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

by Yossi Klein Halevi

  Yisrael had read those writers since he was a boy, knew whole parts of their work from memory. And now the elite of the Hebrew renaissance was opening up to Yisrael Harel. It was his own Six Days miracle.

  Livneh spoke of settling the land in terms of history and security and pioneering, the secular Zionist language Yisrael understood. Mercaz’s messianism was alien to him; Yisrael’s survivor instincts mistrusted utopian dreams.

  Of course Yisrael would join. To go back to the old vulnerable borders was madness. And what nation would turn its back on its ancestral heartland, won in a defensive war against attempted genocide?

  AS FANS STRUGGLED against the Tel Aviv humidity, the greats of Hebrew letters took seats around tables joined together in the café of the Writers’ House. They were left-wing Zionists and right-wing Zionists, nurturing old grievances that bored a new generation of Israelis. Until the Six-Day War it would have been difficult to bring these writers and activists together in the same room. Yet as men of history, they understood the moment. Poet Uri Zvi Greenberg had even told a reporter who spotted him at the Western Wall that he had stopped writing: No poetry, he said, could be as compelling as the vision of Jewish paratroopers on the Temple Mount.

  Presiding over this luminous gathering was Natan Alterman, the nation’s most beloved poet. The great Israeli romantic, bard of the Jewish homecoming: “A man, a lover retrieved from the dust / Approaches a stall or two in the market / Buys amber earrings / For his wife retrieved from water.” Alterman wrote his weekly newspaper columns in rhyme, as if only poetry were adequate to the Israeli story. His love for the land of Israel was inseparable from his famous love for women: “There are those more beautiful than her / but none as beautiful in the way she is.”

  Alterman looked around the table at the men who had answered his call to action. The Movement for the Complete Land of Israel, they were calling it. Here were the spiritual custodians of the nation’s rebirth, carriers of the secular Hebrew ethos. And their voices needed urgently to be heard. A young novelist named Amos Oz had published an article in the Labor Party daily, Davar, warning against the corrupting consequences of occupation. As if the Jewish people could be an occupier in its own land! The debate among Israel’s writers was linguistic: occupied territories versus liberated territories.

  Yisrael sat silently, intimidated by reverence. Not only was he the youngest person around the table, and one of the very few with a kippah; he was the only unknown figure.

  The movement, said Alterman, would be launched with a manifesto, proclaiming the irreversible return of the nation to Judea and Samaria. He urged those present to solicit signatures from their friends, fellow writers and intellectuals.

  Hesitantly, Yisrael offered a suggestion. Why not expand the range of signatories to include other parts of the Israeli public—religious Zionists, for example? “There are many young people within my community who have been waiting for this moment,” he said. “I’m sure we can find support among them.”

  Aside from the Mercaz yeshiva, brought to national attention by the Six-Day War, the religious Zionist community was hardly known for political daring. Its aging leaders preferred pragmatic politics to grand visions. In the “waiting period” before the war, they had been among the most dovish members of the cabinet, skeptical of a preemptive strike against Egypt and even initially hesitating over the conquest of the Old City.

  Yet here was a young man suggesting a shift within one of Zionism’s most moderate communities. Religious Zionists and West Bank settlement? Perhaps it was worth a try.

  Yisrael, emboldened, offered one more suggestion: Why not reach out to younger writers? The only names Alterman and his friends were suggesting for their manifesto were authors of their generation. What about Amos Oz? “I’ll be happy to contact him,” Yisrael offered.

  At the mention of Oz, there was silence around the table. For Alterman, Oz’s offense was not only political but literary: he was part of a generational revolt against the writers of 1948, against the mythic Zionist themes of destruction and rebirth. Oz and his fellow young novelists wrote in a spare Hebrew about the Palestinian tragedy and the decline of kibbutz idealism. For Alterman it was no surprise that they opposed annexing Judea and Samaria: their Zionism, like their prose, was anemic.

  Alterman, red-faced, pounded the table: a wordless veto.

  Afterward novelist Moshe Shamir approached Yisrael and slapped both his cheeks, at once playful and rebuking. “What did you do?” he said. No one was allowed to upset Alterman.

