"The tenacity of Israel" By Richard Sale

If you enjoyed the first part of this piece, its excellence is not my doing. The asides and reflections are my own, but the text has mainly been based on a magnificent book, “Fortress Israel: the inside Story of the military elite who run the country – and why they can’t make peace,” by a former colleague and friend, Patrick Tyler. There are a lot of books on Israel lodged in my library, but Tyler’s is one of the best. 

It is history of the first distinction – accurate, incredibly well researched and brilliantly written. The excellence of his retailing certain incidents, his keen insights into the personalities of the actors, his talents of staging and his sense of connection with what he relates to a broader framework of cultural reference -- are all first class. 

But to return to the narrative. 

By 1956, in Israel, Nasser had become, “Hitler on the Nile.” This clearly displays a lack of proportion and certain hysteria, but it was a widespread Israel’s military. Egypt’s large, formidable army and its leader threatened Israel’s existence and France and Britain also shared this view. 

It was Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal that led to a secret alliance between the British and the French whose purpose was to destroy Nasser his armies.

 

The first plan for Israel’s war with Nasser was called, “Operation Musketeer.” Nasser was supporting French rebels in Algeria and wanted to subvert the pro-British monarchies in Iraq, policies that directly threatened French and British interests. (I am speaking of French colonies in the region.)There were several coy conferences between the French and the Israelis at safe houses in France. During one of these meetings, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “dropped the veil” to reveal that his real ambition to seize the Sinai Peninsula ad its oil for the state of Israel. 

According to Tyler’s account, Israel’s aggressive policies began to gain force and traction. Israel shared the French-British position that Nasser was going to turn Egypt into in a bastion of Soviet-Arab forces hostile to Tel Aviv. Only killing him would prevent that. The French were selling modern weapons to Israel, and in return, Israel would act to advance French interests. At first, France was urging Israel to lead commando attacks on Egyptian and Algerian sites in North Africa in return for $100 million worth of modern French weapons. One of the French generals argued that, “If Israel would take the lead in mounting commando attacks on Egyptians and Algerian targeted in North Africa, including blowing up the Voice of America radio station” that was spreading anti-western messages from Cairo (and perhaps even assassinating Nasser himself,) it would get more modern French weapons including nuclear development plans. 

A meeting between Ben-Gurion and the French at Sevres, he announced to all that it was “time to redraw the map of the Middle East again.” Under his plan, one country, Jordan, would disappear, and another would be swallowed up by Syria and Israel, while Lebanon would retain only a tiny canton of Christian Christians to raise the Lebanese flag. 

The ignorant grandiosity of such ideas is simply staggering. The obliviousness of consequences they reveal.  Opposing groups were to be treated as things. 

Ben-Gurion asserted that Jordan was a failed state under a weak king, and it should be broken up and divided between Israel and Iraq. He asserted that Lebanon did not work as a country, and thus the Maronite Christians on Mount Lebanon should become a Christian (Arab) state while the rest of the country should be divvied up to Israel’s advantage. How was such a plan to be carried out? 

Jordan and Israel were already skirmishing. Israel had already attacked Jordan after two Israeli farm workers were killed. The battle did not go well. Jordan made a serious counter attack, and eighteen Israelis were killed, and the Palestinians in Jordan rioted over what they felt was a recklessly wanton attack. 

The British and French now dipped their oars deeper into this troubled ocean. The French and British wanted Israel to launch an unprovoked attack on Egypt. They mainly wanted to destroy Nasser’s power, and the French felt that if that meant hiving off a piece of Sinai to pay for Israeli participation they were willing to consider it. But Israel had to play its part in this attempt at regime change. 

The French suggested that Israel should stage a bombing raid on its own territory and call it an Egyptian attack, but Ben-Gurion, who always had an exaggerated view of his own righteousness, staged a scene in which he denounced the scheme, saying, “I cannot lie.” That was news to everyone, especially his generals. But as the planning progressed, Ben-Gurion soon began to realize that Israel was in danger of becoming an instrument of the French rather than a partner. So Ben-Gurion and Gen. Dayan came up with a plan to drop parachutists into Sinai in order to make Nasser think they were going to seize it. That would draw out the Egyptians in battle mode which would trigger the intervention of the British and French. 

