The movement that shaped the Lebanon pullout
By Leora Eren Frucht, Jerusalem Post, 8.6.00

Ronit Nachmias, Bruria Sharon, Zahara Antavi and Rachel Ben-Dor of Four Mothers.
Photo by Ariel Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post

(June 7) -- How did the Four Mothers become one of the most successful grassroots movements in Israeli history - and what does its victory mean for the future? --

They were spat upon, called traitors, and dubbed by one army commander "the four rags." They were a few women whose sons served in Lebanon and felt their view was as valid as that of any general's - and didn't hesitate to say so.

They challenged military dogma and, last week, with the withdrawal of the last Israeli soldier from Lebanon, they claimed victory.

By then, the Four Mothers movement had arguably become one of the most successful grass-roots movements in Israeli history, scoring - in the eyes of supporters - a victory for democracy and sanity; in the view of critics - a triumph of defeatism.

The Four Mothers movement was spawned on February 4, 1997, the night two helicopters over Moshav She'ar Yashuv en route to Lebanon collided, killing all 73 soldiers on board.

That night the cost of remaining in Lebanon was put into razor-sharp relief for many Israelis, among them, Rachel Ben-Dor of Rosh Pina and her two friends Ronit Nahmias and Yaffa Arbel of Kibbutz Gadot. The three women had raised their sons together (Ben-Dor used to live at Gadot before moving to Rosh Pina) and watched them go off to the army together to serve in Lebanon.

"We were always full of concern and fear, but we felt there was no choice: we were told that they had to be in Lebanon and that's all there was to it," recalls Nahmias, whose son served in the Golani Brigade.

"But the night of the helicopter disaster was a turning point for us. Families very close to us lost their sons and we realized that if not today, then tomorrow we too could lose ours. And we began to ask, Why?"

THE GOVERNMENT position - that the security zone was necessary to protect residents of northern Israel - began to ring hollow for the women as they watched Katyusha rockets rain down on nearby communities.

Ben-Dor, who teaches at Tel Hai College, two kilometers north of Kiryat Shmona, recalls going to work along a route where Katyusha rockets regularly fell moments before or after she passed by.

All the while, the price of remaining in the security zone was getting higher and higher with each ambush, helicopter crash and roadside bomb.

They were bolstered by pronouncements of the Kochav Yair Circle, a multi-party group of MKs that included Yossi Beilin (Labor), who were also questioning the handling of the Lebanon issue. Ben-Dor and her friends began staging roadside protests, lobbying Knesset members, and circulating petitions, all aimed at removing the IDF from Lebanon.

At first they were ridiculed and patronized. "Many of my neighbors on the kibbutz thought it was a passing phase, that I'd get over it," recalls Nahmias, who works as a personnel director at Gadot's factory.

In media encounters, the women were pitted against political and military experts who would smile benignly, express sympathy for all mothers worried about their sons, and explain that the women didn't really understand security issues.

"The media and military tried to portray our message as a purely emotional one," recalls Linda Ben-Zvi, the American-born head of the movement's English-language division.

"They patronized us. But that was a great miscalculation because it was that emotional message that touched people. And by the time they realized that, the numbers had shifted and support for us had grown," says Ben-Zvi, a professor of theater at Tel Aviv University, whose son served in Lebanon.

By then, the movement had become a threat.

"People from the security establishment tried to frighten us, saying we were causing damage to our own children, strengthening the enemy. They would call me and say, 'you just don't know what damage you're doing,'" recalls Nahmias, who rejects the charge - one that critics of the movement continue to make today.

"If I had believed that for a moment, I wouldn't have continued," she maintains.

Among the most vocal accusations were those of Golani Brigade commander Col. Shmuel Zakai who dubbed the movement "the four rags" (and later apologized), and Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein, chief liaison officer in south Lebanon, who said that public calls for withdrawal endangered him personally.

Gerstein was later killed in Lebanon.

The accusations didn't smother the debate; if anything, it just became more acrimonious.

