I stand there, at the entrance to a cave, I see and I hear, and I can’t really grasp it. What is happening here? How can it be that we, each and every citizen of Israel, are signed on to this? We fund it with our taxes, and carry it out through the sons and daughters we send to serve in the army. What is the connection between the army we knew and the institution that commits such an act against defenseless people?
There is no argument that if the country is in a war of survival, it is permitted to use all means necessary to protect itself.
But now? From our position of strength? Israel, the great military power, against those people out there in the fields, in the caves? How low can you go, and how cruel can you get?
Last Friday, in bone-chilling cold, on the main road at the edge of Tweineh, a woman sat next to a pile of mattresses. At her side, clinging to her, were several children, toddlers among them, wearing thin clothes. When she saw our little delegation, her eyes showed no zest of life or any interest. Later, without much hope, she urged one of the children to cough loudly, to elicit our pity. The boy, about nine years old, looked at us, shrugged his shoulders, and stubbornly remained silent.
At that moment he had more self-respect than I could find for myself as an Israeli.
If I could directly address Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, I would say to him, Sir, I want to believe that you didn’t know exactly what was taking place there. That you had no idea how one signature of yours on a document would be translated into reality and affect individuals. I have no doubt that, had you witnessed what I saw there, in the field, in the caves, you would have canceled the decree and ordered that these people be immediately reinstated in their homes.
There is a struggle over territory, true, and we are in the midst of negotiations over borders, absolutely. But beyond this there is the matter of the boundary that a man makes for himself, the final boundary beyond which a person and an entire people lose their self-respect, and in the end their identity as well. There are deeds that an army — especially one that once bore the banner of “purity of arms”—does not do. Because in performing them, it ceases to defend the nation whose agent it is and begins to act counter to that nation’s most profound interests.
Mr Prime Minister, I’ll say it in the simplest possible terms: It is not fair to bully these helpless people. These are not the values that you, sir, were raised on, and it is not the education you passed on to generations of soldiers. This is not what we reflected upon when, years ago, we studied the prophet Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s ewe lamb that the rich man stole.
It is not too late. That is, it is definitely late. Because three weeks like these, being outside in the cold, humiliated, will not be erased from the memory of the refugees. But something can still be repaired. Today. Right now. You don’t need to ponder over it too long. There’s no need to consult various advisors. This is something that a person recognizes from within, from the deepest place inside. If you give the order to restore these people to their homes, no one will consider it as surrender to Palestinian pressure. On the contrary, they will see it as an act of loyalty to your fundamental values and those of the nation you lead. Sometimes a little repair, even Tikkun like this — in the midst of the moral chaos in which Israel finds itself today — can remind its citizens of what they once were, and what they hope someday to become, when this passes, this storm that sends our compasses awry.
Leave Lebanon Now
February 2000
Ehud Barak promised, as part of his election campaign, to withdraw the Israeli Army from southern Lebanon within a year — after eighteen years of occupation. Grassroots organizations persisted in their pressure on the government to fulfill this controversial promise.
Six Israeli soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah attacks in Lebanon in ten days. The Israeli government has decided on a tough response. Israeli air force fighter planes have bombed power plants deep inside Lebanese territory. Hezbollah has continued to attack Israeli outposts in southern Lebanon, and a flare-up seems imminent.
But, in fact, it doesn’t really matter what Israel’s tough response in Lebanon will be. The entire process is preordained, and it is only an illusion to believe that Israel controls or initiates any part of it.
Time and time again, for over twenty years now, our leaders have brought us to a Lebanese blind alley in which we are forced to act precisely contrary to our interests.
This time, too, apparently, we will react the same way. We’ll once again behave like the drowning man whose frantic flailing sucks him deeper and deeper into the water.
Why does it have to be this way? Why does it sometimes seem as if we Israelis are doomed to make this error by our very nature? That it’s the result of our too finely honed instincts, which in the end bring more and more disasters upon us?
We do not acknowledge the failure of our continued, pointless presence in Lebanon. We are not admitting that our deterrent force decays further with each additional day there. We do not accept that there is no military solution to the Lebanon problem. Instead of facing up boldly to these facts, it’s much easier for us to turn our frustration and humiliation into a great fist and to strike out, hard.
But when you look back today on the many years during which our soldiers have participated in this bloody ritual, your heart breaks. It’s the thought that perhaps most of the retaliatory operations were no more than superfluous and dangerous acts of revenge, an automatic outlet for the well-known overconfidence of military men — as well as of politicians who were once military men — who know no other way but force.
Yes, we realize that they are undoubtedly levelheaded, responsible, sober men, but what’s to be done if their sobriety and levelheadedness prompt them to take two or three steps that repeat themselves in a sort of mechanical routine? At most, they can “suspend” or “examine” their response until what seems to them an appropriate moment, and then, as usual, they react with force and aggression, and recommence for the thousandth time the vicious, bloody circle.
But how is it possible, ask many Israelis who have already come to terms with the idea of a withdrawal, how can we leave this way, with our tail between our legs? How can we allow Hezbollah to humiliate us so?
Because, the answer is, there is no longer any alternative. We’ve got to get out. It’s not important how the retreat is called, or what other people may call it. In any case, we should keep in mind that this won’t be the first time that Israeli soldiers have left Lebanon without completing their mission. In 1986, after four years of plodding slowly through the Lebanese mud, Israel withdrew from Lebanon, finally understanding that the price it was paying in human life was too high.
Nor is there any longer a genuine need to deal with the “public relations” of such a withdrawal. Everyone, in Israel and the world, knows the truth. Israel will be able to exert its deterrent force far better from within its borders, yet with a much greater sense of justice and in national unity. We must do it now.
Get out. Because we are conquerors, and because throughout history an army that was stationed in an occupied land, imprisoned for all intents and purposes in outposts and trenches, has never succeeded in fighting for any length of time against mobile forces, even if much less powerful.
Get out. Because the army of a democratic country, whose actions are restricted by law and by accepted moral norms, can never defeat a guerrilla army fighting for its land, supported by the local population, knowing that justice is on its side.