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

by Yossi Klein Halevi

  THE ABYSS DEEPENS

  SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 22, 1995. The IDF soldiers, many of them paratroopers with red berets in their epaulets, gathered, as they did every week after their Shabbat furlough, at the intersection of Beit Lid near the coastal town of Netanya. There they waited for buses that would take them back to their bases. Many were recent recruits; some had been dropped off by their parents.

  A young man dressed in an IDF uniform and carrying a briefcase approached a group of soldiers gathered at a kiosk. He moved into the crowd. The suitcase exploded.

  Soldiers and passersby rushed to help the wounded. Three minutes later, another suicide bomber exploded.

  Twenty-two dead, sixty-six wounded, almost all of them soldiers.

  Israelis don’t regard fallen soldiers as martyrs but as children. And so Israelis went into deep mourning for the children of Beit Lid. Prime Minister Rabin addressed the nation, promising to pursue terrorists despite the peace process—“no border will deter us”—and to pursue peace despite the terrorists. Israel, he declared, would not withdraw to the 1967 borders, would preserve a united Jerusalem “forever” and maintain its security border on the Jordan River. “In this bitter hour there is not right or left, no religious or secular,” he said. “We are all the people of Israel.”

  And then he slipped. Explaining why peace was the best guarantee to prevent terrorism, he said, “We don’t want the majority of the Jewish population . . . of whom 98 percent live within sovereign Israel [outside the territories], including united Jerusalem, to be vulnerable to terrorism.”

  Was Rabin really making a distinction between a terrorist attack in Beit Lid and a terrorist attack in Ofra? Was the prime minister of Israel telling the settlers that their lives, the lives of their children, mattered less to him than the lives of the “98 percent” who lived in sovereign Israel?

  That is certainly how the settlers and their supporters heard those words. Rabin, they accused, was signaling to the terrorists that killing settlers was a lesser offense.

  Yoel faxed Rabin: “Is your intention to break our spirit? It won’t succeed!” Then, softening, he added, “There is a deep crisis of faith between a majority of settlers and the government, much more than is warranted, not so much because of your deeds but primarily because of the style of your pronouncements.”

  They met soon afterward. Yoel said, “When you speak about 98 percent, how can one expect reactions other than rage and despair?”

  “Do you expect me to be attacked and not respond?” demanded Rabin.

  “The settlers hear this as abandoning them in the field of battle.” Yoel chose that last phrase carefully: abandoning a wounded soldier was a violation of the IDF’s deepest ethos, which Rabin himself had nurtured.

  “I didn’t mean it to be understood that way,” Rabin said.

  “I know you, and I know you didn’t mean it. But that is how it is being understood.”

  “I won’t apologize,” Rabin said. “But I won’t repeat it.”

  RABIN’S OFFICE INVITED Yoel to an Independence Day reception, in the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

  Yoel approached Rabin to wish him a happy holiday. Standing beside the prime minister was Israel’s chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, in gray beard and black fedora.

  “If Yoel were the leader of the settlers,” said Lau to Rabin, “it would be possible to reach an agreement with them.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Rabin said dryly. “I’m the recipient of some of his love letters.”

  Yoel took it as a compliment.

  A FRAGILE EMPATHY

  IN AN OLD COUNTRY HOUSE in a village near Oxford, three prominent Palestinians and three prominent settlers sat facing each other beside a fireplace. The Palestinians and the Israelis were a long way from home.

  Yossi Alpher asked Yisrael Harel to open.

  Yisrael spoke with a frankness that impressed the Palestinians. “How do I listen to the other side without weakening my cause?” he asked. “It’s easier to know your neighbor as a stone thrower.”

  It was June 1995. The dialogue was still a secret. Yisrael was waiting for the right moment to tell his colleagues in the Yesha Council, but the right moment never seemed to come. And so Alpher had organized a two-day meeting far from the conflict and the danger of exposure.

  Yisrael brought with him two partners, both secular academics who lived in settlements and whose Zionism was tough but pragmatic, without messianism. There was Yosef Ben-Shlomo, professor of Jewish philosophy, and Ozer Schild, former president of the University of Haifa.

