January 25th, 2024 - 13th Report: Reservists

 

January 25^th, 2024

Dear family and friends,

Report number 13: reservists

It was my intention to write about Israel at the Hague this time, but as the International Court of Justice is about to publish its interim decision, I’ll wait. As the IDF is de-mobilizing large numbers of reservists, I’ll talk about them. But first, a digression about music.

Israel has a rich and interesting history of important popular songs. Arguably you could tell our story through our music. Our songs of wars and mourning are part of the story. Since the bloody riots of 1929, every war we’ve had has left us with one or more songs of enduring power.

Last September we went to a full concert of the songs of the Yom Kippur War. Three of them stand out.

Netane Tokef is the central section of the prayers of the High Holidays, probably written in the 11^th century in the face of Christian persecution of the Jews. In the Yom Kippur War, Kibbutz Beit Hashita lost 11 soldiers. The kibbutzniks commissioned Yair Rosenbaum to write an elegy about them, and he reached for words all the way back to the Middle Ages. The music he wrote was so moving, it’s used in many synagogues on Yom Kippur. An ancient prayer became the way to mourn in a secular Kibbutz grieving over a war with a religious name, and from there it migrated back into the synagogues. Here's the kibbutz version. And here’s Avraham Fried, the popstar of the Hassidic world (yes, there is such a thing).

We’re the Children of Winter 73 was written in 1994. Young soldiers sang to their parents’ generation: You conceived us in desperation in the dark days of Winter 73, but now we’re grown and can bear the burden. Their own children are the reservists of our current war – the grandchildren of winter 1973.

The anthem of that war, sung by all of us even as its battles were raging, was by the prophetic Naomi Shemer. Lu Yehi, If Only It Might be. Just let them come home, it pleaded. Many didn’t.

This current war is already our longest since 1948, with no end in sight. It should have its own song by now – but doesn’t. Every songwriter around has launched an attempt, and none are convincing. This probably says something about us. Still, the other day I found my choice. It’s called Elegy for Beeri, Kinat Beeri, and it’s even less likely than Netane Tokef. Because it’s not a song at all. It’s a piyyut.

The word piyyut is Greek, but it describes the Jewish liturgical poetry of the exile. At least 15 centuries when the Jews prayed and studied in Hebrew, but didn’t speak it. It’s usually written in complicated literary Hebrew; it takes effort to understand. A piyyutist might have hoped his words would still be recited in a thousand years, but he didn’t expect his neighbors to understand them.

Yagel Harush’s Kinat Beeri is a piyyut. Every line has multiple layers. The very word Beeri – is it the destroyed Kibbutz? Or a source of water? My flowing eyes: are they washing the ashes of Beeri, or filling the well? And what does it mean to fill a well with tears? A friend of mine who likes Piyyut suggested we study the text together. Watch and listen. Even if you don’t understand the words maybe you’ll appreciate the Western musical instruments (including an electric guitar) producing this non-Western music. The ancient format is well suited for this time of confusion.

*            *            *

So: the reservists.

The other day I stumbled on an archival file from 1948, in which men in their 30’s and 40’s requested to be demobilized. Family reasons, professional reasons, health reasons. Some petitions were granted, others not. 75 years ago. Just saying.

Previously I’ve described the heroism of Israelis who threw themselves into the fire on October 7^th; hundreds paid with their lives. The next day hundreds of thousands came. The altruism of the first wave was immediate, unmeditated and short. The altruism of the masses was also immediate, but protracted. They’ve had time to reflect, to malinger, to evade. They’re aware of the hardship their actions are causing their wives and the fear they’re causing their children. They’re watching an academic year lost, important projects declining, their businesses going bust. Their act of altruism is already in its fourth month, and some of them are dying almost daily. Most are men between 22-45. Some are women.

In mid-October a snippet from a Russian fellow was making the rounds: There are 143 million Russians, but the government can’t mobilize 250,000 reservists. Israel has 10 million, but mobilized 300,000 in two days.

