‘The Lion’s Gate; on the front lines of the Six Day War’ by Steven Pressfield

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Egypt, Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Jordan, Moshe Dayan, Sinai, Six-Day War

 

 

‘The Lion’s Gate’ is a fascinating attempt to present the events before and during the Six Day War of June 1967, when Israel’s forces (the IDF) overcame the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, thus staving off what the Arab leaders had proclaimed as the imminent annihilation of Israel as a country and the extermination of its Jewish population.

I jumped at the chance to review it for the San Diego Jewish World website as it shows the military aspect of a momentous event that I experienced personally, and even described in my novel, ‘The Balancing Game.’

The author has eschewed conventional historical narrative, preferring to interview participants and elicit first-hand, blow-by-blow accounts of the progress of the war on the various fronts as experienced by individual soldiers in the different Israeli brigades. This approach gives the reader a vivid – almost immediate – sense of participation in the actual events as undergone by individual pilots, soldiers in the field, officers, generals, reconnaissance operatives and even journalists and photographers.

The book adheres to an approximation of consecutive sequence, though as so many diverse and widely-dispersed developments were unfolding more or less simultaneously the description of the course of events is inevitably somewhat haphazard. What emerges from the various voices, which are quoted verbatim, as it were, is the frustration of the fighting forces in the period before the fighting broke out, the courage, the sense of urgency and the dedication of all those involved, the chaos and need for improvisation in the course of the fighting, and the enormous feeling of closeness experienced by men who had trained, fought and edured battle together, true brothers-in-arms. Two slogans ‘ein brera’ (no alternative) and ‘dvekut bematara’ (adhering to the objective) stand out as the motivating force behind the actions of both the individual soldier and the IDF as a whole. But another concept that lay behind many of the actions of the commanders and the soldiers was ‘balagan’ or chaos, which enabled many military incidents to develop in ways that had not been foreseen.

The accounts that emerge through the statements given by the participants also incorporates their philosophical musings about the battles, the nature of war, and their feelings in general. Thus, at one point we encounter this quote from Moshe Peled, the deputy commander of a company striving to surround and enter east Jerusalem: “What is our advance like? Little wars… all over the field. A house, a bunker, a machine-gun position. Each one is a war that is fought by a platoon, a section, sometimes just three or four men. What keeps them together? They are friends – simple as that.”

The fog of war features prominently in the various accounts, the opportunities missed, the mistakes made, the wrong turnings taken by tanks, the accidents, the friendly fire incidents, no failure on the part of the IDF is omitted. But the combat on the ground was preceded by massive and carefully-planned lightning strikes by Israel’s Air Force, and these played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war. The seminal role played by Moshe Dayan, who was appointed Minister of Defence just a few days before the hostilities began as a result of public pressure placed on Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, features prominently in the book, using exerpts from his own writings.

Many of the developments of the war were unexpected. The rapid disintegration of the Egyptian forces entrenched in the Sinai Desert enabled the IDF to advance to the Suez Canal; the fervent determination of the commanders and soldiers of the paratroop brigades to enter the Old City of Jerusalem overcame the disbelief and initial resistance of the politicians and their superiors; the pleas of the residents of the kibbutzim in the Jezreel Valley, which for years had been the target of Syrian troops situated on the Golan Heights, motivated the commanders in the field to spur their men on to take the forbidding plateau.

Contemplating the IDF victory in the Sinai, Cheetah Cohen, commander of a helicopter squadron, says: “I feel sorry for the Egyptians. The poor foot soldiers, most of whom are simple fellahin – peasants from the delta – have been abandoned by their officers. They straggle westward in columns of fifty or a hundred, sometimes tens and pairs and even individuals, barefoot and bareheaded. God knows what they are suffering from thirst and heat, grief and shattered pride.”

While the cost of the war in Israeli casualties was not high in relative numbers, each and every man killed represented a devastating loss to his comrades, friends and family, and the book concludes with a list of the ten men of the Reconnaissance company of the 7^th Armored Brigade decorated for valor or distinguished service (three of them posthumously) and the 16 men who were killed in action.

My one quibble is with the apostrophe in the book’s title. The Hebrew term for the gate refers to lions in the plural, not just one. And there were, indeed, a great many lions in the epic event that was the Six Day War.

