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

by Yossi Klein Halevi

  But there was something deeper at work in the rage so many Israelis felt that spring toward Dayan. Nothing more clearly marked the reversal of the Six-Day War into the Yom Kippur War, elation and pride into depression and self-recrimination, than the transformation of Dayan from hero to villain. Dayan’s self-confidence, his trademark eye patch, became now a symbol of self-willed blindness. The charming rascal, indulged when he pilfered archaeological sites for his private collection and whose adultery Ben-Gurion once excused by comparing him to King David, had now become a philanderer and a thief, symbol of the reckless sabra who lived above the law. Israel was devouring its favorite son, archetype of Jewish power. The savior, whose face had appeared on magazine covers and posters and key chains in the summer of ’67, had become the destroyer. The fate of Dayan, in good times and bad, was a measure of the manic depression of a nation on the edge of salvation or destruction.

  ON A COLD AFTERNOON in late March, thousands of demonstrators crowded the slope overlooking the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem. The earth was muddy after a rain, and people pressed close against the wind.

  The lone demonstration begun by Motti Ashkenazi had become a mass movement. Teenagers in the blue work shirts of the Zionist youth movements called out to each other and hugged. Bereaved parents with impenetrable expressions and war widows wearing black dresses stood in silence. Demobilized reservists, still wearing their woolen hats from the long winter, clustered spontaneously by unit. Some men came in the simple olive green uniform of the IDF, flaunting army regulations against mixing the army with politics. Children sat on the shoulders of fathers. An Israeli gathering, festive and grieving.

  One hand-painted protest sign read, “There Is No Justice as Long as There’s Dayan” (dayan means “judge” in Hebrew). Another, held by two children, read, “Daddy Was Killed. Why?”

  The hundreds of policemen, many on horseback, had little to do: this was a crowd that preferred singing to rioting.

  Avital Geva was there. So was Yoel Bin-Nun. And Yisrael Harel. But not Arik Achmon. He felt uneasy at mass gatherings; ever since he’d left Givat Brenner as a teenager, he mistrusted the mobilized collective. For all his work for the cause, he never visited Motti Ashkenazi’s vigil.

  THE END OF NORMALIZATION

  AT THE WEEKLY MEETING of Kfar Etzion, Hanan requested a leave of absence from his kibbutz duties, to devote himself full-time to organizing for Gush Emunim. “What will you do if we don’t agree?” asked a member. “What God wants me to do,” replied Hanan.

  In a car borrowed from the kibbutz, he drove across the country, recruiting activists. He rarely slept at home, collapsing for a few hours’ rest on the couches of friends. When asked about Motti Ashkenazi, Hanan was dismissive. “So you bring down the government, then what? The goal is to build a new Israel.”

  What was remarkable about Hanan Porat in the spring of 1974 was the absence of any visible mark of trauma, any indication that only months before he had been gasping for air through shattered lungs. At age thirty-one, Hanan retained a teenager’s enthusiasm and certainties. His impersonal smile conveyed the promise of intimacy to those willing to share his vision.

  Hanan spent a night in the apartment of an old friend from Mercaz, Yochanan Fried. It was here, in the summer of ’67, that the failed dialogue between Mercaz students and kibbutzniks had occurred, where the breach between the two utopian streams first became apparent. And it was here that Hanan was now inspired to write his manifesto for Gush Emunim, proclaiming the passing of secular Zionism and heralding the Zionism of redemption.

  He awoke before dawn and began to write. He quickly lost sense of time. The sun rose, the time for morning prayers came, and still he continued writing. “The aim: to bring about a great movement of reawakening among the people of Israel for the fulfillment of the Zionist vision in its fullness,” he wrote. “Its purpose is the redemption of the people of Israel and the entire world.”

  Why, wrote Hanan, were young Israelis becoming increasingly individualistic, alienated from pioneering Zionism? The reason, he explained, was the inevitable failure of secular Zionism to fulfill its promise of normalizing Jewish fate. “The people of Israel had expected that, after the struggle for establishing the state, their right to exist would eventually be accepted by the nations, including the Arab nations, and that they would be allowed to live normal quiet lives like all other nations.” But now, a generation after the founding of the state, it was clear that the struggle for survival and legitimacy would continue. The result was a growing disillusionment among Israelis regarding “the basic premises of the simplistic form of classical Zionism which saw in the land of Israel ‘a safe refuge’ and a solution to anti-Semitism.”

