They talk back and forth about her children and his one boy. In an abrupt change of tone Irene Fleg says, “You’re happy, aren’t you? I was right, wasn’t I? Look at me, an old wreck.”
“Ridiculous! You’re lovely, Irene. Your leg will heal.”
For a fact the stringy face is not what it was, but it brightens in the subtle thin-lipped smile which he has not seen for several years. “Never mind! Was I right?”
“You were right, Irene, yes.”
She takes and squeezes his hand. “And just quick enough, mon vieux, to beat you to it. Now it can be said, n’est-ce pas?” She laughs. He hesitates, then reluctantly laughs too.
In a corner of the room on two sofas, a vigorous argument is going on among four powerful Israelis about the cancelled Lavie (Lion) aircraft. Very senior gentlemen they arc now, with wrinkled faces and padded midsections, and each has his decided viewpoint. Benny Luria is furious, for Israel Aircraft Industries, of which he is vice chairman, has taken the main blow. Designed and built in Israel, the Lavie was touted after its test flights as the best fighter-bomber in the world, but the Americans have decided to sell Israel the F-18 rather than fund the Lavie. Sam Pasternak is arguing that the decision was forced, prudent, and in Israel’s national interest. Kishote and Barak are mostly listening.
“Sam, you can be very detached and budget-conscious,” says Luria. “You’re in fine shape with the Merkava tank, chewing up a fat chunk of the military budget. But the air force —”
“Nobody in the world will sell us a frontline tank,” Pasternak interrupts, “so we’re building one. The F-18’s a frontline plane.”
Barak says, “What’s more, Benny, the air force approved the cancellation.”
Luria turns on Don Kishote, who heads an influential advisory board to the Prime Minister, called Future Assessment. “Approved, with a budgetary knife at its throat. Right or wrong, Kishote?”
“Yes, it was a little like cancelling a seventh-month pregnancy, but —” says Kishote.
‘There!” exclaims Benny.
“Wait, I’m not finished, listen to me,” Kishote exclaims. The youngest of the four in his mid-fifties, he still sometimes raps out words like a field commander. “There are three reasons for us to produce our own weapons systems, Benny. One, we can do it cheaper. Or two, we can make a Jewish leap in technology that puts us ahead of the enemy, if not of the world. Or three, we can’t buy the system anywhere. The Lavie’s a great aircraft, but when we can get the F-18 —”
“There go the lasers,” somebody calls, and there is a rush to the balconies. Ruti hears that Danny Luria has just showed up and is on the roof, so she trots upstairs. She has seen very little of Danny, but has heard plenty. Ruti is very happily married, and her Amos is even talked of as an eventual contender for Ramatkhal, but she does wonder a bit whether any of her old power over Danny remains. Let’s see! She isn’t pregnant enough to show.
Under brightening stars in the twilit sky, to the orchestral thunder of a Bach toccata and fugue, the pencil-thin rays of the lasers — crimson, green, blue, white — are crisscrossing the valley to paint fantastic patterns on the Old City walls. Ruti sees the back of Danny’s head in the crowd at the rooftop rail. Push in there to him? No, no. Just wait, and watch the pretty lasers …
“Here we are, Abba!” On the big balcony below, Aryeh and Bruria in uniform come to Don Kishote and hug him, both excited and aglow from having marched in a parade. The laser colors are weaving and coruscating on the wall across the valley, forming melting pictures — a roaring lion, a bounding deer, an F-16 — then dissolving into abstract designs. The massed singers in the amphitheatre are bursting into a major chorus of the Messiah:
Who is this King of Glory?
The Lord of Hosts
He is the King of Glory!
“Here’s your Uncle Lee, Aryeh,” says Kishote. “Lee, this is Bruria.”
“So this is Uncle Lee. But where are Spencer and Tamara?” Bruria blurts.
“At the last minute, Bruria, they couldn’t make it,” says Lee. “They were very sorry. So am I.”
“What! They’ve never been here, and now they miss this?”
Aryeh says in a tone to cut off Bruria, “I’m sure they had good cause.”
