Dalia Karpel Ha'aretz September 11, 2002

Twenty-four years after the publication of his book `Dado,’ Hanoch
Bartov is back with an expanded edition in his campaign to clear the
name of David Elazar, the chief of staff in the Yom Kippur War.

A few hours before the Passover seder in 1976, David (“Dado”) Elazar
called the novelist Hanoch Bartov and told him that the time had come.

Two years earlier, the state commission of inquiry, headed by the
president of the Supreme Court, Justice Shimon Agranat, had concluded
that Elazar bore the responsibility for the Israel Defense Forces’
failure at the outset of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was
subjected to a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria. Elazar must resign,
the commission asserted.

Elazar was convinced that he had been done a great injustice but
decided to forgo a legal battle, as though knowing that he had no
chance to defend himself in the face of the political level and the
testimonies that had evaporated or been neatly cobbled together on all
sides. The attorney Amnon Goldenberg advised him to give his version
of the events in book form, and Elazar suggested to Bartov that they
write the book together, after giving him time to go through his own
notes and records.

On that Passover eve he called Bartov to inform him that he had
completed his part of the task and asked that they begin the work of
organizing the material and turning it into a flowing narrative. The
two agreed that after the holiday they would set a date to meet and
launch the project. However, the next afternoon, after playing tennis
and going swimming for the second time that day, as he did his
twenty-second lap of the pool, Elazar’s heart gave out. He was 51 at
the time of his death.

Together with the entire country, Bartov was shocked at the former
chief of staff’s untimely death. Like many others, he attributed it to
“heartbreak” at the ingratitude that the government had shown to the
commander-in-chief who had saved Israel from a serious military
defeat. Bartov had not taken a previous interest in military affairs
but felt a powerful commitment to write the biography of the IDF’s
ninth chief of staff, who had been removed from his post so
humiliatingly. As a columnist in the daily Ma’ariv, he had already
been sharply critical of Elazar’s ouster in April 1974. In one of his
articles, entitled “Responsibility of the unresponsible minister,” he
had wondered how it was possible that the defense minister, Moshe
Dayan, had emerged pure as the driven snow from the Agranat
Commission, “when everyone knew that no one moved and that there was
no motion or decision in the security-military sphere without his
knowledge and authorization.”

Bartov: “After Dado’s death I had the feeling that he had charged me
with writing the book and so it happened that I found myself, one day,
in his apartment on Tagore Street in Ramat Aviv facing two metal
filing cabinets that contained a great deal of documents and other
material. In the first period I read and read, without having been
given authorization, but after a time I received an official request
from the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, the defense minister, Shimon
Peres and the chief of staff, Motta Gur.

“I sat alone and filled thousands of file cards with items that caught
my eye. There was documentation of the Six-Day War and the conquest of
the Golan Heights, and of the War of Attrition, along with the
material about the Yom Kippur War. The original material that I read
about the 1973 war filled me with dread. It was hard to re-experience
the pain of the blindness and the terrible price. That war was the
most traumatic event in Israel’s history. As I read about the entire
campaign, I had the feeling that it was all like a Greek tragedy – how
we went and slid into a war with such horrific losses.”
Did you take it to heart?

“I would go home at the end of the day and find myself unable to
sleep. For the first time in my life, I fell into depression. I took
Valium for a few months and also sleeping pills. My wife, Yehudit [a
psychology and literature teacher and a pedagogical counselor, she
died in 1998] insisted that I drop the project, and when I hesitated
she threatened me with divorce. After a year of work, I was so
stressed out and depressed that I tried to get out of the contract
with Ma’ariv Publishing House, but they refused. I was positive that I
wouldn’t be able to write the book.”

After he “regained his balance,” though, he understood that he had to
do it for Dado’s sake. “I understood that I had entered a crack that
had opened up for me as a result of unique circumstances. Never again
will someone like me be allowed to enter into a mass of material of
that sort. I am one of those people who is fated to hear things from
spokesmen or from journalists who have forgotten their avocation and
effectively function as spokesmen of the Defense Ministry, and give us
the material after it has been processed, sweetened and distorted. I
did the work of a historian and made sure that I stuck with the facts
as I received them. I never pretended that what I wrote was the final
word, but I wrote everything I knew, and to this day the book has not
received a negative review. I’m very proud that not one incorrect fact
has been found.”

