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

by Yossi Klein Halevi

  The radio played a song that seemed to have been written for the men of the 55th: “We liberated the Wall for you and we drained swamps / We stood watch over you in difficult times / We gave you everything, we asked for nothing in return / . . . We knew that soon, soon, a day would come / But now there are those who are not so sure.”

  LATE AT NIGHT, on a hilltop overlooking the empty harbor, Meir Ariel sat on a chair stripped to its metal frame and strummed his guitar. He was supposed to be keeping watch for Egyptian commandos landing from the sea. But he’d sat here night after night, and no commandos appeared.

  Meir and three other men, now sleeping in the adjacent tent, took turns on guard duty. They tried to make life comfortable. They’d hooked up a small generator to a jeep and brought a hot plate into the tent. Though it was against regulations, they’d installed a lightbulb, which they covered with a blanket.

  Soon Meir’s watch would end and he would drink a cup of tea steeped with apple slices and read a bit of Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream and drift into World War II–era Cuba. He imagined a brightly lit casino boat from Havana appearing in the harbor and taking him far from here.

  Strumming, he half spoke, half sang the words of a new song: “Reading Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway / translated nicely by Aharon Amir / Soon he’s going to amuse her on his wide bed / And he’s one of the saddest men in the city.”

  He continued: “Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally go on leave / I’m bound to the binoculars, just not to think / Light and tea with sliced apple await me in the tent / and a cigarette and a story, good and strong / . . . And then another gaze at the moon, at the city and the sea / And then a friend comes and says, Your time has passed.”

  Meir wasn’t writing a protest song, just the forlorn cry of a soldier watching his life slip away. A lament for all the vitality consumed by the country’s security needs.

  Back in the tent, comfort eluded him. “Downed two sliced-apple teas, another four, five cigarettes / The song got stuck here / But now he’ll amuse her on his wide bed / . . . Our forces passed a quiet night in Suez.”

  “A GENERATION IS ABOUT TO BE REPLACED”

  HANAN PORAT LAY in a crowded ward for soldiers recovering from lung injuries. He thanked God that he wasn’t in the burn unit, where the wounds were so unspeakable they were referred to among the hospital staff with the euphemism Hashem yishmor—“God protect us.” He was healing, doctors said, remarkably well.

  And then he read an article in a kibbutz newspaper, and the next phase of his life’s mission was revealed. The article, written by a kibbutznik named Arnon Lapid, was called “An Invitation to Weeping.” “I want to send you all an invitation to weeping,” Lapid wrote. “We’ll weep for hours, together, because I can’t do it alone. . . . I will weep over my dead. . . . And you will weep over yours. . . . We’ll weep . . . for the illusions that were shattered, for the assumptions that were proven to be baseless, the truths that were exposed as lies. . . . And we will pity ourselves, for we are worthy of pity. A lost generation . . . in a land that devours its inhabitants.”

  Hanan felt as if his wounds were being torn open. He would have shouted if he had the voice. Pity the generation privileged to restore Jewish sovereignty to the land of Israel? What small-mindedness, what weakness of character! Where would the Jews be now if, in 1945, they had thought like this Arnon Lapid? Israelis would do now what Jews always did: grieve for their dead and go on, with faith and hope.

  A plan was forming in Hanan’s mind. A response to despair. A new settlement movement, modeled on the pioneering movements that had built the state.

  But this time the movement would be led by religious Jews. There was no choice but to step into the void left by the depleted kibbutzniks like Arnon Lapid. A movement of the faithful. All those who understood that Zionism was about not refuge but destiny, redemption.

  The word would come forth from Hanan’s hospital room, from his shattered body holding the unbroken spirit of Israel.

  IN SUEZ CITY, Yoel Bin-Nun was reaching a similar conclusion. Why were Israelis, even some of his fellow paratroopers, speaking in such apocalyptic terms, as if this were the beginning of the end of the Jewish state, God forbid? Why were Avital and his friends speaking about the collapse of the conceptzia, the security concept of holding on to the territories that had guided Israel since 1967?