  On the Palestinian side there were also two academics—Yezid Sayigh was joined by his friend Walid Khalidi, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. And there was a Fatah activist named Sufian Abu Zaida, popular with the Israeli media because he spoke a fluent Hebrew learned in Israeli prison.

  Yezid Sayigh spoke next. “Like Yisrael Harel I have learned that an examination of other people’s views must lead me to look at my own views too,” he said.

  Yosef Ben-Shlomo told of being brought as a child to the land of Israel from Poland just before the Holocaust. As a teenager he had been an admirer of Gandhi; after the Six-Day War he signed a petition against Jewish settlement in Hebron. But Arab rejection of Israel’s existence convinced him that Israel had to settle the territories. Though secular, he joined Gush Emunim’s squatting attempts and was evacuated seven times. “They needed eight soldiers to carry me.” But now, he added enigmatically, “I may be on the brink of a third change of heart.”

  Walid Khalidi spoke of his family, who had lived in Jerusalem’s Old City for six centuries and had produced judges, scholars, and the last Arab mayor of Jerusalem. “This has always been part of my daily consciousness. This may have in a sense stunted my own growth, since it allowed me little flexibility for alternative development.”

  One way or another, they were all admitting that the conflict had not only energized and defined them but also depleted them. They shared a kind of relief: they could see themselves in each other, men whose people’s historical claim totally claimed them, whose people’s suffering denied them peace. But could they really allow themselves empathy, or would the other side exploit that as weakness?

  Sufian Abu Zaida insisted on telling his story in Hebrew. He was born in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza and dreamed of taking vengeance on the Jews. In Beirut he joined Fatah, then returned to Gaza as an operative. Intending to “clean up” the camp, he shot a drug dealer, was caught, and spent twelve years in prison. There he studied Hebrew by reading the Israeli dailies. In getting to vicariously know Israeli society, he found he could no longer hate Israelis. “Yisrael Harel’s articles were the hardest to understand, due to the rich vocabulary he used.”

  Abu Zaida spoke about his experiences lecturing to Israeli high school students.

  “When will Israelis be invited to appear before Palestinian schoolchildren?” demanded Ben-Shlomo.

  “There is no chance today, but it will come,” Abu Zaida replied.

  AFTER LUNCH—there was a mix-up with Yisrael’s kosher meals, and he stoically ate salad—the conversation resumed in the salon. They argued, intensely but without rancor, about competing claims and colonialism and morality, even considered keeping settlements intact under Palestinian sovereignty.

  Turning to Abu Zaida, Ben-Shlomo asked, “When you say that Palestinians are willing to compromise, does this mean they will acknowledge the Jews’ moral right to a homeland in Palestine, just as the Israeli left recognizes the Palestinians’ moral right to a homeland in Palestine?”

  Abu Zaida: “Jews whose grandparents were born thousands of miles away while my brothers in exile have no right to return—we don’t recognize it.”

  Yisrael Harel, sarcastic: “When we recognize the Palestinian’s right of return, he will be able to recognize our moral right.” In other words: the right of return will mean the destruction of the Jewish state, and then its right to exist won’t matter.

  Th
ere was a third option: Palestinians would exercise their right of return in a Palestinian state, not in the state of Israel. That would mean the end of Israeli control over Judea and Samaria, and the end of Palestinian claims over lands that were now the state of Israel. Yet no one mentioned that option.

  THE NEXT MORNING at breakfast, Alpher was gratified to see settlers and Palestinians mingling. Yisrael invited Sufian Abu Zaida to address meetings at settlements, as a way of preparing his community for the new reality. Abu Zaida readily agreed.

  At the final session the Israelis continued to press for Palestinian recognition of their national legitimacy, and the Palestinians continued to resist.

  KHALIDI: We can coexist with a deep moral-ideological abyss. Let’s distinguish between daily life and the political superstructure. . . . This can at least end the bloodshed, and this is the most important moral imperative.

  YISRAEL: This isn’t enough. You can’t separate us from our history.

  The Jews wanted to talk principles, the Palestinians practical details.

  KHALIDI: For nineteen years, prior to ’67, you survived without Bet El [a settlement near Ofra].

