Episode Transcript
You’re listening to a podcast by Lance Lambert Ministries. For more information on this ministry, visit www.lancelambert.org or follow us on social media to receive all of our updates.
Welcome to a special episode of the Lance Lambert Ministries podcast. I’m Natalie.
Today, we're introducing the audiobook for Battle for Israel, a book written by Lance which offers a unique perspective on Israel’s political and spiritual conflicts.
Written shortly after the Yom Kippur War, Battle for Israel brings readers right to the frontlines, not only in terms of military events but also through Lance’s insights into Israel's broader struggles and future. With his close connections to Israeli leaders and extensive understanding of biblical history, Lance give a unique perspective on past events in Israel’s history, which shed some light on current events happening there today.
This audiobook, narrated by Michael Cross—who also narrated several of Lance’s other books, as well as Norman Grubb’s Rees Howells, Intercessor and other works. The audiobook for Battle for Israel is available today on Audible. Visit the link in the show notes to purchase it.
Today, we’ll be sharing the book’s introduction and first chapter, wherein Lance details the beginning of the conflict between Israel, Syria and Egypt in the Yom Kippur War. Listen next week for chapter 2 of Battle for Israel.
Thank you for joining us, and we hope you enjoy this special episode.
Introduction
Israel expected the Day of Atonement on Saturday, October 6th, 1973, to be as quiet as usual. It was not. It saw the beginning of the most serious of Israel’s wars and the fact that at the time many regarded it as just another Arab-Israeli squabble raises two questions. Would it have mattered if Israel had lost and what is the importance and significance of the State of Israel?
I had always found the American Colony Hotel one of the most gracious places in Israel and a friend and I were thoroughly enjoying the last few days of our holiday. It had been the most peaceful one that we had spent in Israel and we had particularly noticed how relaxed everybody was, including the Arab population in Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Our return flight to England was booked for the following Monday in two days’ time.
Suddenly air raid sirens wailed all over the city. Although my immediate reaction was to wonder whether this signalled the "holiest part of the Day of Atonement, I quickly realized that this could not be the case because the strict laws for Sabbaths and holy days would normally have ruled out the use of sirens. While I was still pondering this, the sirens wailed again. Israel’s fourth war had begun.
On the Bar-Lev line along the Suez Canal a bored Jerusalem Brigade swatted flies and slept. Many men were keeping the fast; others were playing a gentle game of soccer when someone kicked the ball to the top of a bulldozed rampart of sand and a private went after it. Looking out over the Canal, he was shocked by what he saw. ‘MIGs! MIGs!’ he shouted, as Israel came under attack from two hundred Egyptian fighters.
On the Golan Heights, eighty Israeli soldiers were enjoying a day of leisurely military duty. Some were still playing backgammon in their slippers when four Syrian helicopters filled with assault troops swooped round a mountain. Many Israelis were killed in hand-to-hand fighting in the bunkers; others surrendered, only to be executed.
Israel had become overconfident since her last confrontation with her hostile neighbours, and she was taken by surprise. With the Arabs united for the first time for many centuries, equipped with the latest weapons and confident of victory, it appeared that this tiny nation with such a rich religious heritage would be destroyed. Another act in the unfolding drama of the battle for
Israel had begun. This was the Yom Kippur War.
Chapter 1
Annihilation Averted
The Yom Kippur War should have been the annihilation of the State of Israel. People think of the 1967 Six Day War as a miracle, but it was nothing compared with the Yom Kippur War and in the years that lie ahead, when the whole truth comes out, we shall see that it was beyond all reason that Israel was not annihilated.
A few weeks after the war, I heard Golda Meir say, ‘For the first time in our twenty-five-year history, we thought we might have lost.’ Before then I had never heard a prominent Israeli so much as imply the possibility of defeat or admit to fear. At one point in the war, only ninety battered Israeli tanks stood between the powerful Egyptian army and Tel Aviv, yet Israel was not beaten.
The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 marked a new point in world history, and things will never be the same again. Another such turning point was the First World War when a whole order of things passed away, and the face of Europe and the world was changed, much more than with the Second World War, which only finished off the process. Kingdoms and monarchies disappeared, new ideologies arose, and Marxism had its birth in that era. In a similar way the Yom Kippur War, far from being some petty Middle East fracas, was one of the great milestones of history.
