his damaged Mirage in Refidim.
BUT THEN THERE WAS SOMETHING else. I was amazed to learn that mine was not the only Mirage carrying Daggers. The other Mirages came to this battle carrying Daggers, too. I asked how they got them, and they told me that in the past two days they had received Daggers. Just like that. And this happened while I was sitting on pins and needles in Refidim preparing to defend myself. This was great news, but I was left wondering when and in which way permission had been given. Did somebody sit down after my kill, and the near accident afterward, and make that decision? Who, when, and on what basis—my short report from Refidim?
I never found the answers to these questions, and I didn’t waste much time on it. The war was still on, and this was it.
No one in authority has ever mentioned the series of technical, operational, and safety risks two squadron commanders from Hatzor took on themselves when they passed elements from one weapons system to another, proved it, and sent it to battle. They did it relying on their own understanding of the situation, and taking authority and responsibility when everybody else sat at arm’s length. My own chutzpah and Khetz’s comradeship under fire had doubled the firepower of our interception force—and just been forgotten.
THE BIG BATTLE AGAINST THE Russians was the last aerial combat of the War of Attrition. This thrilling victory rectified somewhat the heavy, tragic mood that enveloped us all following the Phantoms’ wars against the SAM batteries, but in essence it didn’t change the situation; Israel lost that war.
Fact: a week after this dogfight, on August 7, 1970, Israel accepted a cease-fire agreement with Egypt, brokered by the United States. This agreement, known as “Roger’s Plan,” called for both sides to remain in place. From our point of view, the important thing was to keep the Suez Canal out of the killing zone of the Egyptian Soviet missile array, which at that time still lay farther away, some several dozens of kilometers west of the canal. After all, this had been the objective of the Phantoms all along. But on the day after the agreement was signed—and in an obvious provocation—the Egyptians moved all their missile batteries right to the banks of the Suez Canal. Now the threat of the missiles penetrated our area in the Sinai. From a defensive system to protect Cairo, the missiles had suddenly turned into offensive weapons.
This was one of the moments of decision taught in military history books, the moment when both sides stand facing each other for the decisive battle. Both opponents are worn down and tired, and only willpower decides who wins. This is what Itzhak Sade meant when he told the Palmach soldiers that when you are cold and wet, this is the time to keep going, for the same rain is falling on the enemy, and a decision is near. Major General Gorodish portrayed such a moment in his famous, pompous words after the Six-Day War: “We looked Death straight in the eyes, and he lowered his.”
On August 8, 1970, the Egyptians looked straight at us, and Israel lowered its eyes.
Strategically, we lost the War of Attrition not just because of our failure against the SAMs. That specific struggle was just one campaign among many, and not a big one—altogether, just fifty Phantom sorties. Besides this failure, the War of Attrition was full of thousands of combat sorties and other campaigns that had worked very well—against MiGs, in the attacking of ground targets, and raiding deep into enemy territory. And at the end of those three hard years our government choked. The failure of the Phantoms against the SAMs was the last straw.
The real reason for our loss had not been tactical. It had been strategic, and bigger even than military power per se.
OUR SPECTACULAR MILITARY victory in the Six-Day War had confused our estimation of power. After it, we were deluded into believing that nothing was impossible. We saw everything through the muzzle of the gun, and forgot how to make realistic evaluations of the power and forbearance of nations. We disregarded the deep pockets of our opponents, who were much richer than we were. Egypt’s population was a dozen times more than Israel’s, and Syria’s threefold. Both were autocratic states with no democratic checks and balances. That, and a low standard of living in their populations, gave them power to mobilize and sacrifice people at will, and supplied them with a multitude of soldiers.
Additional depth was added by other Arab states, and the material and political assistance of the Soviet Union and its satellites. All this was supported by international agreement that Israel was an aggressor, since it held conquered territories against UN resolutions.
SPELLBOUND UNDER THE mysticism of our limitless power, we refused to see the true direction the war of attrition was taking. We narrowed our view, as if looking through a straw, at battles, especially at the more successful ones, and whitewashed our failures. With such self-deceit, no wonder that the loss in the important battle against the SAM missile array, which couldn’t be covered up, was perceived as a national disaster.
THE ENEMY, ON THE OTHER HAND, was wholly different in essence and goals. The governments of Egypt and Syria had no true conflict of interests with Israel. What bothered them was the dishonor they suffered because of their failure in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Our conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the war of 1967 worsened that failure seven times over—the conquered areas gave material and comprehensive meaning to the failure. They also gave a direction for solution of the conflict; the Arab states said it clearly, “the return of every inch of the motherland” (no matter that most of it was useless desert, and was declared “theirs” just yesterday—it all was a matter of pride). The three noes of the Khartoum enunciate, first and foremost a deep insult.
Of course, insult was not everything. There were deep social, religious, and national currents fermenting and waiting their turn. Still, it was hurt Arab national pride—symbolized by the conquered areas—that prevented any political process between the parties. Probably in those first years after 1967 the key to a solution had been in our hands, but old habits and ideas held us captive, too. Soon we attached ourselves to those new land areas. Sharm El Sheikh, the southernmost and most remote point in the Sinai and a magnificent scuba diving site, suddenly became more important than peace.
Within a short time, we had declared we were “waiting for a call from the Arab states,” but we didn’t want —and soon couldn’t use—the captured areas as a deposit and open a political process with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Time for such openings was limited, since the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—the only faction that had a real conflict with us, and the real danger to the Jewish state—were awakening.
When we chose to fight over the spoils of war—those conquered territories—we forgot our true goal, the establishment of the Jewish state. Our loss of political focus led to disruption of our military strategy, and since then that reality has been perpetuating itself: war and enmity became the dominant constants in our region, and they awakened deep, sleeping currents and strengthened them. Within a decade those currents had reshaped the warring parties, and the substrate on which they were functioning.
EGYPT AND SYRIA DIDN’T HAVE this problem, and they had no military illusions. After the loss in 1967 they pinned their hopes not on victory in any given battle, but on time and depth of resources. The Egyptians and the Syrians looked at war as a process of wearing us down. Their rulers saw losses in battles against the IDF as a reasonable possibility (though some events angered them). On the other side, their (pretty few) wins gave them encouragement and reason to continue the struggle.
A war between sides so different is called, in strategic language, “asymmetrical.” Achieving victory in asymmetrical war is not a simple concept, since the meaning of victory is different for each of the warring parties. Whoever gets into a war like that must begin by setting policy and strategy that define “victory,” and how to achieve it. If you think this explanation fits only the case of the war of attrition in 1970, you are wrong.
POLICY AND STRATEGY are much more crucial than any battle, but it is easy to avoid defining them. Thinking about deep concepts requires soul-searching, including examination of conventions that have rooted themselves in us for years. And even harder, it points the finger right at the higher echelons of power. All in all, it is so much easier to deal with tactical questions—how to do this, how to do that. Tactical questions are evident, clear, and tangible. Everyone can relate to them. They are emotional. This is exactly the reason why that tactical failure, in the battle against the Egyptian SAMs, became shrouded in such symbolic importance.
In fact, all that happened there was relatively unimportant: the IDF—and specifically the Israeli Air Force—
