stake. But on May 28, opinion in the government-representing at the time a coalition of parties holding 75 out of 120 seats in the Knesset-was evenly split. Nine Ministers, including Levi Eshkol, voted for war. Nine other Ministers voted against it. The result was a tie, which meant that the decision was no.
But an unforseen development had a devastating effect. Eshkol was to broadcast to the nation a keep-up-the-morale speech. There was still some time left to put the broadcast on tape, and the broadcasting experts, knowing his style, urged him to do so. Eshkol, an interesting personality in many ways, is a highly ineffectual speaker given to meandering sentences and long digressions which tend to peter out. Yet the Prime Minister, used to speaking in parliament, is confident of his ability to get his message through; he was going to read a prepared statement. Up to the last minute of the actual live broadcast, phrases were edited and re-edited. One adviser thought that a phrase about the need to have the forces retreat from the frontiers was psychologically unsound. You don't mention retreat in such a situation. So he put in the words "move the forces" instead. Unfortunately, he forgot to cross out the word "retreat." When Eshkol came on the air reading the statement in a tired voice, he started to hesitate and stammer when he reached this passage, trying to make out the wording and whispering with his advisers. All the people, the tense soldiers listening in the trenches, were suddenly struck with the idea that our supreme leader in this fateful hour was an old, tired, hesitating, stuttering party functionary. The reaction was an instinctive, unanimous demand for strong leadership.
The next four days, in Israel, were taken up by maneuvering to satisfy this demand. As a result, subtle changes in the situation went unheeded. On the same day that Eshkol made this by-now-famous speech, Nasser held a press conference in Cairo. Desperately frightened of the coming war, he looked for some way to extricate himself from the