By Eran Shachar, HaKibbutz, April 3, 1997
The tragedy of the helicopter crash has caused a group of
female members of Kibbutz Gadot and of Kibbutz Machanayim, who are mothers of
young men serving in elite units, to pose several question marks about several
accepted truths. They ask about the excessive eagerness to go into battle which
afflicts their sons, and their self-understood attitude towards the art of
warfare. Yaffa Arbel of Gadot wonders, “I do not understand what is the
difference between a dead citizen and a dead soldier. Why is the blood of a
soldier cheaper than that of a citizen?” Is this a one-time outburst of
motherly emotions or is it perhaps the budding of a new movement of protest?
Mothers are
singing, mothers are singing
A fist of
thunder strikes
(“The Third
Mother”, Natan Alterman)
For the group of women who define themselves as “residents
of the north and mothers of sons who are serving in elite units”, the tragedy
of the helicopter crash was more than the shock of nation-wide mourning. The
tragedy was for them the beginning of a search that pierces the soul, that
touches their whole being, the education that they granted to their children,
and the values that were at the foundation of their world outlook.
Over the years, they had not been especially outstanding in
the social and political activities of their kibbutzim. Yet after some
spontaneous get-togethers which were more like meetings of support groups than
the founding of a protest movement, they decided to go into action. They
formulated a letter of support (see the insert below) and sent it to four
Members of the Knesset – Yossi Beilin, Gideon Ezra, Haim Ramon and Michael
Eitan. The latter are all participants of the “Kochav Yair Circle” - who had
been trying to work out proposals and ways and means for a unilateral
withdrawal from Lebanon.
They emphasize that the letter did not satisfy their need
to act. They feel the pulsing sensation of a mission and seek to widen the
circle of activity, to accept new members into the group, to formulate a credo,
to promote goals that are deeper and more far-reaching than simply “Lebanon
First”. Have we here a real
one-time outburst of motherly emotion, or perhaps a local political adventure
or the budding of a new movement of political protest?
Defense from
the Home Front
In her
phrasing, Rachel Ben-Dor sounds like the spokesperson of the group. After more
than twenty years of membership in Kibbutz Gadot, she left the kibbutz with her
husband and three children. Today she lives in Rosh Pinna, lectures on Jewish
Thought and preserves a close connection with her female comrades “with whom I
raised my children from the time they sat on a potty until they enlisted in
elite military units”.
Rachel says, “I
woke up to the need for action from a feeling that there is no
alternative. That is, from the
knowledge that we must educate how to live for our country, not just to educate
how to die for it. I feel an obligation to do something to promote this idea,
for the sake of my children and for the sake of other children. A few months
ago, I suddenly understood that my son was going out to all sorts of doubtful
places to defend the Sanctity of the Holy Name, as the politicians call it. I
remembered that that we had not brought home toys of warfare, and that the
commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, with three exclamation marks, was a very
strong value at home. Yet all these precautions have not prevented my son from
learning in the army how to kill, albeit in a very refined and elegant manner.
The values which we imparted to him as he grew up did not guarantee a thing. It
could be that we did not arouse in him enough dilemmas and did not implant in
him enough doubts. In contrast to the opinion of many, I think that a person
without any doubts is a weak person”.
Ronit Nachmias
and her family arrived at Gadot seventeen years ago as hired workers. She and
her husband had been teachers of physical education and decided to remain at
Gadot as members. Ronit has four children and she is today the marketing
manager of the kibbutz industrial enterprise. Ronit says, “Until the
mobilization of my son, I had not thought about the character of his military
service. I was simply not conscious of it. All in all, I thought that he would
follow the track of an outstanding athlete, because before he was mobilized he
had played for the Hapoel Galil Elyon basketball team and was quite uncertain
about whether to join a combat unit or not. We were surprised when he decided
to go into an elite unit. It is not possible to say that we had encouraged him
in that direction”.
