All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [217]
To forget nothing, to efface nothing: that is the obsession of survivors; to plead for the dead, to defend their memory and honor. So much has been said about them. They have been subjected to countless analyses, dissected, exhibited, and made “presentable” for theological, scientific, political, and commercial purposes. Treated like objects, they have been insulted, belittled, and betrayed. To resist this tide survivors—and they are becoming ever fewer—have only words, poor, ineffectual words, with which to defend the dead. So some of us weave these words into tales, stories, and pleas for memory and decency. It is all we can do, for the living, and for the dead.
JERUSALEM
In 1967 the Six-Day War stamped a whole generation of Jews with its halo of glory. I remember every phase and aspect of the war as if it were yesterday, as if I had fought in it myself. I remember the three somber, tension-laden weeks that preceded it. I remember the outrageous words, the overt, brutal threats of our enemies, and the silence of our friends and allies. And I remember Israel’s solitude.
It started one spring day in 1967. Israel was celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of its independence. During the military parade in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Eshkol received a brief military report that something was afoot with the Egyptians in the south. The next day there was talk of troop movements. The gravity of the situation quickly became clear. Cairo announced the beginning of its policy of aggression: the blockade of the Strait of Tiran, the revocation of the demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula. To facilitate the massing of his armies there, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded the evacuation of the UN units. Secretary-General U Thant’s hasty submission to Nasser’s demand surprised the international community. There was no longer any doubt about Egypt’s offensive aims. The situation deteriorated daily. When would war break out? In fact, it had already begun with the blockade, a casus belli under international law.
Israeli correspondents and all those sympathetic to Israel reported on the debates in the UN Security Council with mounting unease. Ahmed Shukairy, Yasir Arafat’s predecessor as head of the PLO, made no secret of his dream of witnessing the demise of the state of Israel. Soon, he declared, there would be no further Jewish problem in Palestine: The Jews would be driven into the sea. No one silenced him. No one protested. Gideon Rafael, Israel’s permanent ambassador to the UN, a seasoned diplomat, exposed the Arab countries’ objectives. His words fell on deaf ears. Most delegates tended to mind their own business, perhaps vaguely pleased that the Middle East was once again relieving their boredom. There was, however, one exception: Arthur Goldberg, the former Supreme Court justice who had been named U.S. ambassador to the UN by President Johnson. He fought day and night for Israel’s security and survival.
The Eshkol government undertook intense diplomatic activity in Western capitals, exhausting all its resources in an effort to forestall armed conflict. Eshkol abhorred war, and he believed that if the great powers did their duty, it could be averted. He sent Abba Eban, his minister of foreign affairs, to Washington, London, and Paris. His was a tough assignment, though some top-level meetings were less discouraging than others; a few were even cordial. But no one was prepared to intervene. The so-called great powers suddenly seemed very small. Leading officers of the Israeli general staff urged Eshkol to unleash a preventive war: Every day’s delay threatened to carry a greater price in human lives. One young general burst into the prime minister’s office, tore the epaulets from his uniform, and threw them on the table, lecturing the head of the government, who was also the minister of defense: