Unofficial Rumors of the War
Nesvisky, Matthew
UNOFFICIAL RUMORS OF THE WAR MATTHEW NESVISKY We're sitting on the terrace of a cafe overlooking Beirut and we're sipping coffee and watching the war; journalists are barred by the Israel...
...They could make life hell for the others...
...As we inched our way out into open country, we learned what it was...
...And the phone wasn't working here anyway...
...Suspending judgment, like postponing protests until the war is over—another hotly debated issue in Israel—is very circumspect but not, I think, especially moral...
...The Shias are already delicately balanced between appreciation for Israel's smashing of the PLO and their sympathies for the Khomeini regime in Iran...
...It takes a considerable amount of prodding—to be fair, the professor's English is not good—but he eventually tells his story...
...The most boring job we pulled was manning roadblocks and guard posts, especially in the dead of night...
...After 15 minutes, she finally arrived below where I was watching from the roof...
...Or put it another way: A few days ago I was editing a piece of news copy and came across this felicitous phrase: "Unofficial rumors yesterday indicated . . . . " I liked that enormously...
...But the other day, when he spoke freely with me in Arabic, when there was no reporter here—it would have curled your hair...
...Except among Yoav and Itzik and Davidi and the other men from Kiryat Shmoneh...
...My wife needed it, too...
...But there are other developments that mean more to some people in the area than any superpower machinations...
...There are other attractive aspects to a combat situation: Peer pressure keeps you from performing badly, with the result that you are subsequently self-congratulatory about your behavior...
...It is one thing to hunt for terrorists or weapons or documents: it is another to root through cabinets and closets, photo albums and school bags, sewing baskets and family Korans...
...We've been gathering such horror stories—they would curl anybody's hair...
...The most exhausting duty we had was conducting searches through orchards, sweltering in the July heat under our helmets, packs and flak jackets...
...Little wonder then that, like Pilate, I preferred to wash my hands...
...Still, even if that were a PLO body out there we didn't feel right about letting a mongrel eat its brains...
...There wasn't an apartment house that wasn't shot up, not a shop or garage that wasn't blitzed, a hundred miles of it...
...For days now I've been contemplating what a British correspondent in the Crimean War called the First Casualty in every armed conflict...
...They either recruited for the terrorists or extorted money for their cause...
...I notice that we're now the only ones on the terrace...
...they are fair-minded and they are human...
...The story and photographs you are holding now have been submitted to the censor, which may explain certain vagaries in detail here and there...
...All of the above is true...
...And then, of course, you get to use those guns that all through training you are drilled never to point at anyone...
...Then I immediately wonder what I'm congratulating myself for...
...So we kept our distance...
...I'll admit, frankly," he says, "that when this war began I was totally opposed to it...
...So we rumbled out and camped in a Jewish National Fund forest and settled down to wait, and so far it was just like bivouac on our annual maneuvers...
...But this time we didn't just check our equipment, down our coffee, cheese sandwiches and apples, and head for home...
...You could say the war was fought so that mums could push their strollers without fear...
...And the more you do it the more natural it seems...
...L'azazel, to hell with it...
...Among the exhibits at the kibbutz Holocaust Museum are an exact-scale model of a concentration camp, built by a carpenter who had been a prisoner there, and a street-by-street miniature replica of the Warsaw Ghetto...
...I don't like how he was "produced" here at the Israeli military headquarters to perform for the press...
...The rattle of 50-caliber machine gun fire suddenly starts up, seemingly from right below our terrace...
...Bailey felt he had so much to do he actually requested to be kept on beyond his release date...
...You know, I wish this war was done with...
...The good Lord, who knew that men would go to war, who on occasion even instructed men to make war, built the human mind so that good things would be remembered and bad things would be repressed...
...I know the villains were holed up in private homes and all that...
...I am disgusted by it now...
...The story threatens to spread like wildfire, and the IDF is urgently attempting to stamp it out...
...Like maybe somebody's out to screw me...
...Now, unfortunately, we had an even better view of the soldier's face...
...If so...
...The endless political debates...
...The sounds of shelling, tank fire and air strikes increased...
...We could disobey him or even give him the slip, but then we'd be denied permission to enter Lebanon again...
...Most of us were family men in our 40s, with our combat days long behind us...
...It must have been ten miles or more to the next village...
...I can tell it's bad...
...Yet eventually I realized that withholding even what 1 knew was only my perception of the truth was merely an excuse to avoid addressing my feelings about the war...
...Why not go whole hog and demand advanced degrees and department chairmanships...
...We considered ourselves a third-line outfit...
...And this was long before Operation Peace for Galilee turned into Operation Hell for Beirut...
...In any event, before the second week was out I had learned that this was no longer a "good little war," and had noted in my diary: "I hope I don't come home from this like those Vietnam vets, viewed as having done something dishonorable...
...Clinton Bailey is senior lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, an expert on Bedouin poetry and well known in Israel as an outspoken advocate of the rights of Israel's Bedouin in the face of the government's often cavalier attitude toward their tribal grazing lands...
...Still, I'm not thinking about that now...
...But we knew that the strike force of the IDF is the small but superb regular army and its crack reserve units like the Golani Brigade...
...This day, for example, I discover that the IDF command staff in Sidon, the capital of southern Lebanon, is near-frantic about a rumor that threatens to sweep the Shia population...
...I wouldn't be the first to be driven round the bend by a war...
...Fire rolled with a ghostly glow over hillsides...
...In this uniformed herd you feel capable of accomplishing much...
...And if I saw men liberating souvenirs—an interesting poster, a penknife, some condoms—I kept my mouth shut...
...I'll always remember how my buddies were scrupulously fair in sharing out battle rations, never forgetting to set aside an ample portion for whoever happened to be on guard duty at mealtime...
...There was folk dancing in the park and the little rowboat concession at the end of the town's canal was doing a roaring trade...
...Our IDF escort officer—without one no journalist is allowed to travel from Israel to Lebanon—mutters something about the flak jackets we've left in the Matthew Nesvisky is a news editor and feature writer for The Jerusalem Post...
...The reason given is concern for our safety, and that reason will do...
...Skyhawks, shrieking horren-dously, rend the sky over the Green Line that divides Christian East Beirut from the Moslem western half...
...The censor apparently is fascinated by the story as well...
...With a sinking feeling I watched her as she walked down that long road toward our roadblock...
...In an effort to show loyalty and appreciation to whoever might rule there next, would not some south Lebanese slander the Israelis...
...In either case there was no excuse for Gregor, a new immigrant from Leningrad and a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, to be hurling bound and blindfolded men and boys off the back of our half-track...
...Anyone who would not expect troops to be depressed after taking heavy casualties in an ambush is simply playing footloose with the truth—the First Casualty in any war...
...the bitter condemnation of those few black sheep who had been caught thieving...
...But after these few weeks, I've changed my mind completely...
...Which is to say some of our prisoners were surely terrorists, some were probably just unfortunate day laborers on their way to their jobs in Nabatiya who didn't realize they needed proper identification...
...Can everyone be right...
...since it is well known that our enemies carefully comb Israeli newspapers looking for details about troop movements, references to military equipment and so on, it seems reasonable that the military should review material that could be useful to the other side...
...And no one, I am certain, was frightened...
...Much to our surprise, we were being sent in...
...To be sure, General Stroop was accurate when he crowed: "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more...
...He sleeps in his office in the Sidon municipality building, and rises each day to solve bureaucratic problems, calm fears, investigate complaints, deal with parents whose sons have disappeared or are being detained...
...If the truth be told—and that is what this essay is about—there were some sweet moments back there in the war...
...Others had been plucked out of automobiles at checkpoints because they had no papers, or because their documents were inadequate or suspicious...
...And within a few weeks, in fact, five men in my unit would be in jail awaiting charges of robbing Lebanese citizens...
...I am just unprepared for the hawkish attitudes he has been expressing...
...The troops had a job to do, and we were determined to do it as an unhappy but necessary duty...
...I would glance in the doorway and see my sergeant chopping open a locked attache case with a pickax, and I couldn't pretend that I wasn't helping him...
...What is the point of becoming a casualty yourself in pursuit of that First Casualty...
...And I wonder why I was so much more sanguine about bullets when I was in uniform...
...Unless some sort of all-out mass invasion were planned...
...Yet even now I'm not mourning the slain civilians of Damour or Beirut...
...I shrugged the matter off, ascribing hostility toward the press to the desire to slay the bearer of ill tidings...
...I stand and make an elaborate business of gathering my things...
...Katyushas blew the balconies off our flats yesterday...
...Now, sitting in a cafe and watching others getting shot at causes a vague but palpable nausea...
...In the dead of night we were rolling out our armored personnel carriers, loading ammunition and swapping trousers and shirts in hopes of getting at least one uniform that fit...
...And the ranks of cheering civilians make you feel morally self-assured...
...out in the hallway," Bailey says...
...And that's what they call pinpoint bombardment...
...Just wait here...
...Rina is fearless to the point of insanity...
...But I don't know what an IDF spokesman could say that would alter the view anyone gets traveling up the coastal road from Rosh Hanikra to Beirut...
...Maybe it's schizophrenic to oppose the war and to be appalled by such reporting at the same time...
...Why was the Israeli press so inadequate...
...Somewhere among these thifee faces, I think, is the true face of the war...
...At first I thought it was just my Anglo-Saxon hang-up about the sanctity of private property that made breaking down doors so distasteful...
...It's the last week of July, and we don't know it yet but it's the beginning of the end...
...For all its constant discomforts, occasional dangers and vast stretches of boredom, men like it...
...We begin by agreeing that the war is awful...
...you can test yourself...
...Finally, as the first PLO contingents were about to set sail for Tunis aboard the Sol Georgios, I decided a little holiday was due...
...By the end of the first week of Operation Peace For Galilee, however, war's true face was becoming starkly evident...
...Each house had at least one white flag showing, which led cynics to remark that the villagers would cheer any army that rumbled over their territory...
...I had never before visited the Holocaust Museum there...
...Later I wasn't so sure...
...But the most unsavory assignment we had was house-to-house searches...
...Others are already assembling their books on Operation Peace for Galilee, Good luck to them...
...At the same time your comrades, who are essentially strangers, are linked to your welfare and destiny, and you to them, in a manner that is evident nowhere else in society...
...But, I interject, was it our mitzvah to perform...
...We have 6,000 students at the university," he says...
...To keep men sane...
...That's a curious response...
...I ask him why and he responds briskly...
...I saw it as solving nothing—and worse, I saw it creating a whole new set of problems for us...
...you feel responsible to the rest of the herd and protected by it because you feel it cares about and relies on you to do your share...
...So did seeing our officers remove their insignia...
...In its next issue, Time will headline the statement: "Beirut Goes Up in Flames...
...The residents of this lovely mountain suburb of Beirut, who have long since become accustomed to sitting here and watching the war down below each afternoon, have all moved inside the cafe...
...The firepower that was unleashed, the wholesale destruction...
...The Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley have been obliterated...
...General Sharon says that all his aims have been achieved in the war, and thai the PLO has been dealt a mortal blow...
...So many MIGs have been shot out of the sky that we were joking: "The Russians show the Syrians how to put the planes up, and we show the Syrians how to bring them down...
...I don't envy the job of the censor, and I would never be one myself, but I, too, am very dissatisfied with the situation during the war...
...Some had been captured after firefights in the hills...
...Why did the announced objective of the war change in mid-battle...
...That belief was underscored by the support of the civilian population, which after all was us...
...His "The Ostrich and the Jewish Problem" appeared in the May 1981 issue of MOMENT...
...One example...
...Why drive yet another nail into the coffin of the First Casualty...
...Less demonstrative but still clearly showing approval were Shia Moslem households, identified by their Amal militia insignia and the ubiquitous pictures of their spiritual leader, the Imam Mussa Sadr, believed kidnapped by Muammar El-Qaddafi's agents some years before...
...We drove along the beautiful and solitary northern road and rode the cable car to the grotto at Rosh Hanikra...
...We held a short conference...
...The decision is yours...
...On the wall of the crematorium there I noted that someone had scratched the slogan "Never Again" and that someone else had tried to scratch the slogan out, and I heard myself say aloud that I was glad I lived in Israel...
...Did it happen often, once, or not at all...
...Israelis were outraged by the foreign press and TV reportage of Operation Peace for Galilee, and so were American Jews...
...The censors are neither rigid nor capricious...
...that is...
...That's the kind of war it is...
...And everyone I've talked to, including correspondents who have seen it all in Vietnam and Northern Ireland and Somalia and Nicaragua, is stunned by the destruction of Damour...
...As a measure of just how absurd the situation is, I have in my notebook the West Beirut telephone number of Yassir Arafat (302432...
...The second shot tore off the dog's head...
...Yet I know that this is just for the record...
...All right," Bailey says, finishing his can of pineapple juice...
...None was reluctant...
...Just before final examinations were scheduled in May, they came to professors' homes at night and at gunpoint demanded the questions in advance...
...That's premature and inaccurate, but Israeli wars are usually calculated in hours and days and so are always hard to handle on a weekly printing schedule...
...Civilian casualties of course have been the hottest issue of this most unusual of Israeli wars...
...You could also say it is the truth...
...He's a diplomat...
...Military men know that Israel employed very little artillery in the Six Day War: air power conquered the Sinai, infantry and armor took the Golan, paratroopers captured Jerusalem...
...Why was the foreign press so hostile to Israel...
...No, they didn't come to my house...
...Our holiday mood abruptly changed as evening came on...
