by Elie Wiesel
“And you were sure of victory?”
“I was.”
“From the beginning?”
“From the beginning.”
“You never doubted it?”
“Never.”
And he explains: he knew the respective strengths of his own men and the enemy’s. The Jewish soldiers were better trained and motivated; for them it was a matter of defending their children and their homes. They could be trusted never to give up without a fight, nor would they ever retreat, leaving behind functioning tanks and cannons.
“Would you say they’re fearless?”
“Everybody experiences fear sometime.”
“You too?”
“Yes. I too.”
“Fear of suffering? Of dying? Of dying one hour before victory?”
“Just fear.”
“Does it make you feel ashamed?”
“Not at all. Fear is human. Even if I could discard it, I don’t think I’d want to. It’s the price I want to and must pay. However, it is easier to overcome by putting yourself on the firing line rather than sending your men, your comrades. Many times I would have preferred to be with them or in their place. I would imagine them wounded, disfigured, and envy them their fear.”
Abruptly he falls silent, a vision of horror in his eyes. This hardened officer, who wishes he were made of steel, worries about the fate of his soldiers to the point of pain, of tenderness. In mid-battle he remembered a captain he knew to be profoundly religious. Imagining what his joy would be to see the Wall again, he dispatched him on the spot: the captain arrived there before his commanding officer.
“Strange,” says Motta Gur, wrinkling his forehead. “Though begun as a strictly military operation, the conquest of Jerusalem changed character. Suddenly, the way we fought was different: we were different. Overwhelmed by a feeling at once new and ancestral, we understood that our true objective was no longer the taking of this strategic position or that important network, it was the liberation of history itself. We were on our way to keep an appointment, and we went running, breathless, our hearts pounding …”
But above all, don’t tell him that he expresses himself more like a storyteller than a soldier. Tell him that his tale is inspired, and he’ll fly into a rage.
“You’re really mad! Inspired, me? I’m not even religious and certainly not observant! Haven’t I said it often enough? If from time to time I happen to go to the synagogue, what does that mean? That my children go and I accompany them. And what does that prove? Nothing, except that I fulfill my duty as a father …”
No, Motta Gur is not religious, at least not in the usual sense. If I detect ancient sounds of legend in his narrative, is that his fault? If I hear echoes of the Talmud in his tales, is that his fault?
“Listen,” he says, and now he is really upset, “don’t let your imagination run away with you. Understand? I have told you once and I’ll tell you again: I fought a battle, that’s true. But I only did my duty as a soldier and as a Jew. And now, here with you, I’ve done nothing but tell a story. Mine.”
Wrong! It is also the story of a dream. His, ours. And the dream transcends the story.
TO A CONCERNED FRIEND
You are concerned. That is what you told me when last we met. Concerned about the situation in the Middle East, naturally. So am I. Concerned and troubled. The future seems forbidding. Cease-fire violations, artillery duels, sabotage and reprisals, night raids, assaults and bombardments: violence negates inertia and fosters its own escalation. Too many mothers, on both sides, are in mourning. Too many young, on both sides, give their lives before having lived. Will, then, this curse never be revoked? I thought: We are friends, you and I, we share the same faith in friendship, surely we share the same fears. Except that you went on to say: I should not like Israel to become a power defined by its conquests, and yet that is bound to happen. You added: I would not like to see the young Jews over there developing a conqueror’s mentality and yet, barring a dramatic change, they may indeed be forced to acquire such a mentality.
And so, since we are friends, I write to reassure you. You are wrong to worry; you needn’t. The Jew in victory will not disappoint you: he remains unchanged, even under changing conditions. He may no longer be victim, yet he will never be tormentor. He will not try to break the will of enemies in his power by means of gallows and/or humiliation. Victory, in the Jewish tradition, does not depend on defeat inflicted on the adversary. Every victory is first a victory over oneself. For this reason too the Jew has never been an executioner; he is almost always the victim.