Some 24 years have passed since the first edition of the two-volume
book – “Dado: 48 Years and 20 More Days” – was published. It sold
50,000 copies in a very short time and received the Yitzhak Sadeh
Award for military literature even before its official publication.

Bartov: “I finished writing the first edition of the book and
submitted it to the publisher. The book was sent to the military
censor’s office, which barely touched it, apart from one fact that had
to do with information about the imminent eruption of the war, which
the head of the Mossad [espionage agency], Zvi Zamir, heard less than
12 hours before the war began. That took place in a European country
and the information came from an agent who was codenamed `Bavel’
[Babylon]. He said that war would break out on October 6th before
sunset.” The war, which the Arabs called the Judgment Day War, did in
fact erupt on the day the agent said it would, at 2 P.M.

This week, just ahead of Yom Kippur 2002, which will mark the war’s
29th anniversary, the second and expanded edition of the book is being
published (this time by Zmora Bitan). At 782 pages, it is nearly a
hundred pages longer than the first edition, and it contains 680
footnotes (there were none in the 1978 edition), a bibliography and
new articles, a format that Bartov was prevented from using 24 years
ago.

“I am launching a campaign to clear Dado’s name. With incredibly
calculated leadership and determination, he reversed the fate of the
Yom Kippur War and led the IDF to the outskirts of Damascus and the
heart of Egypt. Dado encircled one of the Egyptian armies and only the
intervention of the superpowers saved it from total annihilation. Dado
and a few other senior officers were made totally responsible for the
actions and decisions and blunders that preceded the war, and they
were as though thrown to the dogs, whereas the government, and the
defense minister as part of it, claimed innocence.”

Recordings about Sharon

The publication of the book in its full format represents the
completion of a mission for Bartov. “When the first book came out, in
December 1978, more than two and a half years after Dado’s death,
there were security restrictions. The truth is that I was also
apprehensive about the people who came to power in 1977 [referring to
Menachem Begin's Likud party]. I was afraid that they would block the
publication of the book.”

What do you mean?

“Rabin, Peres and Gur, who gave the book their blessing, were not
involved in the events of the Yom Kippur War. After the Likud came to
power in 1977, Begin became prime minister and Moshe Dayan was
appointed foreign minister. Ariel Sharon, a major general, would not
have been perceived as `king of Israel’ if the terms of reference of
the Agranat Commission had not stated that it was to investigate the
events and decisions in the containment period extending only until
October 8th. We have to remember that former chief of staff Haim
Bar-Lev, who was appointed as commander of the Southern Front, above
the head of Southern Command, Shmuel Gonen (Gorodish), made his
continued activity on the Southern Front conditional on the removal of
Sharon under certain circumstances – but Dado was afraid there would
be a public and political brouhaha, and managed to dissuade Bar-Lev
from that course of action. So, when I say I had concerns, I don’t
mean that I was afraid I would be killed, but that someone up there,
some kind of Big Brother type, would order that the book be shelved.”

Did you have any concrete reason for thinking that?

“On the day before the book was scheduled to be published, I got a
phone call from a friend who was a spokesman in the government. He
told me that by chance he had run into the justice minister, Shmuel
Tamir, on a plane trip. `We started talking about your book,’ my
friend went on, `and Tamir wanted to know whether you are ready to
submit it to the ministerial committee that deals with manuscripts
written by civil servants.’ Maybe it’s not nice to tell your paper
what I told him, but I told him he could kiss my ass.

“A few weeks later I received an official letter from the office of
the justice minister, politely written, stating that he knows prima
facie that it is my duty to submit the book, and so forth. But I
didn’t give an undertaking to anyone, and after all, I wasn’t a civil
servant. I went to Amnon Goldenberg and he wrote them a letter
designed to ensure that they wouldn’t bother me anymore. That episode
was an indication that they wanted the book to go to the committee so
they could bury it for who knows how many years.