...you feel younger and more fit than you really are...
...Buckland is telling me this over a gin and tonic at the Gesher Haziv guest house where the journalists assemble for their run up to Beirut each morning and where they stagger back for their booze each night...
...Bailey introduces the man as a well-known local poet and professor of Arabic literature at the Sidon campus of Beirut University...
...Like all Israelis, Bailey wears more than one hat, and when he was called up for the war he was appointed advisor to the IDF unit for aid to Lebanese civilians, headquartered first in Nabatiya and later in Sidon...
...Men fisted and showed biceps to signal, "Go get 'em...
...It was Sunday, June 6, and we figured we'd be back home the next day, Tuesday at the latest, no question of not being home for Shabbat...
...This is not a show of bravado for the coffee drinkers watching us from inside the cafe, although it is partly that...
...The story came back from the censor with the words "and depressed" excised...
...Other issues, I think, will resonate longer, such as the morale and peformance of the troops, the wisdom and ultimate effectivenes of air strikes, the political gains and losses of the war...
...For I am disgusted...
...Toward the end of the war all eyes appear to be on Philip Habib as he negotiates the final details of the PLO evacuation of Beirut...
...Notice how I reinforced the credibility of the statement with the phrase "published estimate...
...All reporters worth their salt know the axiom: The First Casualty in any war is Truth...
...Your bill is taken care of," he says...
...The once-pristine city by the bay is shrouded in the smog of war...
...I've told a part of the truth here, a fraction of what I've seen and heard, a bit of journalism, which Arnold de-lined as literature in a hurry...
...There will be heavy civilian casualties today," our IDF escort officer says...
...Up ahead, too, something was delaying our column again and again...
...I won't need time later to reflect in tranquility on what is happening today...
...Old women conveyed it clearly in sign language, eyes rolled heavenward, hands alternately pressed in thanksgiving and outstretched toward us in gratitude...
...Our searchlight picked out some movement...
...Don't ask me if Eli was right to get out...
...But that was before the bombardment began...
...Getting to the truth about Operation Peace for Galilee is also going to be one of the abiding issues that will resonate for years to come...
...But there is pop psychology and there is political reality...
...you feel extended...
...I've long felt we Jews have a proclivity for remembering our blackest hours, our most ignominious defeats...
...Perhaps, but what matters more is that it is impressive—to a layman...
...Foreign news services, though apparently content to subsist on official daily war communiques handed them in Teheran and Baghdad, are outraged when Jerusalem wants to review their copy...
...He fired his Galil and hit the corpse in the groin, causing it to buck obscenely...
...Penetration...
...I'm sickened by the obscenely absurd destruction below, and I'm sickened by the obscenely absurd role I am playing here...
...The eucalyptus trees were strung with colored lights, and the town's famous horse-drawn carriages were everywhere, adding to the festive atmosphere...
...Still, is the statement true...
...He is already famous in the area for racing about unescorted in a jeep anywhere and everywhere he might be required—to remote villages, to the depths of Sidon's Casbah, to the heart of Palestinian refugee camps...
...Thus we must look to the sea, to the Christian west, to the light of democracy...
...In any case, there seemed little to be done about it...
...The next morning we drove a few kilometers down the highway from Nahariya to Kibbutz Lochamei Hageta'ot...
...In the Nabatiya area alone we gathered 5,000 reports of atrocities, just in the first few weeks...
...Israel believes the story was planted by the PLO as a diabolical piece of disinformation—an official rumor, if you will—to undermine the Israeli position in Lebanon...
...Our spotter gives us coordinates and we fire and the target's still there...
...Bailey shrugs...
...Paradoxically, I could handle it much better when I was in uniform...
...Take Farouk Kaddoumi," he says...
...This is, after all, wily, anarchic Lebanon...
...Yet only a momentary flicker of disappointment or confusion showed on her round, brown face...
...From my position, there was no way I could signal her to go back...
...We like to think that if it's published, it's true...
...On the opposite hill artillery snaps out a semaphore like flashbulbs at a Hollywood premiere...
...I'm just sipping my coffee, legs crossed, notebook on my knee, and watching the war...
...Chris is amiable, intelligent and...
...A second face: At dawn this morning I was crouched on a rooftop overlooking the checkpost where we were turning back virtually all traffic heading into Nabatiya...
...That woman is simply not to be believed...
...he is simply supposed to answer our questions and to guide us where we want to go...
...But that's just the problem, isn't it...
...Why add to the cacophony of description, analysis and evaluation that was already taking place...
...This morning we had to leave our wives and kids in the shelters...