Yom Kippur is a Hebrew name and means ‘Day of Atonement’. Among Latin and Oriental Jews (the Sephardim) this Jewish holy day is also called ‘the Day of Judgment’. On this day Jews pray particularly for forgiveness, and ask God that their names be ‘written and sealed into the Book of the Living .’
On the Day of Atonement, everything in Israel is at a standstill. From two hours before sunset until two hours after the succeeding sunset everything stops. There is no transport: no taxis, cars, buses, planes, trains, or ships. The nation’s airports are closed, the ports are closed, and the stations are closed. No shops are open, and no entertainment can be had anywhere. There are no radio programmes, no television; no communication with the outside world, and very little within Israel. Even the telephone exchanges are not staffed on the Day of Atonement. It is a day of prayer and fasting, spent either in the synagogue or at home.
Israeli Intelligence knew all about troop movements in both Egypt and Syria but had misinterpreted the signs. These two countries held military manoeuvres in September and October every year and therefore General Dayan along with the Israeli Cabinet thought that these troop movements were just a war of nerves, a bluff designed to produce another Israeli mobilization with the accompanying paralysis of the economy and tremendous financial drain. Only in June that year a general Israeli mobilization cost the country £4,000,000 per day and tore over a third of the manpower out of the economy.
Moreover, Israel thought of Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, as a ‘weak sister’ and was confident that the Arabs lacked the unity that was essential for mounting an organized attack. So the possibility of a new war was recognized two weeks before it actually began and the Minister of Defence and government officials later admitted they knew of enemy concentrations but could not accept the verdict of immediate war. Shimon Peres then Minister of Transport and present Minister of Defence said, ‘We did not want to believe our own intelligence; we did not want to believe that Sadat was going to attack.’ It was four o’clock in the morning on the Day of Atonement before it was realized that something very serious was afoot.
A United Nations representative, who had already passed on highly accurate information to his Israeli counterpart informed him that in the course of the Day of Atonement, Israel would be attacked on two fronts. This warning was taken extremely seriously when it was finally relayed to Israel but by then it was too late. It takes at least forty-eight hours for a full mobilization of the Israeli defence forces. By seven o’clock that morning the military authorities had started to recall men from leave but it was only two hours before the war began that most of the men were contacted and the reserves mobilized.
In this particular year the Day of Atonement was more generally kept than ever before. A large number of the men on the fronts were actually observing the fasting and prayer, and all over the country synagogues were filled with people, mostly men. Our first public warning that something was wrong came when the air raid sirens wailed for about three minutes at ten past two in the afternoon and again at twenty past two. Within fifteen minutes Israeli radio was on the air broadcasting live reports from both fronts. You could hear gunfire and explosions in the background. These sirens were in fact, the only means the Israeli Government had of informing the nation that something very serious had happened. Husbands and fathers, brothers and sons were suddenly called from synagogue or home with only a few minutes to say goodbye to their families. The majority of them thought it was a short skirmish such as they had had before. They left hurriedly fully expecting to come back, but three thousand of them never returned, and thousands more were maimed for life. The onslaught on both fronts was massive and terrible. There were more tanks on the Syrian front than in the 1941 German offensive against Russia which was two hundred miles long and involved 1,000 tanks. On the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, there were 1,200 tanks on a twenty-mile front and later at Sinai were fought the greatest tank battles in world history, greater even than the battle of El Alamein in the Second World War.
In Britain we are at times somewhat imperialistic in our attitude, for instance we have tended to think of Syria as a tinpot Middle East state which could be flattened by a single blow. Syria however in that initial attack hit Israel with more tanks than Britain and France possessed between them. Indeed one high- ranking English officer in a tank regiment told me that as of now Britain and France have only one-third of their tanks actually ready for use in the event of an attack. In the Yom Kippur War which was the first wholly technological war in Middle East history approximately 4,000 tanks, 900 missile batteries and even unproved new weapons were thrown into action. Abba Eban, former Foreign Minister of Israel said in his statement to the United Nations on October 8th, 1973: ‘Egypt attacked with 3,000 tanks, 2,000 heavy guns, 1,000 aircraft, and 600,000 men.’