“Because I was apprehensive, the book’s first edition appeared without
my sources being cited, which I thought even then was a major
shortcoming. All my sources were primary ones. I had most of the
relevant documents, and above all, Dado’s filing cabinets contained 35
tape recordings that documented what went on in the `Pit’ [the IDF's
subterranean High Command post], which was material that was worth its
weight in gold.”

Who recorded the events in the Pit?

“The recording was not done either for the sake of history or as a
lark. From the very beginning of the war, Dado suspected that Dayan
was preparing for the postwar period, so Dado’s bureau chief, Avner
Shalev [afterward chief education officer and now the chairman of the
Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Directorate] placed a tape recorder on
the table and changed the tapes as needed, and he recorded and
recorded. From the moment I was given permission to read documents and
listen to the recordings – which no one before me had heard, including
the members of the Agranat Commission – I sat with earphones and
transcribed them line by line, word by word.” (The recordings and the
other material from Dado’s estate are now in the IDF Archives.)

The material from the recordings has been added to the new edition.

Listening to the tapes, Bartov says, was a searing experience in
itself. “I am not a military person, and it took me a long time to get
into the atmosphere of the High Command. For example, there was a
stage in which they decided that it was essential to replace Major
General Gorodish because he wasn’t able to get control of the
situation in Southern Command, and certainly he was unable to control
veteran generals like Sharon. The recordings contain that entire
dialogue, including Dado’s attempt to reassure Gorodish. Dado didn’t
want to injure his honor and wanted to soften him up so he would
agree. The decision was to leave him with his title [head of Southern
Command] and appoint Bar-Lev over him as commander of the Southern
Front. I’m not talking about facts here, but about the human side and
about the way this whole chain of events comes across in the tapes.

“There was a stage when Dado wanted to oust Sharon, because Sharon was
causing chaos in Southern Command, not obeying orders and doing what
he wanted, but Dado was concerned that because Sharon was `king of
Israel’ among the public there would be a ruckus in the country if he
acted. There is a passage in which Dado confides in Dayan about this,
and Dayan says, `Listen, from this point of view Israel is in bad
shape.’ But Dayan, too, did not back the idea of replacing Sharon. At
one stage, Bar-Lev said, `Either Sharon or me,’ and Dado implored him
to stay.”

From your impression from the tapes, how far did Sharon actually go?
“It emerges from the tapes, contrary to the prevailing notion, that
Sharon obstructed the crossing of the canal. The original plan was
that Sharon’s division would establish a bridgehead, but Sharon
decided to cross before he had completed the bridgehead. He left the
Tartur axis exposed and the Egyptians entered the area that was
codenamed the Chinese Farm – an area that lay between Tartur and the
Akabish axis. That disrupted the attempt to put the rolling bridge in
place and also threw a Paratroops battalion into a bloody battle at
the Chinese Farm, with many losses. There is a recording made after
the first night of the crossing, when everything went wrong: Dado came
back to the High Command post before dawn and described the events to
the General Staff and it is all recorded. The theme of what he said
was that a golden opportunity had been lost.”

Didn’t Sharon prove that you can emerge unscathed from a state
commission of inquiry that finds you responsible for a blunder?

“That just goes to show that there are commissions, and there are
commissions. The Agranat Commission that buried Dado left him buried.

The Kahan Commission of 1982 [chaired by the president of the Supreme
Court, Yitzhak Kahan] that investigated the events of the Sabra and
Chatila refugee camps in the Lebanon War was a panel with teeth and
operated in an orderly fashion, and its conclusion was that Sharon
cannot serve as defense minister. So the commission said what it said,
and Sharon today, as prime minister, is above the defense minister and
he’s the one who is deciding Israel’s defense policy. That’s how it
works, whatever is convenient. If it’s convenient, people say that the
Agranat Commission decided what it decided and there is nothing more
to be done, but when the Kahan Commission decided that Sharon could
not serve as defense minister but in practice he is navigating the
country’s defense and security affairs and intervening in all things
great and small, people say, Okay, there was a commission but the
people decided differently.”

