To Be An Israeli: The Fourth Book in the All My Love, Detrick series

by Roberta Kagan

  The MiG was weaving just enough to keep Elan from getting tone, and Elan was in danger of flying right past him, so he started a pattern of circular flying to keep his distance behind the Egyptian. They were almost at cloud level. Elan tightened his circle and got dangerously close to the MiG’s six. He knew he wouldn’t get four seconds to get a tone, so he turned his automatic system with radar off and prepared to fire manually. He fired a one-second burst of cannon fire into the fuselage of the MiG, and Elan rolled left before he got caught in the MiG’s wreckage.

  Elan rejoined his number two as Daniel reported “Bingo fuel.” Elan checked his fuel gauge. If they left now, they would make it to Hatzor AFB on fumes.

  “That makes your fifth, right, Ace?”

  “You bet.” Elan turned the cassette player up and sang along over the radio with his number two. “I’m gonna keep a shakin’. I’m gonna keep a movin’ baby. Don’t you cramp my style. I’m a real wild child, whoa.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Katja and Zofia huddled together on the sofa waiting for news. Neither of them slept anymore that night. Blessedly, Ima did not awaken. Few words were spoken between mother and daughter, but they each felt the other’s fear. Mendel was on his way to God knows where, and only God knew what awaited him. Was this the end of Israel? After everything they’d suffered, the Jews had finally come this far, and now? Israel’s enemies encircled the tiny country on all sides. Although neither Katja nor Zofia voiced the truth, they both knew that every Israeli would fight to the death rather than lose their land. To the death… Mendel would fight beside them, and he too would die if he must. But even with all of the sacrifice the Israelis would willingly make, would it be enough to save the country?

  “Should I put up a pot of coffee?” Zofia asked.

  Katja nodded. “Yes, I don’t think either of us is going to go back to bed.”

  Zofia rinsed the coffee pot and began to boil the water. They were easily unnerved. Everything was exaggerated—the water running, the noise of water on steel as it filled the pot, the roar of the steam beginning to rise. Every sound crashed into their ears, interrupting the silent horror of their thoughts.

  The time ticked by so slowly that their lives seemed to have come to a stop. Every so often, Katja would return her gaze to the old clock on the kitchen wall. She felt as if hours had passed, but it had only been a few minutes.

  Ima awakened crying. Her needs distracted them for a while.

  Later that afternoon, Zofia fed Ima, but neither she nor Katja were able to eat anything. They sat with their eyes glued to the television, waiting, wondering, worrying, silently praying, but not knowing if Mendel was alive or dead and not knowing the fate of their beloved country.

  Israel did not have any TV stations. The only TV stations they could pick up told the war from an Arab viewpoint, complete with all of its bias. The newscaster ranted of bombings, fighting, and death, and how Israel would be destroyed. Katja, as well as most Israeli citizens, did not trust Arab news, so she shut the TV off and turned on the radio and tuned into KOL, The Voice of Israel. During the day, reports came in telling of a resounding victory over the Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian Air Forces. This was certainly reason for rejoicing, but the radio said clearly that the ground battle was still to be fought, and Mendel was with the Golani Brigade and fought on the ground.

  Zofia understood. Most of the day they sat glued to the radio watching for news of the war and waiting for answers.

  Somehow even in the impossible tension that filled the room, day finally gave way to night. Zofia put Ima to bed. It was the first time in Ima’s life she had gone to bed without a bath. Ima was restless and unable to sleep. She lay in bed crying then would seem to fall asleep only to awaken a few minutes later crying again. The sound was driving Katja mad. Ima’s wailing was the unspoken voice she and Zofia were feeling: the tension, the uncertainty, and the fear. Usually, Katja was calm and able to cope with Ima’s moods but not tonight.

  Zofia went into the nursery and sat beside Ima, gently cooing and rocking her crib while she softly rubbed her back until the baby finally let go and fell asleep.

  When Zofia came back into the living room, she saw Katja sitting with her arms wrapped around herself.

  “Do you think Mendel will come back home? Do you think he’ll survive?” Katja asked in a small voice.