  “Hevreh, what are you talking about?” Yoel berated. “Exactly what ‘conceptzia’ has collapsed? The government is responsible for the operational failures, and it has to pay the price, but why was the war such a surprise to you? It was the most expected thing that the Arabs would attack again! We recovered much faster than other countries would have in our place. All of France collapsed before the Germans in three weeks. It took five years to liberate it. We revived in less than three weeks and won. We should declare a day of thanksgiving!”

  A great change, Yoel predicted, was coming. “The Israel that will emerge from this war will be a different Israel,” he told Avital late one night. “A generation is about to be replaced.”

  “Okay, Yoel,” said Avital, “so the right comes to power. I accept that my camp has to pay a price for what’s happened. Okay. But what then? We build settlements all over the map. Fine, it’s our land, the heart of the land of Israel. But what about the Arabs there? Do we annex them? Give them the vote? Or not? And then what? Another war? How does it end?”

  THREE MONTHS AFTER THE WAR, Hanan Porat returned home. Though his shoulder and ribs throbbed, and it was sometimes hard to walk or even breathe, he dispensed with a cane and then stopped going to physiotherapy. He dismissed his wife’s pleas to continue treatments. There were more urgent matters at hand.

  Hanan had no name for his new settlement group, no funds, no roster of activists. But he did have the blessing of Rabbi Zvi Yehudah. Ignoring his pain, Hanan began a round of meetings with rabbis and politicians, similar to the frenetic activity he’d undertaken to found Kfar Etzion in the summer of 1967. But this time he felt even greater urgency: redemption was at war with apocalypse.

  Hanan was sitting in a parked car near the Mount Etzion yeshiva when he saw Yoel, still in uniform, approaching. It was the first time they’d met since the war. They had left an Israel still infused with the spirit of 1967, and had returned to a shattered nation.

  Hanan remained in the car and rolled down the window. “Yoel, something must be done to rouse the people,” he said, dispensing with greeting.

  Yoel wanted to laugh with joy. Only Hanan could have survived a direct hit by a shell and then so quickly return to his old self—optimistic, obtuse, one-pointed, unstoppable. “I’m with you completely,” Yoel said.

  ESTHER GAVE BIRTH to the Bin-Nuns’ third child, a boy, and Yoel allowed himself a proper leave to attend the circumcision.

  He arrived in Jerusalem during a snowstorm. A rabbi who taught at the Mount Etzion yeshiva and who lived in Jerusalem offered to drive Yoel, along with the mohel, the circumciser. Ordinarily the drive from Jerusalem, on a narrow road that wound through Bethlehem, took half an hour. But now, under blinding conditions, they drove so slowly that Yoel wondered whether they would arrive at all.

  Just past Bethlehem, the car began to skid. Sunset was approaching. “I’m afraid there won’t be a circumcision today,” the rabbi said.

  Yoel stepped out of the car. Standing in the blizzard, he prayed. “I raise my eyes toward the mountains, from whence will my help come. My help comes from the Lord, creator of heaven and earth.”

  A snowplow appeared. The car followed the plow up the inclining road, and reached the Bin-Nun home ten minutes before sundown. The circumcision, including the blessings, was completed within five minutes—“a Guinness record,” Yoel joked. The baby was named Odeyah, “I give thanks to God.” Yoel explained to celebrants that he’d chosen the name as a response to the war. “I give thanks to God,” said Yoel, “because we were saved by a miracle.”

  The next day, he was back in Suez City.


  AFTER A MONTH of convalescing at home, Yisrael Harel returned to Africa. Though shrapnel remained in his left leg, he was no longer limping.

  The injury only confirmed for him his place in the brigade’s inner circle. He felt closer than ever to Arik, literally his brother in arms, the man who had carried him, bleeding, down the stairwell in Suez City. Just like the song that was playing on the radio: “Be a friend to me, be a brother / extend a hand in troubled times / I’m your brother, don’t forget.” Arik was the antidote to the Haifa kids who had taunted him and thrown rocks at the Bnei Akiva clubhouse, to the Mapai goons who had split his head open during the demonstration against Shabbat desecration. What else had Yisrael Harel ever wanted but that Jews in a hostile world should treat each other as brothers?

