Could it be that precisely thanks to self-deprecating humor we were spared a “Yom Kippur”-style debacle back in the Six-Day War?
Is good Jewish humor what will now prevent a second Yom Kippur War?
Let us begin with the forgotten hero of the Six-Day War — Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. It is no longer remembered today, but before the Six-Day War as well there was an atmosphere in the army of “trust me” and a feeling that “the Arabs wouldn’t dare.” And it was precisely Levi Eshkol — unwarlike, full of humor — thanks to whom the army was ready for war.
At a General Staff meeting in February 1967, an assessment was presented that there would be no war in the coming year and that most efforts should be devoted to training the units. Eshkol rose and said: “How do you know there will be no war?” The senior officers answered: “Starting a war against us would be an insane move on their part.” Eshkol pressed: “And what if some Arab leader goes mad and starts a war? Does Nasser also know that he isn’t supposed to start a war? I ask that we prepare for the possibility that Nasser does go mad, see to the stocks in the warehouses, and purchase everything needed for war.” On another occasion, he instructed the IDF generals to stock up on spare parts for the heavy weapons and the tanks, because “there is no use in cows in the barn if they have no fodder.” At the end of the war the generals arrogantly reaped the glory and tossed Eshkol aside, ignoring the clear-eyed vision that had prepared the army for its day of battle, and ignoring the fact that it was he who made possible the crushing preemptive strike against the enemy — the strike that brought victory in the war. Six years later, in the midst of Yom Kippur, it was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan of all people who prevented Chief of Staff Dado from launching a preemptive strike against the enemy, even when it was clear that war was about to break out.
Eshkol’s clear-eyed vision can be credited to his famous sense of humor. A person with a measure of self-deprecating humor does not succumb to the intoxication of power. He understands the limits. He makes room for others. In heavy Yiddish — the language of Jewish humor — Eshkol would joke with everyone, and not a little at his own expense, and he would manage to dissolve quarrels and show others their faults with great charm. What Ben-Gurion achieved through blazing fury, Eshkol would achieve with humor and easygoing compromise. Eshkol used to say of himself: I compromise and compromise and compromise, until in the end I get what I want. (Ben-Gurion was known for having no sense of humor and not getting jokes. After one of the Knesset election campaigns in which the Herut party was defeated, a story went around that Menachem Begin came home and found his wife packing suitcases. Begin asked her what she was doing, and she said: “I’m moving to Sde Boker!” Why? asked the astonished Begin. Because you promised me that on the night after the elections I would sleep next to the Prime Minister…”
It was told that Ben-Gurion reacted to this joke with utter seriousness: “I don’t believe it — Begin’s wife is an honorable woman..”).
Amid all the abysmal seriousness with which our camps quarrel with one another, amid all these wars of mudslinging, what I miss most is good humor. Not lowly humor that mocks the other and tramples him, not venomous, crude, inflammatory humor. That is not humor at all. That is called buffoonery. But Jewish humor, which knows the situation is dreck and fakakta and still knows how to laugh. Self-deprecating humor that knows that even though I hold a firm opinion, I recognize my limits and know how to laugh at them. People with humor are very serious people. They know how to grasp the subtleties that the fury-filled speechmakers do not always manage to reach. They are the ones who understand that a blazing ideology is sometimes just a garment that warms too much and needs to be taken off. They are the ones who, at the end of the demonstration, will also know how to step aside for a moment, break out the field coffee kit, and sit down for a friendly chat with the other side.
Come to us, people of humor, and prevent the second Yom Kippur War.