Lee is staring at them and smiling. “Aryeh, you were a scrawny kid when I saw you last. You’re a man, and you’ve got yourself a magnificent wife.”
And He shall reign …
King of Glory, King of Glory …
“Ha!” says Bruria, and goes on in her broken kibbutznik English, raising her voice over the music. “Uncle Lee, we had made such plans for them! Tomorrow Jericho and the Dead Sea, and after that —”
“Is it safe there?”
“It’s safe everywhere here,” snaps Bruria, then amends it somewhat nearer the mark. “As safe as Los Angeles, anyway.”
“Come.” Aryeh takes her arm. “Let’s watch from the roof.”
Looking after them, Lee murmurs, “What fools Spencer and Tamara were. And I too, Yossi, if the truth be known. When all is said and done, I missed it all. Didn’t I?”
“Never too late,” says Don Kishote.
“Forty years too late.” Lee shakes his head. “No regrets, regrets are pointless, but I missed it all.”
On the roof, Ruti and Danny are drinking at the bar. He is cordial, as to any old friend he seldom sees. They talk casually about his travels, and her job in high-tech industrial intelligence. Then she ventures, “I hope you’re happy, Danny.”
“No complaints, Ruti.”
“That’s nice. I hope to hear one of these days that you’ve settled down.”
“Me? Maybe when I’m forty and want a family, who knows? I’m having a great time, Ruti, happy as a wild bird. A free wild bird, motek!”
And He shall reign …
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah!
The first fireworks spring into the sky. Ruti leaves. Danny can see the fireworks here at the bar, away from the crowd, better than among them. Moreover the whiskey is here. He is quite content to stand here and watch the rockets and flares soar into the darkness with the triumphant blasts of the choral voices.
Hallelujah!
(Boom!)
Hallelujah!
(Boom!)
The pyrotechnics have been timed to explode to the beat of the music. What a tricky effect! Mighty spectacular, colored fire punctuating Handel’s high notes.
And He shall reign
For ever, and ever —
Danny is pouring himself another whiskey, and feeling as though he himself may reign for ever and ever. Tomorrow he’ll be back at the controls of an F-16, a squadron commander in Heyl Ha’avir. He looks up at the stars, and raises his glass with the silent thought, To you, Dov.
King of Kings,
(Boom!)
And, Lord of Lords
(Boom!)
For ever, and ever!
Hallelujah!
And now yet more gorgeous and astonishing effects! All along the base of the wall, fireworks pour forth a red cascade, as the lasers vividly paint a white dove of peace, winging along the wall with a green olive branch in its mouth. And on top of the wall there blaze forth on flaming frames the Star of David, the Cross, and the Crescent. The four old comrades in arms are standing with Max Roweh when this gaudy climax lights up the sky above and the valley below.
And He shall reign,
King of Kings!
And Lord of Lords!
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
HAL–LE–LU–JAH!
“There’s Teddy for you, and his togetherness,” Luria growls, referring to the mayor of Jerusalem. “Questionable taste, that.”
“That’s what Teddy believes,” Barak says.
“Even with the intifada?” says Pasternak sadly.
“Davka,” says Kishote, “with the intifada.”
“So is that it?” Lee Bloom inquires. “It’s over?”
“Not till they play ‘Hatikvah,
’ ” says Pasternak.
“Oh, of course,” says Lee, “ ‘Hatikvah.’ ”
“Forty years,” says his brother. “But the main thing is, we were gone for nearly two thousand years. Now we’re back, and there’s Mount Zion before our eyes, in our possession. I call that an unusual circumstance, Max, don’t you?”
“Decidedly unusual, yes.”
“And think of this,” says Pasternak. “About a hundred years ago a few crazy Russian Jews dreamed of a Jewish State. Now that State is taking in Russian Jews in the hundreds of thousands. Wouldn’t you call that unusual?”
“Unusualler and unusualler,” says Max Roweh, who likes to drink freely on such occasions.