  “I think we can win over Amos Oz,” Yisrael persisted. “If he were to get an invitation to join Alterman, he would be so flattered he wouldn’t be able to resist. That’s human nature.”

  CAFÉ CASIT

  THE BLESSINGS OF the Six-Day War didn’t cease for Yisrael Harel. Not only had he been courted by the elite, but now an old dream of becoming a journalist—nurtured as a child when he would stand at his neighborhood kiosk and read competing party newspapers—had become fulfilled.

  The Movement for the Complete Land of Israel needed an editor for its newspaper, This Is the Land, and Yisrael was given the job. “But I’ve never been an editor,” he protested. Don’t worry, the movement’s elders assured him, you’ll learn.

  The premier issue appeared in April 1968. The newspaper argued the need to annex the new territories on security and economic and, most of all, historical grounds. Yisrael wrote about Hebron’s just-reborn Jewish community. He described men in prayer shawls walking through the market past sullen Arab merchants and half-ruined stone buildings, some with indentations marking where mezuzahs had been ripped out. After a long day of domestic chores, exhausted young women sat together and studied Torah. One of the founders of the kibbutz movement, Yisrael noted, once said that a sign of authentic settlement was the presence of children. And among the Jews of Hebron, there were many children.

  According to Yisrael, even the Arab owner of the Park Hotel, where the settlers had held the seder, was happy that the Jews were returning: “‘Building is cheap,’ he said, smiling.”

  YISRAEL TURNED OUT to be a talented journalist. Working without an assistant, he published the twelve-page biweekly alone. The pay was symbolic, the hours open-ended, the pressure of editing the greats of Hebrew literature immense. But Yisrael had never been happier. He would have gladly served this cause and these men for no pay. There, on the masthead, was his name beside Alterman’s.

  Along with editing the paper, he helped coordinate movement events. When a decision needed to be made about the next conference or newspaper ad, Yisrael would go to Alterman’s table in Café Casit on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.

  In Café Casit writers celebrated their book launchings and theater directors their opening night. The owner, Hatzkel Ish-Casit (“man of Casit”), a former pioneer who’d come to Tel Aviv to recuperate from malaria and was now a chain-smoking fat man, routinely extended credit he knew wouldn’t be repaid to artists and renowned wild men cherished for their indulgences by an austere society longing for normalcy. The food was Eastern European, cholent and kishke and gefilte fish, which Hatzkel would distribute gratis when the mood struck him. He adopted struggling artists who received their mail at the café, sometimes addressed only “c/o Casit, Tel Aviv.” Even as the city closed down well before midnight, Casit continued, smoky and boisterous. Sometimes a group would begin a Hebrew song and everyone would join in; on Independence Day people danced on the tables.

  Alterman’s table was a place of national pilgrimage. Politicians came to consult him about how to deal with rivals, generals confided military strategy, kibbutzniks shared their commune’s dilemmas, young poets their work. After a few drinks he became expansive; after a few more, occasionally abusive. He once ended a friend’s book-launching at Casit by pulling off a tablecloth, crashing dishes to the floor.

  Yisrael sat in awed silence at Alterman’s table, observing the writers as they drank shot glasses of brandy and argued about politics and gossipe
d about each other’s infidelities. Yisrael was the lone man in Casit with a kippah, but he’d gotten used to being the exception.

  Alterman and his friends in the movement appreciated Yisrael. Here was a young man who, in his total devotion to Zionism, seemed to belong more to their generation than to his own. Perhaps too, they sensed that, aside from his kippah, there was nothing particularly religious about Yisrael. Or rather, that what was religious about Yisrael was what was religious about them: awe at the nation’s improbable survival and even more improbable return home, and a commitment to protect it at any cost.

  YISRAEL WAS OFFERED a job as an editor at the Friday magazine supplement of Ma’ariv, one of the country’s major newspapers. Ma’ariv allowed Yisrael to write as well as edit, and he turned out to be a talented investigative reporter. A series he wrote on corruption in local rabbinical councils drew national attention. Clearly Yisrael didn’t fit the stereotype of the nice religious Jew.

  motta gur heard about the rising young journalist in the brigade and offered Yisrael the position of chief education officer. The position included coordinating efforts to record the battle of Jerusalem for posterity—or what the brigade’s cynics called Motta’s PR campaign to become the IDF’s chief of staff.