  The solution, wrote Hanan, was a return to the classical Jewish thought banished by secular Zionism and which “contains the key to understanding the uniqueness and the destiny of the people of Israel and the land of Israel. The process of the return of the nation to its land is an essential stage in the redemption process foreseen by the prophets of Israel and which the nation longed for through its exile.”

  The manifesto called for the immediate annexation of the territories won in the Six-Day War and for resisting—with mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice, a phrase weighted with Jewish martyrdom—any pressure, military or diplomatic, to force Israel to withdraw.

  As for the fate of the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, Hanan offered a solution that was partly democratic, partly coercive. Any Arab willing to accept Israel’s sovereignty and assume the responsibilities of citizenship—including military or alternative service—should be granted full legal rights. Any Arab who refused to accept Israeli citizenship for nationalist reasons should be encouraged, “by persuasion and financial incentives,” to emigrate.

  THE STUDENTS OF the Mount Etzion yeshiva leaned into wooden stands holding volumes of Talmud and resumed their arguments with the ancient rabbis. But the return to routine was anguished. Of the yeshiva’s 150 young men who’d gone off to war, eight hadn’t returned. In the study hall sat students missing an arm or a leg, and bandaged from burns.

  Rabbi Amital, head of the yeshiva, walked bent like a mourner. A heavyset man with thick black beard, he spoke frankly about his struggles with faith and told his students that not every question has an answer. Before Yom Kippur he had given up smoking; now he started again. His daughter married, but he couldn’t dance at the wedding. He spent weeks speaking with families and friends of each of his fallen students, to ensure that he knew them intimately, that they could continue, as he put it, to live in his memory. “Eight princes of men,” he called them, quoting a verse from the book of Micah about eight protectors of the land of Israel.

  Many of the students had come to this yeshiva because they believed that from here would go forth the vision of redemption. Now they were a shattered community. Beyond personal trauma was an urgent theological question: What was the meaning of a war on Yom Kippur? The Six Days had established the trajectory of the redemption; was this war, which left only demoralization, a setback to the plan for redemption, God forbid?

  No, it couldn’t be, said Rabbi Amital, trying to reassure himself as much as his students. A war in the defense of Israel was itself redemptive. Yes, war was a tragedy; but compared to the powerlessness of exile? The rabbi recalled how, when he was in the “pit of the Holocaust” in Hungary, he prayed that if he were fated to die, it should be as a soldier in the land of Israel.

  A collection of Amital’s talks on the war was published by the yeshiva. The book insisted that despite the war, the very existence of Israel proved that the Jews had transcended ordinary history and entered redemptive time. If a nuclear war were to happen, Amital wrote, and archaeologists in the future attempted to piece together the events of our time, they would no doubt assume that the creation of Israel happened decades, even centuries, after the Holocaust; for what people could possibly create a thriving state immediately after that?

  Hanan was ecstatic
. Rabbi Amital, he told friends, had written the textbook of Gush Emunim.

  But when he tried to recruit Amital to the movement, he was rebuffed. Amital had written not a political manifesto but a response to a crisis of faith—not slogans but prayers, a cry from the depths. And that is what he called his book: HaMa’alot MiMa’amakim, Ascent from the Depths.

  YOEL BIN-NUN RESUMED teaching Bible and the writings of Rabbi Kook. He too was in mourning: Mount Etzion’s fallen soldiers were his students. One student, named Benny, had consulted with Yoel just before the war: he’d been asked to lead Yom Kippur prayers at one of the outposts on the canal but didn’t want to miss the holiday in the yeshiva. What did Yoel think he should do? Yoel told him, “You’ll have to decide for yourself,” knowing exactly what he would decide. Benny went to the canal and fell there.

  Still, Yoel resisted gloom. “In the Six Days I didn’t share the euphoria,” he told his students. “Now I don’t share the despair.”