...Even drivers of UN vehicles, crawling out of our path like bugs, waved in resigned acknowledgment and flashed us acquiescent smiles...
...Everything he said may be true, but I still don't like the smell of it...
...Each was bound and blindfolded and trucked to a collection point for questioning...
...My photographer sweeps up his equipment and scoots his chair behind a pillar, cradling his cameras in his lap...
...Best of all, the bulk of the terrorists have fled, and we are just mopping up and securing the area...
...Residents of the predominantly Christian villages of southern Lebanon also lined their streets and verandas and applauded and cheered as our column rolled by...
...Even worse, they terrorized their teachers...
...14/Moment car...
...About 2,000 of them are Palestinians...
...My paper thinks this is a fascinating story...
...Earlier in the war, when we came upon a PLO mountain redoubt that had been abandoned so quickly that knives and forks were still lying on tin dishes around the cookfire, we cheerfully pocketed Paco Rabanne after-shave and packs of Marlboros and Winstons...
...It's lucky I just happened to see Dr...
...There were reports...
...It was the same, but different...
...He pumps our hands, heaping praise on Israel, and this is absurd, too...
...Just last May, however, a month before Israel decided to invade Lebanon, I visited Dachau...
...Because of what we've learned about the reign of terror the PLO perpetrated on southern Lebanon these past seven years...
...An Israeli photographer working for an overseas news agency...
...I believe Bailey is sincere...
...Even if you accept only a fraction of these reports...
...We had a nice weekend, thank you...
...Rape, butchery, extortion, the stealing of children...
...I'll give you three faces— perhaps out of them we can form a composite of what 1 have so grandly called the true face of war...
...The whole business of the media coverage of the war interested me only after I was out of uniform...
...Far up the highway I could see a solitary figure walking our way...
...So that tourists could crunch eggrolls at Nahariya's Singapore Restaurant...
...no good can come of it...
...Whenever the column halted, which was often, urchins scampered gaily among our tracked vehicles taking orders for Cokes and Marlboros from the village grocery stores...
...Kaddoumi's a diplomat...
...Peace for Galilee...
...Bullets are stripping the pink blossoms off the Persian lilac trees and Rina just keeps pulling herself forward on her elbows and taking pictures...
...Words like military government or travel document must have meant nothing to her...
...And he concludes: "Lebanon is a narrow little country between the desert and the sea...
...We drove into valleys dotted with smashed and burning half-tracks and crisp bundles of black that had once been men...
...According to one published estimate Israel will fire more shells during just this 24-hour period than it did on all fronts throughout the entire Six Day War...
...Those of us called up on the first day of the war reported to our assembly point somewhere in the north of the country just as we always had in our practice mobilizations...
...Nahariya took more than its share of Katyushas over the years, suffered abundantly from terrorists landing on its beach in rubber boats in the dark of night...
...Happy reports, such as the Beaufort Castle being captured without the loss of a single Israeli life (this turns out to be untrue), are given wide currency...
...it is more an attempt to demonstrate my disdain for the war...
...It's a true existential nausea brought on by the absurdity of taking notes on an urban free-fire zone while drinking coffee and smoking tax-free English cigarettes purchased right here in this pleasant resort village...
...Neil Johnston, a veteran of two years as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia, says admiringly...
...It was a scene from Apocalypse Now...
...It is also sentimental claptrap, but true for all that...
...how the mood abruptly changed after June 15 when the siege of Beirut began...
...Spending Saturday night in Nahariya was a buoyant experience...
...You could say that sounds maudlin or banal or even absurd...
...We swam in the Kinneret and went to the Mount of the Beatitudes...
...Israel has just commenced the heaviest bombardment so far of the western sector of the city...
...So the homecoming weekend atmosphere prevailed...
...In short, I didn't want to write about the war because I didn't think I could get it right...
...I admired Bailey's civil rights activities as a civilian and I find much to respect in his military role...
...For this is the first Israeli war that caused widespread doubt and questioning...
...She knew only that uniformed men said it was forbidden...
...Unhappy reports, such as hospitals being shelled, have less chance of publication...
...I nominated myself to stand guard outside while such searches were conducted, and no one criticized me for this...
...But then Avnery raps The Jerusalem Post for invariably referring to all the PLO as terrorists...
...That is, until I pick up a paper like London's Daily Mirror of August 3 and read an unsigned story that begins: Israel is ruthlessly destroying Beirut, street by street, block by block, and killing or wounding thousands of innocent civilians as it does so...
...When it was concluded he asked me what it was and said: "That was really beautiful...
...Thrown in the hopper with all the other reportage and duly weighed and fondled by time, what is written here just might contribute to some unofficial truths...