No-one was coerced. In unit after unit more came than had been called, creating gaps of kit and equipment. The English term for their action was to report for duty. There are those who bemoan that modern society has replaced duty, with self-fulfillment. In Hebrew there isn’t even a precise word for duty. Yet these men and women simply performed it. On the morning of October 7^th they were organized in fiercely antagonistic camps, in the worst political strife in our history. They’ve been fighting side by side ever since. The army has already told them they’ll be called again later this year, supreme in its confidence that they’ll come.

There’s no similar phenomenon in any other country, anywhere. It cries out to be explained. I’ve heard experts talk individualism tempered by an ethos of family, community and nation. Of purpose which balances self-fulfillment. Of identity rooted in relationships and obligations. And of course there are the harsh emotions caused by the brutality of Hamas’s onslaught.

We’ve been watching funerals of young people on the evening news for almost four months. People stand above the open graves and talk. Many weep, some are devastated without tears. I’ve noticed common patterns.  The fallen young man was always eager to help, or was a wonderful friend. Sometimes it’s his humor or innate good cheer. They never talk about his commercial or financial exploits, and rarely dwell on professional successes. Not even when they’re burying a reservist in his 40s. We wouldn’t be the world-class technological hub of innovation and entrepreneurship that we are, if we didn’t have lots of determined individuals who move fast and break things, but that has all receded in the face of something larger, more important. Something worth dying for.

I’ve listened to numerous recordings of demobilized reservists, who’s stories often contain similar themes. Top of the list is the conviction they’re doing something really, really important. They’re preventing Hamas’ ability ever to repeat its attack. They’re defending their country, their communities, their family, wives and children. They’re hoping to free hostages. A journalist-turned-reservist shared a recording of a late-night phone call with his wife, in which he said he was homesick and wanted to come back to her and their infant child. She earnestly told him he was protecting them, and she’d be patient until he could come home after the mission had been accomplished.

There’s the universal soldiers’ motif of camaraderie. The banter and the simple fun of being together in otherwise unacceptable conditions. A tank crewman related how three of his four-man crew had been together for years, and had developed an internal language of banter based on the skits of a TV political satire series. On his first short vacation their 4^th crewman, who’s new to the unit, found the time to watch some of the chapters. He sacrificed a few hours of his precious time at home to fit in better.

There’s the cognitive and emotional chasm between civilians living a sort of normality and the intense but also detached existence in the war zone. A reservist in a medical unit told how they raced to the site of a bloody incident. They then raced back to meet an evacuation helicopter with the torn body of a soldier in his last moments of life, every second seeming an eternity, every movement dedicated to keeping him alive just a bit longer. Once the helicopter took him, the reservist said all he wanted to do was to sit in silence on some desolate beach for a month; instead, they went back to collect the bodies that were beyond medical care. (The soldier survived).

It's intense. It’s the opportunity to do something important beyond what normal life offers. It’s friendship. It overrides the pettiness or banality of everyday life. It’s the chance to destroy a brutal enemy, to defend one’s family and home. It’s a place to set aside the bitter arguments that have torn us. It’s moments of calm and comradeship while surrounded by hell.

And if you’ve been reading my previous reports, you know I don’t really buy all this. I mean, it’s all true, and I personally have experienced chunks of this when I was their age. None of it’s false, in terms of fiction or dishonesty. The pervading sentiments in civilian Israel these past months have been overwhelming. The anger, the humiliation, the sorrow, the fear, the mourning and the rage. As a society we haven’t been ourselves since October 7^th, and the suffocating Zeitgeist has called forth the best and the worst in us simultaneously, both. The reservists have been detached even from our semblance of normality. They don’t hold their wives, they don’t take showers, they don’t run their businesses, they don’t do chores with their children, and if they’re inside Gaza, they don’t follow the news. They don’t even have their smartphones, if you can imagine that. Weeks on end with no social media, no stream of news, no films of cats, sports, or charts of the markets. The reservists see the enemy from up close and kill him, knowing they could be next any minute. They’re cut off from normality and its considerations. (The condition of the 18-21-year-old conscripts is worse in this regard).