Walk about on the Western Bank and you will feel neither the horror nor the pity inevitably inspired by European ghettos. No degrading images of hunger and desolation. The sick are cared for, the children fed. Also, people here are free. Free to go wherever they wish, see whomever they wish. The local dignitaries will speak overtly of their opposition to Israel: they know they won’t be punished. Just as they may listen to broadcasts from Cairo or Damascus, which day after day incite them to terrorism and rebellion. Do you know many examples of occupation forces permitting such practices? Do you know of other cases where the occupier encourages the occupied to maintain family, commercial and other ties with the enemy while still in a state of war? Go and see what is happening on the Allenby Bridge—where hundreds of residents shuttle daily between Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and Amman—and you will no longer compare the situation in Israel today with conditions that prevailed in German-occupied Europe.
Of course, you will answer me that, by definition, every occupation regime is saddening and fundamentally unjust. That is my opinion too. Only I feel compelled to add this: since for the moment the occupation is necessary, the form it takes in Israel is, I believe, the most humane and least oppressive possible. It is an act of bad faith to compare Israeli soldiers to Germans; theirs is another concept of man and his triumphs.
Why should you expect Jewish fighters to reveal a sudden thirst for power, for violence, when in the heat of battle they remained calm and sober? Why should you expect them to develop, belatedly, sadistic inclinations?
Don’t forget: this Six-Day War, this victory, Israel did not want them. They were imposed on her. Nor should you forget that hostilities did not erupt overnight. It was neither chance nor whim. For three weeks—and this cannot be stressed enough—Israel faced psychological warfare on a terrifying scale. The departure of the United Nations Emergency Force, the blockade of the Tiran Straits, the troop movements into Sinai, the military alliances, the inflammatory slogans, the unleashed mobs prodded by destructive, vengeful madness. Take another look at Arab propaganda of those days, including Ahmed Shukeiry’s vociferations. And don’t tell me he behaved like an “irresponsible imbecile”: Nasser and Hussein considered him respectable enough to embrace before cameras and include him in their war councils. And all together proclaimed the hour of punishment to be near: the name and the people of Israel were to be destroyed by fire and brimstone.
With such shouts of hate in his ears, any other fighter would have sought revenge. But the Jewish soldier knew how to control himself. The prisoners-of-war, who expected the worst, namely, the fate they had reserved for the Jews, were as astounded by the moderation of the victor as by his victory. Same astonishment in the civilian Arab population. With few exceptions, the victims-to-be of yesterday did not allow their accumulated, repressed bitterness to turn into cruelty. There were no lootings, no rapes, no collective ransoms, no executions of hostages. Nor any of the scenes of savagery that ordinarily accompany territorial conquest.
Listen to a story heard from a friend. I vouch for its sincerity and authenticity.
This friend belonged to one of the battalions sent to liberate the Old City of Jerusalem. The battles were grim and bloody. Suddenly, under a rain of deadly shells, in a narrow little street just taken, an Arab called out to a patrol and asked to see an officer: it was urgent. Thinking the man might be a truce emissary or a double agent, my friend receive
d him.
“I need a doctor,” the Arab shouted. “Quick, my wife is about to give birth.”
The officer almost burst into laughter, so absurd were both the request and the situation. He hesitated—and I like him for that hesitation—weighing the facts. Who deserved priority? His men, wounded and in pain, or that unknown woman whose child—a son?—might one day grow up to stab his own son? He finally made a decision—and I like him even more for that: a Jewish doctor was sent to assist the woman in labor.
Why would you expect this officer, returned to civilian life, to discover in himself, now, an inclination toward brutality, an instinct for torture?
Permit me, at the risk of shocking you, to go to the heart of the matter: if today so many genuine or pseudo pacifists, so many politicians speak out against Israel’s victory, it is precisely because the Israelis won without sacrificing their honor. Had the victorious Jew behaved normally, that is, in the manner of other conquerors of recent times, had he too established a master-slave or man-object relationship with the vanquished, he would have been understood and forgiven. What the world cannot forgive Israel is her determination, both daring and irritating, to remain human in a situation which is not.
