Israel Won the Yom Kippur War Because Golda Dug In Her Orthopedic Heels

At the height of the Yom Kippur War, Henry Kissinger—never one to suffer from low self-esteem—told his boss “Mr. President, this has been the best-run crisis since you have been in the White House.” Michael Doran would echo the sentiment, given his claim, in his excellent treatment of the war earlier this month in Mosaic, that Nixon and Kissinger were “the greatest supporters of Israel that have ever run American foreign policy.” Alas, facts are stubborn things, and the Nixon tapes are, at least for historians, the gift that keeps on giving. Thus, as I researched the historical record for my new book Eighteen Days in October: the Yom Kippur War and the Making of the Modern Middle East, I never thought of Nixon and Kissinger as great supporters of Israel. Rather, I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s observation that Americans always do the right thing—but only after exhausting all the other options.

Others before them exhausted the other options faster. At the 1968 Independence Day parade in Jerusalem, the Israelis could only fill the skies by sending up every contraption that could fly. Those in the know understood that the vaunted Israeli Air Force was down to its last 130 fighter jets. With France, Israel’s heretofore supplier, now imposing an arms embargo, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol turned in desperation to Washington. President Lyndon Johnson was advised to hold Eshkol’s feet to the fire and demand, at a minimum, that Jerusalem abandon its nuclear program. He could have demanded far more than that. Any offer was an offer the Jewish state could not refuse.

But Johnson ignored the advice, agreeing to sell tanks as well as fighter jets, and to speed up production so that the Israelis could take delivery in 1969 instead of 1970. With these no-strings-attached sales, Lyndon Johnson did more to guarantee the security and survival of the Jewish state than any American president before or since.