How Kissinger Won the Middle East for America

I am writing this (may God forgive me) on Yom Kippur. Exactly 43 years ago,
at this exact moment, the sirens sounded.

We were sitting in the living room, looking out on one of Tel Aviv’s main streets.
The city was completely silent. No cars. No traffic of any kind. A few children
were riding about on their bicycles, which is allowed on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s
holiest day. Just like now.

Rachel, my wife, I, and our guest, Professor Hans Kreitler, were in deep conversation.
The professor, a renowned psychologist, was living nearby, so he could come
on foot.

And then the silence was pierced by a siren. For a moment we thought that it
was a mistake, but then it was joined by another and another. We went to the
window and saw a commotion. The street, that had been totally empty a few minutes
before, began to fill up with vehicles, military and civilian.

And then the radio, which had been silent for Yom Kippur, came on. War had
broken out.

A few days ago I was asked if I was prepared to talk on TV about the role of
Henry Kissinger in this war. I agreed, but at the last moment the program was
canceled, because the station had to devote the time to showing Jews asking
God for forgiveness at the Western Wall (alias the Wailing Wall). In these Netanyahu
times, God, of course, comes first.

So, instead of talking on TV, I shall write down my thoughts on the subject
here.

Henry Kissinger has always intrigued me. Once my friend Yael, the daughter
of Moshe Dayan, took me – in the great man’s absence, of course, since
he was my enemy – to his large collection of unread books and asked me
to choose a book as a present. I chose a book of Kissinger’s, and was much
impressed by it.

Like Shimon Peres and I, Kissinger was born in 1923. He was a few months older
than the other two of us. His family left Nazi Germany five years later than
I and went to the US, via England. We both had to start working very early,
but he went on with his studies and became a professor, while poor me never
finished elementary school.

I was impressed by the wisdom of his books. He approached history without sentiment
and dwelled especially on the Congress of Vienna, after Napoleon’s downfall,
in which a group of wise statesmen laid the groundwork for a stable, absolutist
Europe. Kissinger stressed the importance of their decision to invite the representative
of vanquished France (Talleyrand). They realized that France must be part of
the new system. To ensure peace, they believed, no one should be left out of
the new system.

Unfortunately, Kissinger in power disregarded this wisdom of Kissinger the
Professor. He left the Palestinians out.

The subject I was to speak about on TV was a question that has intrigued and
troubled Israeli historians since that fateful Yom Kippur: Did Kissinger know
about the impending…

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