The incredible transcript

The new version of the book also contains material that did not appear
in the first edition because Bartov was simply unaware of it. For
example, there was a consultation at the home of the prime minister,
Golda Meir, on April 18, 1973. That was about half a year before the
war, in a period when there were a series of warnings about the
Egyptians’ intention to go to war. Those who attended the discussion
that was held that day in the prime minister’s kitchen (the place
where “we could consider things over a cup of coffee or during a light
meal around my kitchen table,” as she put it) were defense minister
Dayan; minister without portfolio (and eminence grise) in the Prime
Minister’s Office, Israel Galili; the director of Military
Intelligence, Major General Eli Zeira; Mossad chief Zvi Zamir; chief
of staff Elazar; the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office,
Mordechai Gazit; and assorted aides.

The forum discussed the prospects of war and what to do about the
possibility. The minutes of the meeting, which appear in full for the
first time in the new edition, are one of those historical documents
that have to be read in order to be believed. (Dayan recommended that
the approach to the full cabinet should be “in very minor tones,” only
“in the form of information.”)

Bartov: “One of the reasons that led me to put out a new edition of
the book is that after the Yom Kippur War all the lessons seemed to
have been learned and people thought a trauma of that order couldn’t
happen again. But even though so many years have passed – we are about
to enter the 30th year since the war – everything is the same today
and things are being run just like they were then. In 1973, the
cabinet was excluded from all the major decisions. Those decisions
were made by a small group, which included the prime minister,
ministers Galili and Dayan, and sometimes [education minister] Yigal
Allon, too. The minutes of the meeting in Golda’s house show that the
political-military leadership group was, on the one hand, afraid to
say things in full to the cabinet and, on the other hand, afraid of
the Americans.

“The place in the minutes where Galili says that he passed a note to
Dayan stating that Eli Zeira had described the situation to the
cabinet exactly as they wanted and according to their instructions, is
amazing. Why? That government, exactly like the government today, did
not want to return territories and they knew that if they were to tell
the Americans on the one hand and the full cabinet on the other that
things were reaching the boiling point, the Americans would say: Let’s
go to Camp David, we’ll talk and reach a compromise. That was the last
thing that Golda’s kitchen cabinet wanted. I could accept that
approach somehow, if it were backed up by a mobilized military force,
but they didn’t want to call up the reserves, either, because Israel
cannot maintain a large army in the field indefinitely.”

Another equally fascinating passage of the minutes exposes the way the
most fateful affairs of state were treated in “Golda’s kitchen”:

Israel Galili: “There were two very significant words in what Dado
said. He said: If it [war] happens, let it happen. But in my opinion,
that obliges us to behave in a way that will bring about a `meaningful
decision.’ Those are very intriguing words.”

Golda Meir: “In all the serialized novels this is the moment where
they stop the movie” [sic].

Galili: “If so, I say, just before the movie is stopped, that we need
an authoritative interpretation of the deciphering of this matter.”
Golda Meir: “He said that they [the Egyptians] have intentions and are
planning it. I state for the record that I do not want a war. That
probably comes as a surprise to you.”

Dayan: “I suspected as much for some time.”

Golda Meir: “On Friday I visited the Shur family [whose son,
Lieutenant Avida Shur, was killed a few days earlier in the IDF's
`Aviv Neurim' raid on Beirut that struck at Palestinian leaders] on my
way to Revivim [the Negev kibbutz where Meir's daughter lived]. His
mother is totally shattered and she told me, `I said all along that
I’m not worried at all. I am not fearful for his life because he was a
saint. I was sure that nothing could happen to him.’”

Bartov points out that less than six months after this conversation in
Golda’s kitchen, 2,350 Israelis were killed in a war. Obviously all
the participants in the meeting viewed these heavy losses as a
disaster, but when they had the choice between a political option,
which probably could have given Israel what it expected in a
settlement with the Arabs, and the war option, the participants
decided to forgo a discussion on the subject and not to share what
they knew with the full cabinet. There was no discussion of the matter
as was mandatory in a properly run government.