I’ve been texting with some reservists since the beginning. Some of them are normally intelligent and thoughtful people, even when their political views are different than mine. I’ve watched as Israeli society has slowly, fitfully and haltingly begun to revert to a complex view of reality; the reservists haven’t. This is clearest in the willingness to question the slogans we all agreed on once: the reservists are still convinced. Complete victory, we’re all in this together, we’ll bring the hostages home.

Then, last week, I had the opportunity to spend an evening with Yehuda and his wife Shlomit. Yehuda is 43; Shlomit is about the same. Their four children range from a son who was bar-mitzvahed last summer, to a 5-year-old daughter. We’ve been friends for more than 15 years. Yehuda and I generally share a cynical humor about the ridiculousness of much around us, but our friendship is richer than mere snide commentary. On October 7^th he was told not to join his unit until someone had a moment to prepare, but that night he was told to come next morning. He then spent three months in uniform. He’s an infantry major. His job is to call in artillery assistance, but of course he did all sorts of things, from being the point man on patrol to playing chess on the veranda of a commandeered Gaza beach hotel on an evening when his unit was resting.

We talked for an hour and a half or so. Shlomit joined us about half an hour in. Their elder sons wandered in and out, mostly disregarding their parents’ exhortations to go to bed already. I’m recording sections of our conversation.

Yehuda: I left home in uniform, and was offered my first ride before I’d even crossed the sidewalk in front of our building. From there to Zeelim in the western Negev I changed rides perhaps five times, but at no point did I wait more than five minutes for the next ride. I’ve never seen the parking lots of Zeelim so overflowing as that morning.

We were sent to one of the border kibbutzim to scour for hiding Hamas fighters and dead bodies. There was destruction everywhere, and the stench of death. A few days later we we’re sent back to Zeelim to train for fighting inside Gaza. Until then we’d have been convinced our rather elderly unit would be only in the third line of action, if at all. Just last summer they were talking about disbanding us entirely.

There were lots of rumors, but one afternoon it was clear that the next day we were going in. That was frightening. I set aside two teabags, and told my best friend in the unit that after the war we’d drink them together. (Jaroslav Hasek’s Svejk in a similar situation makes a date to drink beer in his favorite tavern. I forgot to ask Yehuda if he’d been thinking of that). Our fear peaked the next morning when, having handed in our smartphones, we boarded the bus from Zeelim. After that things got a bit better.

Sometime it was even a bit humorous. From Zeelim we drove to Netiv Haasara, just north of Gaza. We geared up in the lee of a hill. Then we marched up the hill, and there was Gaza in front of us. As we marched down we were ever more alert. Given the destruction of October 7^th we didn’t know if we’d even recognize the moment of crossing the border, and after about half an hour I was pretty sure we already had. Our rifles were loaded and we were on highest alert – but then we reached an opening in the border fence itself, and saw some IDF fellows who’d already been there a few days. They were sprawled around, helmets off and rifles nearby, sunbathing. (Though Yehuda didn’t say so, all my experience of soldiering tells me the veterans made fun of the worried newcomers with their fingers on their triggers. It can’t be otherwise).

Shlomit: from the moment Yehuda told me they were handing in their smartphones, I stopped breathing. Literally. And I didn’t breathe again until the next time he called. And yes, all of the children, even the five-year-old, were all afraid Abba would never come back.

Yehuda described being in action. I found it interesting that even when telling about being in potentially lethal situations, he talked about being tense and alert, but didn’t go back to the level of fear he’d described on leaving Zeelim. Many of the reservists concur in this: Of course they were frightened. Only an idiot wouldn’t be. But there’s apparently something calming in the numbers, and the self-assurance of everyone around them.

Shlomit didn’t have that luxury: The first time he came out, turned on his smartphone, and called, I couldn’t say a word. I gave my smartphone to the children. Only then did I realize that the entire time I’d been carrying a large tray laden with crystal. Everything I’d been doing had been with one hand. Children, home, work, it had all been one-handed. Now, suddenly, the tray and all the crystal came crashing down.