Now the orchestra strikes up “Hatikvah,” “The Hope.” The guests on the Roweh balconies join the powerful choral voices below, and voices are sounding from everywhere, singing the minor-key melody borrowed from Eastern European folk music, the mournful-triumphant anthem of the Jewish State. Lee Bloom sings along with the others in his rusty Hebrew,
We have not lost our Hope
Of two thousand years
To be a free people
In our land
Land of Zion
And Jerusalem …
There follows a prolonged trumpet flourish, and a giant shower of fireworks. “Independence Day ends,” says Barak, and he goes off to the roof.
Aging and frail, Max Roweh still stands erect, as he did while singing the anthem. If he had a beard and a broad-brimmed rusty black hat, Kishote thinks, he could be taken for the Ezrakh. “Well, the Great Trumpet has sounded,” Roweh says to the others, and with a twinkle in his eye he quotes Maimonides. “Yet the Messiah tarries …”
“… And all the same,” Don Kishote completes the quote as a last dazzling burst of blue-and-white fire rises to the stars, “I will wait every day for him to come.”
Historical Notes
And so our story ends, though the saga of Israel continues to the present day, when pink streaks of a dawning peace seem to be appearing in a sky darkened for half a century by war.
Some readers turning the last page of The Glory may well wonder, “How much of all this has been accurate, how much imaginary? Did that fireworks display, for instance, really happen in Jerusalem on Independence Day 1988, with lasers painting changing pictures on the walls of the Old City, and Handel’s Messiah thundering from the ravine below?”
It happened, all right. I was there, consulting with knowledgeable Israelis about the historical novel I had just begun, which in time became two books, The Hope and The Glory. Even then those Israelis were asking me; “How can you possibly end the story, when it’s still going on?” Standing there on a Yemin Moshe balcony, as voices from everywhere sang “Hatikvah” and colored fire poured from Mount Zion, I said to myself, “This is where it will end.”
As in The Hope, the history in The Glory is offered as reliable, but accuracy about the recent past has a built-in limit, especially in a country still in a state of war with several neighbors. As one approaches the present day, stubborn controversy accumulates. The facts dramatized in this novel are drawn from the available serious sources in English and Hebrew, and from consultations in depth with experts, Israeli and American. Where head-on disagreements persist, I have told the truth as nearly as I could discern it. One caveat: my characters do sometimes occupy posts held in those days by real very different people, many of whom are still alive; and for this dramatic license I must beg the indulgence of some distinguished Israelis.
All political figures, and all military personnel of general staff rank — except, of course, for my four fictional leading men — appear by their right names.
A few comments follow on sources, reliability, and ongoing controversy in specific scenes of The Glory.
PART ONE: THE DREAMERS
The Eilat sinking and the reprisal against the oil refineries happened as described, causing the frantic acceleration in the Security Council debates which led to Resolution 242, with the famous dispute over the “two little words.”
The “Wild West show” of Israeli derring-do during Nasser’s War of Attrition, such as the Green Island raid, the armored incursion across the Gulf of Suez, and the capture of the Soviet radar, are documented in Israeli military literature. The Boats of Cherbourg, by A. Rabinovich, gives a full account of that sensational escapade, and much other history of the Israeli navy as well.
The victory of Israeli fighter pilots over the Soviet air force in 1970 was not publicized at the time by either side. Former chief of the air force Avihu Bin Nun, who fought in this engagement, helped me with facts and color. For air combat tactics I consulted former ace Ran Ronen.
The move of the missile sites to the Canal, a clear violation of the War of Attrition cease-fire, gave Egypt a decided advantage three years later in the Yom Kippur War. After it was a fait accompli, our State Department laggardly acknowledged that it had occurred, but that nothing could be done about it.
The raid on terrorist headquarters in Beirut in April 1973 made world headlines. No declassified records are available at this writing of the secret elite strike force called “The Unit,” or Sayeret Matkhal. It is known that Ehud Barak, the present (1994) Army Chief of Staff, took part, as did Muki Betzer, later important in the Entebbe rescue, and Yoni Netanyahu, the unit commander killed at Entebbe. This chapter is based on journalism and personal interviews. Invention has perforce filled out the account, and though the general facts of the exploit are correct, details are improvised. Amos Pasternak is of course an imaginary character. Unofficial accounts mention a blond woman who aided the raiders, but Madame Fleg is a figure of fiction.