Bartov: “Why do I say that everything comes down to the terms of
reference of the Agranat Commission? Because they didn’t deal with the
events of the spring and what preceded the war, including what is
implied in the minutes of the meeting that was held in Golda’s kitchen
– which was actually a scheme by a group of leaders both against the
Americans and against the full cabinet. The Agranat Commission stopped
its investigation at the moment when the Israeli force started to
organize and move to a counter-offensive, first on the Golan Heights
and then on the Southern Front, all after October 8th.”
Are you hinting at a conspiracy?

“I don’t want to use that word, because I don’t know. It all began
with the terms of reference of the Agranat Commission, which decided
that it would not deal with the political level or with the major
policy issues that sent Israel into war. Let’s say it was not a
conspiracy, but that there was the intention to prevent an
investigation of those matters. The commission also stated that it
would not address the question of ministerial responsibility but only
direct responsibility, and therefore neither the prime minister nor
the defense minister is responsible. Golda said afterward, `What do
you want from me, I was surrounded by excellent generals.’ But she was
the one who made the decisions. Justice Agranat and the members of the
commission believed that Israel was in such dire straits that it would
be catastrophic to do away with the political leadership – but it
didn’t help them, because the government of the fiasco was sent home
by demonstrating soldiers. The country was led by other governments
and survived and became stronger.”

The bulldog qualities

One of the ways that the new edition of the book makes its point about
the Agranat Commission is through a lecture delivered by the former
president of the IDF Appeals Court, Major General (res.) Ilan Schiff.

“The book ends on October 25th, the day the shooting stopped. I
deliberately did not want to get into a controversy with the
commission. I know the facts better than they did. The Agranat
Commission took the easy way out. I let the facts speak for
themselves. That is why I cite the remarks made by Major General
Schiff, a legal expert. That was the first time that an officer of his
rank spoke the hard truth about the faulty working methods of the
Agranat Commission – which was the last time that what is considered
the `good of the commonalty’ was placed above the right of the
individual, and in fact also above the Commissions of Inquiry Law.

“How is it possible, Schiff asked, that responsibility on this matter
was imputed solely to Dado, who demanded a call-up of the reserves,
and not on Dayan, who had all the authority and exercised it against a
general mobilization? Justice Agranat, Schiff said, had doubts about
whether it was right to recommend Dado’s removal, but the majority of
the commission members held that he should go, and he did not want to
remain in the minority, so he concurred with them. That is more than
an amazing revelation in the light of the fact that one of the
commission members, former chief of staff Haim Laskov, was then the
ombudsman of the defense establishment and as such was subordinate to
the defense minister, Moshe Dayan.” (The other commission members were
Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, State Comptroller Yitzhak
Nebenzahl and former chief of staff, Prof. Yigael Yadin.)

Schiff delivered his lecture while he was still in uniform at a
seminar on the Yom Kippur War. Called “End of the Age of Innocence,”
its subject was the legal aspects of the investigation and work of the
Agranat Commission. Schiff argues that it is unlikely that the working
methods and the conclusions reached by the commission would be
applicable today, in a period when people are increasingly at the
center of things. Schiff, who represented another chief of staff,
Rafael Eitan, before the Kahan Commission, points to the strange fact
that some of those who were being investigated by the Agranat
Commission appeared without legal counsel – among them the chief of
staff and the director of Military Intelligence, both of whom were
forced to resign. Zeira said afterward that he had consulted with
Justice Agranat, who had advised him not to use a lawyer. According to
Schiff, one of the reasons that Elazar and Zeira were not represented
was the pressure of the commission itself to complete its work quickly
(at least to publish the first, partial, report) because the public
was anxious to know what had happened and why, “and the good of the
army and the general good are for the work to be completed as soon as
possible.”

How would you characterize Golda Meir’s attitude toward Dado?
Self-righteousness?

