How Israeli intelligence went from excellence in 1967 to catastrophe in 2023

Michael Oren’s ‘Six Days of War’ portrays the former president of Israel, Levi Eshkol, as understated and under-appreciated. The man, however, ensured Israel won the war in just six days.

Levi Eshkol and Uri Goren | Wikimedia Commons

Michael Oren’s Six Days of War is the most authoritative work on the 1967 war between Israel and several Arab states. It is objective, fascinating, sober, and to the point: It avoids unnecessary extraneous commentary. I read it during one of my trips to Israel and just fell in love with this modern-day Thucydides.

The most fascinating character that emerges is not Nasser, Dayan, Eban, Hussein, or Amir. It was the understated and under-appreciated Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister who was a compromise candidate and got the job by sheer chance. Levi Eshkol was the very opposite of a charismatic leader. He spent most of his early career designing, operating, and managing water supply systems. One can hardly think of anything more prosaic and boring.

Despite then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s provocations, Eshkol remained one of the few people in the Israeli cabinet who was hesitant to go to war. He repeatedly sent his foreign minister Abba Eban to Washington DC, requesting help in re-opening the Straits of Tiran, which Nasser had closed.

Worried about winning, not losing

For years, Israel had publicly maintained that closing vital international waterways would be a casus belli for war. Nasser, under pressure from the agitated Egyptian street, which he had partly stirred up, seemingly believed he could get away with it. And he actually did. When Eban requested Lyndon Johnson to send US ships through the straits, Johnson politely declined. The wily Johnson told his colleagues that the Israelis are going to fight. In effect, by refusing to defend international waters, Johnson left Israel with no choice.

The worried and worked-up Israeli public forced Eshkol to appoint the flamboyant Moshe Dayan as the defence minister in his cabinet. Dayan was all for war, but Eshkol still hesitated. He was worried not just about losing the war, but about winning it.

Incidentally, it appears that the elderly sage, Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, living in the Negev during his retirement, was also not very enthusiastic about the war. But Dayan prevailed in the cabinet and the war happened. Israeli intelligence was so good that they knew the best time to hit Egyptian airfields was during the breakfast break. Israel won a stunning victory in six days. It occupied the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. They had, quite literally, conquered vast territories.

When the celebrations were held in Jerusalem, when Jews finally were able to visit the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount after 19 long years, it was Dayan who was in all the photographs. Levi Eshkol had a back seat. And yet it was Eshkol who was the real Israeli leader who ensured that the IDF was superbly supported in its supply chains and logistics.

By not interfering and over-projecting his persona, Eshkol ensured that the Israeli intelligence was honest, competent, and in top form. Contrast this with 1973 and 2023 when “charismatic” and flamboyant persons like Golda Meir and Benjamin Netanyahu were the leaders. The Israeli intelligence failed and the failure was spectacular and catastrophic.

Eshkol was prescient about the consequences of victory. Today, Israel is saddled with Gaza and the West Bank as Egypt, which earlier ruled Gaza, has repeatedly rejected calls for allowing the exodus of Palestinians into the country. Jordan has been even more emphatic in asserting it wants nothing to do with the West Bank.

Israel is stuck

Israel is stuck with these two land masses and the populations living there. Matters are made worse by intransigent Israelis insisting on going into the West Bank and living there. The situation has become incendiary. No Israeli politician can afford to lose the votes of these expansionists. And every Israeli politician has to face international opprobrium for “allowing/encouraging” these folks.

The nightmare of a two-state solution continues to haunt Israel. If a non-state actor like Hamas can do so much damage, what can a state with tanks, aircraft, and howitzers not do? Now, Dayan and his intellectual successors can see how prescient Eshkol was. If Jordan still controlled the West Bank, if all Israel had taken was Jerusalem and the thinly populated Golan, no one would be calling for a second state. There would be no fear of tanks attacking Israel and, for that matter, no headaches from difficult Israeli extremists.

If Egypt still controlled Gaza, the Egyptian army would have made sure that there was no Hamas. Sometimes spectacular success can give migraines not so different from defeats or stalemates. They say that the Spanish ulcer ruined Napoleon. Perhaps Eshkol feared that these easily conquered territories would turn into ulcers.

Contrasting 2023 with 1967

Let us contrast the lead-up to the conflicts and the responses, then and now. Eshkol let the Israeli intelligence do their job and everybody descended to work under the slouching waterworks fellow. The result was that Israel’s intelligence was at its absolute best. Now consider Mr Security Netanyahu, who knows everything and who probably kept second-guessing, influencing, cajoling, persuading, and threatening his agencies. The result was that on 7 October 2023, Israel looked foolish and incompetent, and its citizens paid the price.

Netanyahu could have learnt a thing or two if he had studied modern Indian history. Funding Hamas and thinking that he could control them was always a fool’s errand. A greater leader than Netanyahu suffered on account of creating Bhindranwale and funding the LTTE.

The most important contrast is that Eshkol’s war ended in six days. It is now almost eight months, and this war still drags on. Napoleon again comes to mind. Austerlitz was clean, sharp, and quick but the invasion of Russia was a prolonged nightmarish quagmire.

Boring Waterworks Eshkol managed to win in six days, and even as he won, he remained worried about the possible bittersweet effects of the victory. The telegenic, articulate Netanyahu, for all his boastful rhetoric, stands virtually trapped.

Then and now…

Jaithirth Rao is an entrepreneur and an investor. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)