The raiders were dropped just back of Mitla Pass, but unfortunately, the parachute raid was a botch. First of all, Gen. Ariel Sharon, supposed to be Israel’s Patton, had not thoroughly reconnoitered the ground and had led his forces into a trap. The Egyptians stoutly fought back, and the attack stalled. Sharon’s forces were pinned down and strafed by Egyptian combat planes, and, worse, the British and French didn’t appear. Sharon didn’t lead the counterattack, leaving the task to his deputy. While the troops were being withdrawn under fire, Sharon “stayed a safe distance away,” says Tyler. In the end, the Israelis took casualties trying to obtain an objective that was promptly abandoned. Some of Sharon’s officers accused him of cowardice. 

The Soviets at that time were engaged in crushing an armed revolt in Hungary, and Ike had just won his election in a landslide and to the French and British, it was the moment to act. Soon, the French were dropping paratroopers in the northern Sinai and the British were plodding ashore at Port Said. Soon, British and French bombers were hitting Cairo, and when Eisenhower heard this, his extremely explosive temper went off in a blinding white flash, and he used the most brutal, threatening and incessant profanity to express his displeasure. For days, the halls of the White House echoed with his rage. 

Ike was in a fury. He was infuriated because behind Washington’s back, the French and British had conspired against him and supported Israel’s naked aggression. The plot violated the precepts of the Tripartite Declaration, the Charter of the United Nations, and ‘the very spirit of the transatlantic alliance,” according to Tyler. Ben-Gurion was a man of hyperbole and untruthful exaggeration, and he was that now. He called the Suez campaign, “the greatest and the most glorious operation in the annals of our people and one of the most remarkable in world history.” That this was simply fatuous apparently never occurred to him.  

 Few thought Israel’s actions glorious. The Russian premier, Bulganin, flung a blunt warning calling “Israelis criminally and irresponsibly playing with the fate of the world and with its own people.” The words bounced off Ben-Gurion like peas off a steel helmet. 

On Nov. 7, 1956, the plot collapsed. The British premier, Anthony Eden, was booted from office, and Paris began to realize the gigantic folly of the whole idiotic operation. Ben-Gurion was talking to the French about the oil resources of the Sinai and a French minister exploded, saying, “Soviet pilots are flying over Syria, the Soviets want to intervene in the Middle East, and you still think of the oil in the Sinai?” 

But Israel was not going to give up what it had gained. Ben-Gurion didn’t budge at all because, as Tyler puts it, “A small and embattled military had demonstrated its prowess in combat for a second time in a decade; it had seized the Sinai Peninsula – an area three times the size of Israel. Sparta and prevailed over Athens with spectacular results.” 

So Israel was determined to profit at any cost. That was its attitude and criticism from outsiders only hardened it. And many of Israel’s military were not going to listen to any calls for withdrawal either, and it is here that the Israeli character gets to be interesting. 

One of the key rules of King Frederick the Great was that a country should know when it was time to halt and go no farther. But Israel apparently ignored that -rule. What you had taken, you held with a grip like a pair of pliers. To Israel’s military the seizure of the Sinai was a masterpiece of cleverness, and Israel’s military displayed an enormous reluctance to give up what they had gained. It’s a vice of temperament, some kind of inner greed that encourages you to hold on to it what you have conquered, whatever it costs, completely ignoring what others may think of your action. This is a kind of insular blindness that simply doesn’t see things clearly because it is so intoxicated by its own triumphs and self-importance. Deep-rooted Passions are, after all, the basis of all diplomacy. 

