Friday, November 9, 1973—THE BULLETIN—7
Peming the Press
See also NEWS STORIES , . . page one
For once I longed to take up arms.
SITTING in the comfort of a Tel Aviv restaurant recently, we jwere revising the old Six-Day war crack about the peace-loving Israelis having a piece of Egypt, piece of Syria and a piece of Jordan, Every peace they end up ith more pieces. . .The street ights were celebrating the end f the blackout. The customary military miracle had been achieved.
Earlier on the Suez Canal, some f us felt moved to pity by the reckage of the wretched Egyptian rmy. We watched fascinated as e Israeli advance lanced inexorably forward to slam the trap m the Arab beachheads.
African after African nation was jreaking off relations with Israel. Curppean politicians were talking ententious rubbish about the need or both sides to show moderation.
lat with one thing and another, t was the usual windup to a Middle ist war.
( In this atmosphere it takes a noment's thought to remember ow comtemptibly we. Western ^urc^eans, have responded to the vents of the past month.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in my
'fe, on Golan and at Suez, I ave felt ashamed to be a mere eporter of events. The sight of the estern Powers attempting toap-ease the Arabs' genocidal am-itions has seemed to me one of e most humiliating of my short fe.
Admittedly, a part of my own fficulty in seeing the issues Idly is the memory of meeting Israeli captain in Syria in the rst week of the war.
He was in a distressed state jecausfe his company had just und a group of Israeli pris-ers left behind by the retreat-Syrians. They had been bound, deously tortured and then shot, he Israeli censor deleted all lis sort of thing from our reports avoid causing unnecessary suf-
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WE HAVE WATCHED ISRAELIS DISPLAYING ALL THE QUALITIES EOR WHICH WE LOOK IN OUR CIVILIZATION - MILITARY GENIUS NOT LEAST - l¥N/lf ON THE OTHER SIDE STOOD AN ENEMY or WHOM THERE COULD BE NO DOUBT THAT, ARMED WITH AN ATOMIC WEAPON, HE WOULD HURL IT LIKE A HYSiTERICAL CHILD". . .
fering to the families of missing men. But back home, it seems worth recording.
Some may argue that these things happen in all wars. But the Syrians conduct in their last few encounters with the Israelis suggest that in the world forum it would be wiser to treat them with all the caution that primitive savages deserve. After all, many Arab leaders do not even trouble to conceal their respect for the Nazis pioneer efforts in their field.
AT A MORE MUNDANE political level, the fact is that Israel came within a terrifying margin of losing this war - and even in one short month we seem in danger of forgetting this.
On the first day up on Golan, had the Syrians not halted for several hours in accordance with
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ELATED ISRAELIS: 'Until this war I have never much liked them.'
their rigid battle plan, they could have swept across upper Galilee to deal Israel a potentially lethal blow.
Heroism is very unfashionable, but one did not need to be an Israeli to cry a little, walking through the old front line a few days later, where the teenage conscripts had fought to the death for the vital hours that enabled their country to mobilize.
Some bunkers shot it out to the last man, they say. On the Suez line, many Israeli positions had been evacuated to cut costs last time the defense budget was reduced. Save money, pay blood.
Israel's total war dead are probably in the region of 1500. If Britain fought a three-week war and lost in the same ratio of population, we would have 28,000 men to bury.
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The Arabs, of course, with their suicidal human wave attacks, take the view that, just as the Russians can replace every tank they lose, so the Nile Delta can replace every peasant.
Until this war, I have never much liked Israel. But to see this society gathered in arms to save itself has been impossibly emotive. Down in Sinai under the starlit sky we sat and talked for hours to sentries who are agricultural engineers, tank commanders who are university dons, students who drove amphibious assault craft in the murderous first crossing of the Canal.
Lieutenants swear ferociously at their colonel when the mood takes them. Men carry Luger pistols or Swedish submachine guns or captured assault rifles according to taste. Many have their private tins of Nescafe and little gas stoves with them because in their homes they keep a bag in a corner cupboard, every day of every year, ready packed for the summons that came on Yom Kippur.
If their tanks break down, the crews often repair then by the roadside: the average British or American tank man would telephone the garage if he finds a loose bolt. A middle-aged Israeli supply officer was telling me that all his trucks were American .1942 vintage that had been patched together to see service in Israel's last four wars.
IN MOST ARMIES, under a helmet and four day's beard and dirt there is a good-natured unimaginative soldier. In Sinai, you find a man who wants to discuss the Chinese Exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Israel at war is a family at war, perhaps the most highly motivated army in history. Even in Syria I have seen Israelis treat their prisoners with nothing worse than amused pity, embarrased by a terrified Arab grovelling for mercy to which he is quite unaccustomed and thus does not expect.
This is why it has felt so shameful to be a Western European in Israel; because we have been watching Israelis displaying all the qualities for which we look in our civilization-military genius not least-while on the other side stood an enemy of whom there could be no doubt that armed
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(Continued from Page 3) should not necessarily erode Dutch links with the Arab States.
He said that the Arabs had complained that Holland had supplied Israel with oil during the recent hostilities, but Dutch ports and airfields had not been used for this purpose.
Mr. van der Stoel also emphasized that all the Dutch political parties, except the Communists and a small Socialist group had announced their support of Israel. . Because of the Arab boycott, the Dutch Government has banned private motoring on Sundays to conserve oil supplies.
The first earless Sunday turned into an impromptu celebration in Amsterdam as youths garlanded their bicycles with flowers and roller skated through downtown streets. Officials said that fewer than 20,000 vehicles were used in all of Holland, compared with the usual 800,000 on Sundays.
The national traffic police called it "an outstanding success."
JONS.
with an atomic weapon, he would hurl it like a hysterical child.
AWAY FROM the battlefield, today, it seems fantastic to imagine that the Arabs are ready for a lasting peace. Surely it is more to the point to think forward to the next round that must come, to find the courage we seem to lack to confront the Arabs for what they are-the most destabilizing factor in the world politics of the'1970s.
Four times now, the Israelis have achieved the military miracle that we have so dangerously come to expect from them.
Yet this time the Arabs fought better than the last. What if next time they fight still better again, and achieve the break-through their huge weight of men and arms logically dictates?
The concept of a ceasefire would be quite meaningless once the Syrians were rampaging through the heart of Israel exercising their proven taste for fire and the sword.
Can we possibly found our political attitude to the Middle East on the assumption that the Israelis can walk on the water whenever the impossible is asked of them?
I shall never go for a holiday to Israel because the waiters are rude, the food is terrible, the architecture drab. But these last
BY MAX HASTINGS London Evening Standard
weeks, I am proud to have shared the Israeli's camp fires in Sinai.
For the only time in my life anywhere in the world, I wish that I had been carrying a rifle beside them.
They are a very great people who one month ago came closer to destruction than blind Europe seems willing or able to recognize.
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