Did you think to demand he come back, or not return to his unit when he got a short leave?

Shlomit: No. It’s his duty. It has to be done. That’s the way it is.

And when he goes back next time, probably in a few months?

Shlomit: Yes.

Yehuda: Yes, of course I’ll go. But you know, not everyone will. A number of our men didn’t come back from their visits home. One called and said he’d contracted dysentery. Then another said the same. Another said he’d found his business in ruins and couldn’t return. There were all sorts of reasons. The CO accommodated them. At the beginning we were 29 in our sub-unit; we were fewer by the end. (I didn’t ask how many fewer).

I wanted to know how the existence of our hostages effected their behavior. A bit hesitantly Yehuda admitted it mostly hadn’t.

Yehuda: The basic operational assumption is that there are no civilians in the areas we were in. The civilians have all left, and if they haven’t, they must know why not. Whether they’re armed or not is immaterial. We know some Hamas operatives aren’t armed, because their task is to observe us and report our locations, not to shoot at us. If we saw a head poking up, we shot it. When you kill an observer he can’t tell his operator our location, and the operator can’t send someone through a tunnel to shoot us from behind.

Were there cases when you were told not to shoot in specific directions, I asked, referring to what Yizhar told me that day on the road to the Knesset.

Yehuda: Yes. Occasionally. And then a day or two later they’d rescind the order, and as you know no hostages were freed. So I can’t tell you more about that. (I don’t know if he was saying can’t, or won’t. Yehuda knew me when I had high security clearance, but that was then. Anyway, I’d told him I intended to write about our conversation. I wasn’t going to extract from him any more than he was comfortable in telling).

He continued: You know, we talked about the hostages sometimes. It was pretty clear that if any of them were somehow to free themselves, it would be almost impossible for them to reach us. Our system was not to let anyone near us, period. I suppose if someone came with his hands in the air and screamed that he was Israeli… (We already know that wouldn’t work, I said). Yes. You know, Yaacov, in the exact same situation one soldier will let off five rounds, while another will empty an entire magazine of 35 rounds. You have to hope the hostage will be seen by a five-round fellow.

I found this not comforting. And kept on prodding: what about the possibility that your actions are inadvertently killing hostages you don’t know are there? What about the possibility the commanders don’t care enough?

In the only tense moment in an otherwise friendly evening, Shlomit responded sharply to my question. What are you saying, Yaacov? The only ones responsible for their deaths are Hamas, who kidnapped them and are holding them!

I: I’m sorry, Shlomit. Of course Hamas bears the blame. They bear the blame for this entire war. I’m not saying otherwise. But you know, or perhaps you didn’t hear, that this very afternoon the IDF admitted to the families of three dead hostages that it can’t rule out the possibility that when we recently assassinated Ahmad Randour, their family members were also there though we didn’t know it. That’s the question I’m asking Yehuda.

He could only say the obvious: The IDF really wants to free the hostages, but doesn’t know everything, and the accidental deaths of hostages can’t be ruled out.

My final questions were about the goals of the war. Did any of the reservists have doubts about them. I got the impression Yehuda didn’t know what to make of my question. On the lines of: What do you mean, not achieve the goals?

I: That’s exactly what I mean. That the goals of destroying Hamas and also freeing the hostages can’t be attained. Not separately, and even less, together.

Yehuda seemed to be furrowing his forehead in puzzlement. We didn’t ask ourselves questions like that, Yaacov, because we were engaged in destroying Hamas. Each day we were killing some of them, or destroying their tunnels, or both. That’s what we were supposed to be doing, and that’s what we were doing. We’re doing the job, so why ask ourselves if it can be achieved?

It was late. I apologized for keeping them up, and we decided that we’d talk about the politics of it some other time. Or not. My positions on so many aspects of our current situation are so far from the surrounding consensus, that perhaps creating doubt in the minds of reservists and their wives is wrong.

 

Yaacov