  The Movement for the Complete Land of Israel had connected Yisrael to the literary and political elite; Ma’ariv had connected him to the media elite. And now this: a role that could gain him entry into the paratrooper elite. What more could Yisrael Harel have hoped for?

  A PARTNERSHIP OF SERVICE

  THE FOUNDATION FOR the Families of the Fallen of the 55th Brigade held its first meeting in the apartment of Moisheleh’s widow, Daliah. On Arik’s suggestion, Yisrael was elected chairman. Arik sensed that the position was important to Yisrael. We can put his ambition to good use, thought Arik.

  The foundation’s first decision was to assign friends of the fallen soldiers to their families. The volunteers—“Friends of Dad”—were instructed to visit the families at least once a month, assist the widows with practical problems, and attend family events like children’s birthday parties. Arik and Yisrael each took responsibility for four families.

  Meanwhile Yisrael was editing a narrative history of the battle for Jerusalem. A team of volunteers had assembled hundreds of interviews, diary entries, and letters to wives and girlfriends from among the fighters. When Yisrael had a question about the accuracy of a detail, he consulted with Arik. Also on ethical questions, like whether to write that one of the officers had been killed by friendly fire. “We can’t write lies,” Arik said, “but we don’t have to reveal the whole truth.”

  Arik liked the diligent culture officer. He appreciated professionalism, and Yisrael was a fine editor. As for Yisrael’s right-wing politics, Arik dismissed that as harmless delusion. Let him and his friends imagine they can determine the future borders of the state; meanwhile, the Labor Party will continue to rein in the utopian fantasies of the Jews.

  “Srulik,” Arik called him, a Yiddish endearment for Yisrael. The nickname seemed to Yisrael a subtle put-down, reminder of his outsider status as a religious Jew. But he kept his resentment to himself.

  NATAN ALTERMAN DIED in 1970 at age fifty-nine. Some said the poet died of heartbreak. Only a mass immigration of Western Jews, he had argued, would allow Israel to absorb the West Bank without risking a Palestinian majority, but the Jews weren’t coming.

  Café Casit closed for the funeral. Yisrael Harel was assigned the role of escorting the poet’s mistress behind the casket.

  Chapter 13

  UTOPIAS LOST AND FOUND

  AVITAL GEVA, PROVOCATEUR

  THE FARMERS HEADING toward the fields of Ein Shemer weren’t sure they were seeing right. The trunks of the cypress trees had been painted purple and gold, gleaming in the first light of the day.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Haggai, Avital’s neighbor and his commander in the reserves.

  “Life has to flow,” Avital said enigmatically. “It can’t be confined into neat little categories.”

  Perhaps he wanted to remind his friends of the beauty of trees, not to take nature for granted. Perhaps he was trying to shock them out of their routine. Order was smothering the kibbutz, he said. At the weekly meeting, Avital suggested growing potatoes on the lawn.

  Economically at least, Ein Shemer was thriving. The kibbutz inaugurated its first factory, a rubber-producing plant. At the weekly meetings the comrades debated the need to hire outside labor, a violation of their socialist ethos. But there was really no choice: Ein Shemer’s several hundred members couldn’t manage its expanding economy alone.

  Every night after dinner the kibbutzniks gathered in the social room to watch television. The country finally had its first TV station—government-run, in black and white, with mostly news programs and sports. The Labor government insisted that programming end before midnight, to ensure a good night’s sleep for the workers of Israel.

  Ein Shemer’s debate over May Day continued, more wistful than strident. On the first May Day after the Six-Day War, comrades were so disoriented that the kibbutz forgot to hoist a red flag, until someone climbed up the water tower and hung it himself. A year later, May Day was declared a half work day, compromise between those who still cherished the holiday and those who wanted to abolish it altogether. They still served borscht in the dining room in honor of May Day and held the military-style lineup, though attendance was sparse. Finally, the following year, the weekly kibbutz assembly voted to cancel May Day as a day of rest—though comrades who opposed the decision would be allowed to take the day off and work as compensation on Shabbat.