...My comrades on the pavement explained that searches were under way in Nabatiya and that no one was allowed in or out of the town that day...
...Also giving us the high-sign were youths in battered Mercedes sedans that flew the flag of Major Sa'ad Haddad's Free Lebanese Forces...
...I congratulate myself for scoring points...
...We halted and saw the bloated corpse of a man in uniform about 20 yards off the road...
...Only it was more than that...
...Bui the PLO claims it fought a much mightier power to a standstill, and its survivors are greeted as heroes in their latest temporary havens...
...Chris Buckland, a British newsman who covered the battles in Belfast for seven years, said: "I've never seen anything like it...
...The world press makes much of Israel's vaunted "civilian army...
...I was touched by the comradeship amid hardship, as when we created a Sabbath Eve celebration for each other even as our minds were on our families back home...
...Unless this was something much bigger than the Litani Operation...
...I was impressed by the ease with which our Arabic speakers won the trust of the Lebanese, how they were vigilant in showing courtesy and respect for the local population...
...The issue will eventually be resolved, after the bodies are counted and the moral assessments are duly placed on the scales...
...But we know better than that, don't we...
...For that matter, why extract only exam questions at gunpoint...
...The ground shakes such speculation from my mind...
...I'm thinking instead of only one casualty...
...Menashe, sitting next to me, said the people here must be used to it, as the PLO and the Phalange and the Free Lebanese Forces had all at one time or another operated their roadblocks here...
...I could not recall ever seeing such blind rage in a human face before...
...And she stoically accepted it...
...The crack IDF brigades, the real fighters, were clearing the way for us...
...As one IDF escort officer told me: "I've tried again and again to explain Israel's case to foreign journalists...
...I actually liked this war at the outset...
...But this Israeli assault was just awesome...
...We obviously haven't solved the Palestinian problem, and we may not even have secured peace for Galilee...
...Did the PLO students terrorize teachers...
...the result is that deep in the warrens of the PLO strongholds, chunks of apartment buildings—as well as the roof of West Beirut's last remaining synagogue—go spinning into the streets like so many whittled chips...
...I remember how we ran to gather up each other's damp uniforms when a helicopter began to churn a huge cloud of dust in the direction of our laundry line...
...We get coordinates and we fire again and the target's still there...
...Now I don't think it's possible to get it wrong...
...All photos by Karen Benzian...
...Helicopters clattered overhead...
...Until we restrained him, he was even kicking them in the spine and thumping them with his rifle butt...
...As I studied that model I couldn't help thinking that some Palestinian some day, somewhere, will construct a little replica of West Beirut to celebrate a glorious moment in Palestinian history...
...Remember how the Shah of Iran dressed like a statesman and talked like a statesman and everyone treated him like a statesman...
...A mitzvah is a mitzvah and no one else was going to perform it...
...But we certainly don't think it'll do the country much good if you print it...
...We had been lectured about booby-trapped cigarette packs, radios, doorways, bodies...
...Yet if the Shias, who often bear photos of the Imam on their rifle butts, believe that Israel is holding Mussa Sadr, it could cause great tension...
...When you are part of a vast army column of well-oiled and well-armed vehicles stretching for miles before and behind you, you feel perfectly secure...
...Havoc was wrought there in the late 1970s in a war of all against all, and what was left the Israelis smashed apart this summer in their drive on the headquarter of the PLO...
...A third face, that of Gregor, twisted and flaming with animal fury: That afternoon we had been sweeping up suspected terrorists, either flushed out of orchards and caves or picked up at roadblocks...
...I ended up serving 41 days and was glad to get out when I did...
...Beyond the notorious Arab penchant for fantasy, isn't it natural for an occupied people to tell horror tales about the previous occupier, to win sympathy as victim, to demonstrate innocence, to curry favor with the new power...
...The professor doesn't have much else to say, except that he is grateful that Israel invaded...
...The bombardment of the Lebanese capital has been so brutal, so sustained and so devastating as to be a crime against humanity...
...He was a tyrant and a thug...
...An old Yiddish proverb says, "Tell the truth— and run...
...Yet you always call him a terrorist...
...I also have the phone number of the PLO's chief spokesman, Mahmoud Labadi (312198...
...For the first time I wonder what a woman feels when a barman delivers her a scotch "compliments of the gentleman at the corner table...
...Why were soldiers on leave protesting the war...
...The dog returned...
...They were silent, seemed angry...
...Bailey returns and acknowledges that the professor sounded unconvincing...
...A few minutes later we were throwing away our loose change...
...Silence in the face of uncertainty seemed the wisest course...
