Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic

11. Refusal in Perspective: From the War of Attrition to Moral Attrition

11 Refusal in Perspective From the War ofAttrition to Moral Attrition Seven years after the beginning of the war in Lebanon, and in the second year of the uprising in the territories, the Haifa Theater staged a play written by Irwin Shaw in 1936 called "The Rebellion of the Dead." In the play six dead soldiers raise their heads during the funeral service and refuse to be buried. Their refusal to comply with the proper order of the war causes their General to appeal to their wisdom and their sense of duty: "Comrades, your country demands of you one more thing-that you lie deep in the ground." While at any other time prior to the war in Lebanon Israelis would have regarded this playas anachronistic, now it evoked a reaction from both sides of the political map. One reader wrote to the press: The generals in this show are not our generals and their message is not to us.... The percentage of officers among our war dead is extremely high compared with other armies in the world and this fact must serve as an indication for our army. (Kolbo, 26 October 1989) In defending the presentation of the play, the Israeli director stated: Every society demands some sacrifices from the individual and this causes severe conflicts.... I am not playing politics-I am trying to understand how a soldier feels in the grave. He feels deceived.... The war in Lebanon was the first war in which this type of emotion arose among some of the soldiers and the public, and this is a fact. (Ha'aretz, 12 September 1989) 211 212 Conscience at War Yoram Falk was the director of Sartre's play, "The Altona Verdict " (in Hebrew, "Nidonei Altona"). The play was written as an allegory on the French involvement in Algeria and the destruction of an entire generation of young people in France as a result. Falk had to stop working in the middle of rehearsals as he was sent to the occupied territories as a combatant reservist (Yediot Acharonot, 8 February 1988). With the prolongation of the Intifada, Israeli press people as well as foreign crews were no longer enthusiastic to go into the field. Thus the moral ordeal of the Israeli soldiers was often documented from the point of view of Palestinian crews-who were taking pictures of the backs of the Israeli soldiers. When the faces of the soldiers were revealed they were seen as tired, confused, humiliated , and above all, lonely. Throughout the Intifada they remained lonely in the crowd, they were lonely when facing the mob in the territories, when watching the people bathe on the Tel Aviv beaches, and when the bathers question the soldiers why they have injuiries from stones on their forehead. They were lonely when they were brought to trial. The Gaza Strip remained the no-man's land in the minds of the Israeli public as well as in the minds of the Palestinians, and Ansar became the prison of the individual's collective memories-a place where all who enter are immediately turned into victims. Following the peace accord, a soldier from Jerusalem is called for by his parents, the Berman family, to help them in their business . Young Berman has been chasing youths who have been hanging PLO flags in the territories for three years. His parents are now sewing PLO flags and need his help in the family factory (Ha'aretz, 9 September 1993). The writing of this concluding chapter was started on 14 May 1994; a day when the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip had been completed following the Peace Treaty with the PLO. The last place to be evacuated was the Jebalia Refugee Camp-where the Intifada erupted on 7 December 1987 (according to an IDF spokesperson). The military calendar shows that this month marks the twentyfifth year of the War of Attrition-an unknown and forgotten war; even the day of its inception is not clear. While officially it is a war that lasted seventeen months from 1969 to 1970, it might be regarded as a war that started on the seventh day of the Six Day War. This is the war of my generation. As young conscripts we believed (like the reservists of those days) in what we were doing. Refusal in Perspective 213 We believed we were keeping the 1967 administered territories, and the status quo, in...