Blamed for the 'blunder' of the 1973 war, the sole female prime minister of Israel, should be appreciated for her fortitude in preventing a preemptive attack on the country's enemies.
All of Israel’s prime ministers have had to make fateful decisions during their terms of office. The grimmest of them have to do with wars – how to prevent one, whether to launch one, how to end one. These are life-and-death matters, for which the decision makers have always paid a high and intolerable psychological and political price.
A vivid example is the situation in which Prime Minister and Defense Minister Levi Eshkol found himself during the so-called waiting period on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War. Eshkol made a decision whose importance can hardly be overstated: not to launch a war without first getting a green light from Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. That decision sparked a fierce dispute between Eshkol and the General Staff warhorses who were gung-ho to wage battle as soon as possible. Unlike Eshkol, they were not gifted with forbearance or a diplomatic-strategic mindset. But despite his wisdom, and an ability to function with nerves of steel in a crisis (in contrast to the man who was then the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, who cracked under the pressure) – Eshkol paid a price as infuriating as it was unjustified: He was compelled to place the defense portfolio in the hands of Moshe Dayan, who went on to reap all the fruits of victory.
Prime Minister Golda Meir, who died 42 years ago this month, also faced a terrible and excruciating decision. Like all of Israel’s premiers, with the exception of Benjamin Netanyahu, she understood well the necessity of doing whatever was necessary to preserve close relations with the U.S. administration. In the summer of 1970, her government acceded to the demand of William Rogers, the secretary of state in the Nixon administration, to accept UN Security Council Resolution 242. Adopted following the Six-Day War, the resolution stated that, as a condition for peace, Israel must withdraw from the territories it had occupied in the Six-Day War.
Israeli agreement was finally given within the framework of a cease-fire with Egypt that ended the blood-drenched, bereavement-laden War of Attrition (1968-1970). The six cabinet ministers from Gahal (the right-wing Herut-Liberal bloc) opposed Meir’s decision: they resigned and in so doing dismantled the unity government. From Meir’s perspective, giving in to the secretary of state’s demand was integral to maintaining Israel’s good relations with the United States. Speaking in the Knesset on August 4, 1970, she stated that “even if disagreements exist,” they must not be allowed to overshadow a basic fact: namely, that the United States was “a friendly power, which proved in the past and is proving in the present its aspiration to ensure Israel’s integrity and security.”
On October 6, 1973, hours before the Yom Kippur War broke out, Israel-U.S. relations faced a supreme test. In a meeting held that day in the Prime Minister’s Bureau in Tel Aviv, Chief of Staff David Elazar, whom Meir held in high regard, raised a critical issue. He asked the prime minister for authorization to have the air force launch a preemptive strike against the air forces of Egypt and Syria. Probably the chief of staff was thinking in terms of the Six-Day War, when Israeli aircraft preemptively attacked Arab forces and airbases, effectively deciding the war’s outcome at its outset. But the conditions in 1973 were completely different.
Meir recounted the tense conversation with Elazar in her 1975 memoir, “My Life”: “I want you to know that our air force can be ready to strike at noon, but you must give me the green light now. If we can make that first strike, it will be greatly to our advantage.’ But I had already made up my mind. ‘Dado,’ I said, ‘I know all the arguments in favor of a preemptive strike, but I am against it. We don’t know, any of us, what the future will hold, but there is always the possibility that we will need help, and if we strike first, we will get nothing from anyone. I would like to say yes because I know what it would mean, but with a heavy heart I am going to say no.’”
Meir did not explain to the chief of staff and to “Mr. Security” – Defense Minister Dayan, who was present in the meeting – why she had made such a grave and fateful decision. She realized that in the days ahead, Israel would require massive American aid, both diplomatic and above all, military. She remembered very well the advice that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who succeeded Rogers in 1973) gave to Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Simcha Dinitz – namely that the Jewish state must not find itself in a situation where it will be blamed for starting a war, because it will then be difficult to request aid from the United States.
On October 6, the day the war started, Kissinger made his position clear in a conversation with Mordechai Shalev, the charge d’affaires at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He emphasized that Israel must not launch a preemptive strike and noted that President Nixon also agreed with that approach.
‘Absolutely awful’
Brig. Gen. Yisrael Lior, Meir’s military secretary, noted afterward – according to “Today War Will Break Out” by Eitan Haber (in Hebrew) that “her heart was heavy within her… She was well aware of the implications of her refusal, but she had no choice. It was important for her to muster support from the United States.”
On that same fateful day, Meir told Kenneth Keating, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, unequivocally, that Israel would not take preemptive military action, despite the clear advantages it could have.
At the time the prime minister made her decision, no one predicted the war would be so lethal – “heavy in days, heavy in blood,” in Dayan’s words. But it was obvious to Meir that her decision was liable to bring about the most horrific consequences: injury, death, bereavement.
Within a few days Israel found itself in a critical predicament in terms of materiel. The erosion in the IDF’s aerial and ground capabilities was acute. At a meeting on October 12, Meir described the situation in two words: “absolutely awful.” At that point Israel’s military had already lost 46 aircraft – 16 Phantoms and 30 Skyhawks – and 125 tanks. The feeling was that the army was hurtling toward the red line. “Today I received a report concerning the situation of the planes,” Meir said. “I was appalled.”
On October 14, 1973, the United States began airlifting arms to Israel. The prime minister recalled this in her testimony before the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, after the war: “We received 26,000 tons of equipment. We received 40 Phantoms and 53 Skyhawks. They [Israel’s pilots] were able to fly the Phantoms, [but] the Skyhawks had to be refueled three times in the air [during the flight from the U.S. to Israel], because we did not want to wait.”
Meir also justified her decision to the members of the commission, and to herself as well: “The chief of staff raised the matter of a preemptive strike. I said: 1973 is not 1967, and this time we will not be forgiven and we will not receive help when we’re be in need of it.” She went on to emphasize that “maybe it can be said with certainty that boys who are no longer with us – maybe they would have remained alive, but I don’t know how many other boys would have fallen because of a lack of equipment.”
Golda Meir is identified with the Yom Kippur War and with the “blunder” in the way it was anticipated. To this day a trenchant controversy exists about her, about her period as prime minister and about her performance during the war. However, we should very much appreciate her inner fortitude, which made it possible for her to make the bitterest and most fateful decision in all of Israel’s history.
19/12/2020 by HAARETZ
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