Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation

by Yossi Klein Halevi

  Gush activists spoke of Rabin with condescension. A weak man, they said, vulnerable to American pressure. They dismissed Rabin as Israel’s first dejudaized leader, lacking the Jewish roots of the Labor leaders born in Eastern Europe. Rabin couldn’t joke in Yiddish like Eshkol, had no memory of childhood pogroms in Russia like Golda. He was, they sensed in Gush Emunim, someone whose Jewish instincts couldn’t be trusted.

  Yoel Bin-Nun resented his friends’ contempt for the commander of the Six Days, God’s instrument in the redemption of Israel. Mocking Rabin for his supposed lack of Jewish rootedness was just another way of mocking his Israeliness. The native-born Rabin was the first fully Israeli prime minister. Yoel felt himself Israeli in every part of his being; his religious identity was most deeply expressed in his Israeliness.

  Rabin presented his government to parliament on June 3, 1974. Two days later Gush Emunim confronted the government with its first crisis.

  THE CARAVAN OF twenty cars and trucks drove over stony hills without roads, avoiding army roadblocks intended to thwart the would-be settlers. The activists had sent a letter to the government announcing their intention to build the first settlement in Samaria, near the West Bank city of Nablus. They were forfeiting the element of surprise, they said, because Jews should settle the land of Israel without subterfuge. Still, that didn’t mean they needed to meekly appear before the army’s roadblocks.

  They came to a field of grass yellowing in the early summer sun. Nearby was an army base and an Arab village, Hawara. Young men unloaded a generator, a Torah scroll, a children’s slide. They erected a dozen tents, hoisted an Israeli flag on a pole. Kerchiefed young women turned one tent into a kitchen, with gas burners and army-size pots. The young men began laying barbed wire around the camp.

  Only a few hours later did the army discover that a hundred settlers had eluded the roadblocks. Soldiers surrounded the area.

  The date was June 5, 1974—the seventh anniversary of the Six-Day War. It hadn’t been planned that way: for the religious activists of Gush Emunim, the “secular” calendar held little meaning. Still, it was a curious coincidence for a movement aimed at resurrecting the spirit of ’67. Activists saw that seeming coincidence as one more confirmation of their rightness in history.

  Ariel Sharon appeared, along with Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook. Together, the big general in a short-sleeved shirt and the elderly rabbi in black fedora and long black jacket planted a sapling.

  YOEL BIN-NUN ARRIVED LATE, as usual. He came late to his classes, late to prayer services—inevitable perhaps for someone who lived between normative and messianic time. Yoel didn’t know how to drive—he didn’t have time to waste on trivialities—and so had gotten a lift to the encampment with students, riding on dirt roads and skirting Arab villages to avoid roadblocks.

  Esther had tried to convince him not to go. “What is this,” she said, “a struggle against the British Mandate? Why are you building a settlement against the wishes of a sovereign Jewish government?” Yoel tried to reason with her: “The whole world is applying pressure on the government of Israel—America, the Europeans, the UN, the media, the left—but only our counterpressure is extreme? All we are trying to do is help the government stand strong. As long as the government is the final arbiter and can remove us if it chooses, then what we are doing is legitimate.”

  “Just don’t drag me into it,” said Esther.

  Sharon, friends with Rabin from their army days, spoke to the prime minister on an IDF line. Sharon offered a compromise: let the settlers move to an army base, and the cabinet would decide their request. Rabin agreed.

  The proposed base was near the Jordan Valley, and that would offer the Labor government a face-saving way out. The settlers, the government could claim, had agreed to resettle in a part of the West Bank included in Labor’s map of settlement. Gush Emunim could claim victory too, the beginning of cooperation with the new government.

  Yoel was elated. “This is our chance to transform settlement from a partisan issue into a national consensus,” he told Hanan. Exactly as Kookians believed: the land of Israel would unite the people of Israel, not, God forbid, divide them.

  Hanan agreed. “It’s the best of bad options,” he said.

  He approached Rabbi Zvi Yehudah. The elderly rabbi was standing rigid, holding on to the barbed wire fence with both hands.

  Hanan tried to remove his rabbi’s hands from the barbed wire. “It must be painful,” he said.