  YISRAEL: To give up Bet El today is to declare that it was never important to us to return to the land of Israel. It was easier when we never had it. Our real message must be to find a new formula that doesn’t constitute a betrayal of either side.

  They were all keen on continuing.

  A JEW IN TEL AVIV

  YAIR LAPID, the young talk show host who was always ready with a clever rejoinder, seemed perplexed. Why, he asked his guest, Meir Ariel, haven’t you promoted your new album? No media appearances until now, no marketing. You’ve even confined sales to a single music store in Tel Aviv. “It’s as if you’ve said, ‘I’m releasing an album but I’m imposing a blackout.’”

  “You’re right,” said Meir, smiling nervously and clutching his guitar. “I tried very hard not to release [the album], but in the end it weighed so heavily on me that I put it out and that’s it. But that doesn’t mean that anyone has to hear it. In all seriousness I say that anyone who wants to do his soul any good shouldn’t listen to this album. It’s a hard album, with hard material.”

  The audience laughed.

  The album was called Rishumei Pecham (Charcoal Sketches), and Meir was right: these were not songs one listened to for pleasure. One was an apocalyptic vision based on the book of Daniel and sung partly in Aramaic; another was about an old kibbutznik so frustrated by economic failure that he beats his wife and children; another was based on the Talmud’s musings on the varied forms of divine justice inflicted on Titus, the Roman general who burned the Temple, and which Meir turned into an allergory for the fate of material-driven empires. Meir had sent the songs to his friend, Shalom Hanoch, hoping he would produce the album. But Shalom refused: even for Meir, this was pushing the limits of obscurity.

  Two years earlier Shalom had produced Meir’s fourth album, Zirei Kayitz (Seeds of Summer), which contained some of his most accessible love songs. Yet the album sold poorly. Meir had long since accepted his place on the respected periphery of Israeli music. But he was tormented by his inability to provide for his family. Defiantly anticommercial, Rishumei Pecham seemed a taunt against the music industry.

  Meir produced the album on his own new label, Ariel Productions. The minimalist songs, backed by a plaintive accordion that had lost its Zionist vigor, were all recorded in a single day. Meir’s son, Shachar, a musician in his mid-twenties, was producer, while Tirza ran what business there was. Initially Meir refused to promote the album. Only on Tirza’s insistence did he agree to appear on Yair Lapid’s show.

  Rishumei Pecham was Meir’s favorite among his own albums. His only concept album, it was at once a protest against a devouring modernity and a eulogy for the Israel of communal values. Like Avital Geva, he was raising a kibbutznik’s last cry against the new Israeli culture of McDonald’s and cable TV, against the banks to which the kibbutzim were mortgaged and the real estate developers uprooting orange groves for shopping centers.

  More than in any previous work, Meir was exposing something of his growing devotion to Judaism and the God of Israel. Much of the language and imagery of Rishumei Pecham was drawn not only from the Bible—a common source of inspiration for Israeli artists—but also from the Talmud and rabbinic commentaries and kabbalah, mostly absent from secular Israeli culture.

  Meir understood God’s existence partly through language. There are no words for things that don’t exist, he told a friend. And so if there is a name for God, He must exist. Meir found amusing the notion that the world evolved without a creator and that a human being was a material construct without a soul. “The human being is nothing more / than a piece of sophisticated mud,” he sang. “And he has a certain personality / and a perfect shape. And that’s / sophisticated—for mud.” He continued: “Mud that dries up—disintegrates . . . / And a human being who dries up—he too disintegrates / Except that / . . . He has a tombstone, and an address / and that’s—sophisticated.” The proof for Meir of the existence of a soul was its ability to give its incarnation a name.

  MEIR WAS INTERVIEWED on Army Radio by his old friend Yoav Kutner. What, wondered Kutner aloud, was Rishumei Pecham actually about?

  KUTNER: I’m thinking of your career. . . . You get wonderful reviews, you produce wonderful albums. . . . And yet you still haven’t made it. Not one of your albums has sold.