An example: the Old City of Jerusalem, yes, Jerusalem again. During the twenty years of its illegal occupation by Jordan—in defiance of United Nations resolutions—no one raised any objection. It was considered a fait accompli. No government deemed it opportune to protest against the profanation of Jewish holy places, the construction of luxury hotels on ancient Jewish cemeteries, the demolition of synagogues several centuries old. Members of the U.N. accepted with equanimity the fact that Jordan violated its own armistice agreements by forbidding Jews access to the Wailing Wall. But as soon as the Jews replaced the Jordanians as custodians of the sacred city, the reactionary and communist governments, left-wing editorial writers and right-wing propagandists voiced their indignation. The injustices suffered by Israel? Her inherited rights vested in a past three thousand years old? Arguments of no interest. The fact that no Arab was chased out of the Old City in 1967, while all Jews were expelled from it in 1948, does not count. Neither does the fact that Israelis respect, and guarantee respect for, the holy places of all three religions for the first time since the destruction of the Temple. On the contrary, I tell you it works against them: it is because Israelis commit no sacrilege and profane no mosques, that they are resented.
Would you like another example? The raid on the Beirut airport. Remember? A dozen planes destroyed on the ground: a brilliant operation against Lebanon, whose authorities had been closing their eyes to the activities of Palestinian terrorists. Remember the international outcry? Never was the Security Council convened so hurriedly to vote so quickly, so unanimously so severe a condemnation. The Arabs’ friends were enraged; Israel’s, confused and embarrassed. Even pro-Israeli circles rejected our thesis that twelve planes were not as valuable as the life of the one man assassinated by Arab terrorists, one week earlier in Athens.
At the time I couldn’t help but wonder: Why was everyone up in arms? Why more than usual? In what way was this relatively innocuous and bloodless reprisal different from the others? Why did it encounter such lack of understanding, since it involved no loss of human life? And, as usual, the answer was inherent in the question: the Beirut raid was condemned because it had caused no bloodshed. Had there been human casualties, the reaction would have been less violent. By affirming that man—any man—is more important than objects—any objects—Israel alienated public opinion. Please, do not protest: that’s how it is, that’s how it has always been. People used to hate the Jew because he refused to fit their concept of a victim. Today they are disturbed because he refuses to fit their concept of a victor. He has dared to undertake, and successfully, a perilous operation—the temporary seizure of an enemy airport—without causing a single injury. Admit that there is something in that to offend his judges.
Actually, we ought not to be surprised. For as long as the Jew has existed, he has been judged. At first, by God. Then, by men who, one after the other, using different titles and pretexts, insisted on substituting themselves for God. Finally, each Jew had to justify himself in the eyes of the entire world for each day, each hour that he was still alive. And the game goes on. He is rebuked for his nationalism and his universalism, his wealth and his poverty, his submissiveness and his revolt. We have not yet finished pleading on behalf of the Jews who during the holocaust accepted death without a fight, and already we are forced to defend other Jews who, one generation later, do fight—and fight well—because they refuse to die.
But then, who are our judges? Moscow, whose armies invaded Prague? Washington, whose troops razed Vietnamese villages “in order to save them,” as one officer put it? The saints with clean hands in Paris and London? Formosa? It would be a farce, were it not for its tragic aspects. Read the papers, my friend. Thousands of human beings are dying in the jungles of Asia. And the United Nations keeps silent. Entire tribes are being wiped out in Sudan, Yemen and Indonesia. And the United Nations keeps silent. Political analysts speak of nuclear wars as possibilities—who will be the first to pull the trigger? against whom?—nobody cares. U Thant has indicated he does not wish to be disturbed at home except in case of war. And nobody is even perturbed. In Biafra—remember?—children ravaged by hunger and disease looked at press photographers one day, one minute before dying. And the United Nations kept silent. Wait, my friend. May I add to that last sentence. I recently heard over the radio that the number of Biafrans dead of hunger—yes, of hunger—has reached, and probably exceeded, two million. And the United Nations kept silent. The item was not even placed on the agenda.