  THE FAITHFUL STEP INTO THE BREACH

  A WINTER NIGHT in Kfar Etzion. Pine trees swayed in the fierce wind, and the thin windows of the concrete houses shook. Inside the kibbutz dining room, inadequately warmed by kerosene heaters, some seventy young men sat on benches around long tables. Most were recently demobilized soldiers. Yoel, on leave, didn’t wear his uniform: the IDF had to be kept out of politics.

  It was January 30, 1974, and the young men had gathered to found a group that would inspire Israel in its crisis of confidence—a rescue mission for the endangered spirit of 1967. It’s up to us now, thought Hanan. He looked around the room: most participants had grown up in Bnei Akiva. The presence of a few bareheaded men—settlers from the small Labor Party settlements on the Golan Heights and in the Jordan Valley—only confirmed that the pioneering momentum had shifted to the Orthodox.

  Hanan, the wounded hero, the first settler, called the meeting to order. Shirt untucked, knitted kippah pinned to unruly hair, he conveyed indifference to his appearance, a man devoted wholly to the nation. Whatever doubts had once tormented him about subsuming his spiritual needs to his public persona had vanished. What could possibly be more ennobling than the convergence of Israel’s destiny with his own?

  Speaking rapidly, Hanan denounced the government for its weakness. What had Israel gained by refusing to launch a preemptive strike on Yom Kippur morning and then surrendering to American pressure to save the Egyptians from defeat? Only the world’s contempt. And now the government was preventing settlement in the land of Israel.

  Hanan’s audience understood that he was not speaking merely politically but theologically. God acted in history through the people of Israel; when they were strong, as in the Six Days, God’s glory was augmented. But when Israel acted in fear toward the gentiles, God’s Name was desecrated.

  Yoel passed a note to Hanan, suggesting that the group choose a name. Hanan ignored him. Yoel wrote another note, and Hanan ignored that too. He always does that to me—

  Yoel passed a third note: “We’ve been meeting for years, and nothing has happened. If we don’t choose a name nothing will come out of here either.” He added a Talmudic phrase: “The name determines.”

  This time Hanan responded. “A suggestion has been made that we choose a name,” he announced. “Any suggestions?”

  “Without question, Emunim,” called out a young rabbi. The Faithful. The name was adopted unanimously.

  The next day one of the papers reported that a gush, or bloc, of pro-settlement activists had formed. Hanan adopted the term: Gush Emunim—Bloc of the Faithful.

  A MERGING OF ELITES

  ON A FREEZING windy morning in early February 1974, a man smoking a pipe stood alone on a muddy slope overlooking the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem and declared a hunger strike. He intended to continue until Defense Minister Dayan resigned for his failure to prepare the country for war. He tried to drive the wooden poles of his protest signs into the ground, but it was too rocky. Instead he gathered piles of stones to balance the signs. One was directed at Golda Meir: “Grandma + 3000 Dead = Failure.”

  His name was Motti Ashkenazi, and he had commanded Budapest, the only outpost on the Bar-Lev Line that hadn’t fallen to the Egyptians. With shell fragments in his back, he and his men had held out for five days against constant bombardment that turned most of Budapest to rubble. And now Ashkenazi was demanding a reckoning. Why had he, as commander of a frontline position, received a mere half-hour warning before the Egyptians launched their attack on Yom Kippur? How could we go back to business as usual when that very mentality had led to the disaster?

  Only one newspaper reported, briefly, on the hunger strike. It was hard to take Motti Ashkenazi seriously. Protest movements scarcely made a difference in Israel. The Labor Party, entwined with the state, seemed impervious to public pressure.

  On day two of the hunger strike, a soldier on a single crutch appeared. He’d read about the protest, he explained, and left his hospital room to join. He said nothing more. Ashkenazi assumed he was suffering from shell shock. The two young men sat together in silence.

  On day five, Ashkenazi felt close to collapse. He checked himself into the hospital, and doctors rushed him into surgery, removing the shrapnel in his back. The next day he signed himself out and resumed his hunger strike. Several dozen demobilized reservists joined him. By the end of the week the media was reporting the beginning of a movement.