But Schopenhauer once observed that being stubborn is a condition where a person’s will crowds out his judgment. He should have added that a stubborn man is one who lacks the capacity to sift, assess or prioritize. A stubborn person is a person incapable of creating a hierarchy of value. He is a person without perspective, and lacks capacities of judgment that are necessary to assess things according to their worth. In the case of Sinai, Israel’s blind stubbornness resembles a wrench that has rusted over and no longer works. There is nothing you can do to restore its function or flexibility, nothing that would restore its usefulness. In the case of Israel and its presence in the Sinai, its desire for its possession, was so intense, so voracious, that it overcame and stifled its reason.  Imagine a beautiful stone arch,  and imagine when one of the builders suddenly sees a single stone at the top of the arch, and he wants it with all his soul.  He simply wants it. He gets on a ladder and starts yanking away at it with all his strength, without realizing that if he gets his prize, the wall will collapse, and he will be killed.  That is the how the Israelis were behaving now. They desired a thing so much they feel that they feel that their life is incomplete without it, or worse, that without it, life is not worth living. There is a lack of common sense in this. It shows that you cannot grasp the intensity of the desire of others who want the same thing. You must prevail. The desires of others have no reality for you. 

Withdrawing from Sinai 

“Negotiations are a continual struggle between men without principles, impudently aggressive and over-greedy,” said French historian, Albert Sorel. 

After the collapse of the Israeli, French British scheme, Ike did not want to collide with his European allies head on. He was more cunning than that. He saw that Israel was committed to defying the world, and Ike was committed to curbing Israel.  The United Nations was moving to impose sanctions that would severely hurt the Jewish state if it refused to withdraw from Sinai and the Gaza Strip. In a TV broadcast, Ike said that Israel’s conquest put in danger the high principles of the UN Charter.  It was the first time that an American president had called Israel, not a state that had made the desert bloom, but a military aggressor.  The Israelis had attempted to impose conditions for their withdrawal, but Ike would have none of it.  The U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles warned that if Israel refused to withdraw from the Sinai, it risked “a rupture in its relations with the United States.” 

He added that Israel was “on the verge of catastrophe." 

Of course Israel’s military, including generals like Dayan and Sharon were against withdrawal. To some, it was like watching liquid cement harden.  Dayan paid no heed to the threat of sanctions, saying, “Why do we have to kneel down before we have to?” But then came a new development. Israel would withdraw, but America would make a strong declaration supporting freedom of navigation for Israeli shipping through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. With that, Israel began to withdraw from the Sinai and the Gaza strip.  The Sinai crises had ended. 

Israel’s bold plan to redraw the map of the Middle East had failed. Their plan to seize Sinai and get rid of Nasser had evaporated. But like a live coal in bed of ashes, Israel had made clear it could go on the offensive in the absence of any imminent threat to seize territory or to weaken its enemies through preventive war. As Tyler notes, Nasser emerged as “a savior of his people, and Egypt now had full control of the Suez Canal and its revenues. 

The greatest tragedy was that of Sharett.  He was a man of insight and sympathy, and he had worked so hard to comprise and accommodate the Egyptians and Arabs. But with Israel’s victory in Sinai, the importance of his efforts had vanished leaving no trace. He was a discarded, diminished figure shoved to the sidelines. Militarism in Israel was in the saddle. 

And think of what followed: The Six Day War, The War of attrition, Yom Kippur War, the Palestinian Insurgency, the 1982 Lebanon War, and the South Lebanon Conflict -- the list goes on and on. 

What is clear is that Israel’s War of Independent has never been concluded. 

I will end in Part Three, if Pat is willing. I have great sympathy for Israel and its struggles and would like to make some comments about what I have learned.

Comments

[Matthew]

Mr. Sale: Thank you for the enjoyable article. I have zero sympathy for Israel and complete sympathy for the Palestinians. Sharon, Sharon, Sharon. A coward? I've known that since Sabra and Shatila.

[BabelFish]

Many thanks for this, Richard. It is quite an education.

[jdledell]

Richard - Thanks again I hope Pat approves Part 3. I learned a number of interesting angles about this episode. I'm going to have to get Tyler's book to fill out my obviously incomplete knowledge. It is a coincidence but I was in Israel in October 1956.