The Concepzia which lulled “The Dreamers” before the Yom Kippur War remains a matter of much rueful analysis by Israeli strategic savants.
The roller bridge scenes are dramatized from a detailed unpublished report by Lieutenant Colonel Fredo Raz, the officer in charge of the bridge. Scattered references to this extraordinary structure occur in the literature on the war. It is presented here as a picturesque instance of Israeli improvisation, late in arriving but still important in the crossing.
PART TWO: THE AWAKENING
The controversies about the sanguinary Yom Kippur War are to this hour many and bitter. The last word about some matters in dispute may not be spoken in our lifetimes, and the account in The Glory is not to be taken in any way as such a last word. I tell the tale as I have come to understand it, after an arduous effort to master the almost infinite, often terrible facts of Israel’s fateful test of fire.
Avigdor Kahalani, the “Black Panther” of the Syrian front, is today a Knesset member and an author. He was awarded the Medal of Heroism, Israel’s highest military honor, and his books are valuable sources on the Golan Heights campaign. Yanosh Ben Gal and Yossi Ben Hanan today are retired major generals.
Chaim Bar-Lev, former Ramatkhal and cabinet minister, has been one of Israel’s eminent leaders. As pictured in the book, he was in deep disagreement during the war with General Sharon, a figure of enduring controversy.
General Avraham (“Bren”) Adan’s memoir, On the Banks of the Suez, is a key military treatise on the Sinai battles; a formidable field commander, he was also an early peace advocate. Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval is an indispensable source for the diplomacy of the war. In these memoirs both authors give themselves the best of it, of course, as did Churchill, De Gaulle, and for that matter Julius Caesar. Dado, a meticulous biography of General David Elazar by H. Bartov, offers a unique day-by-day, hour-by-hour account of the command aspect of the war. An expert combat overview is The War of Atonement by Chaim Herzog, former President of Israel.
The nuclear alert on Thursday, October 25, now virtually forgotten, caused a great international tumult. I was in London at the time. I met my wife at a theater where we had tickets for a comedy, and rushed her back to the hotel so that we could pack up, and board the next plane to our home in Washington. Since Washington was Ground Zero for a nuc
lear attack, my conduct in retrospect cannot be called cool. I get growls about it from her to this day.
The project of an American airlift to the trapped Egyptian Third Army was dropped when, just before Kissinger’s visit to Cairo, Golda Meir agreed to a second “humanitarian convoy.”
The Agranat Commission’s verdict remains a sore subject in Israel. Its subtle distinctions between the responsibilities of “the political echelon” and “the military echelon” did not convince a large sector of the public; and for them the forced resignation of Dado made him a heroic figure unjustly treated, while the exoneration of Dayan damaged him.
PART THREE: THE PEACE
The main facts of the Entebbe rescue are beyond challenge; the terrorists in the terminal were wiped out, the Jewish hostages were saved, and Lieutenant Colonel Yoni Netanyahu was the only Israeli fighting man killed. Disagreement has sprung up about details of his death, about the attack on the terminal, and most of all, about the credit due to the many participants in the exploit. The peripheral adventure of the fictitious Aryeh Nitzan is based on facts not in serious dispute.
Yoni Netanyahu has become a mythical hero not only of Israel, but of the diaspora, and to some extent of the world. Revision of myths is part of every nation’s historiography. Yoni fell at Entebbe no flawless superman, but a thirty-year-old commander with human faults and blazing courage. In my view his myth is imperishable, and in essence true.
The exchanges of Sadat with Golda Meir, Dayan, and Sharon on his arrival at Ben Gurion airport are culled from the memoirs of all four.
My portrait of Dayan in The Hope and The Glory is based on the available literature including his memoirs, on unpublished academic material, and on consultation with eminent Israelis who knew him best. The paradox of this great man of war is that he rose to his full stature only near the end of his life, in the Camp David negotiations, as a main architect of Israel’s first peace treaty. The character Eliakim at Camp David is a real person, Eliakim Rubinstein, appearing on television screens as I write, as Rabin’s chief aide in negotiating peace with Jordan.