one-man vigil outside the prime minister’s office quickly burgeoned into mass, countrywide demonstrations as more and more reservists were demobilized and came home angry. It was an anger fueled by that matchless fury which Israelis reserve for their fallen idols. They were so angry, in fact, that in April 1974, following the findings of the inescapable inquiry commission, the once-indomitable Golda Meir, the woman who was an epic embodiment of true legends and legendary truths, became so discredited in the eyes of her exhausted and grieving nation that she and her fellow ministers, morally crippled, were compelled to resign. In stepping down, the path was paved for Yitzhak Rabin to step up to the plate.

First Term: 1974–1977

March 1 1922
–
Born in Jerusalem.

1941
–
Joins Palmach, the Hagana commando force.

1948
–
Leads the Palmach ‘Harel’ Brigade in helping to smash the siege of Jerusalem.

1964
–
Appointed Chief of Staff of the
IDF
.

1967
–
Chief of Staff of the Six-Day War.

1968–1973
–
Ambassador to Washington.

1974–1977
–
Prime Minister.

Key Events of Prime Ministership

1975
–
Negotiates through Kissinger interim agreement with Egypt entailing deep withdrawal in Sinai.

1976
–
The Entebbe, Uganda, rescue operation.

1977
–
Resigns because of his wife’s illegal bank account.

1992
–
Reelected prime minister.

1995
–
Assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

Photograph credit: Moshe Milner & Israel Government Press Office

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Sec. of State Henry Kissinger at a joint press conference, 12 July 1975