“Absorbing and convincing: an exemplary work of journalistic history.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Chapter 8
Nine Days to War: A Terrible Situation
1. Anxiety: “Keep up your appearance”
The fear triggered by Nasser’s acts, beginning on Independence Day, rapidly escalated into panic. “We are in a cold war, with the hot war close on the horizon, ready to erupt at any time,” wrote Yosef Weitz in his diary. “The people of Israel are in a state of anxiety.” The public was demanding the immediate appointment of a war cabinet, he noted, but the ministers were negotiating as usual to expand the coalition. He thought this was madness. It was hard for Weitz to work in his garden, hard not to be involved. He felt as if he were outside of things. But his grandson Nir was called up and Nir’s wife, Mira, was going to visit him in the Negev with fresh socks and underwear. She left their two-year-old son, Amir, with Weitz, who went with his great-grandson to the park, played ball with him, and took him to the supermarket. “A nice boy, intelligent, perceptive and talkative,” he noted, trying to console himself.
“The children know every detail and at school they have prepared them for a state of emergency,” wrote Riki Ben-Ari from Tel Aviv to her relatives in Los Angeles. Many Israelis were going overseas. “Every day people call me and say So-and-So has left the country,” Ben-Ari wrote; those leaving included women and children. “Planes arrive empty and take off full,” reported Ha’aretz. The conductor Erich Leinsdorf canceled his concert and fled, like most tourists. According to a report given to the chief of staff, the southernmost city of Eilat was emptying out; thousands had already left. The IDF feared that the Egyptians or the Jordanians might attack the city and cut it off from the rest of the country.
People hoarded food; there were buying panics almost everywhere. “Mothers and wives who are ordinarily wise, moderate, and capable women are rushing to the grocery stores in loud confusion, buying up in virtual hysteria whatever is needed and whatever is not,” wrote the Jerusalem author Yeshurun Keshet in his diary. Grocery stores stopped extending credit. “What will happen if, God forbid, there isn’t any bread or water or dairy when the war really does break out?” wrote Keshet; he had no doubt that it would. “They are not to be blamed, I guess,” wrote Edith Ezrachi of Jerusalem to her relatives in Nashville, North Carolina; she assumed they were “remembering their suffering and near starvation in 1948.” She also went out and bought rice, noodles, and sugar, and she filled a spare bucket with water. Anxiety took over the kibbutzim, too. On Yehiam they prepared for the worst, partly under the sway of recollections from the War of Independence. They dug defensive trenches between the houses, as if expecting the enemy to invade kibbutz territory. “If you take shelter in a house or a hut, seek cover beneath a bed, table, etc.,” members were instructed. The shelters were for the kibbutz children.
Yehoshua Bar-Dayan’s impression was that the situation on the home front was worse than where he was, and many soldiers shared this sense. “The calm and confidence in the military are completely different to the sense of panic felt by the little man,” wrote one soldier in a letter home. Another wrote, “I never imagined the situation was as terrible as what you described to me in your last letter. . . . If what you wrote is true, about women crying all day and running to get in line early at the grocery store in case, God forbid, there is no food left, then all the nice stories in the papers and on the radio about people volunteering are just that—nice stories.”
The newspapers tried to lift public spirits with reports of unity between the people and its army, with accounts of steadfastness and willingness to sacrifice. This was Israel’s “secret weapon,” Maariv believed: the Israeli. Such was the story of a kindergarten teacher from the south who took her class of thirty on a day trip. They happened on an encampment of reservists. The five-year-olds started clambering happily on the military vehicles. Some of the soldiers hoisted them onto their shoulders. One soldier was equipped with a recorder and a harmonica, and he gathered the children in the shade of a tent to play some tunes while they sang along. Other soldiers gave the children cookies and candy from their battle rations, and let them drink out of their canteens. Finally they all sang songs together. One of the boys recited: “Soldiers, take care of us and of the country and of our flag.” He was showered with kisses. “The soldiers, most of them fathers, seemed to enjoy the visit even more than the children,” Maariv concluded.