  MEIR: Of course I’d be happy if—

  KUTNER: You do everything backwards. Your previous album, Seeds of Summer . . . was, quote, “commercial.” Meaning that it was a less difficult album. . . . With Shalom Hanoch’s help it flowed and was pleasant to listen to. . . . And it didn’t succeed. . . . And instead of trying even harder to do something light, you go and do your least accessible album . . .

  MEIR (switching to English): Man, I’m telling you, I’m gonna make it. Not only nationwide, but also— That’s why I’m speaking English! International wild!

  Reverting to Hebrew, Meir explained that Israel was such a small market, why not sing in a foreign language?

  KUTNER: Chinese is big these days.

  MEIR: Chinese, exactly. . . . We need to create in every language. Folk songs in Romanian—in Israel!

  “SHALOM ALEICHEM”—PEACE BE WITH YOU—Meir said in archaic Hebrew, and bowed his head in chivalrous greeting. Covering his long graying curls was a beaten black fedora.

  “Aleichem shalom,” replied his friend Menachem Regev: And peace be with you.

  Every Wednesday evening Meir came to Menachem’s Tel Aviv apartment, where friends gathered to study the Torah reading of the week. Menachem, a graphic artist, had grown up secular, become ultra-Orthodox, left that community, and was now, like Meir, in transit between worlds. Menachem, whose hobby was inventing Hebrew fonts, shared with Meir a love of the resurrected language, a sense of awe simply to be speaking it. On Menachem’s walls were framed album covers he had designed, including some of Meir’s.

  The living room filled with a dozen men. There were musicians, former kibbutzniks, a psychiatrist. Someone rolled a joint. A newcomer appeared. “Baruch habah”—Blessed be the one who comes—people greeted him. No one asked how he knew to come; if you found your way here, you belonged.

  “Yallah, Meirkeh,” said Menachem, using the Yiddish endearment for Meir’s name, “let’s begin.” Meir read from the book of Numbers, the portion about Balaam the magician, who intended to curse Israel but instead blessed it. Meir read the text like poetry, cherishing every word. Several men put on kippot; others remained bareheaded.

  Then the discussion began.

  Did Balaam bless or curse Israel when he proclaimed it a nation that would dwell alone? What did it mean to be a chosen people?

  The Jews, said Meir, aren’t any better than anyone else; the heart isn’t more important than the brain. But every nation has a unique role. Our role, said Meir, is to remind the world of God’s oneness.

  H
ow do we know there is only one God? someone demanded.

  Because that’s what’s written, someone replied.

  Everyone laughed.

  The conversation turned, inevitably, to modern Israel. Could the Jewish state find its place in the Middle East, or was it destined to remain apart, as Balaam seemed to predict? Could Israel trust the Palestinians to make peace? Was Arafat partner or nemesis? Was the return of the Jews home fulfillment of ancient prophecy? And what about the rabbinic establishment and its monopolization of Judaism?

  More than the arguments, the gathering itself was the message: Judaism doesn’t only belong to the Orthodox, we too are custodians of the Torah, we too have the right to struggle with the tradition.

  Finally, around 3:00 a.m., Menachem turned to his friends and said, “You don’t have anywhere to sleep?”

  “Good night, hevreh,” said Meir. And though Friday evening was still two days away, he added, “Shabbat shalom”—Sabbath of peace.

  A SOLDIER’S DEATH

  SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN on July 17, 1995, Motta Gur, pistol in hand, entered the walled garden of his house in North Tel Aviv. The garden was the place he loved most. Standing near the loquat tree, he pointed the gun at his temple and fired. A preemptive strike: the rare cancer that had been spreading slowly and excruciatingly in his body for nearly ten years was about to reach the brain. In a note of farewell, he told his family that he hadn’t wanted to be a burden.

  Arik Achmon got the call shortly after Rita Gur found her husband in the garden. If I’m ever in a similar situation, thought Arik, I hope I’ll have the courage to do what Motta did.

  In the last years, as Motta became increasingly ill, Arik would meet him every few weeks in his office at the Defense Ministry, and Motta, one of the strongest men Arik knew, would confide how unbearable the pain was, how humiliating the loss of bodily control.

  At the house, Arik found Rita and their four children quietly grieving. Rita said she was at peace with Motta’s choice. “Motta restored his dignity in his own eyes,” she said.