  “I hope so,” Zofia said, biting her lip. She walked over to Katja and put her arm around her daughter. “All we can do is pray.”

  Like she’d done when she was just a child, Katja laid her head in her mother’s lap. Zofia patted her hair. Neither of them said another word. There was nothing else to say. They just stayed together, breathing softly in the darkness, the radio playing in the background.

  Katja and Zofia were paralyzed with fear. They spent their days going through the motions of taking care of Ima, but their hearts were with Mendel and with Israel. They both knew that anything could happen. If Israel lost the war, the Jewish homeland they’d worked so hard to build would face destruction. Mendel, their beloved Mendel, might be maimed or killed. Anything could happen. Zofia wanted to take her daughter and the baby and go back to the kibbutz.

  No one had any idea how long the war would last, and Zofia felt isolated from her friends and her extended family while she was at the house. She longed for the camaraderie at the kibbutz. However, Katja refused.

  “When Mendel comes home, he’ll come here to our house. I want to be here waiting for him.”

  CHAPTER 41

  JULY 8, 1967

  Israeli intelligence had deduced that the likelihood that the Soviets would intervene had been reduced. Had they wanted to be involved, they would have helped Egypt. The Syrians were no longer advancing into Israeli territory but continued to shell Galilee from the Golan Heights. Many Israelis wanted Syria punished for its shelling of the kibbutzim in Galilee even before the war. Moshe Dayan had bitterly opposed the taking the Golan because the estimate in troop losses were 30,000.

  A break came when Israeli intelligence intercepted a telegram from Egypt’s President Nasser to the president of Syria, to immediately accept a cease-fire. Israel needed to take and keep the Golan to secure the kibbutzim in Galilee. Dayan agreed that it was time to move before the Syrians sued for a cease-fire and the UN would not approve taking any more land. Operation Hammer had begun.

  JULY 9, 1967

  Mendel had been assigned to the Golani Brigade. After the previous day of fierce fighting, there were only twenty-five men left alive in his unit. His unit was tasked with taking the stronghold at Tel Faher. His brigade commander addressed the men.

  “The enemy is dug in at Tel Faher with trenches, bunkers, an extensive minefield, and three belts of two-sided sloping fences and coiled barbwire. They are armed with anti-tank guns, machine guns, and 82 mm mortars. Tel Faher has not seemed affected by aerial bombardment. This stronghold is the key to the Golan. Failure is not an option,” concluded LTC Moshe ‘Musa’ Klein.

  Mendel was terrified. He wasn’t a warrior; he was a lawyer, a man who fought his battles with books, papers, and arguments in a courtroom. How he had lived through yesterday’s fighting was a mystery to him. So many good men had died, all of them more deserving to live than he. Perhaps it was his time to pay with his life for becoming rich defending a product that took innocent Israeli lives. Whether he deserved to die or not, God would judge.

  Mendel thought of Katja, Ima, and his mother-in-law. I will fight for my family and my nation, and perhaps God will forgive me of my trespasses. In any case, I will pour out my life as an offering if need be to keep the Syrians from attacking my wife and family. Still, Mendel was terrified.

  “Time to move out,” his brigade commander said. The men split into two units, one to attack the southern flank and one to attack the northern flank. Mendel was assigned to the unit led by LTC Klein attacking the northern flank. If the men made it alive to the trenches, they were to throw down their rifles and use their Uzis for close-i
n fighting.

  Although his surroundings were unnerving, Mendel’s thoughts were more of his family than of himself. What if the enemies bombed Tel Aviv, his wife, his baby? Sometimes a horrific vision would cross his mind, and he’d see Katja or Ima dead. Then he would shiver with fright and helplessness that would almost throw him into a panic.

  The Syrian commander ordered that his men hold their fire until the Israelis made it to the barbwire, the killing zone. LTC Klein’s group belly-crawled to a place in the fence where there was poor visibility to the entrenched enemy positions. A private that Mendel had ridden with on the bus, Uri Medina, cut the bottom three strands of the fence on both sides to allow the men to belly-crawl past the barbwire perimeter. Mendel hesitated when it was his turn to crawl through but was met with a stern glare from his commander. The Israelis belly-crawled at a snails’ pace up the hill and to the trenches.