  “No, no,” Rabbi Zvi Yehudah replied, seeming distracted, “leave it.”

  Hanan told him that the group was prepared to accept the government’s offer and relocate. He was sure the rabbi would agree. Rabbi Zvi Yehudah, after all, had worried about a confrontation between settlers and soldiers, had even met two days earlier with the new defense minister, Shimon Peres, to try to convince him to approve the settlement.

  But now the rabbi suddenly turned implacable.

  “What is wrong with this place?” he asked. “Isn’t this Samaria?”

  Yoel was horrified. Blood could be spilled here. And we have an alternative! But who was he to contradict Rabbi Zvi Yehudah?

  General Yona Efrat, gray-haired and mustached, approached Rabbi Zvi Yehudah. The rabbi released the barbed wire he was still holding. He opened wide his long black coat and said, “If you want, take a machine gun and shoot me.”

  “Honored rabbi,” replied Efrat, “we don’t shoot Jews.”

  Hanan gazed with wonder at his teacher. Could there be a more exalted example of love of the land of Israel?

  Yoel wept.

  ONE BY ONE the squatters were lifted by their hands and feet to waiting buses. Some held tight to tent stakes, to the flagpole, to the land itself. Some men kicked soldiers; some women beat them with their fists. Yehudah Etzion, Yoel’s student, threw himself onto the earth, and was dragged away by a dozen soldiers.

  Hanan lay on the ground. Sharon rushed over, pushing aside soldiers, and shouted, “He was wounded in the war!”

  Yoel was revolted by Sharon’s behavior. An Israeli general attacking Israeli soldiers: Was there no shame?

  Yoel was carried away without resistance.

  THE HEAVENS ARE HIS KIPPAH

  AVITAL GEVA RETURNED to the orchards. Weekends, his circle of conceptual artists resumed meeting in Ein Shemer, planning new provocations. Everything was the same, but nothing felt right. “There’s no challenge left for me in the orchards,” he told his wife, Ada. But in his forays into the art world, he longed for the purity of the fields.

  “Hevreh? Everything is stuck,” he said to friends around the breakfast table in the orchards. “And this is our failure. Our camp, the enlightened left—we’re the corrupt establishment. So we brought down Golda and Dayan, so what?”

  The only new ideas seemed to be coming from Yoel Bin-Nun and his friends. But how could Yoel, of all people, not realize that Gush Emunim, with its vision of unrestrained power and occupation, was repeating the very sin of arrogance that had led to Yom Kippur? “But really, hevreh, at least Gush Emunim is doing. All we do anymore is talk.”

  Avital bought a cow’s tongue from a slaughterhouse, preserved it in formaldehyde, and installed the work in the Artists’ House in Jerusalem.

  FRIDAY EVENING, in the dining room of Ma’agan Michael, a kibbutz not far from Ein Shemer. Avital, surrounded by bales of hay, stood before the skeptical members. He had intended to bring piles of earth into the dining room, remind the kibbutzniks of their attachment to the land, but the culture committee said no and so he’d compromised on hay. What did they expect, a slide show?

  Avital spoke about his art projects, the tongue in formaldehyde, the books he’d left to rot in his front yard, a piano he’d filled with sugar. He wasn’t getting through.

  “What’s with the hay?” someone called out.

  Avital looked down, laughed, started to explain, laughed again, and finally said, “Some artists work with wood, some with stone, so why not hay? For me, art is giving meanin
g to material. A farmer plowing his piece of land—he’s also creating art.”

  Avital turned to the state of the country. “Yom Kippur was a big blow to the Israeli ego. But even after that blow it’s still business as usual. Who is dealing with our real problems? Look, hevreh, just consider that in fifteen years there may not be water in Israel. But who is even talking about it? Look at the kibbutz. All the kibbutzim resemble English parks. One day we’ll be growing potatoes instead of lawns.”

  “Who are you to come here and insult us?” someone called out.

  Several members walked out.

  “If we build greenhouses,” Avital persisted, “we can reach harvests that are eight times as great as today.”

  “What is it you want?” a kibbutznik called out.

