Six Days of War

by Michael B. Oren

  The warning was not news for Rusk. Barbour had received a similar estimate earlier that morning from the Israel Foreign Ministry. “I am confident that Israeli apprehensions are to them genuine,” Rusk’s ambassador had reported, describing the information as “in large part the result of hard intelligence.” Now, fixing drinks for himself and his guest, the secretary asked that Eban read the entire message aloud, slowly, and that Washington be given further time to verify its accuracy.

  While Eban waited, American intelligence agencies “scrubbed down” the Israeli warning. The conclusion, confirmed both by British intelligence and by the UN, was that the Egyptian deployment remained defensive and that there was no sign of an imminent attack. Ambassador Nolte in Cairo speculated that Israel’s warning was merely a smokescreen for its own impending offensive. Rusk was more reserved, telling CIA director Richard Helms, “If this is a mistake, then in the words of Fiorello LaGuardia, it’s beaut.”

  Nasser would have to be “irrational” to invade at this stage, Rusk explained when he next met with Eban. As for guarantees for Israel, the U.S. government could not issue “NATO-like language” along the lines of “an attack on you is an attack on us” without congressional approval. Forty-one Congressmen had come out against unilateral U.S. action in the Straits, Rusk revealed; many others were opposed to any military commitment in the Middle East while Americans were still fighting in Vietnam. Thus, Israel would be advised to trust in the UN and in Britain’s proposal for a maritime convoy and declaration. The question of stationing UN troops on Israeli soil should also be reconsidered, the secretary intimated. Most vitally, Israel must not open hostilities. “I do not wish to assume that your information is meant to give us advance notice of a planned Israeli preemptive strike,” Rusk admonished. “That would be a horrendous error.”

  The conversation continued at a desultory pace, with Eban expressing Israel’s willingness to “harmonize” with any international initiative, and exhorting the White House to write Eshkol a letter with the words “we are going to open the Straits.” Rusk concluded with concern for the “arm’s length attitude” Israel had shown to the American embassy in Tel Aviv, and for a more open exchange of information. And that was it: no guarantees, no commitments, overt or confidential. Eban was unperturbed, though, sensing that Rusk had intuited the political dynamics behind Eshkol’s warning, and knowing that the real discussion still lay ahead, with Johnson. Glibly he recalled that “I did not get the impression that the U.S. had ever decided to enter a new and complicated defense alliance between cocktails and the first course of a dinner party.”88

  The dinner party took place that evening, on the State Department’s roof, hosted by Eugene Rostow. In contrast to his brother, the National Security adviser, who had assimilated fully into mainstream American life, the Undersecretary was fond of emphasizing his Jewish roots, spicing his private conversations with Yiddish. His warmth toward Israel was express. Yet, in opening the discussion, Rostow merely repeated what Rusk had said earlier: The president could not guarantee Israel’s security without congressional approval, which, under the circumstances, he was highly unlikely to get. Instead, Israel should place its faith in a process beginning with a UN review of the Straits issue, followed by the maritime declaration and convoy.

  Eban responded by summarizing Dulles’s 1957 pledges to Israel and by stressing the need to conclude any UN discussions swiftly—four days at most. Otherwise, the blockade would become a reality and the Israeli people would lose faith in the maritime convoy idea. Apart from such emphases, there appeared to be no major gaps between the U.S. and Israeli positions.