The regular Israeli garrisons numbered only a few hundred men against Syria’s massive tank attack. With their greater numbers the Egyptians should have been in El Arish if not in Gaza and Beersheba, within twenty-four hours and then the whole of Israel’s heartland would have been exposed. There was nothing to stop them. The U.S. Pentagon estimated that Israel was technologically superior and therefore did not need to be comparably equipped so she was not armed to the same extent as her Arab neighbours. It turned out that the Arabs however had not only more weapons but often better weapons than the Israelis. They used hand held missiles such as the RPG7 which can blow the turret right off a tank and the Snapper, a mobile anti-tank rocket which makes tanks burn so fiercely that the armour melts. They also had SAM 6s (surface to air missiles), anti-aircraft rockets that travel at two and a half times the speed of sound. At six miles range this gives a pilot only a matter of seconds in which to take evasive action, so in the early stages of the war three out of every five Israeli jets were shot down. In those first few days Israel suffered terrible casualties.
The Bar-Lev line fell, the Hermon fortress, which most people had thought of as invincible, was taken. Then the Egyptians crossed into Sinai, and the Syrians took much of the Golan. Until this happened the Israeli news service had always been most reliable, and many Arabs tuned into Israeli Arabic broadcasts for accuracy. During the first week of the war however, Israeli news tended to be very inaccurate and news from Damascus and Cairo much more dependable.
This was largely due to a breakdown in communications between the front and second lines of defence on the Israeli side. Even Moshe Dayan was confused on the second day of the war because of this. Whole companies and units were wiped out without a survivor. Yet on the whole morale on the Israeli side was very high, especially at the front.
Egypt and Syria should have beaten Israel, but they were inexplicably prevented. The Egyptian high command gave the first Egyptian division that crossed the Canal fifteen hours to take the Bar-Lev line. They took it in just five hours, and then halted. If they had swept on, the whole of central Israel would have been at their mercy. One Egyptian tank commander said later, ‘I was only half an hour’s drive from the Mitla Pass, and there was nothing to stop me.’ Yet the fact is he stopped.
Likewise, the Syrians should have been in Tiberias on the evening of the first day of the war, but they too stopped. The commanding officer of Israel’s Golani brigade said later in my presence that when the Syrians were first advancing, the Israelis had only two tanks and ten men at their NAFAQ headquarters. This man held no religious belief, but he referred to this as a miracle. Although he had been involved in the four previous wars of Israel’s history he had never seen anything like it. Wave after wave of tanks bore down on them. Then when they came to within one mile of the NAFAQ headquarters, they halted. ‘They saw the Lake of Galilee,’ he said, ‘they liked the view, and they stopped.’
As a result of these delays in the Egyptian and Syrian advance Israel had time to regroup and reorganize. Many think that it was this period of time that made all the difference to the outcome of
the Yom Kippur War.
Another Israeli captain without any religious beliefs said that at the height of the fighting on the Golan, he looked up into the sky and saw a great, grey hand pressing downwards as if it were holding something back. In my opinion that describes exactly what happened; without the intervention of God, Israel would have been doomed.
Shimon Peres, once a key adviser to Golda Meir and at present Minister of Defence, has said, ‘The miracle is that we ever win. The Arab nations occupy eight per cent of the surface of the world. They possess half the known oil resources and are immensely rich. They have more men in their armies than we have people in our state, and in addition the Russians have built for them a great war machine. On our side we have only America.’
It was at this point in the war that I first learned of the massive Soviet airlift of arms to Syria and Egypt which had begun on the first day of the war. Two hours after the war started Antonov transport planes carrying weapons and replacements were landing every three minutes and at the same time that the war began, Russian ships arrived at Latakia, Syria and Alexandria, Egypt, carrying heavy military replacements for everything that would be lost in the fighting. Three days before the war began the Soviet Union had launched two orbital Sputniks which crossed Israel at the best time for aerial photography. Russia then relayed information to Syria and Egypt as to whether Israel was prepared. This is probably why the war originally planned for six o’clock in the evening of Yom Kippur, was brought forward to two o’clock. The Russians had passed on the information that preparations had begun on the Israeli side. Others have suggested that it may have been the result of a compromise between the Syrians who wanted to launch the attack at six AM. with the sun behind them and the Egyptians who wanted the attack to commence at 6 PM.