“In fact, they were all self-righteous when it came to him, apart from
Yitzhak Rabin, who was then the minister of labor and was the only
minister who called for the report to be returned to the Agranat
Commission for its completion. Everyone, including Golda, was silent,
and when she let Dado read the conclusions, and Dado looked at her and
said, `I understand that I am being asked to resign,’ she said,
`Regretfully, yes.’ Golda told Dado – and this is in the book – that
he was the only person she trusted and that all the advice he gave her
was good and that it was thanks to him that she had come out of the
war in one piece. General Abd al-Ghani Gamassy, who was the Egyptian
army’s operations officer in 1973 and afterward its chief of staff,
said that in his opinion the best Israeli officer in the war was David
Elazar, the second-best was Elazar and the third-best was also Elazar.

At a certain point Golda visited Dado at his home and offered him the
post of Israeli ambassador to the United States. He was inclined to
accept, but he died.”

What is the role of the military correspondents and the rest of the
media in this whole mess?

“Everyone was fed by the same sources and the situation is unchanged
today. A few months before the war, Israel’s 25th Independence Day was
celebrated with exultant articles by all the wise men, the former
chiefs of staff and the journalists, who declared, each in his own
style, that Israel is a tremendous military power and so forth. Chaim
Herzog [a retired major general who was afterward ambassador to the
United Nations and Israel's sixth president] said so and so did Dayan.

Dayan told Time magazine that Israel was out of danger for the next 10
years. Golda said with typical arrogance in an interview to Ma’ariv
about the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, `Let him stew.’ There was
not a journalist who didn’t declaim and repeat these texts. Ya’akov
Erez, the military correspondent of Ma’ariv, told people for years
afterward that on the eve of Yom Kippur 1973, he had a report of large
concentrations of the Egyptian army but that the military censors
would not let him publish it, and the next day the war broke out.

Much has been written about Dado’s restraint and his nobility in the
face of the Agranat Commission’s conclusions. How do you explain that?
“He tried to keep his chin up and behave as he always did, with
restraint and nobility. But according to a few stories I heard, he
broke down and cried more than once when he was in an intimate circle.

Elie Wiesel told me that he met Dado in Boston and they were talking,
when suddenly Dado shed a tear, if not more. Dado came to this country
as a lone boy of 15, orphaned of his mother and far from his father.

For his whole life he kept a photograph of himself at his mother’s
funeral by his side. He came here and was taken to a kibbutz, Sha’ar
Ha’amakim, where he joined the youth group from Yugoslavia, without
knowing a word of Hebrew. He worked and studied. He wanted to join the
British Army during World War II but his buddies wouldn’t let him. He
went to the Palmach [the pre-state "shock troops"] – the Yugoslav, or
the `Montenegran,’ as his friends called him – a child-man of 21,
alone among all the sabras. That was in 1946. Within two years he was
the commander of the 4th Battalion, the breakthrough battalion. That
says something about his qualities of military leadership, about his
great powers.

Can you conceive what went through his head during those harsh hours
on Yom Kippur?

“The battles for Jerusalem in 1948 remained with him as traumas, and
their oppressive weight surfaced during every crisis, including the
terrible moments in the Yom Kippur War. The battle for the St. Simeon
Monastery, in the Katamonin neighborhood of Jerusalem, became a symbol
for him. The monastery, which overlooked southern Jerusalem, was
manned by dozens of well-armed Arab fighters. The first attempt to
take the building, on the night of April 29, 1948, failed, and the
second battle, in which Dado took part, went on for 16 straight hours.

“At one stage, after the Israeli forces had captured the monastery but
were then besieged inside it, and everything hung in the balance, and
the Palmach lost a great many fighters, they considered retreating but
didn’t know what to with the men who were seriously wounded. Dado
decided to stay with the wounded and blow up the building with
everyone inside. Benny Marshak [known as the `politruk' of the Haganah
defense force] was totally opposed to a retreat, and quoted Yitzhak
Sadeh [a founder of the Haganah and the Palmach]: `When it is pouring
rain and you are drenched to the skin, always remember that it is
raining on the enemy, too.’ In other words, whoever holds on for an
instant longer than the other side will win the day. Dado always
remembered that saying from that day of retreat, and he would invoke
it in the darkest moments and in every crisis. In fact, it can be
heard on the tapes from the Pit. It is a sentence that reflects his
bulldog quality.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 19th, 2002 and is filed under history.