“After the
tragedy of the helicopters, I decided to direct part of my energies from
worrying to more constructive areas. The connection with Rachel and with the
other women had been existing all the time, but the decision that something
must be done was a new one. I thought that we should protect our sons from the
home front, just as they are protecting us from the battle front, and that we
have to equip ourselves with political weapons”.
DISBELIEF IN
PROTEST
Miri Sela,
Machanayim, had been very active in the movement of Women in Black. She says,
“For years I used to stand evey Friday at the Rosh Pinna junction”. She is
therefore not strange to organizing for political protest. She has four
children and she manages the restaurant at the Machanayim junction. Miri says,
“I have a problem with Lebanon. I am not sure that I want to or am able to
attend to all the world-embracing subjects which my friends bring up. It was only
natural that the education in our home was to join a combat unit, and in
general that one must make a maximum of effort in the service, including
officers candidate school.
“My son who was
mobilized a short time ago was born at the time of the visit of Sadat to
Israel. I remember that I cried with emotion throughout the television
broadcast and I said to my son, ‘My dear, you were born into a time of peace.
You can forget about doing army service. And lo and behold, reality tapped me
on the face, as we say. In such a situation, I feel that I cannot sit idly at
home”.
Yaffa Arbel of
Gadot did a lot of soul-searching before she joined the group. She is the
mother of four children and is wary of political labels, of the distortion of
her words in the media. In general, she finds it more convenient to be active
without any exposure. Yaffa says, “One may say that I have joined in order to
encourage the Kochav Yair Circle, as well as other political bodies, to perform
deeds and not just to accept the given situation as a fact with which one must
live. I do not believe so much in the power of protest movements. Did the
actions of Miri all those years with the Women in Black help at all?
Nevertheless, it is important for me to be convinced that the political echelons
have done everything possible in order to protect our children, mine and the
others. For only if I am convinced shall I be able to identify with what is
happening here.
“It makes no
difference to which goals I have educated my children on a verbal level. The
fact is that although they are not typical Israeli machos in their nature, they
do join combat forces and units in which they learn how to kill. More than this
teaches something about them, it teaches something about us, the parents, which
messages we have been sending them throughout the years”.
TO PUT PRESSURE
ON THE POLITICIANS
Since the
process of organization was spontaneous, the mothers prefer at this time not to
formulate basic principles and not to delimit their activities by commandments
of what to do and what not to do. They have no name, no postbox, and no voice
mail. They have not been registered as a non-profit association and have no
bank account to which one may send contributions. It is clear to them, that if
the process of organization does not wither away, they shall need to focus on
an ideological message and invest much effort into the organizational side as
well.
Rachel Ben-Dor
continues, “I, who had been all these years the silent majority, wish first of
all to make the public conscious of the things in which the members of the
group believe. We want our voice to be heard. After the helicopter crash, I was
boiling mad when the Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Mordechai, said that voices
not raised in support slacken the hands of the fighting men. We need to put
pressure upon the politicians because most decisions are carried out through
politics. We also need to make it clear to our sons and to the new recruits
that the army does not distribute candy and that military service is not an
annual camping trip of school
children”.
Miri says that
after the helicopter crash her children understood that we are not talking
about games. “They suddenly realized that it is near to them. My son said to me
something that was very difficult to hear, ‘Mama, it seems that the turn of my
age-group has come to present a sacrificial gift to this country’”.
Yaffa makes the
sensations more acute, “The statesmen silence the home front by a methodical
offering of our sons to this Molech, Lebanon. Our boys are sent out to They
send our boys out to drug and to silence public opinion in Israel. I do not
understand the difference between a dead soldier and a dead civilian. Why is
the blood of a soldier cheaper than the blood of a civilian? I lived for many
years at Gadot under the threat of Syria, and I prefer to continue that way
rather than endanger the lives of my children”.
They know from
a gut feeling that they are not alone and hope that it will be easier for
others to join an existing group rather than to set up a group from the ground
up. In their opinion, the silent majority lives in abundance and in relative
economic affluence. This way of living creates the illusion of normal living,
of belonging to the western world. It causes them to forget the fact that
Israel is in the midst of a war of survival, similar to that of much less
developed societies. They cynically say that although Lebanon is the burning
issue, they rely upon the local politicians to find a new complication after a
solution is found for the one in the north.