My Grandfather brought me to Israel so I could have my bar mitzvah in Haifa on October 26th, 1956. He took me around Israel after that meeting all his old buddies from Irgun etc. Sometime that following week he took me to meet Ben Gurion. After a short meeting with this obviously awe struck kid, I was shooed out of the office and Ben Gurion and my grandfather must have spent talking privately for at least 30 or more minutes while I sat outside the office. All my grandfather would tell me is they talked about "stuff".

As I said, I was awe struck by everything in Israel and totally oblivious to the war that had just started.

[Bandolero]

Richard

Thanks a lot for making that chunk of history 1956 to me "smellable" and "feelable."

I'ld love to read one time a similar plastic description of the time a couple of years later, when Israel was on it's way to nukes and JFK opposed Israel having nukes. Of course, as we all know, that chunk of history is a bit dispensable now, as, at least that's what I heard, JFK's successor LBJ staunchly supported Israel's drive to nukes, but I'ld love once to read such a feelable description of that chunk of history, too.

[Piotr, Poland]

Interesting to read it. I've learned shortly about Nasser/ Suez crisis during my school education in communist times, and never paid special attention to this episode again.
The teacher "sold" this story to us like a great victory of "progressive nation of Egypt" with a big help from "Fathers of the Progress" (aka CCCP) against "greedy capitalists" without drawing all the nuances, you did here.
I didn't know Ike was furious about Israeli/UK/France cooperation for example, and that US tried to negotiate "non Soviet" Egypt with Nasser.
Thank you for showing all the shadows of grey in what was black/white picture in my memory

[Abu Sinan]

Thanks for the read and look forward to the next installment.

[richard sale]

But this was an incident of cowardice in the field -- which is a bit different.

Richard

[richard sale]

Well, you were only child. You had no means of knowing anything. what Ben-Gurion like?

Richard

[richard sale]

I was the first reporter in the world who wrote two articles about how Israel had developed an intermediate range missile system which was developed inside caves in the Negev. The warhead were deployed on the backs of railway cars. The huge blast doors would open, the missiles were fired, the railway cars with withdraw and the blast doors would close. The warhead was based on a US Army tactical artillery round and was developed at the Chaim Weizmann Institute.

My sources were CIA and defense contactors I knew. I expected some blowback but no - the Israeli Ambassador called me up and congratulated me on en excellent story. I was puzzled but was told Israel had a Labor government and they were all for displaying Israel's might.

It was quite an education. at the time, in May of 1985, I was a reporter for the sister publication of Aviation Week, Aerospace Daily. Two years later I was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

I realize that it is all a long time ago and no one remembers that. But I do.

Richard Sale

Richard

[The beaver]

Mr Sale,

Ben Gourion was so miffed at the British and French that he kept his copy of the Protocole de Sèvres even though Eden wanted no trace of their agreement after their conversations which took place at Sèvres from 22-24 October 1956.

[Larry Kart]

Richard writes: "Of course Israel’s military, including generals like Dayan and Sharon were against withdrawal [from Sinai]."

A minor point, perhaps, but I don't think that Sharon was a general during the 1956 war. In any case, I doubt that Sharon's views, whatever his rank (I think he was then a major), carried anything near the weight at the time that Dayan's did, especially after the brigade that Sharon commanded got into that mess at the Mitla Pass thanks to his arguably poor judgment.

[Cee]

Richard,

Israel’s bold plan to redraw the map of the Middle East had failed.

They never gave up trying and they're doing it now at the expense of the US.

I'm still moved by the history of the Holocaust. I was watching Charlie Rose interview Martin Amis last night about his new book that I plan to buy. I am no longer moved by the plight of the state of Israel.
I know better now. They have become what they claimed to hate and have proven it over and over. How on God's green earth do you provide software to the murderous Guatemalan government to do to non-white people (like Palestinians) what was done to them when IBM collaborated with the Germans to wipe them out?!
How they do engage in false flag attacks to kill people like Leon Kinghoffer on the Achille Lauro (read Profits of War by Ari Ben Menshe) while claiming Never Again?
I hope that you address the Israel attack on the USS Liberty when you write your next article.