The American airlift with each plane carrying a hundred tons of ammunition, tanks and weapons did not begin until the tenth day of the war when the Israeli army was actually running out of ammunition. The delay was caused almost completely by the refusal of America’s so-called allies, particularly Britain, to grant facilities to the United States for refuelling her planes. Britain was so bitter about the airlift that she persuaded her NATO allies to fight it. Germany refused to allow the United States to take weapons from her bases on German soil and put them on Israeli ships in Bremen and Hamburg. Eventually Portugal opened up the Azores to United States transport planes and Israel was saved. Planes then came in almost nose to tail; there was no time to lose. If they had not come, Israel would have been totally lost.
The fighting became increasingly severe. Galilee was shelled and the Syrians even used Frog missiles. There were many air raids in the north but then Syria was gradually pushed back. Meanwhile, Egypt was held in the Sinai where the greatest tank battle in world history was fought on Friday, October 19th. Much of the fighting was at such close range that they weren’t even able to manoeuvre the tanks. Jordanian radio described it as ‘Hell on earth’. Although the British and French embargo on arms was supposed to be even handed, it was in fact loaded against Israel.
I have seen for myself some of the many British weapons captured by the Israeli defence forces. Presumably they were coming from Kuwait into Syria because Britain supplied Kuwait with arms throughout the war. Israeli British-made Centurion tanks were immobilized through lack of ammunition and spare parts. Due to the urgency of the situation some tanks which went to the front under their own power rather than waiting to be transported had damaged their tracks by the time they arrived there. Spare parts and ammunition had already been paid for but as they were on board Israeli ships in British ports when the embargo was placed on them, the entire cargo was impounded by the British Government. There would certainly have been an outcry in Britain if India, for example, had taken the same action with ships flying the British flag.
Two French Mirage fighters were shot down and captured by Israel; yet there are only two nations in the Mediterranean which use Mirages−Israel and Libya. Libya, supposedly nonbelligerent was supplied by France with planes and weapons throughout the war. It seems that she passed on this equipment to Egypt. The French embargo on Israel moreover was so bitter that France did not even allow blood donated by French volunteers to be sent to the Israeli wounded.
Many nations joined Egypt and Syria. In the first twelve days Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Jordan all came in on the Arab side and North Vietnam sent a contingent of pilots to Syria. In the first two weeks of the war, twenty-seven African states broke off relations with Israel yet many of them had been the recipients of Israeli aid. Thirty-four states in all, including India, broke off relations. Other countries which were supposed to be impartial such as Malta, were in fact bitterly hostile to Israel at this time.
So Israel became increasingly isolated. People sometimes wonder how Armageddon could ever take place. This war showed that within a few days contingents from all the armies of the world could be in Israel.
Israel’s isolation also occurred on another front. With the exception of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, no church leader condemned the fact that the war was a premeditated attack on the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar. If anything was said faintly resembling condemnation, it was qualified with remarks sympathetic to the Arab cause. The Israeli Cabinet felt very bitter about this. Some of them said ‘We never expected Christian churches to support us in the war, nor would we ever expect Christian churches to collect money for ammunition or weapons. We did not even expect them to collect money for our wounded. But we thought that the least they could do was to stand up and say that they thought it was a terrible thing that on the most sacred and holy day of the Jewish calendar, when everyone was fasting and praying, this premeditated attack took place.’
The Pope just talked about the need for peace on both sides and said that one could not blame the Arabs for longing for their old homelands. It is a sad fact that the Vatican has not yet recognized Israel as a sovereign state. The World Lutheran Federation remained absolutely silent as did the Anglican Church. The World Council of Churches sent over a million pounds worth of aid to Jordan and an undisclosed sum to the Palestinians. These funds were for the relief of war victims on the Arab side and for the refugee programme amongst the Palestinians. Some of this money could well have found its way to the terrorists. Until this time not even a penny had been sent to Israel but owing
to criticism that they were not being even-handed, the Council committed themselves to sending five and a half tons of medical supplies to Israel.
It has to be understood that the World Council of Churches has in its membership many churches in the Arab world and consequently there are numerous requests for help sent to Geneva from there. On the other hand, there is no similar organization in Israel to seek assistance. Then there are the very definite leftist and radical tendencies of the Third World majority in the Central Committee of the Council. It is because of these tendencies that its members side with the Arabs against Israel.