  Just before they reached the trenches, a sniper shot PVT Medina in the forehead and he sunk silently to the ground, blood running down his face from the hole in his forehead. As the corporal next to him tried to climb into the trench, a mortar round blew off his right arm, and it landed on Mendel’s back, its blood staining his uniform shirt and its hand dangling in front of Mendel’s face. He opened his mouth to scream and his commander put a hand over his mouth, gave him a withering look, and threw the bloody limb to the side as they listened to the wounded man screaming in pain. The unit’s medic tried to attend the wounded man and half his face was blown off by a mortar round and he sank to the ground, his body convulsing in its death throes.

  LTC Klein waved to the men to hurry up and get into the trenches. Mendel and his commander ran through the trenches firing their Uzis. The trench was filled with the smell of damp earth and burnt gunpowder. It was confusing to tell who was who, so they had established a password. When a lone gunman stood in front of them, LTC Klein challenged him with a password. He didn’t know it and fired at them with a submachine gun and missed. Mendel and his commander bailed out of the trench and LTC Klein was shot and killed, his blood poured out on the soil of the land he fought so hard for.

  Mendel stood up and found himself face-to-face with a Syrian soldier who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Mendel heard more rifle and Uzi fire in the trenches as he watched the boy frantically struggle to put a new clip in his rifle. Mendel wrestled with his desire to quit, go home and let this boy live, and to do his duty and defend his family and country. He sadly shook his head and fired a burst of rounds into the boy’s body. The young Syrian fell over backward and died, eyes open, seeing nothing, his mouth agape like a dead fish at the market.

  Machine gun fire opened up from the bunker and riddled Mendel’s body. He never saw it coming, but he felt the bullets enter his body. At first, it was like a dream. His mind would not accept the fact that he’d been hit. Everything around him began to move in slow motion. The shock of what had happened dulled all feeling at first, but then it wore off, and he felt intense heat and pain where the bullets had torn his body open. His breath became shallow. He dropped his Uzi, and his hands held the open wounds as if by sheer will, he could force them closed.

  He fell over the body of the young Syrian boy and choked on the blood from his internal injuries. He looked at the face of the young boy. What made them different, anyway? Would his mother cry when he didn’t return home? Why did they have to fight and die here? Was he a traitor for having these thoughts? Why couldn’t they live in peace? But he knew why—because they were Israelis, and they would never be granted any measure of peace without blood. Yes, Israel must survive. Otherwise, the Jews as a people would surely perish. But Mendel wished that he could understand why there was so much hatred, so much anger, so much death, and destruction. Why couldn’t people find a way to live together? Why did it have to come to this? He cried, for himself, this young Syrian enemy no more than a child, and his family whom he would never see again.

  Blood, so much blood… Mendel realized he was dying. And once he accepted it, all of the fear he’d felt about death was gone. The pain ceased, and somehow, he felt at peace with death. The only worries on his mind were his family. Who will take care of my family? He saw Katja’s smiling face in his mind’s eye. She was holding Ima above her head. Ima was laughing and drooling. Such a beautiful child, Mendel thought. He knew he was drifting away. He would never grow old with his wife, never see his daughter under the chuppah at her wedding, never…

  Then in his mind, he spoke to Katja. She seemed to be right there before him, her lovely face just inches from his. Goodbye, my Katja. You’ve been my everything—yesterday, today and forever. Please don’t mourn me. The best thing you can do for me is to go on living. Take care of Ima. Take care of yourself. I want you to know that you’ve given me so much. From the day I first saw you on the Exodus, when we were just children, I knew I loved you, Kat. I’ve always loved you. He spoke the words in his mind, but he believed he was speaking them aloud. She was there, right there. He felt her kiss gently upon his lips. Mendel sighed. “I’ve had a good life, Kat…because of you,” he whispered. Then he took his final breath and left the earth on his way to a place where there were no borders, no differences in people, no hatred or wars, where there was only light and love.

