For everything there is a season. In Israel, it is the season for trying to find the answer to the painstaking questions: was the war in Lebanon worth the death of some 640 soldiers and the wounding of some 5,000, and did the almost three-year war achieve its orginal objective of “peace in the Galilee?”
These questions and the demand for their answers and for determining who is responsible for the nation’s torment have taken on greater urgency in recent days as the fanatical, Khomeini-like Shiite terrorists stalk and kill soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force even as they proceed to withdraw.
NO CAUSE FOR REJOICING
For most Israelis there is no cause for rejoicing either about the war itself or about what they see as an unnecessarily protracted withdrawal. During the first 17 days of March, alone, 17 soldiers were killed. This included the 12 soldiers who were killed on March 10 less than a mile from the border town of Metullah by a Shiite car-bomber.
The war in Lebanon is viewed by most Israelis as at best a pyrhic victory and at worst a Vietnamization of Israel. Most Israelis, including many in the IDF, do not see the war as a war of defense, unlike the previous wars Israel was forced to fight.
This war is considered one of the darkest episodes in the life of the country. Unlike other wars in which Israel was involved, there are no songs to celebrate the action, no poems to mark Israeli heroism, no literature to chronicle feats and exploits, no epics to mark victories. Only obituaries and headlines which report the deaths of Israelis, and the anguished outcry of the families and friends of the IDF fallen demanding a rapid, if not immediate, withdrawal from the bloodbath in Lebanon. The soul of Israel is in agony.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE GENERATION
The existential anguish of the Israeli people as a whole was perhaps best expressed by the father of IDF Staff Sgt. Ephraim Michael, 28, of Holon, who was one of the 12 soldiers killed near Metullah. In a quiet, almost hushed voice, the father said at the gravesite of his son: “This is the tragedy of our generation, that the fathers must say kaddish for their sons.”
This generational tragedy was also described in a subdued and forceful tone by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Talking to 80 participants in the United Jewish Appeal’s Ambassadors’ Mission, he said , regarding the war in Lebanon:
“There is no hope and no one should say that the goal is total elimination of terrorism. Its’ unattainable. Whoever aspires to the unattainable, and who ever believes that by a long good war you can finish terrorism forever asks for disappointment, frustration, because whenever you try to reach the unattainable it must lead you to frustration.”
Once the war in Lebanon “was extended beyond the peace in Galilee limited goals to the far reaching goals — a new government in Lebanon, peace, no terrorists will remain in Lebanon, the Syrian army will be out — whoever set these goals practically aspired to the unattainable, ” Rabin declared.
‘ NO MORE TO BE THE POLICEMAN OF LEBANON’
Then, in a voice filled with emotion, the Defense Minister stated that Israel’s only goal in Lebanon is to achieve security along Israel’s northern frontier “without the need for the IDF to be stationed permanently in Lebanon. This is the only goal of Israel in Lebanon: no more to be the policeman of Lebanon; no more to be the defenders of the Christians, of the Druzes and who knows what.
“No one has sent for us to be the policeman of this country. No one have given us the right to decide who will be President there. One should learn from history, that whoever set his foot in Lebanon sunk in the Lebanese mud … We want to be out of Lebanon … and to end illusions about the capability of Israel by one good long war to finish terrorism. “Rabin did not identify the architects of the illusions, but everyone in the audience knew.
Premier Shimon Peres, expounding on the same theme, said at the farewell dinner for 270 participants in the combined Ambassadors’ Mission, the UJA Young Leadership and the Southeast Region: “We have never had in mind to remain in Lebanon, we have never looked for Lebanese land; never did we intend to play a role in Lebanese politics … While the Shiites are doing the most to terrorize our withdrawal, the Shiites are not our enemies. Neither the Shiites nor the Sunnites, nor the Druze nor the Christians are our enemies. We don’t have enemies as people. We don’t have collective enemies and we are not going to appoint any enemies in our neighborhood or elsewhere. Our enemis were and remain a state of belligerency, a sentiment of hate, an approach of prejudice.”
THE RELENTLESSNESS OF THE SHIITES
For the average Israeli the Shiites seem even more relentless in their hatred of Israel than did the PLO whom many consider now to be pussycats by comparison. What is most alarming about the Shiites is their willingness to die for the sake of Allah and for the chance to meet him sooner than naturally necessary.
The Shiites are impervious to Israel’s threats of reprisals and its “iron fist” policy. The Shiites say there is nothing Israel can do to them that hasn’t already been done to them by the Christians and the PLO in Lebanon.
But beyond the fanaticism of the Shiite suicide teams, there is a practical consideration. The Shiites are in competition with other groups in Lebanon to achieve a leadership role as the foremost and staunchest defenders of their country against the Israeli “invaders.” Their political stock increases each time they kill or maim an Israeli soldier. It helps them attain credibility and moral and political stature as Lebanon’s real “freedom fighters.”
Their daily forays against the IDF and the carbombings of Israeli troops is generating anxiety among many in Israel that Shiite militancy, intransigence and fanaticism will set an example for West Bank extremists and inspire the development of an organized resistance movement against both the Israeli military and the Jewish settlers there.
Most Israelis have developed defense machanisms to deal with the tragedy of the Lebanese war. In the almost three years since the war started, Israelis have learned to accept death as a way of life. It isn’t that they are developing ways to inure themselves against events which were thrust upon them and over which they have no control.
They sublimate their anger, bewilderment, anxiety and frustration by such activities as buying sprees — a psychological blanket against thoughts of death. Aside from the families involved, the average Israeli reads the daily newspapers and listens to the hourly Kol Israel radio broadcasts about events in Lebanon with almost stoical resignation. A day after the March 10 Metullah tragedy, throngs of Israelis walked leisurely through the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, stopping at their favorite cafes on Dizengoff or Ben Yehuda Street to sip coffee and engage in casual banter.
But the fear of the ongoing events in Lebanon and the anxiety of being called for “miluim” in Lebanon emerges almost in passing, but pervasively, in off handed almost parenthetical remarks. Many are frightened of serving in Lebanon — probably the first time since the War of Independence that fear of fighting in a war is being expressed — because many do not see the war in Lebanon as a war of defense.
Many say they would gladly fight to defend Samaria and Judaea, even those who feel that Israel should return the territory. “But Lebanon is not our country. Why should we die for it?” many ask.
REACHING OUT FOR PEACE
The people of Israel want peace, not only so that lives can be saved but also so that they can return to a normal, constructive and productive existence. Talk of peace by the Egyptians, by the Jordanians by whomsoever generates euphoria.
Two days after the Metullah tragedy, some 150 members of the Japanese Christian pro-Zionist Makuya sect, on their 24th annual pilgrimage to Israel, marched through the streets of downtown Jerusalem, singing in perfect Hebrew songs such as Havaynu Shalom Aleichem, Hava Nagilah and chanting Am Yisrael Chai. They passed out little flags and lapel stickers with the inscription Shalom and a Magen David and the Japanese flag alongside we each other.
Workers in offices above the street level threw confetti out of the windows while crowds of people on the street grabbed the flags and stickers and applauded the pilgrims. The Japanese and Israelis. There were exchanges of Shalom and many passerbys joined in singing along with the pilgrims. Almost all the Israelis were moved emotionally; some cried.
On that cloudless, spring-like day in downtown Jerusalem, peace permeated the air and Israelis were savoring every minute of it.
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