  “I cannot forget the calm, matter-of-fact attitude in which the situation was analyzed while we sipped our wine,” Moshe Raviv, Eban’s assistant, recalled. The foreign minister, “not agitated…serious and moderate” described Washington’s policy “as the best chance for peace if the [American] intelligence information about Egypt’s intentions turned out to be not true.” He then went further by asserting that of course he knew that the president lacked the powers to issue the guarantee Eshkol wanted, and that “the message would not have been phrased in that way if I had been in Tel Aviv.” Told that the U.S. would in any case pass a “precautionary note” to its Cairo embassy, Eban, Rostow wrote, “seemed entirely satisfied with this step as a response to their [Israel’s] request.”89

  In his effort to broadcast calm, to counterbalance the panic he detected in Eshkol’s letter, Eban had inadvertently eased Washington’s own sense of urgency. Rostow reported to British ambassador Patrick Dean that “we expected they would tell us they were going to strike but instead they merely requested clarification regarding the proposed maritime plan.” Rusk, advising Johnson in preparation for his own meeting with Eban, proposed that the U.S. could either “unleash” Israel and let it fend for itself or “take a positive position, but without commitment,” on the convoy idea. The secretary opted for the latter, which would enable the U.S. to delay an Israeli preemptive strike. The UN discussions could then run their course and the U.S. could then seek alternative measures, such as the stationing of UNEF in Israel. As for the demand for formal security guarantees for Israel, wrote Rusk, Eban was not expected to press them in his talk with the president.90

  A more exact reflection of Israeli thinking might have been obtained from Harman, who was also present at the Rostow dinner and came away from it furious. In a heated cable to Jerusalem, the former Oxford-trained lawyer, and ambassador since 1959, charged the administration with giving Israel “unsaleable merchandise” and acting in bad faith:

  For the past 12 days the US has undertaken the responsibility of restraining us from the protection of our rights and our security…They [the Americans] held us back by giving us the impression that they were involved with us and would stand by us. They knew that we would ultimately have to fight to protect that vital interest, but as a result of their intervention and their assurances, we would now have to fight in very different military circumstances…In fact, what they had told Eban this evening contained nothing definite and precise, contained no specific and binding time-table and, above all, contained no definite commitment in that the US assumed a binding responsibility in regard to Aqaba.

  The impact in Jerusalem was seismic. If Johnson was unwilling to commit to Israel on any level, then clearly Eban had not carried out his terms of reference. These were promptly restated and in language incontrovertible even to the foreign minister:

  Israel faces grave danger of general attack by Egypt and Syria. In this situation, implementation of the American commitment is vital—in declaration and action—immediately, repeat, immediately, meaning a declaration by the U.S. government that any attack on Israel is equivalent to an attack on the United States. The concrete expression of this declaration will be specific orders to U.S. forces in the region that they are to combine operations with the IDF against any possible Arab attack on Israel. Whatever reply you get from the United States, limit yourself to stating that you will report to your government. In view of the gravity of the situation, this notification is to be delivered without delay to the highest American authority. In the absence of the president, deliver to Secretary of State Rusk…We stress the top secrecy of all dealings arising from this cable. Under no circumstances are you to phone us on this matter.91

  The keen displeasure and lack of trust manifest in these orders could not have been lost on Eban. He irascibly cabled Jerusalem demanding details of the alleged Egyptian preparations. But flustered as he was by his own government, he was also losing patience with the Americans. When Rusk next called and asked to postpone his meeting with the president—he wanted time to read the just-issued report on U Thant’s talks with Nasser—Eban bristled. Warning of the “catastrophic psychological effects” of delaying his return, he told Rusk that on Sunday the Israeli Cabinet would hold “perhaps the most crucial…meeting in our history,” and he could not miss it. “I tell you frankly that I think we are in for hos
tilities next week. This is an act of blockade which must be resisted. I doubt if anything at this stage can change that outlook. The only thing that might have an effect would be an affirmation by your president that he has decided unreservedly to get the Straits open.” Rusk, “audibly flurried,” merely replied, “I get it,” and hung up.

  Yet, at his next round of talks, with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Eban again played down his government’s instructions. “I felt that I had done my duty in having this ‘idea’ passed to the president and that I need not waste time in hypochondriac frivolities anymore.” Instead of stressing the dangers Israel faced, he listened as Wheeler and McNamara explained how the IDF would win a war in two weeks even if attacked on three fronts simultaneously—one week if Israel shot first. In training, motivation, and communications, Israel was vastly superior to its foes, and therefore had nothing to fear. If Israeli intelligence had information on Egyptian attack plans, it had better reveal its sources, the Americans said, otherwise it had no basis for preemptive action.92

  The Americans were perplexed, and understandably so. While the Israeli government forecast war, U.S., British, and UN sources agreed that there was no change in Egypt’s disposition, and even Eban seemed to disavow the claim. Yet the White House was unwilling to take chances.