  Yoel arranged his shifts of nighttime guard duty to coincide with those of his students who needed to talk. He was especially concerned about the emotional state of one student, Moshe, who had lost a hand in battle. Moshe had leaned back inside his tank at precisely the moment it was hit by a shell, killing the other crew members. Now he was tormented by doubts: Why had God spared him? Why the randomness of death?

  One afternoon teacher and student walked together on a hill of boulders. Wildflowers covered the moist earth. In the valley below, one of the fateful battles of the Macabees was said to have been fought.

  “We speak of God as a righteous judge,” Moshe said. “But where is the righteousness of judgment in war?”

  “I also had those feelings coming out of the Six Days and Yom Kippur,” Yoel said slowly. “Why him and not someone else? It seems so random. But you have to look at the problem in a broader way. In ordinary times God judges each person by his merits. But in time of war, judgment becomes collective.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Everyone who falls in battle is a messenger of the nation. True, the burden isn’t divided equally. The families of the fallen suffer more. But we’re all in the same place. The whole people of Israel fought. And those who were killed—they belong to all of us.”

  They walked for a while in silence.

  “Each of us needs to find our own way to contribute to the collective,” Yoel said. “Those of us who came back feel a need to justify our survival.”

  THE LAST INDEPENDENCE DAY

  ARIEL SHARON SAT in Arik Achmon’s living room. The hefty general nearly filled the small kibbutz-made couch that the Achmons had brought with them from Mishmar Ha’Emek.

  “Listen, Arik,” Sharon began, “you and I know each other. We can talk straight. Does your movement have political plans?”

  Since being demobilized, Sharon had returned to politics, as a leader of the new right-wing bloc, the Likud, whose founding he had initiated. Now he wanted to know whether Motti Ashkenazi’s movement could be a political asset.

  “Our only goal is that those who failed should pay the price,” replied Arik.

  Sharon nodded. He himself had warned before the war that the Bar-Lev Line was untenable, only to be rebuffed. Sharon’s performance during the war had confirmed Arik’s opinion of him as the IDF’s greatest field general.

  But politically Arik had no sympathy for Sharon.

  “As a movement we are neither right nor left,” said Arik. “But I have been a lifelong member of the Labor camp. Despite everything, it is still my camp. The culture of the right has always been alien to me.”

  Afterward, when Arik told his father-in-law about his meeting with Sharon, Hazan warned him, “You’re going to bring the right to power.”

  “If it doesn’t purify itself,” Arik countered, “Labor will bring the right to power.”

  BARELY A MONTH after demobilization from a six-month reserve stint, Arik was back in uniform. A cease-fire had just ended a war of attrition on the Syrian front and a battalion of paratroopers had been drafted to restore order in the IDF’s northernmost positions, and Arik was asked to take command. “All right,” he said, “but not for more than three weeks.” He packed his bag, took his gun—now an M16, courtesy of the American arms airlift to Israel during the war—and headed up north.

  He found chaos. Inside the army’s most important electronic spying installation—located on the top of snow-covered Mount Hermon and captured by the Syrians at the beginning of the war, then recaptured by the IDF—there were no working telephones, no barbed wire fence, no water. That’s how it is, he thought. When there’s a mess that needs to be fixed, you call the paratroopers.

  Three weeks later, the outpost restored, Arik was again a temporary civilian.

  The Agranat Commission, appointed by the government to investigate the failures of the war, released its findings, and placed the blame entirely on the generals, in effect absolving the politicians. The chief of staff, David Elazar, was replaced by Motta Gur.

  Demonstrators outside the prime minister’s office cried shame. The Agranat Commission had exonerated Golda Meir, but the nation held her accountable. A week later, a broken Golda announced her resignation. She remained in office several weeks longer as a caretaker leader. Dayan refused to follow her lead. The protests intensified, and finally Dayan too was forced to resign.

  “That’s it, hevreh,” Arik told his friends, “mission accomplished.” They had helped lead the most successful protest movement in Israel’s history. With the end of Golda’s government, the era of the founders had ended too. What more could they hope to achieve?

