Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.
“I never vacuumed at home wearing my pearls. In fact, I never vacuumed at all. I was always working at the studio. I would have gone crazy staying at home like Margaret Anderson, and my family knew that.” —Jane Wyatt
Unfortunately, it’s common in political discussions to hear pundits and commentators say: “Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders.” There’s only one problem with that analysis: There are no 1967 borders. The line that Israel inherited from the War of Independence is the Armistice Demarcation Line of 1949, which is different from the international boundaries that exist elsewhere in the world.
Movie lovers know her as Lizabeth Scott, (1922 – 2015) the husky-voiced femme fatale and noir babe of the 40s and 50s. But she was born Emma Matzo of Scranton Pa. Her best film is “Dead Reckoning” (’47).
Jewish holidays do not simply recall the past. Jewish holidays are cautionary tales for all time. They remind us that Jewish history repeats itself with terrible constancy.
The Jewish people introduced ethical monotheism to the world — and for this gift the world has never forgiven us.
Oct. 10, 1973. Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, right, consults a battlefield map with Maj. Gen. Haim Bar-Lev in the Sinai desert, during the Yom Kippur War.
The first few days of the Yom Kippur War were confusing and frightening.
We heard that things were going badly for Israel on both fronts. Later, after the war, we learned that Moshe Dayan told Prime Minister Golda Meir that the Third Commonwealth was about to fall.
Turning the tide of war called for operational genius.
Ariel Sharon had that genius, and a plan. There was a narrow gap in the Egyptian line. Sharon believed he could cross the Suez, and exploit that seam. Sharon’s superiors had little faith in Sharon’s plan. They ordered Sharon to stop sending forces across the canal. Instead, they wanted him to widen the gap on the Israeli side of the Suez.
Sharon read the battlefield differently. He knew that only decisive, offensive action could rescue the Jewish state. His plan, grandiose and brilliant, was to cross the canal, encircle the Egyptian Third Army, and threaten that army with complete annihilation.
Sharon’s military superiors believed the Egyptians would sniff out the plan, close the gap, and destroy Sharon’s small, vulnerable force.
Sharon disobeyed orders. He claimed there were communication problems. Perhaps the oldest, most reliable fiction soldiers use to neutralize their commanders.
Sharon knew from years of fighting Arab armies that attacking from the rear, destroying the missiles that wreaked havoc on the Israeli Air Force, ambushing reinforcements, destroying supply depots, and sowing chaos across the entire front, would cause the Egyptian army to collapse. Arab armies are notoriously unimaginative when face with a nimble, improvisational enemy. They have a tendency to fall back into a defensive, suicidal posture.
And this is exactly what happened.
Of course, Sharon’s superiors were furious with him. But deep down, they knew that the man who had defied them, had saved the Jewish State.
