Mister Barak, thank you for enabling me to sleep soundly once more

Dina Bar, Kibbutz Hagoshrim, Haaretz, 28.5.00

It is not as if I have nothing to do: the pile of clothes to iron reaches the ceiling. Today is Thursday, and it is proper to give the house the attention that it deserves in honor of the Sabbath. Besides that, my son Nir is supposed to get a weekend leave tomorrow and I need to go over his room and put some order into his belongings, after two weeks of his absence from home. I shall put flowers into a vase and a few treats on the copper table in the center of his room.

Nir is in the armored corps, eighteen and a half years old. Next week he completes his basic training. Today he is in a tank and wishes to protect our home, but I remember him as a fragile fetus who needed special protection from me nineteen years ago. That same month of July in 1981, that same month of cursed memory, we could not stick our heads out of the bomb shelters for ten days. We suffered heavy bombardments directly onto our settlement – our homes, the members’ gardens, the children’s houses, and the agricultural fields.

This is a bizarre paradox. Nineteen years ago I was flat on my back in bed in order to safeguard Nir and let him live out his days as a fetus without harm. And today, as he gallops along in a tank to defend the homeland, I am powerless to do anything except to pray.

For eighteen years now have I felt quite terrible. It is reasonable to assume that all the residents of the North feel as I do. However, I sum up the past eighteen years as an unbearably heavy burden upon my conscience, accompanied by terrible feelings of guilt which have devastated my days and my nights. Each soldier who is killed, is killed for my sake and because of me.

Oh yes, I know about the voices. I hear them telling me that this is the role of the army, to protect the civilians. But in the Lebanon we were not defending the whole State. We were not defending all its citizens. We were defending me, a resident of the Panhandle of the Galilee. Thus every soldier who is killed there, or is wounded and remains disabled for the rest of his life, is killed or disabled for my sake and because of me.

As residents of the North, our nerves are forever exposed, raw and jangled. Before anyone else we know how to recognize the tension in the air, to know whether the flight of a helicopter is routine or not. As we make a round trip from HaGoshrim to Kiryat Shemona, we automatically turn our heads towards the “Gibor” landing strip en route, to see whether it is clear of helicopters and ambulances that have arrived to evacuate any casualties. If it is swarming with activity, then Heaven help us.

Before the Lebanon War, all the kibbutz members in the North would carry around personal weapons wherever they went. There used to be routine attempts to infiltrate which sometimes succeeded. Alarms rang out twice a week for squads on duty to check the fences on the run. These duty squads were civilians, members of the kibbutz, who would stay awake through sleepless nights and then go back to work the next day, with tired and bleary eyes.

And today we are already no longer in the Lebanon. Shall we return to the same reality that I have just recalled? I have no idea and I have no solutions up my sleeve. It could be, but even if the clock turns back, I prefer things this way. If only no more people shall die for my benefit. Please, do not die for my sake any more. I lower my eyes and ask the forgiveness of all the families who have lost their sons in the Lebanon. You have sacrificed those whom you most cherish for my sake, and I am a bewildered and lost soul.

Mister Barak, please, we turn to you. You have done a great deed. Now would it be possible to ask for peace as well?