 

 

 

 

Refugees

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Bashir Assad, Israel, Jordan, Nazi Germany, Palestinian refugees, Syria. Lebanon

 

The general Israeli public is on the whole soft-hearted and empathetic towards those in need. The scenes we see on TV almost nightly of Syrian refugees pouring across the borders into Jordan and Turkey, sheltering from the snow or sweltering in the heat inside the flimsy tents of refugee camps, do not bring joy to any Israeli heart.

The scenes of bombed houses, shattered homes and devastated lives caused by both sides in the conflict arouse a mixture of emotions – horror at the atrocities being inflicted on innocent civilians just a few hundred metres from Israel, shame at the failure of the world community to put a stop to the carnage and mortification at the vicious effrontery displayed by Bashir Assad in bombarding his own population. The retaliatory attacks by his opponents arouse the same feelings of resentment and regret in all those who can do nothing but watch as a neighbouring country obliterates itself.

For political reasons Israel cannot allow itself to become a haven for those unfortunates, but it has allowed its medical services to provide succour to individual cases. To date over three hundred badly wounded Syrian adults and children have been treated in hospitals in Israel. There is evidently some form of tacit cooperation at work here in order to enable these cases to get across the international border between the two countries, with the person accompanying the injured individual also being allowed to enter Israel.

Israel has a long and complex record with the concept and reality of the term ‘refugee.’ Today the word is immediately associated with the Palestinian refugees, who supposedly were driven out of their homes in the course of the 1948 conflict in which the State of Israel was established. Never mind that many of those who left their homes then are no longer alive, and that numbers of them left because they were encouraged to do so by their leaders, it is a fact that the many millions of persons defined today as Palestinian refugees are the second and third generation of descendants of the original refugees and surpass them greatly in number.

When the State of Israel was founded all the Jews living in Moslem countries were expelled and forced to abandon their property. The tiny, nascent State absorbed them, swelling its own population and obliging everyone to drastically reduce their standard of living. Those refugees were also housed in tents and temporary encampments initially, but all the resources of the new State were mobilized to provide permanent housing for them and to integrate them within the wider society.

The Palestinian refugees, by contrast, were kept in their impoverished state by their host Arab countries and deprived of civil status in order to be cynically used as a tool for putting pressure on Israel and the world community. Current demands to grant them the ‘right of return’ into modern Israel is both a distortion of history and a sure-fire recipe for the destruction of Israel – the only Jewish country in the world – while there are dozens of Moslem countries with almost endless resources for accommodating these unfortunates, should they choose to do so.

My own parents were refugees. They fled Nazi Germany and were fortunate enough to find refuge in England, where I was born. After proving themselves to be worthy over the course of several years, they were granted British citizenship and I was a British citizen from the moment of my birth there. Similar stories are prevalent all over the world.

It’s a pity that the morals and standards  of humanity prevalent in the wider world do not seem to have penetrated the minds of those who govern Arab countries.

London and Jerusalem

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AJR Journal, Assad, Brent Cross, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kindertransport, Lebanon, occupied territories, Oxford Street, Palestinians, Syria

One of the readers of the AJR Journal (Association of Jewish Refugees), published in London, to which I contribute a monthly column entitled ‘Letter from Israel,’ sent an irate letter to the editor complaining about what I write.  “Why doesn’t Mrs. Shefer-Vanson write about the real issues that beset Israel instead of her bland pieces describing life as if she were living in North West London,” they said, or words to that effect.

I don’t usually reply to the letters referring to my column that the editor of that august journal occasionally prints. Some of them are positive, some negative, but as long as my name is spelt correctly, that’s all I require. Besides, there seems little point getting into arguments with readers, as these could well drag on over several months and end in nothing of any great significance. There is the additional consideration that many of the readers are quite advanced in age (refugees from Europe who left in the 1930s and 1940s, or who came as children in the framework of the Kindertransports), and it might appear disrespectful on my part to enter into an argument with them.

I make a point of not (or hardly ever) bringing politics into my column, partly because I have to send my article to the editor about six weeks before it actually appears, and the situation in Israel and the Middle East in general often changes radically within that period of time, so that what may be correct and relevant when I write it is passé by the time it appears. Apart from that, if it’s up-to-date news that people want to read, there are many other places where that can be obtained, and I doubt whether the AJR Journal is where one should be looking for it.

