Foxbats Over Dimona - The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, Yale University Press, 287 pages, $26
Few are the historical studies whose findings require the rewriting of conventional historiography, as they newly illuminate everything that has previously been a matter of absolute consensus among scholars of a period. This book is one of them. If the theories of Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez are correct, everything we thought we knew about the circumstances leading to the outbreak of the Six-Day War is wrong.
Until now, the accepted approach has been that "the Russians fell victim to their own disinformation. The Egyptians went much farther than Moscow originally intended," as the authors write. This was backed up by statements of former Mossad chief Meir Amit, in 1983. In other words, the war broke out because the Soviets passed incorrect information to Egypt and Syria regarding the build-up of Israeli forces on the Syrian border, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser took a series of steps (moving troops into Sinai, closing the Straits of Tiran, expelling the UN peacekeeping forces from the Israeli-Egyptian border) that aggravated the situation, leading to a war that was not in line with Soviet intentions. While the Russians did want to provoke a regional crisis, they were not, apparently, interested in war. According to Michael Oren, a historian of the Six-Day War, there are protocols in which the Russians make it very clear to Egypt that they do not want war, and that blockading the Straits of Tiran could provoke one.
In their book, Ginor and Remez, she a Sovietologist, he a longtime Israeli radio journalist, challenge this approach on three main counts. They say that the Soviet Union was the instigator and prime mover behind the crisis leading up to the 1967 war, as well as in the war itself. Second, they say that the nuclear component was a major factor: The idea was to stir up a crisis so that Israel's nascent nuclear program could be attacked and destroyed before the country's atomic weapons became operable. And third, they say the Soviet leadership had solid plans to intervene directly in the war, through military operations employing Soviet troops. The manpower and arms that were to be used for a coastal invasion of Israel and attacks on Israeli targets, first and foremost the nuclear reactor in Dimona, were all in place, and in some cases, orders had already been given to start rolling.
These three claims run completely counter to all the findings and conclusions of previous historical research, and illuminate the mindset of the Soviet leadership at the height of the Cold War in a completely new - and frightening - way. The trouble is that these arguments are supported primarily by circumstantial evidence. There is not a single utterance or official document that mentions a decision of the Soviet Politburo, or of then-general secretary Leonid Brezhnev himself, to instigate a war in the Middle East. Nor is there a single Russian historian with access to archival material or contacts in high places who has written about the existence of a Soviet scheme to drag Israel into a war, launch attacks on Israeli territory and wipe out its nuclear research facility in Dimona.
Ginor and Remez say that they cannot back up their theories with documents or other written proof because of a decision by the Soviet leadership to impose a complete blackout on their critical role in instigating the Six-Day War. After the Soviet plan was made irrelevant by the swift and decisive success of the Israeli air force in the early hours of the war, the Kremlin successfully destroyed every last trace of evidence. Maybe so, but it is hard to believe that over the past four decades we have not heard a murmur from even one person who was in on the secret of such a large-scale plan for military action against Israel, nor that even a single official memo has been found to confirm this theory.
That the Soviets would keep a careful watch on Israel?s nuclear progress and even be concerned seems obvious. But there is a big difference between that and deciding to bomb its reactor. The chapter does not offer a single official document or direct testimony of such a plan. Actually, U.S. president John F. Kennedy (1961-63) seems to have been more worried than the Soviets about Israel developing the bomb, and unlike them, took concrete action to stop it. Kennedy's pressure on David Ben-Gurion did not shut down the Dimona plant, but the Israeli prime minister did agree to a visit by U.S. inspectors to ascertain that it was not manufacturing nuclear weapons.
Double agent Harel?
The most interesting - and conspiratorial - chapter is the one about a document dispatched by the Soviet Foreign Office on February 23, 1966. The document reports on the meeting of "Gariel," an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, with the leader of the Israeli Communist Party, Moshe Sneh, on December 13, 1965. During this meeting, Gariel told Sneh that Israel was developing nuclear weapons - violating its express policy of "not being the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region." Sneh reported this immediately to the Soviet ambassador, who hurried to inform Moscow. "Gariel" is the Russian transliteration of "Harel," as in Isser Harel, the former Mossad chief, who was indeed appointed Levi Eshkol's intelligence adviser.
There is no question that this is a sensational disclosure. Harel, who served as head of the Mossad for many years and was known for his dogged pursuit of Israelis who spied for the Soviet Union, is the man who supplies the Soviets with information on Israel's most top secret facility, violating an Israeli policy to which the leadership has clung tenaciously since the early 1960s.
The authors offer three possible hypotheses to explain Harel's actions. One is that Harel was acting as Eshkol's emissary, and that for some reason (which they do not go into), the prime minister wanted the Soviets to know that Israel was developing nuclear weapons and building up an arsenal. Another is that Harel was a Soviet spy. Finally, there is the possibility that Harel, who was a fierce opponent of the nuclear program, made up his mind to sabotage the project via the Soviets.
All three hypotheses are problematic and unconvincing, and portray Harel's actions as illogical and even irrational. The first explanation is not convincing because, as the authors themselves point out, in 1966 and 1967, not only the Egyptians and the Soviets, but also Eshkol, believed that the transition from European arms to modern American technologies left the Israel Defense Forces in a severely weakened position. This was one of the reasons that Eshkol was so worried about an Egyptian preemptive strike. As for the theory that Harel wanted to throw a cog in the wheel by alerting the USSR, it is hard to believe that he would be prepared to put Israel in real danger (a Soviet attack) just to get rid of a project spearheaded by his nemesis, Shimon Peres. And if Harel was a spy, it is doubtful he would have used Moshe Sneh to relay information to the Soviets. He would have done it himself. In addition, it was obvious that Sneh would not conceal his talks with the Soviet ambassador from Israeli officials, lest he himself be suspected of spying (as indeed he was). So the mystery remains.
According to Ginor and Remez, the Soviets interpreted Sneh's report in keeping with the first hypothesis, namely, that it was a message from Eshkol, and possibly a threat. They say that immediately after this information was received, the Soviets stepped up efforts to curb Israeli nuclear development, and from the spring of 1966, they met with the Egyptians to draw up blueprints for a war that could be exploited for a Soviet offensive against Dimona. Further proof, say Ginor and Remez, were the sorties of Soviet MiG-25s (which NATO referred to as "Foxbats") over the nuclear facilities in Dimona on the eve of the war (the first of which took place on May 17). The fact that they were prepared to use their newest and most sophisticated fighter planes, which were still under wraps, to fly over Dimona (for the purpose of photography and surveillance) is cited as evidence that they were planning to attack.
I beg to disagree. Although Ginor and Remez call them "provocative reconnaissance sorties," it is more likely that the Soviets were interested in gathering data on Dimona, and if they had state-of-the-art planes that could do it, they figured they might as well use them. Moreover, the Russian air force knew that Israel's Mirage fighters were inferior to the MiG-25 at high altitudes, so there was little chance that Soviet pilots would be shot down. This is borne out by the reports of Israeli air force pilots, who reported not being able to make contact with the planes flying over Dimona.
Ginor and Remez have done an impressive job of information gathering, and they have conducted a comprehensive and in-depth inquiry. There is no question that as a pioneering study presenting issues that need to be reexamined and probed further, this is an important book. But the authors should have restricted themselves to raising the questions, in the hope that other historians would use them as a basis for reexploring various aspects of Soviet policy, rather than stating categorically that the entire historiography of the Six-Day War is mistaken and only their theory is correct.
Dr. Reuven Pedatzur is a lecturer in the political science department of Tel Aviv University, and writes frequently on defense matters for Haaretz.
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