of every twelve in the whole country, showed up to applaud the army, which plays such a big part in our nation's life.

There was no reason for anxiety that day. The state seemed more secure than ever, war seemed far off. Certainly there had been trouble brewing all through the last few months on the Syrian frontier, with armed infiltrators planting bombs in border settlements, and various kibbutzim shelled from time to time. Something, everyone felt, would have to be done about it sooner or later, perhaps quite soon; a full-scale attack by our army on the fortified positions on the Syrian hills seemed imminent. But we knew that the Syrian Army was a negligible force, and such an attack would not rank as war by Israeli standards. We knew that war could come only if Egypt wanted it. And Egypt was busy with a small war in Yemen.

Nothing could have been further off than the idea of war on that sunny day; we lolled around on the Tel Aviv seashore, waiting for the festivities to start, as we listened to the transistor radio blaring old marching songs, including one I had written myself about Samson's Foxes. Yet at that very minute General Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief of Staff, approached Prime Minister Levi Eshkol on the reviewing stand in Jerusalem and whispered something in his ear. A most urgent message had just come through. As gay and unconcerned as everyone else's until that moment, Eshkol's face suddenly clouded over. The next day we read it in the newspaper: the headline was devoted to the parade, but underneath was a second important item, announcing that the Egyptian President, Gamal Abd-el-Nasser, had ordered his troops into the Sinai Peninsula, opposite our southern frontier.

It will always remain a mystery what exactly were Nasser's motives. The most plausible explanation is that he had reached the conclusion Israel was going to attack Syria as a part of a devious American plan to overthrow a left-wing, pro-Soviet regime in Damascus. He could not

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