Extensive media coverage, mounting casualties in Lebanon and ultimately, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's election promise to withdraw the army from the security zone all helped galvanize more support for the movement and its goal. It soon counted among its members not only mothers, but fathers, sons and citizens from all over Israel, and at one point collected 25,000 signatures for a petition to withdraw from Lebanon.

DID THE Four Mothers movement merely reflect the Israeli public's growing malaise over Lebanon and ride that wave of discontent?

"When we began, Lebanon was a silent war. No one talked about it. There was very little support for a withdrawal, let alone a unilateral withdrawal," maintains Ben-Zvi. "We didn't just reflect public opinion, we shaped it."

"The main contribution of the movement was to legitimize the public debate over Lebanon," says Gadi Wolfsfeld, a Hebrew University professor of political science and communications. "Before they came along, debating what we were doing in Lebanon was a taboo subject; it wasn't patriotic to raise it."

"You can have millions of disgruntled people, but if no one mobilizes them, nothing changes," says Bar-Ilan University sociologist Prof. Dafna Izraeli.

"This movement was unquestionably a success because it managed to mobilize people and give a voice to that malaise."

How did three or four determined women manage to mobilize public opinion?

For one thing, they were mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon and among their ranks were bereaved mothers who had lost their sons in Lebanon. That touched a deep chord in Israeli society.

"From the beginning of the involvement in Lebanon, there was confusion concerning the goals of the war," says Prof. Yaron Ezrahi of the Israel Democracy Institute. "I think the mothers who saw this, particularly the bereaved mothers, just couldn't tolerate the idea that the lives of their sons could be extinguished without a compelling and unambiguous, rational reason."

"In traditional military cultures, the men go off to war to fight for their women, and the women are assigned the role of heroic mourner. When women refuse to play this passive role and instead become voices of protest, that has a very strong echo. And that's what happened here," says Ezrahi, who also teaches political science at the Hebrew University.

A MORE prosaic explanation is that these women ultimately won respect and attention because they were well-connected. Many not only had sons serving in elite units in Lebanon, but husbands in the military as well.

At one point, for instance, the Four Mothers movement included the wife of OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Amiram Levine.

So while they were derided by military officials on talk shows, they were taken more seriously behind the scenes. Nahmias recalls visiting the base of her son, who served in Golani, and finding that many high-ranking officers privately shared her doubts about the wisdom of remaining in the security zone.

"This bolstered me tremendously," recalls Nahmias. "Other mothers reported similar encounters. We saw that there were in fact many viewpoints about Lebanon."

Nahmias's own son didn't mind her activity, she says, but he continued to believe in the necessity of the security zone - until he finished his military service and his views changed, she notes.

Ben-Zvi's son, Arik, became a student organizer for the movement after completing his term in Lebanon.

Other soldiers were less comfortable with their mothers' involvement. One of the original Four Mothers, Yaffa Arbel of Kibbutz Gadot, withdrew early on at the request of her son who was serving in the elite Egoz unit.

WOLFSFELD says the media catapulted the movement into the limelight.

"The Four Mothers were very active and deserve credit, but I can't separate their activity from that of the media, which raised their status enormously. If the Four Mothers hadn't existed, the media would have invented them," he says.

Wolfsfeld argues that the media went far beyond reflecting the changing public opinion, and actually accelerated it by giving generous coverage to anyone in favor of a withdrawal.

On the other hand, he notes that for many years the media were guilty of accepting the consensus view on Lebanon - that the security zone was necessary - without question or criticism.

"The news media in general, and especially the Israeli media, don't like complex stories. The Lebanon story went from 'the heroes protecting the northern settlements' to 'It's time to get out of our Vietnam.' The turning point was the helicopter disaster."

In both cases, the media overstepped the bounds of fair journalism, he implies.

Yes, the media gave generous coverage to the Four Mothers movement, says Ezrahi. And in showing closeups of dead and injured soldiers, it also dramatized the war and captured the growing malaise. But that was a legitimate thing to do, he contends.

