Steven Pressfield’s latest book offers a front-row seat from which to observe the Six Day War.
By SETH J. FRANTZMANSteven Pressfield’s latest book offers a front-row seat from which to observe the Six Day War(photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)
Your time is over, Jews. The experiment in nationhood that the Zionist entity has managed to sustain for nineteen years is due to expire.”The heavily accented Hebrew of Ali Ahmad Said, the Egyptian announcer of ‘Kol Ha’Raam’ radio out of Cairo, sometimes called the “voice of thunder”, was confident of victory prior to the outbreak of war in 1967. Haim Koren was a 13-year-old then, living in Haifa’s Bat Galim neighborhood. He recalls his parents reassuring him that prime minister Levi Eshkol would speak on the radio tell the Egyptians the truth. But when Eshkol did speak on May 28, it was a disaster as he stuttered through notes he had just prepared.The public was not reassured, and the army, fully mobilized, was chafing at the bit, awaiting the order to go.Steven Pressfield is the author of several best-selling novels, including The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The War of Art. To write Lion’s Gate he conducted several hundred hours of interviews with 63 participants in the war, including some wellknown people such as Yael Dayan, the politician and daughter of Moshe Dayan; Shlomo Gazit, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence and Zalman Shoval, a former politician and diplomat.He assembles them, sometimes with whole chapters devoted to various participants, and other times by looking at certain episodes, like the battle for Um Katef in Sinai, through the eyes of several participants.As he notes up front, this is not traditional history writing. “I must alert the reader to another intentional violation of the conventions of history writing”, describing the book as “hybrid history” where the book is told from the first person through the eyes of the participants. This leaves the reader a little jarred; wondering if the words are verbatim from the interviews, or paraphrasing by the author. The use of the first person by a variety of participants may lead some to recall the 1971 book The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk about the Six-Day War. However the essential difference here is that while that book was about first-person introspections, often dealing with how they felt about treating Arab civilians and other sensitive subjects, this book is purely a book about war and is not a critical account of the conflict. Pressfield is clear on this “I am a Jew. I wanted to tell the story of this Jewish war, fought by Jews for the preservation of the Jewish nation and the Jewish people. I don’t pretend to be impartial.”Some of these stories are well known, such as Israel’s decision to launch air strikes to destroy the enemy airfields at the opening of the war. But the details and how the individuals perceived them are new and raw. Dr. Naomi Eilam, who was serving as a pediatrician for two communities near what is now Ben-Gurion international airport, but which was then on the Jordanian border and subject to raids by “Fedayeen” terrorists. She recalls the feeling of abandonment before the war. “How could this be happening? Where were our allies? The Americans, mired in Vietnam, dilated and demurred. The State Department claimed to have literally lost the 1956 letter in which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had guaranteed Israel’s territorial integrity.”France had also cut off arms shipments.Britain was seen as tying its interests to Middle Eastern oil regimes. At the air bases like Tel Nof near Rehovot, the pilots were busy preparing for their bombing runs of enemy airfields. Seventy-two Mirage IIIC fighters received between 1962 and 1964 had been outfitted with twin 30 millimeter cannons, rather than missiles. The pilots were being trained to strafe the enemy fighters that they hoped would be sitting on the ground during the early morning raid that would start the war.Giora Romm, a Mirage pilot in squadron 119, recalls “we feel the weight of responsibility.It’s not something one speaks about.We have all heard [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser’s threats. We know what the Egyptians will do to our families if we cannot stop them. Similarly on the Jerusalem front, as the paratroopers await orders to conquer the rest of the city, the oddities of Israel’s army are brought into plain view. Moshe Milo, a captain in battalion 71, ponders the sub-standard equipment.“In Israel in ’67 the army is too poor to have its own trucks for troop transport.We must use civilian vehicles, called up under the mobilization plan.”Although the book is titled Lion’s Gate it is not centered on the battle for Jerusalem, but focuses more on the Sinai campaign.Only towards the end is some perspective of the conquest of the Old City brought in.Yoram Zamosh, another member of battalion 71, recalls the moment he comes to the Kotel (Western Wall) after the liberation.“Here the enemies of my people have devastated all that they could. What remains? This fundament alone, which they failed to raze only because it was beneath their notice. The armored legions of our enemies have passed on, leaving only this wall.”
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