Yom haZikaron-1988
YOM HAZIKARON 1988 This is the first Yom haZikaron (day of remembrance) for the fallen of Israel since September 15, 1987. That was the day our son Alex died in battle against terrorists in Lebanon...
...I honor them...
...Why not now...
...It is just the way it is...
...Home is home and it will take more than irritation to force me to leave...
...From officer school Alex wrote to a friend on July 15, 1986: The army is not a place that demands its members to cease thinking...
...The officer must think and do his thinking with a sense of justice far less abstract than that of the law professor or the civil judge...
...its costs—I just want you to know that in my army and especially where I am now (in officers' training) thinking is encouraged, especially about questions and dilemmas far more difficult than I think civilians see officers having to face...
...But the quality of the officer's choice can be measured in terms of blood, while the academic sees his question and answer as largely hypothetical...
...The young men I'm with are learning to think and to make decisions harder than any in the civilian world—and they are not abstract or fanaway...
...I turn to Alex to help me...
...How shall I remember this day...
...His father and I and his three brothers have always turned to Alex...
...There are many things about this country which I truly hate (others hate them enough to be driven to leave...
...Ronen, his commander...
...This is not an intellectual feeling...
...Today, were he still leading his men, he would be working to make them "effective, mature and humane...
...as craving blood and action...
...Here the officer craves to create from his group of kids a force which will be mature and humane as much as it will be effective...
...I want to make this place better—not to leave it...
...On December 20, 1986, Alex wrote: Israel is my home emotionally, religiously, and in every other way except for the location of my family...
...There are words and words, and laughter and love, and beauty in art and thought...
...and Oren, the private who went to evacuate his two fallen officers...
...It is not...
...No, there is not silence...
...His sense of justice must be combined with his responsibility for the lives of his men and his duty to complete the mission he has been given so as to lead him to a decision—usually in minutes rather than in the years which an academic can take to answer (or declare "unanswerable") the same question...
...Don't read any of the above as blind nationalism...
...Now this task is left to others at a difficult time...
...S.F.S...
...In this treasure that he left us I have found a way to remember Alex...
...Nine months later, on the day before he was killed^ the day before his 25th birthday, Alex signed on for two more years in the Israel Defense Forces as a company commander...
...For we know that as each soldier is, so will be his unit, and as each unit is, so will be the armed forces—and as those forces are, so will be Israel which is our home—and who wants his home to be seen as a place of injustice and inhumanity...
...One month earlier, in another letter from officer school, Alex wrote to the same friend: You are used to the image of the officer as part of the military establishment...
...And I weep for us and for Israel and for the Jewish people who have been diminished again, as we have so often, by the loss of our youth...
...But because I see this place as my home I don't pile the cons on one side of the scale and the pros on the other and come to a conclusion about whether it is "worth" staying here...
...I feel more at home here than I can describe...
...In that battle and in the same spot died Alex...
...That was the day our son Alex died in battle against terrorists in Lebanon as he ran with his medic to aid his fallen commander...
...To a civilian the idea that orders must be followed is blown out of proportioa I won't go into discussion now of the value of the "order" vs...
...Alex would want us to remember that he was not alone in caring that the army of Israel must always struggle to be ethical while carrying out its painful responsibilities...
...There is a long list...
...On this day I remember them...
...Not I, nor those whose footsteps I follow...
Vol. 13 • April 1988 • No. 2
