Palestine and Zioinism The Whole Truth
It was the consequence of a degree of collusion between Egypt’s President Sadat and Henry Kissinger who had just became President Nixon’s Secretary of State. Kissinger was frustrated because the Israeli government of Prime Minister Golda Meir would not make even the smallest concession to allow him to push Sadat into making a separate peace with Israel. So he, Kissinger, sent word to Sadat that “a little heating up would be in order.”
Sadat’s battle plan, of which Kissinger was fully aware, was to cross the Suez Canal and stop. Which is exactly what Egypt’s forces did. Sadat had absolutely no intention of advancing further; and he was confident that Syria’s forces would stop their attempt to recapture some if not all of the Israeli occupied Golan Heights when Kissinger blew the whistle and convened a session of the Security Council to get a peace process going.
In Kissinger’s pre-war vision Sadat would be hailed by his own masses as a conquering hero for taking back the Suez Canal and he, Kissinger, would then give the Israelis a couple days to strike back at Egyptian and Syrian forces before blowing the whistle.
It all went badly wrong for Sadat and Kissinger (and the Syrians) for two main reasons.
One was that Israel’s armed forces were not war ready. And that was because Defence Minister Moshe Dayan believed there would never be war unless Israel started it. Because of this lack of war readiness Israel suffered heavy losses, of tanks especially, when Sadat launched his attack to cross the Suez Canal. And that led to a real crisis in Israel’s relationship with the Nixon administration and Kissinger in particular.
I became aware of this crisis in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Golda.
As some of you may know, I enjoyed on the human level a very special relationship with Golda. That was because whenever I went to Israel I always sent her three dozen red roses. From the moment she became prime minster that guaranteed me the first interview with her at moments of crisis. To cut a long story short…
I arrived in Israel on the second day of the 1973 war. I discovered that Golda was holding a war cabinet in the kitchen of her Tel Aviv home and I sent the roses there. Two hours later I had a telephone call from Lou Kiddar, Golda’s personal assistant and lifelong best friend. She said, “Golda thanks you for the flowers and will try to call you this evening.”
When Golda did call me it was to say that on this occasion she could not give me the first interview. There was, she said, a compelling reason why she had to give the first interview to the American networks. I asked her what the reason was. She said
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We are in desperate need of a resupply of weapons from America, tanks especially. Kissinger is sitting at Nixon’s elbow telling him to delay the re-supply and make us sweat until we are ready to make concessions.
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Golda went on to tell me that she was ready to fly to Washington for one hour with President Nixon to clear the blockage.
As it happened it was Dayan who cleared the blockage and got the re-supply going. He did it by ordering the arming of two nuclear missiles, one targeted on Cairo, the other on Damascus. That was enough to terrify Nixon and he ordered a massive re-supply of weapons to Israel without further delay.
Years later I told the story of Dayan’s nuclear blackmail to an audience in America. After my presentation I was approached by a Jewish gentleman who had abandoned Israel and was making a new life in America. He said to me the following.
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Alan, what you said about Dayan’s nuclear blackmail is true. I know because I was the officer responsible for overseeing the arming and the targeting of the two nuclear missiles.
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The second main reason why it all went badly wrong for Sadat, Kissinger (and the Syrians) is that Ariel Sharon and other Israeli generals decided that when they were re-supplied they would have to teach Kissinger (as well as Sadat and the Syrians) a lesson. Sharon and other Israeli generals were convinced that in the immediate countdown to the war Kissinger had ordered American intelligence indicating that Sadat was about to attack to be denied to Israel.
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