I had the opportunity to meet him in 1993, and he was quite a distinguished gentleman. He had mellowed a bit by the time I got to meet him, but you could tell that he had a twinkle in his eye for mischief.
As commander of the air force from 1958 to 1966, Mr. Weizman assembled a potent fleet of fighter jets and personally led the training of its highly proficient pilots.
He was the military's chief of operations in 1967, when the Arab forces, led by Egypt, began gearing up for a coordinated offensive against Israel.
On the morning of June 5, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack, putting Mr. Weizman's air-based strategy into action with devastating results. In two hours, with just 300 combat planes, half as many as the combined Arab force, the Israeli Air Force destroyed 200 Egyptian aircraft, most of which never left the ground. By noon, another 200 Arab planes were downed in aerial combat. It was often said that the war, which lasted six days, was won by the air force in the first six hours.
Eleven years later, Mr. Weizman, then Israel's defense minister, made his reputation as a peacemaker by helping convince a skeptical Prime Minister Menachem Begin that a negotiated withdrawal from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula would make Israel more, rather than less secure.
President Ezer Weizman. Taken July 1993.
No comments:
Post a Comment