But as for the jibe about me living the life of someone who lives in North West London, I’m tempted to reply that in some ways there are definite similarities, albeit with a far better climate. After all, like someone living in North West London, I’m surrounded by Jews, there are Arabs in the vicinity, my relatives are not far away and the cultural and musical life is not inferior to what is available in London (apart from the theatre, of course).

Granted, we don’t have Brent Cross, or even Oxford Street, but we have quite reasonable substitutes, shopping malls keep popping up all over the place and downtown Jerusalem has even become reasonably quiet and unpolluted since the light railway began operating.

But then the political situation raises its ugly head, and there is no getting away from the fact that while life inside Israel continues on its even tenor, events in the region are volatile in the extreme. On our northern border Syrians are killing one another with unprecedented ferocity (not unprecedented, actually, vide Assad père). To the south of us the Egyptian populace, with the aid of the army, has just succeeded in toppling its democratically elected president, and there’s no knowing what lies ahead for that benighted country.

Yes, there are Occupied Territories, with their Palestinian population. The situation does not bode well, but there is very little I can do to change the state of affairs. I don’t support the settlers, I vote for the parties of the Left, but at the moment there are not enough people who think as I do to change the political situation under Israel’s democratic process.

The peoples of the surrounding countries may well take the lesson of the events in Egypt to heart, and who’s to say that similar occurrences won’t follow in Jordan, Lebanon, and even Iran? Anything’s possible in this day and age of instant messaging, facebook, etc. The main reason preventing people from going out and demonstrating en masse in those countries till now has presumably been fear of even greater violence on the part of the ruling echelon, and of course, the army which it controls. But if the army decides to side with the demonstrators, anything can happen.

So it seems wiser to keep out of the political morass and stick to describing the very pleasant life I lead here in Israel, with endless sunshine, caring people, and a rich cultural life. If anything, North West London comes a very poor second to what I – and many others – enjoy here.

The World in Turmoil

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Britain, Francois Hollande, India, Israel, Jordan, Kim Jung Un, Mid-West, Syria, Turkey

 But is it any more so than usual? Perhaps yes.

 Young Kim Jung Un is threatening to use nuclear weapons against someone, maybe the US, possibly South Korea, or even Japan, or any of the countries of South-East Asia (which constitute the world’s main manufacturing power-house). The rhetoric and the idea, if not the location, sound familiar to Israeli ears.

 After all, the current leaders of Iran have long been threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation.

 France’s Minister of Finance has been found guilty of lying in order to cover up his illegal possession of a Swiss bank account, with an ensuing scandal for the government of French President, Francois Hollande. Another familiar-sounding event for Israelis.

 For more than one of Israel’s politicians has been known to engage in financial misbehavior, and some have even landed up in jail as a result.

 And as if all that weren’t enough, the bloodshed of the Syrian civil war continues unabated, with mutually-assured devastation between the warring sides, aided and abetted by outside parties from other Arab countries and entities.

 Egypt’s so-called democratic revolution has not brought greater freedom of expression to that country, with leading television personalities being arraigned for supposedly mocking the President and Islam. Nor have there been any signs there of an improvement in the status of women.

 India’s foreign tourism has plummeted by 25 percent, apparently as a result of the recent spate of gang rapes. That is not something we are accustomed to in Israel, though there does seem to have been an alarming increase in random thuggery and violence of late.

 Add to all this the strain on the stability and economy of the surrounding Arab countries, mainly Turkey and Jordan, as refugees from Syria pour in and are accommodated in makeshift camps. Going by the past Arab record on rehabilitating refugees, there isn’t going to be much of a future for any of those unfortunate souls who are fleeing for their very lives.

 That is also something that is not completely unfamiliar in Israel’s experience.

 England is still in the grip of a modern-day ice-age, with no relief in sight. But given that Britain’s weather has always been the major topic of conversation there, that’s nothing new either. People in Israel, and in Jerusalem in particular, forget sometimes how very fortunate we are. Believe me, I know, having grown up in London and having also spent a year in the US Mid-West. That’s not a climate, it’s a catastrophe!

And so the world continues on its merry way. Each day brings a new and unexpected development on the world stage, and here in Israel we watch with interest, somehow managing to forget our own not inconsiderable troubles in the process. But I’m positive that someone will be sure to remind us of them in the not too distant future.

That’s something to look forward to.