When do the distinguished delegates wake up? When they are instructed to indict Israel. When Israel is on trial, everybody stands up to be counted. Then all have something to say. Why are they so eager? Because, to them too, Israel remains a people apart, a people whose very existence constitutes a challenge to richer and mightier nations. Whose way of conducting wars and winning them is a reproof to those whose own battles brought no glory to the human spirit.
To me, Israel’s victory is above all a moral one. A state without a one-party system, without summary executions—do you know of many in that part of the world? In Baghdad, festive crowds dance from night to dawn beneath the gallows. In Egypt, concentration camps are still realities. And do you know how the Syrians treat their Jewish prisoners? They drive them mad—literally mad—with torture.
In Israel, the arbitrary does not rule; the judiciary is free from pressure. Dissent is every citizen’s right. As yet, no one has been condemned for speaking his mind in public. The opposition sits in Parliament and not in jail. Palestinian terrorists in Nablus and Gaza enjoy more rights than do Houari Boumedienne’s adversaries in Algiers. In Israel, revolution has not eliminated democracy, national independence has not been achieved at the price of human dignity. That is her true victory.
Of course, like you, I hope with all my heart that one day, Jew and Arab, reconciled for the sake of their children, will live in peace, without the aspirations of the one limiting the other’s. That this reflects the deepest vision of the Israelis, I firmly believe. Threatened by their own extremists, Arab leaders unfortunately do not dare take the hand extended them, and therein lies the tragedy. Were they to accept one first contact, the rest would become possible. Instead, they insist on denying Israel’s very existence: peace cannot be made with what does not exist. A blindness as childish as that is inadmissible. Granted that a nation, like a man, may, in a surge of madness, hate and fight another nation. But to deny the existence of the other or regard it as a non-nation peopled with non-persons is unacceptable. Even God does not permit Himself to reduce man to object. Israel therefore has no choice: she will wait until she is recognized. Remember: twenty centuries of solitude have taught her the secret of waiting.
Frankly, I know what really worries you. You are afraid that what you call “the Jewis
h soul,” forged in suffering and accustomed to persecution, will stop being Jewish. You fear that without its wounds, it may change and become cruel, inhuman: like the world it faces. Well, rest assured; the Jewish soul has withstood so many onslaughts of hate, an ancestral hate which has worn many faces, that it will find it easy to resist the fleeting thrill of military glory. Have faith, Israel deserves it: our history is the best proof. A soul does not change so radically and so quickly. The mentality, the instincts of a conqueror are not acquired in months, or even years; it takes generations, and implies a tradition the Jews do not claim. The Jew who has resisted change throughout his millennial history, do you really suppose he would repudiate his heritage because of a few victories on the battlefield?
You know and esteem the Jewish people enough to realize that the secret of its survival—and the antagonism this survival arouses—is linked to its unrelenting will not to assume a destiny other than its own. The setting and circumstances are immaterial. For the duration of its torment, the Jewish soul has remained Jewish—that is, vibrant to everything human—and Jewish it will remain now that we can see a glimmer of light.
TO A YOUNG GERMAN OF THE NEW LEFT
“… And this is why at the end of this battle, from within this town which has taken on the face of hell, above and beyond all the tortures inflicted on our people, in spite of our maimed dead and our villages of orphans, I can tell you that at the very moment we are about to destroy you without pity, we nevertheless feel no hate for you. And even if tomorrow we should have to die like so many others, we still would feel no hate.”
With these words, written in 1944, Albert Camus addressed himself to a German who might have been your father. I quote them to you today because they bear directly on what we face today. As in 1944, the issue is hate. Yours. Directed against me. Against us.
