To Prevail Over the Past

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A few nights ago, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized each other, I had a vivid recollection of the night of May 14 and May 15, 1948, when Israel declared its independence. I was nine years old. I remember my father coming to my bed and lying beside me in the dark. "When I was a boy, I was beaten in school in Russia and then in Poland for being a little Jew," he said. "You may still get beaten in school, but not for being a Jew. This is what the State of Israel is all about." In the darkness I could suddenly feel his tears. It was the only time in my life that my father cried in my presence.

The next morning, within hours of Israel's declaration of independence, five Arab armies invaded the country from all directions. The Jewish section of Jerusalem was besieged for several months, bombarded by Jordanian artillery from the east and by Egyptian forces from the south. What had been, since the beginning of the century, a neighborly feud between Arabs and Jews turned that night into a major international war.

Twice in my life, in 1967 and again in 1973, I saw the face of war as a reservist soldier, first in Sinai and then in the Golan Heights. That experience turned me into a peace activist, but not into a pacifist ready to turn the other cheek to an enemy. If anyone tries to take my life or the life of my people, I will fight. I will fight if anyone tries to enslave us, but nothing short of the defense of life and freedom could make me take up arms. "National interest," "ancestral rights" and an extra bedroom for the nation are not reasons to go out to the battlefield.

As a teenager addicted to politics, I would do my shift as night watchman along the perimeter fence of Kibbutz Hulda, secretly listening to the news on a portable radio. Through the night, I would wander between the transmissions of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Whenever they referred to Israel, they used the term the Zionist entity. The announcer would say "the so-called government of the so-called state" but would stop short of pronouncing the word Israel, as if it were a four-letter word. The Arab world, primarily the Palestinians, dealt with us as if we were nothing more than a passing infection.