  “My dream is to build a greenhouse that will create new technologies for Israel,” he said.

  “What does that have to do with art?”

  “Everything is art. Also building a greenhouse.”

  It was an idea he’d long nurtured. But now, abruptly, he’d announced it and made a fool of himself.

  A few days later he received a letter from the culture committee of Ma’agan Michael. Inside was a check for 2,100 liras. A note explained that twenty-one kibbutzniks had each contributed 100 liras, “to help you fulfill your dream.”

  What do I do now?

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, a tent camp in the desert. The 28th Battalion had been called up for a training exercise, and Zviki, the battalion commander, was briefing his officers. Meanwhile, sundown was approaching.

  The religious officers asked to be excused to prepare for Shabbat. Zviki readily agreed.

  “What about the rest of us?” demanded Avital. “Shabbat isn’t only for the religious. Don’t I deserve a Shabbat?”

  “You’re right,” said Zviki, and ended the meeting.

  When Yoel heard about the incident, he laughed with joy. What a precious soul! Avital doesn’t wear a kippah? The heavens are his kippah.

  Photo Insert

  Yoel Bin-Nun (center, smiling) hiking with friends from Bnei Akiva, early 1960s. (Courtesy of Hannah Grajouer)

  Yisrael and Sarah Harel on their wedding day, August 15, 1962. (Courtesy of Ronny and Esti Columbus)

  Avital Geva, Kibbutz Ein Shemer, 1964. (Courtesy of Amir Tomer)

  Yisrael Harel (in kibbutz cap) with Sarah and two Israeli friends, Grand Canyon, 1965. (Courtesy of Vardit Zik)

  Ada and Avital Geva, Kibbutz Ein Shemer, 1965. (Courtesy of Amir Tomer)

  Arik Achmon on the eve of the Six-Day War. (Courtesy of Arik Achmon)

  Paratroopers pose with the Jordanian flag in the Rockefeller Museum, June 6, 1967; Meir Ariel is on the far right. (Eli Landau)

  Motta Gur (sitting in the center, turning left) on the Mount of Olives, about to enter the Old City, June 7, 1967; Arik Achmon is sitting in foreground, with his sleeve rolled up. Moisheleh Stempel-Peles is standing in the foreground. (Government Press Office)

  Hanan Porat (left) at Rachel’s Tomb, at the end of the Six-Day War. (Courtesy of Rachel Porat)

  Meir and Tirza Ariel, Kibbutz Mishmarot, shortly after the Six-Day War. (Courtesy of Tirza Ariel)

  Wedding of Yoel and Esther Bin-Nun, with Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook (right), March 17, 1968. (Courtesy of the Bin-Nun family)

  Wedding of Hanan and Rachel Porat, September 24, 1969. (Courtesy of Rachel Porat)

  Udi Adiv, before his arrest, early 1970s. (Courtesy of Udi Adiv)

  Arik Achmon poses for Yisrael Harel’s camera, just before the crossing of the Suez Canal, October 15, 1973. (Courtesy of Arik Achmon)

  Paratroopers in “Africa,” 1974: Arik Achmon (second from left) and Yisrael Harel (second from right). (Courtesy of Arik Achmon)

  Hanan Porat in Sebastia, December 8, 1975. (Moshe Milner, Government Press Office)

  Avital Geva, Kibbutz Ein Shemer, 1975. (Courtesy of Amir Tomer)

  Hanan Porat (left) with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the latter’s visit to Kfar Etzion, September 29, 1976. (Moshe Milner, Government Press Office)

  Ofra, 1979. (Moshe Milner, Government Press Office)

  Israeli soldier evacuates child from Yamit, April 22, 1982. (Miki Tzarfati, Government Press Office)

  Ofra, 1983. (Herard Reogorodetzki, Government Press Office)

  Meir Ariel on leave from Lebanon, 1983. (Courtesy of Tirza Ariel)

  Yisrael Harel, with megaphone, at a settlers’ demonstration at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, November 1983. (Shmuel Rahmani)

  Udi Adiv, released from prison, May 14, 1985; Udi’s mother, Tova, is on the left. (Reuven Castro, Ma’ariv)