THE SONS ARE
SUPPORTIVE
We ask, “Are
you privileged to receive the support of your husbands and children, or is this
a sort of project of the mothers only?” Rachel replies, “By chance, we were
just talking only about a get-together of women. My own husband, for example,
offers full support. I also keep my son in the picture, although he is entirely
not involved. I do not think that we should limit the process of organization
to one gender only. It could be that when we were setting up our group there
was an outburst of instinctive motherly feelings and in the second wave others
will link up with the idea and
join us”.
Yaffa
continues, “I really ask myself whether only motherhood is pushing us forward.
My son told me that he is happy that we are trying to do something. In his
case, it is perhaps too late, for our influence on people and events is not
immediate. I do not think that my role is to give a message to him and to
others that because of the political dilemma they should not do the best they
can. Perhaps we shall succeed in correcting something that will affect the next
generation”.
Ronit joins in,
“What my son does he should do in the best way possible. He knows that I will
not be able to look into a mirror knowing that I have done nothing in order to
protect him. He is over therr, and I am over here, doing whatever I can. I do
not want to live with the feeling that I am letting things just roll along. If
I don’t do anything to change the situation, it is as if I support the existing
policies. By the way, from recent conversations it has become clear to me that
many young men think as we do. True, they have to maintain the facade of
manliness, but I feel that they re backing us up”.
Miri adds, ”My
son is supportive. I asked him how is it that he, an outspoken humanist of the
left, is going to a unit in which he will be taught to murder. He replied it is
precisely important that there be in such a unit people like him, who may
perhaps moderate the atmosphere. I definitely think that I am obligated to
support this approach of his, and hope that our activities shall reduce the
chances that he would be tested too many times. In my kibbutz, no one knows
about the new organization, but I am convinced that were I to request time off
for activities, I would receive it. And if not, then I have an accumulation of
vacation days from now until further
notice”.
LOOKING FOR
PARTNERS
Knesset Member
Yossi Beilin got in touch with them after having received the letter that had
been sent to the Kochav Yair circle. He said that he would be happy to meet the
group and added that there is something special in the fact that it is a group
of women, mothers from the north whose sons are serving in combat units.
Knesset Member Gideon Ezra sent a letter to them, thanking them for their
support. He announced that the subject had been tabled for discussion by the
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset, of which he is a member.
From there he may succeed in pushing the issue of Lebanon in a new direction
and defreeze it from its state of stagnation.
Rachel Ben-Dor
says that there is a problem when people relate to their group not as people
but rather as mothers. “People treat me as is if I were in a constant state of
hysteria. Everyone tells me all the time not to worry, not to worry, like a
mantra. And I say to them that only when the situation ceases to be worrisome,
shall I cease to worry. In general, the attitude towards mothers is as if they
think with their hearts only and not with their heads; as if our entire
initiative is infected by a lack of rationality. I feel that the attitude of
the public towards me is similar to its attitude towards a bereaved family. We
are given a platform from which to speak out our thoughts, but the attitude
towards us is respect but not proper evaluation. I would like to see that our
statements are given validity beyond the media gimmick whenever we residents of
the north, the mothers of sons who serve in elite units, say anything”.
While we are
talking, they think that nevertheless it would be worthwhile to formulate a few
sentences to serve as a sort of motto. Afterwards, they say that it is
worthwhile to get people who think
as they do to sign a petition; that is, without a campaign of persuasion,
simply to register their signatures. Then they reflect aloud that it is perhaps
worthwhile to organize a formal meeting, to which the communications media
would be invited, and at which they can speak out. They are of the opinion that
“things have a dynamic of their own, and of course anyone who joins us would
introduce some new idea which we can discuss and adapt, and with which we can
proceed forward”.
The question is
whether this “Song of the Mothers” will become “the striking fist of thunder” or
perhaps just another “strong silence”, as it is written in the poem by
Alterman?
A