[William R. Cumming]

Richard! Many thanks as always. At some future point could identify Israeli leaders born in then USA and/or raised or educated here?

IMO Jewish leaders have almost continuous failed their followers. A harsh judgment I know! But they failed to see Hitler for what he was! They failed to see the USA as the promised land. And now they have led many into what I believe may be as terrible as the HOLOCAUST, a largely successful HOLOCAUST IMO.

Many Americans are Patriots but not NATIONALISTS. A distinction made by historian John Lukacs, a staunch Catholic.

Is this distinction valid for Israel?

[richard sale]

That's very generous of you. History is fascinating and studying it is never a waste of time.

Richard

[richard sale]

Thank you, William, for all of your generous comments and encouragements. You make me want to be more industrious.

I will try to formulate the question of whether Jewish leaders railed their followers.

When you said Jewish leaders failed to see Hitler for what he was, I saw in a recent documentary that Polish Jews, who later rose in the Israeli hierarhchy agreed to spy for the Nazi S.S.

I was stunning when I saw this, and will get back to you with better information.

I think I understand the reasoning but it is hard to admire.

Richard

[Matthew]

Richard: Tis true. Sharon's reported battlefield cowardice is actually more serious the moral cowardice at Sabra & Shatila. At least when Saddam went to the gallows, nobody could say he wasn't a man. I doubt many (any) Israelis would face death so stoically.

Btw, the US government's rapid press-reaction force is on alert. See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/jerusalem-attack-car-driven-light-railway-platform?CMP=twt_gu

If only our government showed as much concern for American citizens as it does for Israeli citizens.

[richard sale]

Fascinating. Thank you.
Richard

[richard sale]

The incident that relates Jewish leaders in Poland, occurs in an episode of Hitler's Bodyguard.

I'll try and hunt it up.

Richard

[richard sale]

You are right. I know that Eitan, one of the commanders was a major. Sharon was the brigade commander but I don't think he became a general until 1967.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Richard

[Cee]

William,

I was astounded to learn that many in the Jewish leadership collaborated with the SS. Several references are The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black and Zionism in the Age of Dictators by Lenni Brenner.
Some in the US even lobbied not to increase immigration to the US which resulted in the S.S. St. Louis being turned away because they didn't want a rise in anti-Jewish sentiment in the US, PLUS they had to dream to establish a state. We see how that is working out.

[Matthew]

jdledell: Always enjoy your observations about West Bank settlers. Any updates?

[Cee]

All,

I spoke to an Orthodox Rabbi who told me about what happened to Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl when he was trying to raise money to save Jews. He was ignored.

I'm not home to refer to my other books but I did find the following as to why help wasn't forthcoming to others who perished.

"It is not an accident of history that from 1933 to 1945, no important Jewish organization ever demanded that the United States open its doors to the Jews threatened by Hitler." pp 191

"The Jewish establishment, afraid of losing its influence upon the community, instead of supporting rescue, mobilized all its power not to save the Jews of Europe but to save the prestige of its leaders. " pp 193

"Wise devised a very diplomatic solution. He knew that he could not publicly oppose a resolution establishing a government agency to save the European Jews, but could kill it by lending it a political character...There was a war against the entire Jewish people and the Jewish leadership was playing the futile game of Who's Who in American Jewry." pp 194

"It is not widely appreciated that during World War II there was one segment within American Jewry that used every possible means to save Jews: the Orthodox Jewish groups

[Cee]

Forgot to add...that came from http://www.amazon.com/Scared-Doomed-Jewish-Establishment-Million/dp/0889628483

[Larry Kart]

Sharon was promoted to colonel in 1958 and was a major general by June 1967. When he became a brigadier general (assuming that in the Israeli Army that was/is the prior step) I don't know.

[Joe100]

Richard -

Was this Rafael Eitan??

And keep up this most enlightening history narrative!