Lot of excellent histories have been written of the Six Day
War, whereby Israel against seemingly overwhelming odds overcame the combined
forces of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Steven Pressfield, author of one of my
all-time favorite combat novels, his classic "Gates of Fire" about the
Greeks at Thermopylae, has shown his ability to write about a specific war in
terms of its universality. He takes a different approach in The Lion's Gate. It is what he calls a
"hybrid history," a narrative story drawing on hundreds of hours of
interviews with veterans of the war, documentary research and the author's
imagination. The whole book is composed of first-person accounts, most factual
but a few invented. And what an account it is.
That account is not “balanced”. There are no Arab stories. The author
wrote it that way to tell about war as it meant to a people. We know that
beliefs come down to us from history which in the Middle East seems
particularly dark and confused. And so is “justice” over thousands of years.
Belief in their mission never wavers among the Israelis.
"If we lose, what our enemies will do to us will make Auschwitz look like
summer camp," says Danny Matt, a paratroop commander under Ariel Sharon.
A former U.S. Marine, Pressfield knows war and he knows the
men who fight wars. He admires the Israelis for their victory, but he does not
discount the grim losses on both sides.
Pressfield relates
one soldier’s conclusion which surely rings true for all wars
"We looked death in the eye but death did not look
away," he says. "He took as many of us as he wanted." I found this account most interesting.