  Of the thirteen men who were part of the Golani Brigade, who attacked the northern flank, only one man escaped injury and only two that attacked the southern flank finished uninjured. The southern flank fell, but the northern flank was stubbornly dug in. The brigade’s reconnaissance unit was called to reinforce them, and the target was finally taken at dusk. After the fall of Tel Faher, all the other Syrian fortifications fell, and the entire Syrian line fell like dominos. Many of the Syrian commanders deserted.

  The war only lasted six days. Never before had one nation fought three nations at once and won so decisive a victory. This could only have been described in words like “providence” or “hand of God.” Israel was here to stay.

  CHAPTER 42

  For Janice, America had changed so much that returning home felt as if she’d landed on the moon. It was all new and exciting. Everywhere she went, there were head shops—small stores selling antiwar tee shirts, wall hangings, bongs, papers to roll marijuana cigarettes, love beads, and books on organic farming. She resented being pregnant. She hated that she was gaining weight. There were men everywhere, and she looked like hell.

  Grant and Lincoln parks were common sites for love-ins and peace-ins. The parks were filled with young people, eating, smoking dope, talking, and listening to music. Janice’s father forbade her to go to any of these events. But as always, Janice did as she pleased.

  She called her best friend, Bonnie, and together they went to a love-in at Grant Park. The park was right next to the Art Institute of Chicago, and as they walked by, Janice looked up at the two statues of lions and remembered that she’d been to the Art Institute on a field trip as a child many years ago. The entire area was filled with people sitting on the ground. Music blasted from the bandstand.

  “Hey, you two wanna join us? Come on, sit down.” A fellow with long, dirty, blond hair beckoned. “I’ve got some acid. Ever drop acid?”

  Janice had no idea what he was talking about. She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “Okay, no acid. Here, have a puff of my joint.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Have you ever smoked dope?”

  Janice shook her head. Bonnie took Janice’s arm and led her away.

  “Acid is LSD,” Bonnie said. “It’s a hallucinogen. Dope is another name for marijuana.”

  “Did you ever take them?”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened?”

  “Dope just makes you feel kind of calm and creative. Acid’s another story. It can be good or bad, depending…”

  “Depending on what?”

  “On your state of mind, on if you have a good trip guide…lots of stuff.”

  Janice had no idea what Bonnie was talking ab
out, so she didn’t say anything. Although she desperately wanted to be a part of everything she saw going on around her, Janice was afraid to try drugs because of the pregnancy. It was not so much because she cared about the baby, but her mother had warned her about how young people were taking drugs and dying from them, too. Her mom was always so dramatic.

  But her mother had also said that if Janice took any drugs, the baby could be born defective. And even though Janice hardly ever listened to her parents, she couldn’t help but believe that taking drugs while carrying a child might be dangerous. It would be far too hard for her to raise a kid with problems. She wanted to be rid of the baby as it was, not to add any extra burden. So she refrained from trying any illegal substances.

  Janice was surprised to find men willing to have quick and casual sexual encounters with her regardless of her pregnancy. She felt fat and ugly but longed for excitement, so she took advantage of the offers. For Janice, casual sex was a way to break out, break away from her past, from her mistakes that were still weighing her down like an albatross. If she had known of a reputable doctor willing to perform an illegal abortion, she would have had one without thinking twice. But girls were dying from trying to abort babies with the help of medical students or women who just needed some extra cash. Janice wasn’t about to take that risk.

  Meanwhile, Janice’s father, Ronald Lichtenstein, arranged for a lawyer to prepare divorce papers, to send to Elan. If it was necessary, Janice’s father was willing to pay Elan to sign them and free Janice of this marriage. On her parent’s advice, Janice wrote a letter to Elan explaining why she wanted the divorce.

  The lawyer also suggested that she lie in the letter and tell Elan that she’d suffered a miscarriage because she’d been so upset when he’d walked out on her. The attorney warned that if Elan knew he had a child in America, the day might come when he would come looking for his offspring. It would be best to sever all ties now. Otherwise, Elan would always be in the background waiting to resurface. After all, Elan knew that Mr. Lichtenstein was a wealthy man. One could not be certain that Elan would not come to America and try to claim some of his father-in-law’s good fortune in exchange for any claims Elan might have on the child. Janice took the attorney’s advice.