...Nothing here is censorable," he tells us laconically on the phone...
...Rina is rapidly becoming a legend among the foreign press corps...
...That is the chief reason why, despite my keeping copious notes for the 11 weeks of the war, I was determined early on not to write anything about it...
...Can everybody win...
...We might be called on later to hold positions, as we were in the Yom Kippur War, but certainly not to go in the first day...
...I'm proud of our rushing a wounded PLO man to a military hospital, a lost child to a local police station, a water tanker to a cut-off village...
...He turns to the professor...
...I didn't witness any out-and-out looting, but I still had the gut feeling that what we were doing was morally impermissible...
...Talk to me about casualties and I'll talk to you about the First Casualty...
...Yet during the Peace for Galilee Operation the censorship comes under heavy attack...
...The streets were packed with young mothers pushing baby buggies, old yekke couples strolling arm-in-arm, soldiers on leave, UN personnel on the prowl, giggling teenagers, honeymooners, tourists...
...the warm feeling of being invited onto a Lebanese citizen's veranda to watch the World Cup soccer playoffs on TV together...
...My admiration for Rina is mixed with despair...
...Was the war necessary, as all previous wars were perceived to be, for the survival of the State...
...Conceivably, publication of those two words would have a negative effect on troops still in battle, not to mention the population at large...
...I'm lucky to catch him in his office...
...I couldn't understand how anyone could get used to it...
...We could leave the corpse there in good conscience, just report its position at the end of the patrol and let some burial detail worry about it...
...But as the Americans say, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and looks like a duck, well, it must be a duck...
...The most insane activity we had was clearing canyons and wadis, performing what in Vietnam was called "reconnaissance by fire...
...Apparently the truth is just a rumor—and you choose your truth and run with it...
...This is something of an achievement, if you will, for Damour is a refugee camp that has been reduced almost to powder by strafing, artillery, rockets and bombs...
...What I was really thinking was: "God damn, but this is a good little war...
...A scandal brews about a purge of "leftists" at the Army radio station...
...They might even give aid and comfort to the enemy...
...Yet even as we spin down the mountainside from Aley and reach the crossroads at Damour, I'm not thinking about civilian casualties...
...Bailey escorts the professor out...
...The proprietor of the cafe, who was apologetic for his phone being out of order, now refuses our money for the coffee...
...we even gathered up their foam rubber mattresses...
...Now we were dealing with civilians...
...But we found out he wasn't a statesman...
...You can spit and curse and belch and break wind with abandon...
...Just tell him what you were telling me the other day about life at the university...
...Our relationship is good, however, certainly better than if we were not Israeli journalists, and so his free commentary on the action is accepted...
...We approached only close enough to determine if the soldier's uniform was Israeli...
...I recall how everyone who went on leave unfailingly telephoned reassurances to families of comrades, and invariably came back with enough homemade cakes for all...
...It was decided that our corporal would shoot the dog...
...But believe me, just getting the terrorists off the backs of the Lebanese is a mitzvah...
...The IDF has traced the rumor to two Beirut newspapers that often serve the interests of the Palestinians...
...But I believed their welcome was genuine...
...It was a Bedouin woman, barefoot and balancing an impossibly large bundle on her head—mint, as I eventually made out, or possibly some other greenery she had gathered...
...The rumor is that the revered Imam Mussa Sadr is not in fact being held captive in Libya, but was recently found by the Israelis when they overran the PLO stronghold in the Rashadiya refugee camp...
...To me there has never been any great mystery about why men agree to go to war...
...We get coordinates and we fire so much we can't even tell if the target's still there...
...Sure," he says, "lean tell you why Eli packed it in...
...I don't know, Uri," I reply...
...according to our intelligence, the holy man has long been dead and buried beneath Libyan sands...
...It stands just off the coastal highway not far from Beirut's international airport, and so bears mute witness to everyone who travels up from Israel to Beirut...
...On the slope below the cafe a volley of Katyusha rockets has set an olive grove ablaze...
...I can't judge...
...Already on the first day of the war the Israeli shekel was accepted currency in Lebanon, four to the Lebanese pound...
...We gathered at our emergency supply depots, greeting each newly-arriving reservist with the sort of grins and jokes you get at alumni get-togethers...
...Such editorializing exceeds his mandate...
...They are doing this in a low-key manner, however, fearful that vociferous public denials will only fuel the flames...
...Let's call this "unofficial rumors of the war...
...And we all agreed this war was going on much longer than we had ever dreamed possible...
...The man is in charge of the PLO political department...
...You keep stumbling over what may be the corpse of that First Casualty...