"That's the nature of democracy today. The media no longer allows the army to hide the cost of war from the public, and that makes anyone who protests what appears to be a futile war that much more effective."

In effect, says Ezrahi, the Four Mothers "pointed out that the emperor - in this case the government policy in Lebanon - was naked."

TOMORROW the movement will hold its last meeting, a symbolic wrap-up, at Kibbutz Gadot where it was conceived. Although the movement's activities are over, its impact continues to reverberate.

The day after the withdrawal from Lebanon, movement leaders gathered outside the Ministry of Defense to hold a peace vigil.

Ben-Dor, the founder and chairperson, recalls being approached by several soldiers. "They told me that they were relieved that we had gotten the troops out of Lebanon but that they were also grateful for something else: They said we'd given them a powerful lesson in democracy."

A victory for democracy?

"I wouldn't disagree with that," says Wolfsfeld. "Their success is an important sign that people can make a difference. But you also have to remember that they were well-established, articulate women with lots of connections to the political and economic elite and that helped. If one looks at groups of protesters with more working-class backgrounds, one has much less faith in democracy."

Women's activists note the fact that women spearheaded the ultimately successful national struggle and see it as an indication of what women can achieve.

FOR SOME, these achievements are overshadowed by a larger question of what the movement's victory means for willingness to fight the wars of the future. Does it indicate a growing reluctance on the part of many Israelis to do battle at all?

Settlement leader Israel Harel thinks so. "The movement did not rise out of a sense of national responsibility or strategic thinking but rather because its members did not want their kids to be killed. It shows a lack of national solidarity: 'For you people in the north, we are not willing to sacrifice our sons' was the real message.

"This is part of a broader trend in Israeli society of reluctance to sacrifice and endure casualties."

Harel adds that such an atmosphere hinders the army's freedom of action, damages its morale and further reduces its deterrent power.

NAHMIAS rejects the charge that hers was a self-absorbed battle to get her son out of Lebanon. "During the struggle I got calls from people with very close ties to the military echelon who told me they could get my son out of Lebanon, they could even get him out of the army, and they'd do that if I would just stop this protest.

"They didn't understand that I wasn't doing this just for my son but because I believe that our presence in Lebanon was bad for the country as a whole. Even when my son completed his army term last year, I continued to be active."

Would she send her son to fight what she considered to be a war for survival?

She seems surprised at the question.

"Of course I would. Even in this war I never encouraged my son to try to get out of Lebanon or refuse to obey orders. And in a truly necessary war, I think all of us would be ready to send our sons. We know we have only ourselves to rely on to defend ourselves," says Nahmias, who came to Israel on her own from France at age 16, and later served in the army.

"I still believe we need a strong army, but we must use it wisely and not allow it to be dragged into a situation like the one in Lebanon."

Harel is not so convinced. "There may be individuals who feel that way," says Harel, "but the general trend is one of an unwillingness to sacrifice."

He points to a recent expos* in the Israeli press that revealed that a large percentage of secular youth are avoiding the draft.

Ezrahi agrees that there is a larger trend at play here, but it's one he considers healthy. "Like youth all over the Western world, Israelis are less willing to sacrifice their lives for anything except self-defense."

He maintains that "the majority are willing to fight to the last drop of blood if the country is perceived as being in any real danger."

But who decides what constitutes a "real" danger?

Ezrahi acknowledges that this is a real problem, and he blames it on the government rather than on protest groups like the Four Mothers.

"Lebanon established a terrible precedent; it was a war of choice, not an existential war, and the government tried to fool the people into believing it was something else. That has made the public much more suspicious.

"Now, even a necessary war is not likely to receive automatic support or legitimacy from a public that doubts the government's intentions.

"So in the long run," says Ezrahi, "the Lebanon War has actually narrowed the options of any Israeli government to act rationally in self-defense because it blurred the distinction between a war of choice and a war of survival."

That could lead the next Four Mothers-type protest group to shout "the emperor is naked" even when he's fully clothed.