  Meeting of Gush Emunim settlement leaders, July 1987: Hanan Porat is on the far left, with Yoel Bin-Nun beside him. (Shmuel Rahmani)

  Meir Ariel on accordion, with Shalom Hanoch on guitar. (Courtesy of Tirza Ariel)

  Arik and Yehudit Achmon on a visit to Nepal, 1998. (Courtesy of Arik and Yehudit Achmon)

  Avital Geva (left) and Yoel Bin-Nun at memorial for paratroopers who fell in the Six-Day War, May 2007. (Ricky Rosen)

  Udi Adiv, 2013. (Frédéric Brenner)

  Arik Achmon on the Mount of Olives, 2013. (Frédéric Brenner)

  Yoel Bin-Nun, 2013. (Frédéric Brenner)

  Chapter 18

  “END OF THE ORANGE SEASON”

  THE LONELIEST MAN IN ISRAEL

  FROM HIS CELL in Ramle’s maximum-security prison, Udi Adiv tried to follow the momentous changes occurring outside. The self-confident, seemingly invincible Israel he had known before entering prison had been shattered. But the new Israel, traumatized and divided, felt too elusive to grasp.

  The distancing was mutual. Udi Adiv had faded from public memory. The trial that had scandalized Israelis less than two years earlier seemed, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, like history. Still, in Israel, no trauma was ever really forgotten, only displaced by new trauma, so that the country’s emotional life resembled one of its archaeological sites, an accumulation of disrupted layers.

  Udi had been in prison for nearly a year when the war began. In a letter to a childhood friend from Gan Shmuel, he had called the war an inevitable outcome of Israel’s refusal to make peace—that is, dismantle itself as a Jewish state. But he confessed to feeling unease at being excluded from the Israeli collective at its most desperate time.

  Still, those moments of emotional solidarity with his fellow Israelis were fleeting. At his insistence, he’d been moved to a cell of Arab security prisoners. A Shin Bet agent who came to check up on him urged Udi to express regret for his actions. “You think your Palestinian friends see you as one of them?” he said. “For them you’re just another Jew.” Udi replied, “My people are the revolutionaries of all nations.”

  The prison authorities took their revenge by denying Udi his most basic requests, like allowing his parents to bring him extra underwear. He was sent, for no apparent reason, to the X’s, a punishment cell divided into three cages, each so small there was no room for a mattress. Sitting on the bare floor, he assessed his prospects for surviving prison as an intact person. You can do this, he told himself. Other revolutionaries came out of prison stronger.

  He set himself a list of rules. First, forget your previous existence. Hope for nothing and expect nothing. Don’t anticipate visits from relatives and friends, don’t mark the wall of your cell with a calendar counting down the time, don’t hang family photographs over your bunk. Approach prison with the same curiosity you would apply to any society; become a student of its ways. Accept the petty humiliations, like eating with a spoon. Be intellectually engaged and emotionally detached.

  He settled into a monastic discipline. Following 5:00 a.m. wakeup and body count, he jogged for an hour in the courtyard. After breakfast in the dining room, where he ignored the taunts of “traitor” from Jewish criminals, he did an hour of calisthenics. Then he worked on his Arabic, reading the bland Arabic edition of the Histadrut labor federation newspaper, the only paper allowed into the security cells.
He read—Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Sartre, Kant. Often, after the 11:00 p.m. curfew, he continued reading by the dim light of the corridor.

  The warden—“that racist Romanian,” Udi called him—ordered all Marxist books confiscated. From then on, he said, prisoners would read only what was available in the prison library. One of the prisoners appealed to the Supreme Court and won.

  Udi had rarely been without at least one girlfriend since his teen years. Yet he accepted the absence of women with an equanimity he once would have believed impossible. Shortly before his arrest, he met a Frenchman who had spent time in a monastery. Udi had asked him how he’d survived without sex. The Frenchman replied, “My pleasure came from wisdom.” If he could sacrifice for a religious delusion, Udi now reasoned, then I can do no less for the sake of truth.

  Udi wrote Leah, who had been with him the night of his arrest: it’s over between us. Leah had never been a real revolutionary. As a political prisoner, he explained to her, he needed a partner who was as committed as he was.