I1: Fallen Soldiers

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Soldier 3:

Before Lebanon very few Israelis had even heard of a Shi'a
Muslim. Sure we knew Lebanon was stuffed full of different
sects all trying to beat the hell out of one another - but it
wasn't our argument. If the Muslim Arabs wanted to kill the
Christian Arabs - fine, if the Christian Arabs hated the
Palestinian Arabs - so what? If they all resented the Syrians - that was all great as far as we were concerned. Our argument in Lebanon was with the Palestinians. The PLO organised its world wide terrorism from our northern neighbour. It sent Katusha rockets thundering into our cities, gunmen blasting into our buses and planted assassins in London and Paris.

You probably don't know this because of all the anti-Israel coverage of the Lebanon war, but the PLO had perpetrated over 240 acts against Israel and Jewish targets in the year running up to the war. The Palestinian-organised PLO was our enemy alright... So why was I killed by a Shi'a?!

The war might have started off OK - to break the PLO and push it 25 miles from Israel's border - but then it went terribly wrong. We achieved our objectives in a matter of days, and then Begin, our prime minister, got duped. We ended up in our most protracted war ever - a war which we started - and made enemies out of a group that until then had been acquiescent neighbours, buyers and sellers with whom we had traded over the 'Goodwill Fence.'

Once the Shi'as were set against us, all hell broke lose. We forgot about the Palestinian problem and just tried to escape the Shi'as fury. Avoiding Red Crescent Ambulances filled with TNT, or suicide bombers, or snipers, or exploding mules, or roadside mines, or the hit- and-run ambushes.

I'd spent three months in Lebanon running between raindrops, but I only needed to get hit by one. A bearded sniper on a rooftop took a fine aim. I looked up towards the crackle of gunfire and met his eyes as I fell. A young Shi'a man with blind hate in his eyes.

Lebanon was a tragedy, a mistake. The Lebanon War, Milchemet Shalom HaGalil, literally means "a war to bring peace to the Galilee." The contradiction in the words just echoes the contradictions of the war. Have we peace in the Galilee now? Not really -we just have different enemies and different tactics - Hizbulla, Islamic Jihad and all the other new and dangerous terrorist groups. And whatever happened to the Goodwill Fence?

Hey, don't think I hated Israel. I loved my country and I died for her. I volunteered to become an officer and to do more than my compulsory three years. I am just angry because I didn't die in my country but in one we had no business being in for so long.

I did not agree with the Lebanon war. I did not agree with my Government. I did not agree with the terrible blunders we made, but Israel was my home and when I gave my life for her, I wish it could have been for the right cause. I had many friends, two sisters, a brother and parents who buried their eldest son. If I had died for a cause I believed in then perhaps the nobility of the fact would have made grief easier to bear. But I died for what was wrong. Why?

(Soldier 3 sits down and soldier 4 gets up to speak)

Continued