For This
Nathan Alterman (link)
On these very days of battles, the Minister of Defense has noticed
these things, and has added to what is said here his own authority,
this deed, that is not very common in matters of war, is worth the
weight of any poem, from the point of view of effectiveness as well
as morality.
Mounted on a jeep, he had crossed the conquered city;
a brave and gentle lad, a lion of a lad.
In the street, that was beat,
an old man and a woman
were pressed to the wall; all they had.
And the lad then had smiled; with milky white teeth:
“I will try the machine gun”… And he tried.
The old man just shielded his face with bare hands
and the wall was all covered with blood.
This snapshot of liberty battles so dear,
there are braver than those, so they hiss.
Our war thus requires a poetic ear
very well, let us sing for this.
Let us therefore now sing of ‘Delicate Cases’
that are better off called, simply, slaying.
Let us sing of the talks that disguise all the traces
of guilt about lads ‘simply playing’.
Let us not simply say ‘these are but minor details’
for details and principles
are always wed.
If the public just listens to details thus told
and does not imprison the criminal’s heads.
For the bearers of arms, and with them, we as well;
in either action
or with a pat on the back
are forced with the talks of ‘revenge’ so we tell
into criminal deeds very black.
The war is so cruel! He who morals expounds,
with a fist shall be torn from its face!
But because this is so
the decency bounds
should be straight and as hard as a mace!
And to those who can sing only splendors of war
and are bound to pour honey on its every sore
Let it punish them cruelly so ever more
and step them forthwith on the martial court floor.
Let the silence that whispers “this is so”
be smitten and dare not show its face.
The war of the people who stood without fear
against seven armies;
the kings of the East
will not fear saying also “Do not say it in Gat”
it is not quite as coward as this!
Al Zot the Seventh Column, Davar 19.11.48
A Dose of Nuance: ‘For This,’ again – and again…
By DANIEL GORDIS MAY 19, 2016 12:30
In November 1948, Natan Alterman, by then the unofficial poet laureate of the Jewish state, published a poem in Davar, the Histadrut newspaper. Titled “Al Zot” (For This), the poem appeared at a terrible time in the young nation’s history. The fighting in the War of Independence was brutal, the outcome was by no means a foregone conclusion and one percent of Israel’s civilian population would be killed before the fighting ended.
Alterman wrote of a young man, “a lion cub flexing,” on a jeep. He comes across an Arab couple. Fearful, they turn and face the wall along which they were walking. The boy smiles, and says to himself, “I’ll try out the gun.”
Then, says Alterman, “The old man just cradled his face in his hands, and his blood covered the wall.”
Whatever prompted Alterman’s poem, Alterman had heard something about Israeli soldiers’ conduct that he believed demanded a response. How did David Ben-Gurion, the often autocratic, nation-building prime minister who had created the IDF, respond? He wrote Alterman: “I am requesting your permission for the Defense Ministry to reprint the column – no armed column in our army, even with all its weaponry, has [your poem’s] power – in one hundred thousand copies and to distribute it to every soldier in Israel.”
Shortly after the war, S. Yizhar wrote Khirbet Khizeh, a novella about the IDF’s cruelty to an Arab village toward the end of that war. There was no place named Khizeh, so the specifics of his novel are fictional. But his point was clear. One of his cynical characters says: “[We’ll] open a cooperative store, establish a school, maybe even a synagogue. There [will] be political parties here. [They’ll] debate all sorts of things. They [will] plow fields… and do great things. Long live Hebrew Khizeh! Who, then, would ever imagine that once there had been some Khirbet Khizeh…. We came, we shot, we burned; we blew up, expelled, drove out, and sent into exile.”
Those are harsh words, especially so soon after a war as difficult as the War of Independence. How did the new state respond to the accusation? Khirbet Khizeh became an Israeli best-seller.
Later, it was added to the compulsory high school curriculum, and Yizhar was elected to the Knesset.
In Israel’s early years, when the IDF was unabashedly a people’s army, when today’s widespread cynicism about Israel’s military was not yet in vogue, Israel’s politicians and writers understood that at the core of a society worth defending, there had to be truth. For the state to matter, it had to be decent. Nothing made Israel greater than holding it accountable to truth.
After the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, the international community and Israeli citizens decried what had happened. Menachem Begin tried to sidestep the issue. “Goyim kill goyim,” he said, referring to the fact that it was Christian Phalangists who had killed Muslims, “and they blame the Jews.”
But Israelis insisted on knowing what responsibility their country bore for the atrocity, and Begin had no choice but to appoint the Kahan Commission. When the commission released its report, it determined that because he had not done enough to protect the Muslims in the camps, Ariel Sharon was unfit to serve as defense minister.
It is in the context of that Israeli tradition that we ought to see the IDF’s latest controversies. Does Sgt. Elor Azaria, the soldier charged with manslaughter for the shooting in Hebron, deserve a fair trial? Of course he does. But do we protect Israel as a country worthy of the Declaration of Independence’s promise that it “will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel” if we do not take the time to find out, carefully and fairly, what happened? Alterman and Yizhar would tell us that in a healthy society, that question would not even be raised.
Which brings us to Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, and the kerfuffle between the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Golan has been under attack since he expressed worry that Israel is exhibiting signs of immoral societies, and that moral erosion can be seen even in the army. When Ya’alon defended Golan, urging the military brass to continue speaking out on ethical matters, the prime minister summoned him for a “meeting of clarification.” For a short while, there were rumors that Bibi was going to fire Bogie.
The ax did not drop. Netanyahu and Ya’alon issued a joint “kiss and make up” statement, reasserting that the army is under the authority of the political echelon.
But that was never the question. The question is whether, with many Israelis now opposed to putting Elor Azaria on trial, enough people still have the courage – and the support – to point out that something in Israel has, indeed, corroded, and neither Alterman nor Yizhar would be terribly proud of today’s Israeli discourse.
In a world in which European capitals, the United Nations, the Palestinian national movement, BDS, Jewish Voices for Peace and many more are engaged in spinning a web of lies about what Israel is and what it does, the Jewish State has one remaining weapon more powerful than all. It is the light of truth. We do Israel justice best when we shine it on ourselves no less than on anyone else.
The writer is Koret Distinguished Fellow and chairman of the core curriculum at Jerusalem’s Shalem College.