  In one of his last acts in office, Mustafa Kamel appeared before Walt Rostow. The atmosphere was cordial but tense. The national security advisor was irked by the latest Egyptian propaganda, especially charges alleging the existence of a secret CIA-Mossad plot to overthrow the Ba’th in Damascus and install UNEF on Syrian territory. “Your adversaries believe that a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria is imminent,” Rostow informed Egypt’s ambassador. “We know this is unthinkable. We cannot believe the government of the UAR would be so reckless. Such a course would obviously have the most serious possible consequences.” Rostow, concluding, sought to temper his warning by describing it as “friendly,” and by noting that Israel had been similarly admonished. Kamel’s only response was to deny the truth of the rumor—perhaps the evacuation of American nationals from the area had triggered it, he suggested—and to cite Egyptian reports of Israeli war plans. “Nasser will cooperate to the fullest with the United Nations,” he pledged.93

  As a further precaution that night, the White House cabled the essence of Israel’s warning to Moscow. Johnson was frank in informing Soviet leaders that he could not verify the warning, yet he expected the Kremlin to check it out with the Egyptians and to discourage any warlike acts. Egypt and the USSR had thus been put on notice—America would not countenance war. But what of the Israelis? The portentous messages from Jerusalem seemed incompatible with that proffered by Eban: a readiness to strike and an openness to diplomacy. The task of deciphering which of these was more accurate, and deciding the crucial course the United States would take, now fell to one man, the last of Eban’s interlocutors.

  He has been described so disparately as to appear almost two different men. To those, like Richard Helms, who worked closest with him, he was “a fine man to work for, a man of his word…a man of great understanding of human problems.” Walt Rostow recalled that “he was always for the underdog,” and his brother, Eugene, that “he was a wonderful person of tremendous heart.” His warmth and compassion found expression in his advocacy of civil rights, in his War Against Poverty, and his vision of the Great Society. But other observers saw different sides to him: unscrupulous, power-hungry, manipulative. These flaws, together with his tragic entanglement in Vietnam, led more than one biographer to denounce him as a narcissist with dubious scruples, a tyrant driven by “a hunger so fierce and consuming that no consideration of morality and ethics, no cost to himself - or to anyone else - could stand before it.”94

  Duality also characterized Lyndon Johnson’s attitude toward Jews and the State of Israel. He had intimate ties with Jewish activists in the Democratic party, in particular its chairman, Hollywood mogul Arthur Krim and his wife, Matilde, a former Israeli, and with Abe Feinberg, his informal liaison with the Jewish community. Unusual for a man hailing from Texas’s rural Hill Country, Johnson chose Jews—the Rostow brothers, speechwriter Ben Wattenberg, and domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson—as his top advisers, appointed Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg as ambassador to the UN, and was exceptionally close with another Jewish Justice, Abe Fortas. White House Counsel Harry C. McPherson, Jr., was openly disposed toward Israel, as was presidential aide John P. Roche, who once admitted, “I look at the Israelis as Texans, and Nasser as Santa Ana.” Critical of the Eisenhower administration’s handling of the Suez crisis, a proponent for massive foreign aid to Israel, Johnson’s ability to attract the Jewish vote was purportedly one of the reasons for his selection as Kennedy’s running mate in 1960.