In the recent Nairobi conference of the World Council of Churches some of these issues came to the surface. The General Secretary, Dr. Phillip Potter, publicly professed his ineradicable prejudice against white people and even accused Britain of being ‘responsible for the most racist system in history’. There were also a number of complaints made about the double standards adopted by the Council, notably that they were ‘operating one law for the Right and another for the Left.’ One of the most respected of British churchmen and Parliamentarians, Sir Cyril Black, as a result of that conference wrote to the Daily Telegraph calling upon British churches ‘to consider carefully whether they can any longer, in good conscience, continue in membership of the World Council of Churches’.
Furthermore, Israel appears to have suffered ostracism from the International Red Cross, for this body recognizes the Red Crescent of the Arabs and the Red Lion and Sun of the Iranians and at the same time refuses recognition to the Red Shield of David (Magen David Adom). Until 1975 it seems that the leadership of this well-known organization did not think it appropriate to give attention to the case of such recognition probably because of the well-known political difficulties in which they would be involved. Now it is due to be considered and it will be interesting to see the outcome of their deliberations. To the onlooker it must seem strange that while other national or religious symbols are acceptable, the Jewish symbol is not. Again in a Red Cross congress held in the late autumn of 1973 a vote of censure on Israel’s conduct of the war received a two-thirds majority.
While one feels that this does not really represent the true policy of the leadership of the International Red Cross it does reveal the problems such an organization faces in dealing with new states, particularly Israel.
Many of the Christians in Jerusalem felt that the main purpose of my being delayed there was for prayer. We had been staying at the American Colony Hotel but after two weeks it was becoming too costly. It was at that crucial moment that the then warden of the Garden Tomb, Jan Willem van der Hoeven and his wife offered us accommodation in a house at the Garden Tomb. Many believe that the site of the Garden is the place of the resurrection of Christ. It was as if one was at the heart of things. Here was the natural centre for most of the Christians in Jerusalem: My burden was that among them there should be a ministry of genuine corporate prayer. I found here as everywhere else, that this was a lost art. So many Christians know how to pray on their own but they do not know how to pray together.
I was appalled that when Israel was in such great need, even Christian workers and servants of the Lord who had been clearly put there by God and really felt God calling them to pray for all
that was going on at that time, were unable to pray together in depth. This was not because these Christians were necessarily divided on personal or doctrinal issues, neither was it due to any lack of private devotion nor godliness. The reason was that the art of praying together has been largely lost. So we held a school of prayer at the height of the war. Our burden was for the dying and wounded, Arab and Jew alike, that they might be saved; for the Israeli people, that the war might be used to turn them to God; for the invaders, that the Lord would paralyse and confuse them and especially for Jordan, that she would not enter the war.
A member of our group with a military background, a typical Britisher not given to fantasy, came to me and said that on the third day of the war a picture came to his mind when he was praying. He saw himself on the Mount of Olives. He saw great clouds roll out of heaven down on to the Mount of Olives and from there across the wilderness of Judea, blotting out the whole country of Jordan. It was so vivid that he immediately turned in prayer to the Lord and said, ‘Lord, what does this mean?’ He felt that the Lord replied, ‘Pray that the Jordanian authorities will be so confused that they do not enter the war.’ He came to me early the next morning and recounting his experience asked, ‘Do you really think that it was of God?’ I felt that it was.
We felt quite sure that we must give ourselves to much prayer that clouds would come down upon King Hussein and the Jordanian Cabinet. We also prayed that Christians would be protected and used at both fronts and at home. We had some remarkable answers to our prayers. Jordan stayed out of the war. Officially she sent a token force, a crack regiment called the 40th Brigade. However, the 40th stayed behind a hill on the Syrian front and hardly fired a shot. Indeed one Israeli general felt that they were there to stop the Syrians and Iraqis from entering Jordan rather than to fight the Israelis. The bridges over the river Jordan were open to civilian traffic for almost the whole war, closing on only three separate occasions in the course of four months.
We had the tremendous joy of hearing King Hussein being interviewed in English on a radio broadcast. The Indian interviewer said, ‘You are very unpopular with quite a number of the Arab states because they feel that you have let down the Arab cause and that if you had opened the third front, Israel would have been finished.’ Hussein replied, ‘Well, they may feel that, and I can understand it. But you see, we were very perplexed the day the war began and ever since, for we do not feel that we have sufficient air cover to allow us to attack. We are not sure that we would have got the support that we needed from Iraq and Syria.’ That was a great answer to prayer, and he had even used the word ‘ perplexed’.