  We can’t stop now, Yisrael Harel insisted. The protest movement was an unprecedented opportunity to deal with political cronyism and the waning of pioneering idealism.

  Arik was dismissive. Did Yisrael really think he could manipulate Arik into helping him bring down Labor and replace it with the right?

  “Do what you want,” Arik said. “Just leave me out of it.”

  INDEPENDENCE DAY WAS APPROACHING. For Arik, the notion of celebrating this year—the torch-lighting ceremony on Mishmar Ha’Emek, the communal singing in the dining room—was unbearable. “For me,” he told Yehudit, “there is no Independence Day anymore, only Memorial Day.”

  “We don’t have to go to the kibbutz,” she said.

  “I need to get out. I can arrange a business trip to New York. It’s not essential for work—”

  “Go in peace, Arik.”

  ARIK FLEW TO NEW YORK shortly before Independence Day.

  There he bought his first-ever pair of jeans. He felt a little self-conscious—he was almost forty-one—but still it felt right. Kibbutzniks of Arik’s time had despised jeans as a symbol of Americanization, of bourgeois life. Which is one reason he wanted to wear them now: jeans were the uniform of the globalizing world that Arik hoped Israel would join.

  On the evening of Israel’s twenty-sixth Independence Day, Arik sat alone on the edge of the bed in a Manhattan hotel room. He thought of all those who had died on Yom Kippur for the mistakes of others, all those who had fallen in all the wars. He thought of how he had once believed the stirring rhetoric of politicians and generals. He wished he could weep.

  INDEPENDENCE DAY ON MISHMAROT

  A FEW DAYS after Meir returned home from Suez City, Tirza flew to America. The American movie producer she’d met while modeling in Tel Aviv had sent her a ticket. She was going to try to break into film.

  Meir drove her to the airport. She assured him there was no “monkey business,” as she put it in English, between her and the producer. Not that it mattered: Meir confided to her that there was this young Dutch woman, a volunteer on Mishmarot, whom he had his eye on.

  As they parted, Meir said, “You have my blessing to fulfill your dream. I’ll wait for you for five years. The door is open.”

  He didn’t waste time grieving. A few days after Tirza left, the Dutch volunteer moved into the Ariel home.

  MEIR WAS LEFT w
ith two small children. Though there was no longer a children’s house on the kibbutz, there were neighbors—and most of all Meir’s parents. They silently endured the collapse of Meir’s life in full view of the community. And they stepped in to help raise the children.

  Being normal, just like everyone else, had always been so important for Meir. But now it was hard even to pretend. After a wild night, he’d show up late to work in the cotton fields. There were days he didn’t come to the dining room.

  Meir’s friend, Moisheleh, invited him to an orgy in Haifa. Afterward, driving home late at night, the two kibbutzniks were so drunk they had to steer together to keep from crashing into oncoming traffic.

  On the eve of Independence Day, the whole kibbutz gathered around a bonfire on the main lawn to sing the old songs. Meir slipped away with a young woman, a volunteer from France. They returned to the campfire a half hour later. The young woman, limping, was missing a sandal.

  RABBI ZVI YEHUDAH COURTS MARTYRDOM

  YITZHAK RABIN FORMED a new Labor government. Chain-smoking, curt, direct to the point of dismissive, Rabin, the IDF’s commander in the Six-Day War, was Israel’s first native-born prime minister. At age fifty-two, he wasn’t prepared for the job. Though he’d served as ambassador to Washington, his only cabinet position had been minister of labor, a post he’d held for barely two months before being appointed prime minister.

  Like other Labor leaders, Rabin’s map for settlement included the Sinai Desert, the Golan Heights, and the Jordan Valley, which separates the West Bank from Jordan. What those areas had in common was that they contained little Arab population. The worst of all options for Rabin was settling precisely where Gush Emunim intended to—Samaria, the northern West Bank, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Gush Emunim countered that Samaria was the most strategically significant of all the post–’67 territories, because its mountain ridge overlooked the coastal plain around Tel Aviv, where the vast majority of Israel’s population and infrastructure were concentrated.