  Then came Vietnam and the disproportionate role Jews played in the anti-war movement. One 1967 poll showed that nearly half of American Jewry opposed Johnson’s Vietnam policy; a popular button read, “You don’t have to be Jewish to be against the war.” When Feinberg assured him that America’s defense of Saigon was proof that it would also protect Israel, Johnson exclaimed, “Then why the hell don’t the Jews of America believe that!” American Jews were, to his mind, ungrateful for his advocacy of Israel and hypocritical for not supporting a war against an enemy—the Vietcong—not unlike the Palestinian guerrillas. His anger turned on Israel as well, for its refusal to come out publicly in favor of the war and to press its American friends to back his Asian policies. Such grudges only hardened his resentment of Israel’s retaliation policy and its resistance to American inspections of Dimona. “Israel gets more than it’s willing to give,” he once complained to Feinberg, “It’s a one-way street.”95

  Nevertheless, Johnson remained staunchly pro-Israel, “a friend,” as he once told Eban, “in the true sense of the word.” Though closely allied with oil companies, he never sought to ingratiate himself with the Arabs. Routinely, he overruled the objections of both the State Department and the Pentagon in personally approving aid packages for Israel.96

  That ambivalence—both resentment of and admiration for Israel—was present in the Oval Office on Friday, May 26. “I will see Eban, as I feel I must,” Johnson had written Harold Wilson. He had before him the file of presidential pledges for Israel’s security that the State Department—with Evron’s help—had finally managed to assemble. There was an affidavit from Eisenhower, secured by Walt Rostow, who also traveled to Gettysburg, regarding the 1957 commitments. These obligations weighed heavily on him, as did the intelligence estimates of a swift Israeli victory; he had seen similar estimates of America’s ability in Vietnam. He was determined not to let Israel be destroyed. But then LBJ was also angry, “fed up with being pushed around” by American Jews who had bombarded the White House with telegrams and delegations demanding his intervention on Israel’s behalf. What kind of impression would be created if he received the foreign minister and Israel went to war the next day?97

  “What should I tell Eban?” the president asked a 1:30 P.M. gathering of his most senior officials. “Around sundown I’m going to have to bell this cat. I need to know what I’m going to say.” Lucius Battle summarized America’s position vis-à-vis the Arabs: “Whatever we do we’re in trouble. If we fail to stand by Israel, the radical Arabs will paint us as a paper tiger. If we stand by Israel, we will damage ourselves seriously with all the Arabs.” Joe Sisco of the State Department said that the Israelis feared the UN would come up with some “gimmick” to legitimize the status quo. “Israel’s existence is at stake,”added Vice President Humphrey, citing the Egyptian overflights of Dimona. Gen. Wheeler outlined the Regatta plan, but McNamara was against promising Eban anything concrete. Judge Fortas stated, “the United States cannot let Israel stand alone,” but Rusk disagreed: “If Israel fires first, it’ll have to forget the U.S.” The meeting thus ended inconclusively. Instead of answers, Johnson’s advisers had left him with
little but questions: “If you were in Eban’s place and we told you we were relying on the UN and a group of maritime powers, would that be enough to satisfy you? Will I regret on Monday not giving Eban more today?”98

  There seemed no solution for Johnson other than to play for time. Using the long Memorial Day weekend as an excuse, he hoped to put off Eban for a day or more, trusting that the Israeli government would not make a decision in his absence. This would give the White House time to review its options while the intense press coverage surrounding Eban’s visit—Israeli-engineered, Johnson suspected—waned. He had all but decided to put Eban off, indefinitely perhaps, when Eppy Evron interceded.

  “I’ve heard good things about you from my friends Harry McPherson and Abe Feinberg,” Johnson had told Evron when Matilde Krim first introduced him, one year before. Since then a unique friendship had blossomed between the president and Israel’s minister plenipotentiary, so close that letters from Evron would be hand-delivered to Johnson the same day. Whether or not Johnson’s amity was, as Harman suspected, a ploy to curry American Jewish favor, everyone acquainted with Evron agreed that the former union and government bureaucrat had an unusual capacity for networking. “He could get senior officials to meet him at 2:00 A.M.,” recalled a former colleague, Mordechai Gazit.99