We continued to pray that God would confuse the invaders and cause them to hesitate. We also asked that there might be the miracle of national repentance and prayer. We prayed for the Israeli Cabinet, especially for Golda Meir, then seventy-six years of age. Mrs. Meir was an agnostic but at Ben-Gurion’s funeral in 1973, she said, ‘I thank the Almighty that two years ago he brought about reconciliation between me and David Ben-Gurion.’ I had heard her use expressions such as ‘Thank God’ for this or for that previously, but only as a colloquialism. I had never heard her refer to the Almighty in this way.
Among other things we prayed that the hidden motives and counsels of the Soviet Union might be unmasked before President Nixon and the Free nations and that President Nixon’s impeachment at such a time might be averted. We prayed that he would give up the two tapes, although at that time he was resisting this. We prayed that the Egyptian Third Army would be surrounded and even surrender thus bringing a speedy end to the conflict.
We had some remarkable answers to these prayers. For the first time in Israeli history, one of the three leading Rabbis of the Jewish Agency sent out a letter appealing for repentance on the part of the Jewish people. He listed fifteen reasons for the need of this repentance, including Israeli car driving–if you have experienced this, you will understand why.
To those who would charge me with being anti-Arab in my attitude let me say that I count many Arabs among my dearest friends. Furthermore, in the Yom Kippur War we prayed for the safety and deliverance of those Arab believers who were involved in the fighting, some of them known to us. It was a great joy to me to hear later of one remarkable answer to prayer. One of the first men in the Egyptian Army to cross the Suez Canal is a true Christian, the son of an Egyptian pastor who is one of my dear friends. This young man, a captain in the Engineers, was a leader of a unit of fifteen men. They were to be responsible for the laying of the ‘carpet bridges’ across the water of the canal. He had understood that the Egyptian authorities considered that there would be few survivors among those who were in the forefront of the battle. Just before the war began he was praying and opened his Bible at Acts 27:24, and read ‘and lo, God hath granted thee all them that sail with thee.’ After the bitter fighting of those first few days, his unit was the only unit which came through unscathed.
Even more remarkable is the fact that his half track broke down in the midst of the fiercest tank battle ever fought in world history. For over half an hour it lay immobilized between Egyptian and Israeli tanks locked in battle. He knew that he was a sitting target but was unable to get out and do anything. Placing himself in God’s hands he told Him that he was ready to die if his time had come. Then when he tried the engine again it started up and he was saved. I remember so well this young man being prayed for fervently by name at about the time of this battle.
The Egyptian Third Army was surrounded and cut off and became dependent upon the Israeli forces for food and medical supplies. The Israeli army broke through the Egyptian defences and poured over the Canal into Egypt. Syria was pushed back to within fifteen miles of Damascus. President Nixon gave up the two tapes and his impeachment was averted.
On Sunday, October 21st, Kissinger was urgently called to Moscow by the Kremlin. The next day there was an unofficial cease-fire on the Suez front, which we felt could be to Israel’s grave disadvantage. For previously, under cover of the 1971 cease-fire, the Soviet Union had supported the moving up of SAMs by Egypt to within one mile of the Suez Canal. These ground to air missiles which were not taken away in spite of much fuss and bother in the United Nations, nearly determined the course of this war.
Why was it that Britain and France did not immediately forward a motion in the Security Council calling for a cease-fire when Egypt and Syria moved on to Israeli-held soil? Evidently President Nixon had personally asked the then Prime Minister of Britain, Mr. Heath, if he would do so but Mr. Heath had refused.
True the British Ambassador in Cairo, Sir Philip Adams, did ask Sadat on October 12th if he would like a standstill cease-fire on existing positions, by which time the Egyptian army had crossed the canal, taken the Bar-Lev line and were advancing towards the Sinai passes. Sadat however refused as the Egyptian army was planning a big offensive the next day and hoped for further territorial gains. The matter was left there despite the fact that at that time Israel was on the verge of defeat. As soon as Damascus and Cairo were threatened, however, Britain moved with amazing speed in order to get a cease-fire resolution passed. We prayed that the cease-fire might be broken if it was only going to allow Egypt and Syria to rearm and regroup for more bloodshed.
