CHAPTER 2
I was still in bed, after a long night's work, when the sirens sounded.
For the first second or two I didn't recognize the sound. It surprised me. Then I said, "Well. So it has started." I hadn't expected the war, which I knew was coming, to start just that day.
My wife wanted us to go down to the air raid shelter. She was very proud of the shelter, because, as a member of the House Committee, she had been entrusted, a few days before, with preparing the shelter for war. Until that time, the shelter was considered a joke and was used by everyone as a store room for things we didn't know what to do with. Now it was clean, empty, provided with water and buckets of sand.
I did not want to go down. Even during the 1948 war, I always preferred open trenches to closed shelters. What's more, a high-ranking officer of the Air Force had promised me a few days previously that in case of war not a single enemy plane would reach Tel Aviv. In Israel you believe the promises of the armed forces; they are the only promises you do believe.
I was in bed in Tel Aviv instead of out in a trench somewhere among the sand dunes of the Negev, because as a member of Parliament I am exempt from military service. I believe that very few men of my age group, however, were still in Tel Aviv on June 5, 1967. As a matter of fact, Parliament was reconvening that very day, and I had to go up to Jerusalem for the session. After listening to some / 8