i954: a spy story i o 5 as it was, on the main convictions common to all Zionist leaders: that the Arabs don't want peace; that Arab nationalism is an inherent threat to Israel; that the support of the Western powers is important for Israel's security; that the superiority of the Israeli Army is essential for Israel's very existence. All these convictions are elements of the vicious circle, caused by it and, in turn, affecting it.
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Yet in retrospect, one wonders if the assumptions about Abd-el-Nasser were valid.
Long before Abd-el-Nasser was discovered by Time magazine, I was invited to have a cup of Arab coffee by a friend, Yerucham Cohen, a witty ex-Haganah officer of Yemenite descent. Yerucham, at the time a Hebrew University student, lived in Jerusalem in a little room on the roof of a seven-story building, without an elevator. He had called to advise me to ignore Nagib and the other young officers of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and to concentrate on that fellow Abd-el-Nasser. "This is the man to watch," he said, "I am certain that he is the one who counts."
I asked him why. "I just happen to know him," he replied.
The full story sounds quite improbable. During the War of Liberation of 1948, Yerucham Cohen was the aide of General Yigal Allon, chief of the Israeli southern command. After we had encircled and cut off the Egyptian brigade in the so-called Faluga Pocket, Yerucham was sent under a white flag to talk with the Egyptian command. The official objective was to arrange for the burial of about a hundred of our soldiers who were killed behind the Egyptian lines during a night attack, but the real aim was to sound out the Egyptians on their possible surrender. The Egyptian commander, a huge Sudanese general known as "The Black Tiger," sent one of his younger officers, Major Abd-el-Nasser, to talk with Yerucham. The talks