And the Sea Is Never Full Read Online Free PDF Page A

Violence becomes more frequent, more intense. Planes are hijacked. We witness the massacre of Palestinians by the Jordanian army and the birth of the Black September movement.
    One evening, having been invited to Golda’s home, Marion and I arrive to find her distraught. The army has just shot down five Soviet MiGs that had violated Israeli airspace. Golda fears reprisals. Chainsmoking as usual, she complains: “These Russians, what do they want from us? Why are they always against us, always on the enemy’s side? Why do they provoke us? Is it war they’re looking for? With a small state like ours?”
    Next day, in the restaurant at the Knesset, we chat with Ezer Weizman, the former air force commander, a minister without portfolio in Golda’s government, and the future president of the State of Israel. “Everybody is worried,” I say to him. “Aren’t you?” No, he is not. The enfant terrible of Israeli politics is, as General de Gaulle would say, “sure of himself” and of
Tsahal
, the army. “The next war will not last six days but six hours,” he tells us. “The plans are ready, success guaranteed.” “Then why is Golda so worried?” I ask. Weizman shrugs as if to say: What can you expect of a woman who has never done military service?
    An hour later we have coffee with General Bar-Lev, commander in chief of the army, and famous for his strategic genius. I first met this brilliant military man in New York, where he was doing postgraduate work at Columbia University. He is a fine man—intelligent, reserved, sophisticated, and loyal. His speech is slow and deliberate; his gaze, penetrating. He inspires confidence and is admired by the military, respected by the politicians, trusted by the public.
    We discuss the current tensions. He is nearly as optimistic asWeizman. He whips out his pen and scribbles numbers on a paper napkin. Of course, he says in his low, halting voice, there are those who are afraid—not of the Arabs, naturally, but of the Russians. Those Russians are powerful. Their numbers are overwhelming. But they are far away. What would be dangerous for us would be a war with infantry and armored vehicles…. If the Red Army sends more than a hundred thousand soldiers, that might pose a problem…. But they would need transport planes…. And, yes, their pilots are good. But ours are better.
    I must admit that I was frightened by his calm. I thought to myself: The entire world is afraid of the Soviet Union, but he is not. France fears the Russians, Washington is wary of them, China distrusts them, and the tiny Israeli nation is fearless. If Bar-Lev’s equanimity had been based on a belief in divine intervention rather than in strategic arguments, I would have better understood his attitude.
    Let us stay another moment with
One Generation After
, whose French title,
Entre deux soleils
, was suggested by Manès Sperber. What does it mean, “Between two suns”? It means dusk, the mystical hour worshipped by Hasidic dreamers. At that hour on the first Friday of Creation, according to
Pirkei Avot, The Ethics of Our Fathers
, ten things were introduced into human history: the abyss that swallowed Korah and his accomplices; Miriam’s well, which accompanied the Children of Israel into the desert to heal them; the mouth of the ass that answered Balaam; the rainbow in Noah’s time; the manna; the staff used to effect the biblical miracles in pharaonic Egypt; the
shamir
, the tiny worm that split the stones used in the construction of Solomon’s Temple; the rectangular shape of the letters engraved in the Tablets of the Law; their capacity to be read at four different angles; and the tablets themselves. Certain sages add the demons, who were also created at this hour between daylight and darkness. And the tomb of Moses. And the ram Abraham sacrificed instead of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.
    This title reflects, less clearly than the American, the content of this work, which deals, however