The paper told of a shoemaker from Ness Ziona who wanted to give all of his savings to the IDF; the army refused his donation. An elderly couple donated their pensions to the IDF. The Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company promised its Israeli customers it was doing everything possible to keep production going. “Our duty and yours in these days of emergency is to stay level-headed and continue our daily activities, even step them up, and not to get into a bad mood or fall into panic,” declared the company. Its advice to the women of Israel: “Keep up your appearance, put on makeup, look beautiful, and smile, even if it takes an effort.”
Letters sent overseas also reflect an attempt to repress anxiety, but it nonetheless was often visible between the lines. There’s nothing to worry about, everyone is healthy, we feel fine, spirits are up, it all looks worse from the outside, wrote one woman from Tel Aviv to relatives in Boston, probably trying to reassure herself first and foremost, but the opening words of her letter were “Taking advantage of the Friedmans’ leaving Israel, I’m writing you this letter,” as if she feared it might be her last opportunity to make contact. Some letters were warm and calm, the writers seeming to have internalized the official spirit of resolve; others were official and cheery. “The main thing is the greatness of the people at this hour, which proves over and over again that the spark exists in each and every person from Israel and becomes a great flame of dedication and a love of Israel,” wrote Yoskeh Shapira to overseas delegates of the Bnei Akiva movement. “We are keeping calm and trusting Him who dwells in the heavens,” wrote parents from Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv to their daughter in Los Angeles. The kibbutz members were collecting underwear and towels so the soldiers camped nearby could shower and change, wrote the mother: “A spirit of volunteerism and generosity prevails in the country; everyone looks out for everyone.” On the balcony at Café Roval in Tel Aviv they set up a blood donation station. The owners offered donors complimentary coffee and drinks. Penina Axelrod, in Boston, received letters from her family assuring her that the mood was cheerful, but she also got a request from her sister to send their father’s medication quickly: “I don’t want Dad left without a supply.”
But the letters from Weizmann Street in Rishon Lezion showed how hard it was to stick to a routine. Rina and her baby moved in with her parents when her husband, David, was called up for reserve duty. The toddler made everyone happy. A real little boy, as his grandmother wrote, he was starting to walk and chatter, saying every word twice. He could recognize his grandfather and say “Saba,” the mischievous little devil. But he also called out for his father all the time, saying, “Come, come.” His grandmother wrote, “It breaks your heart.” Uri, the young brother, now in high school, kept up his good grades and did his homework “tip-top, as if nothing is going on.” But his father, who remained unwell, “felt the situation keenly,” wrote his wife. “I never imagined I would go through this horror again in my lifetime,” he wrote to his daughter, who was still in Manhattan but was now thinking of coming back. “Everyone has betrayed us.” The parents refused to advise their daughter to come home. They knew no more than she did from the papers in New York, they wrote. But on May 28 the mother said, “Father’s opinion is that you shouldn’t send your things over yet. If you haven’t sent them, wait until the situation becomes clearer.”
Riki Ben-Ari, a fashion commentator whose drawings appeared in Maariv, found it difficult to concentrate and was doing almost no work, but she wrote to family that she was more optimistic than many because she believed in fate: “You could die by accident, too.” While weeding his garden, Yosef Weitz noticed an unusual silence that had settled on Hahalutz Street. Almost no vehicles were going by, he wrote in his diary. “Everyone looks up at the sky as if planes will appear at any moment.” Civil defense representatives went through houses in Rehavia to check on the basements (which served as bomb shelters), Edith Ezrachi told her relatives in Nashville. “It’s hard to say there’s a good mood.” The civil defense authorities instructed residents to buy black paper and tape to darken their windows. Across the street, Ezrachi noted in another letter, was the Gymnasia Rehavia high school, its windows piled high with sandbags. “It’s a very sad sight.”
The first volunteers soon began to arrive from overseas. “It’s wonderful to see them,” Yediot Aharonot wrote cheerfully. Some celebrities came, too, to show solidarity with the embattled country, including the pianist Daniel Barenboim. Foreign reporters also started arriving, among them the grandson of Winston Churchill, who went to see Ben-Gurion almost as soon as he landed.