  Who cares one way or another about the damned red flag? demanded Avital. Why are we wasting our time arguing about nonsense when our passion for the kibbutz is slipping away?

  Part educator, part prankster, Avital proceeded to turn Ein Shemer into an art project. He connected the kibbutz houses with pink cloth, a reminder of interconnectedness. (And pink as faded red?) On Passover, for the communal seder, he turned the dining room into the Yellow Submarine, with psychedelic Beatles and Blue Meanies. Why? Perhaps because a kibbutz was evocative of the intimacy and claustrophobia of a submarine. Or perhaps just because.

  Despite themselves, the kibbutzniks were intrigued. What was he going to do next?

  He invited Ein Shemer’s members to donate books they no longer needed. The growing pile on his lawn included works by Lenin and Stalin, agriculture manuals in German, a book by an early Zionist theoretician about the dignity of labor. Here was the collection of Ein Shemer’s dreams, the once-holy books that had inspired Avital’s parents and their friends to plant their garden in the wilderness. What would guide them now, when their dreams had been fulfilled?

  Avital laid the books in rows, as if on shelves, and left them out in the sun and the wind to wither into the land.

  He expanded the happenings to his Arab neighbors. He collected hundreds of books in Hebrew and Arabic, piled them on a hilltop, and distributed leaflets inviting people to help themselves, a coexistence of words. He helped a friend from art school fill a truck with dirt from the Israeli Arab village of Meiser and dump it into the neighboring kibbutz of Meitzar, then did the reverse. Literally sharing the land.

  Just before the fall holiday of Sukkoth, when Jews build huts covered with palm fronds to recall their desert wanderings, Avital announced a competition for the most beautiful sukkah in Ein Shemer. The kibbutz had a communal sukkah, but the holiday celebration had become routinized. And so he was calling for “privatizing” the holiday, each family taking responsibility for its own sukkah.

  Avital cut palm branches, piled them on the road, and invited families to take what they needed to cover their huts. At the entrance to the kibbutz, beneath the canopy of ficus trees, families built shacks made of board and cloth and decorated them with paintings and rugs. Avital and Ada brought cots into their sukkah and slept there through the week-long holiday.

  TOGET
HER WITH TWO FRIENDS from art school, Moshe Gershuni and Micha Ullman, Avital was exhibiting at Israel’s leading galleries and museums. He assembled two kilometers of irrigation pipes that wound through the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; through the pipes played classical music. He rode a tractor over eighteen meters of rubber from Ein Shemer’s factory and exhibited the tire imprints. The Israeli art world was charmed by his use of kibbutz motifs to mock and affirm.

  But Avital’s greatest satisfaction was in working with teenagers. He volunteered as a counselor at the Hashomer Hatzair seminar center, Givat Haviva, named for one of the young women who had parachuted to her death with Enzo Sereni. Young people responded to Avital because he was that rare adult who kept the exuberance of youth. Avital’s goal was to convey the joy of communal life, not through lectures and seminars but through experience.

  “Okay, hevreh, listen up,” Avital called to the dozen teenagers standing in a clearing in the orchard. It was a summer morning, and the earth, deprived of rain since late spring, smelled of dry heat and pine needles.

  “Every morning for the next week, you are going to plow this field,” he explained. “Your mission will be to pull together while hitched to this plow.” He pointed to a long block of wood, affixed with metal wheels. “This is soft earth, like butter,” he continued. “Without rocks. But pulling the plow is still hard work. Before tractors, horses used to do it. You’re going to test the strength of humans.”

  The young people stood with folded arms. The girls among them wore tight shorts, like city girls. Despite themselves, they were curious. They were from Mishmar Ha’Emek, Yehudit Achmon’s kibbutz. Among them was Arik’s daughter, Tsafra, from his first marriage. “I think you know my father,” she said to Avital.

  “Arik Achmon’s daughter! Ya Allah!”

  They brought poles and connected those with steel wire, forming four rows, like galleys. Five to a row, they began pulling the plow. “Together!” called Avital. They inched forward.