Strike Zion! [antikvár]

Part I: Prelude CHAPTER ONE The clocks stopped in Israel on Monday, June 5, 1967, and they started again a week later. That's how most people felt. For instance a gathering of generals on the evening of June 12 was disrupted somewhat by the question: "When exactly did you reach the Suez Canal?" Some said Wednesday and some said Thursday but the fact was that they, like every citizen, regarded that week as something outside of time as we know it. For one thing, as marked on military calendars, they formed the beginning of a countdown: 10 days-9-8-7-6-5-4—3-2-1. At Day Zero, if Israel's carefully hoarded jets and tanks had failed decisively to vanquish the Egyptians, the tide would have turned against them. The inescapable logic of dwindling fuel reserves and the narrow margin of combat effectiveness would have made disaster certain, had the enemy known how to delay by even a few hours the long-range spears of armor. "We might have had a few days in hand," confessed a strategist operating one of the computers employed during the week of desert battles. "But the sheer weight of Arab numbers and arms would have swung against us by the second week." It is doubtful if the rest of the world yet understands just what a Goliath confronted David. The war was over so quickly. It seemed, to one TV critic watching the battle films, "like a John Wayne movie." You had to smell the corpses thick as flies along the paths of war. You had to see the crushed Russian-buUt jets and the melancholy Russian-built tanks with guns drooping as they lay abandoned or gutted. You had to read the casualty lists in the Jerusalem Post with their disproportionate number of dead majors and colonels. You had to examine the Russian SA-2 missile base, the first to be captured intact anywhere. You had to fly over the 25 Arab airbases where warplanes lay squashed like moths in the sand, 1 Si i> a i. V I ¦ : r ' ; i ' I'' i ri' |i ¦! ' 1 ' ¦ I I 11;.