A retired colonel in the Israeli army who was a sabra, a native Israeli, told me, ‘I have lived here all my life. Every time we have had one of these cease-fires they have not kept it. We report it and report it and report it and then we just have to fight back. That is what will happen this time. They will probably break it three times and the fourth time we will retaliate and take all the territory we need.’ That is exactly what happened, the Egyptians broke this unofficial cease-fire three times. On the fourth occasion, the Israelis fought back. They went as far as Ismailia and then turned southwards cutting off Suez City and ending up only fifty miles from Cairo. This made Russia furious. Brezhnev sent Nixon what Senator Henry Jackson in perhaps overemotional language called ‘the most brutal cable ever sent to a President.’
What Brezhnev said in this cable was that the Soviet Union had decided to take unilateral action and so resolve the Israeli problem. America took this very seriously because American reconnaissance flights had already spotted that a large Soviet
warship previously seen heading for Alexandria, Egypt, had now docked there. On the deck of this warship were ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. At the same time the Soviet airlift dramatically stopped and all those huge transport planes were at the ready while crack Soviet parachute regiments moved towards the airfields. Aware of both these facts, President Nixon called a worldwide United States military alert, known as a Stage Three alert in the five-stage American defence Condition. This put 2,300,000 men on stand-by and was the first such alert since the Cuban crisis eleven years before.
Why did the Russians bother to cable Nixon? Why didn’t they just get on with the job by letting the Egyptians have a ballistic missile and letting them fire it? Why tell the Americans? According to a high-ranking Israeli expert on foreign affairs whom I asked about this, the Russians believed that they must observe some outward form of détente. They believed that Nixon was in such a domestic crisis that he would delay at least twenty-four hours, long enough for Egypt to have fired two or three ballistic missiles and wipe out Haifa, Tel Aviv and probably western Jerusalem. When it was over and there was worldwide protest, Russia would hold up her hands in horror and say ‘We are very sorry, but what’s done is done. Israel is finished.’ Thank God that in spite of his personal and national problems, Nixon proved to be quick witted and sharp. Whatever the true facts about this matter, it was certainly more than mere ‘sabre rattling’ on the part of the United States and very much more than a cover-up of the Watergate scandal. I cannot forget the burden of prayer that fell upon some of us in Jerusalem on the preceding day and the urgent and anointed prayer that was made to God concerning the unmasking of the Soviet Union’s plans and intentions. We were not the only ones to sense the call of God to pray in this vein.
Samuel Howells, principal of the Bible College of Wales and son of Rees Howells the great intercessor, told me later that one of the greatest times of prayer that he remembers since the war years came on the night President Nixon called the alert but before it was publicly known. During that day he had felt a tremendous burden and anguish come upon him. He walked up and down, prayed for a while and in the end asked God, ‘What does this burden mean?’ ‘My enemy is seeking to precipitate Armageddon,’ he was told, and Samuel Howells then spent some time in prayer. Later during the course of a regular evening meeting he and others felt led by the Holy Spirit to remain in prayer until early the next day. That morning they were not surprised to hear about the worldwide United States military alert although they did not realize the full situation until I was able to explain it to them some months later. At approximately the same time thousands of miles away from Wales, Gladys Thomas and Kitty Morgan were praying in Israel. They had learned some of the deep lessons of intercession with Rees Howells, Samuel’s father, during the Second World War. Both of them felt troubled in spirit throughout the day and as they prayed the Lord had said to Gladys, ‘Pray! For my enemy is seeking to precipitate the end.’ No doubt there were others still unknown to me upon whom this sense of urgency came as they waited upon the Lord. To such the U.S. worldwide military alert was no surprise.
Throughout the world many thought that the United States’ alert was ordered for domestic reasons. In fact at that time we came to the very brink of World War Three, though in Britain and the rest of Europe, hardly anyone realized it. We were living in a fool’s paradise, teetering on the brink of nuclear war. Christians in the Free World continued their routine meetings and programmes unaware of the grave issues at stake and tremendous movements in the unseen world. The Lord Jesus told us to watch and pray, to be ready for the things coming upon the face of the earth. Were we ready then?
As soon as the United States’ worldwide military alert was called, the Soviet warship weighed anchor and sailed back to the Black Sea. Israel’s annihilation had been averted.
You’ve been listening to a sneak peak of the audiobook for Battle for Israel by Lance Lambert. For more information on this audiobook, please visit our website www.lancelambert.org. May you know the deep deep love of Jesus.