  YISRAEL HAREL WAS organizing a “university” in Africa for reservists whose studies had been interrupted by the war. Yisrael enlisted a hundred volunteer lecturers and planned over two hundred courses—in physics, classical languages, Jewish philosophy. Bar-Ilan, the Orthodox-sponsored university, agreed to serve as supervisor. An abandoned Egyptian army base was turned into the “university of the brigade,” as the men called it, and a catalogue was printed.

  But before classes could begin, the order came to decamp. Henry Kissinger, the American secretary of state, had negotiated a separation of forces between Egypt and Israel. Nearly five months after Yom Kippur, the last IDF units were leaving Africa.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE demobilization, Yisrael invited a group of friends for a talk.

  “Hevreh,” he said, “what are we prepared to do to make this a state worth living in?”

  “What are you suggesting?” someone asked.

  “That we help Motti Ashkenazi.”

  “We’re still in uniform, Yisrael,” someone countered. “This isn’t the place for this discussion.”

  “Srulik is right,” said Arik, using his nickname for Yisrael. “This disaster has a father and a mother. There has to be accountability.”

  Yisrael was thrilled. He, a son of religious Zionism, and Arik, a son of Labor Zionism, would join together to help bring down the corrupt regime of Mapai.

  Arik was unsparing in his critique of the political culture created by his party. “When you are in power for too long,” he said, “political considerations became more important than national considerations. All the institutions and leaders I grew up believing in have failed. The system that I was sure was foolproof has failed in every way. We can’t depend on anyone but ourselves.”

  THE NEXT DAY, February 21, 1974, the men of the 55th Brigade gathered along the Egyptian shore of the Suez Canal, near the spot where the paratroopers had first crossed. The farewell ceremony had almost been canceled: a tank brigade had been given the honor of being the last Israeli unit out of Africa, and the paratroopers revolted. We were the first ones into Africa, Danny Matt insisted, and we won’t leave unless we are the last ones out. The IDF relented.

  In June 1967 the paratroopers had ended their war by lining up, parade style, on the Temple Mount. Now they simply gathered around as Danny addressed them. “We, the paratroopers’ brigade,” he said, “were entrusted with being the lead unit in the force that brought about the turning point in the war and returned the initiative to the IDF. . . . You stood day and night beneath a murderous bombardment . . . deployed against us with a strength we hadn’t known in previous wars. Thanks to our ability to hold the bridgehead, the IDF succeeded in transferring the necessary forces and establishing its great foothold on Egyptian soil.

  “
I was privileged to command you—veterans of the retaliation raids [of the 1950s], liberators of Jerusalem and trailblazers in the Yom Kippur War. . . . Let us hope that the [prophet’s] vision will be fulfilled in us, that ‘nation won’t lift sword against nation and won’t learn war anymore.’ ”

  The Israeli flag was lowered from a pole mounted near the bridge. Then the men released balloons and colored smoke grenades.

  Kibbutzniks and religious Zionists, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, university students and workers: they had created an intimate society. Now they were returning to their separate lives in a wounded and divided Israel. Someone scrawled a farewell message onto the side of an armored car: “From the wars of Egypt back to the wars of the Jews.”

  Arik walked slowly across the bridge toward the Israeli-held side of the canal. He had always managed to slip, seemingly without effort, from soldier back to civilian. But now he felt overwhelmed by a confusion of emotions: pride, anger, heartbreak. One more mission accomplished. But how many more times could they keep giving their all, compensating for the failures of their leaders?

  Chapter 17

  THE HOME FRONT

  THE RESERVE DUTY THAT DIDN’T END

  ARIK ACHMON RETURNED home, but only formally. By day he resumed his job as CEO of Kanaf-Arkia. Most of the employees had long since been demobilized, and Arik found a company recovering from the economic crisis of the war and its protracted aftermath. Nights he spent with Yisrael Harel, helping organize Motti Ashkenazi’s campaign.

  At a meeting of Ashkenazi’s supporters in the Kanaf-Arkia office, Arik tried to focus on planning parlor meetings and lobbying politicians. But the activists seemed more interested in debating ideology. What should their position be on settlements, the social gap? “Hevreh, we’re here to work, not to talk Zionism,” Arik pleaded.

  The activists agreed about this: the country’s most senior political and military leadership, and especially Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, had to go. It was, as Arik put it, a matter of accountability.