As tensions mounted, so did the fear of Israeli Arabs. The crisis sharpened suspicions that always hovered over Arab laborers, and the number of Jews traveling to predominantly Arab Nazareth dropped. The police denied, however, that Arabs were distributing anti-Jewish leaflets. The author Yeshurun Keshet thought about Israeli Arabs that week. There were no assurances of their loyalty to the state, he wrote in his diary: “The soul of the eastern man is a dark abyss and his thoughts are a mystery.” Naturally, “the voice of blood and racial belonging” drew Israeli Arabs to the Arab world, and were stronger than the material advantages Israel offered them. It followed that no arrangement in the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel could be natural or sustainable. “This is not a temporary problem, but a curse for generations.” Keshet had no delusions: “No final solution is feasible.”
Eshkol’s military secretary, Israel Lior, had met with the head of the Security Service, Yosef Harmelin, and suggested he heighten the state of alert. Harmelin proposed “preparing actions against the local population.” It was decided that in the event of war, military supervision over Israeli Arabs would be renewed; among other things, overnight curfews would be imposed and Bedouin residents would be moved from the north of Israel to the south. A few dozen Arabs were arrested under military directives. The military advocate general, Meir Shamgar, however, cautioned against a second Kafr Kassem, an Arab village where, on the eve of the Sinai Campaign, several dozen residents had been shot dead after curfew hours by Israeli Border Guard police. “Curfew violation is not cause for opening fire. Use of firearms is permitted only when engaged in war. People who are late getting to their villages when a curfew is in force will be allowed to return home; if necessary they will be arrested. Under no circumstances should they be hurt.”
Fausi Al-Asmar went to visit a friend on Kibbutz Galon, but no sooner had he reached her room than she was called to the kibbutz secretariat. When she returned, she told him the kibbutz had demanded that he leave immediately. He might be an enemy spy, the kibbutz secretary had explained. What could he be spying on in the kibbutz? she had asked. He could tell the enemy that all the young kibbutz members had been called up, and also that there were not enough bomb shelters. The army, which continued to monitor Arab activities, reported enthusiastic expressions of identification with Nasser and hopes that Israel would be destroyed, particularly among Muslims. Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, conversely, sent out a newsletter to its active-duty members reporting that Arabs from the surrounding villages had come to help the kibbutz with the farmwork. They came with their families, and looked sad and tense. “We set up lovely tables for them in the dining room,” the newsletter continued. “We tried to honor and appreciate what they were doing, and they spoke of work and peace.” Ha’aretz reported that the Galilee Arabs were afraid of the coming war and were depressed. There were also reports of Arabs offering to donate blood and money.
Professor Akiba Ernst Simon, a longtime member of the movement in favor of a binational Arab-Jewish state, and Uri Davis, a leader of the struggle against martial law, were among the signatories to a petition published in Ha’aretz calling on Israel to wait before going to war: “He who gains time may also gain peace.” But these voices were lost in the consensus of anxiety. Amnon Zihroni, an attorney, reexamined his worldview as a pacifist and draft resister; in 1954, he had held a prolonged hunger strike to force the government to recognize his right to conscientious objection. In May 1967, he still believed he did not have the right to kill a human being, in accordance with the principles of pacifism. While he blamed the government for the crisis, he nonetheless wrote to Eshkol asking to be enlisted “in some defensive capacity,” such as a medic.
Though always a positive thinker, even Edith Ezrachi was losing hope. “I must admit that up until about Friday . . . I was still fairly optimistic,” she wrote to Norwalk, Connecticut. “I was still almost confident that some way would be found to avert a military confrontation. But by Saturday I was grasped by the nightmarish realization that there may be no way out.” On Sunday, her husband, Eitan, was called up. She tried to amuse her relatives in America with descriptions of his efforts to fit into his old uniform. He looked as if he were back in the Boy Scouts. She laughed at his appearance, but really she wanted to cry. “Our anxiety is very great and very grave and our incomprehension is maddening.” This was a fear of destruction, and its source was rooted in the Holocaust.
On Thursday June 7th, in Part II of Ameinu’s special commemorative web and e-newsletter edition marking the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, the excerpt from Tom Segev’s new book, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, continues with “The Shadow of Holocaust and the Six Day War: ‘Nasser is Hitler.’”