...We soon found out why: "You guys from Haifa and Netanya and Jerusalem, you don't live on the border...
...But I couldn't fool myself...
...Don't take my word for it...
...journalists are barred by the Israel Defense Forces from entering downtown Beirut today...
...We were all shocked and depressed by the thefts, and resentful of our bad reputation...
...At the same time we are not permitted to endanger him, and so he is authorized to supervise our itinerary so that we don't get our asses shot off...
...You can bargain, shuk-\ike, with the censor if the need arises, and you win a few points and you lose some...
...So I did my 41 days of army duty, and for the next 40 days or so I worked overtime as a newsman, running up to Beirut several times and filling slots for colleagues who were called up after I was released...
...1 remember, too, how Moshe, in civilian life a member of a poor Moroccan poultry-growing moshav in Western Galilee, sat by my little radio and listened through to the end as an exquisitely ordered and harmonious Telemann quartet was broadcast...
...But when I do, they invariably open up their newspapers and refuse to listen...
...We're also intrigued by the question of whether the military censors will allow us to publish it...
...it was hungry...
...Avnery laughs and crams more Flying Dutchman into his pipe and says nothing...
...To us the desert means Islam and the repression of the Middle Ages...
...Why couldn't we determine if that one infant did or did not have its arms blown off...
...The first was the face of the dead solider we discovered on the previous night's patrol...
...None of the men in my company was enthusiastic for war...
...For one thing, many restraints are suspended during wartime...
...The state-controlled radio and television, especially in the first weeks of the war, are widely criticized by the public as inadequate...
...Did the Defense Minister mislead the cabinet...
...You can skip washing and shaving and you can squat around the campfire and eat with your fingers and then wipe them on your clothes—and you must not minimize how much this means to the little boys within us all...
...She did not know why she was barred from going to the market, as she likely had been accustomed to doing for years...
...And because this is the Middle East, or perhaps because we are Jews, a certain amount of dickering goes on...
...We have teams out collecting and documenting...
...But even local newsmen claim that in no other war in Israel's history has the amount of permitted information been so sparse...
...But then I've been going through some changes myself since this war started...
...This happened to be an extraordinarily high number for one outfit, and it earned all of us the sobriquet as the ganavim, the thieves...
...these were all heartening things...
...The past months had not been easy on her either...
...blasting away at caves and groves of trees to see if they shoot back...
...But the siege of the ghetto has become an immortal moment in the history of the Jews...
...We were lured northwards, where the hotels and guest houses were offering generous discounts in an attempt to rebuild the tourism that had suffered so from the periodic shelling before Operation Peace for Galilee...
...No question, it's very bad down there today...
...Accepted and gratuitous, because we know without being told that civilian casualties will be heavy today...
...So they are making discreet approaches to Shia leaders, and in particular to the Imam's sister, who is venerated by the masses...
...But for the time being, while the machine gunners are still pissing on their gun barrels to keep them from melting, we are obsessed with the matter of casualties, and that is as it should be...
...One story I was editing about an IDF patrol that ran into an ambush described the survivors feeling "numbed and depressed...
...We go back to the car...
...By the third day of the war I have recorded in my diary: "This war will resolve nothing...
...While we huddle with our IDF escort officers behind buildings that are slowly being chipped away by machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, Rina is out there edging along the Green Line in a military low-crawl, snapping pictures of terrorists in West Beirut...
...I actually came into this cafe in search of a phone...
...He is a Maronite Christian, and agrees to speak only after I promise not to publish his name...
...In the meantime, the barefoot woman, her face a study in passivity, turned and began plodding back up the highway...
...But I get a minor scoop for my notebook when I pick up a hitchhiking soldier one day and he turns out to have served under Geva...
...The IDF is distressed because if the story takes hold among the Shias, Israel will be expected to produce the Imam...
...I didn't have the responsibility he had...
...The censor's job is to cut or not to cut, not to provide advice...
...Our mood was further reinforced by our reception on the other side of the border...
...They alone ruled student political life...
...Unofficial rumors...
...The top of his head was gone but the lower part looked smooth, healthy, even jaunty with its carefully groomed mustache...
...the respect the secular soldiers had for the religious men among us...
...So it had been in every previous Israeli war...
...We feel embarrassed, flattered, foolish and somewhat seduced...
...But it seems moot...
...And Israel cannot do that...
...The reason for this reception was clear to all of us...
...As we ground through northern settlements, beaming women, children and old men lined the roads, tossing us cigarettes, candies, popsicles, books...
...But there were reports...
...We write it up and duly submit it...
...Normally I have few problems living with the censor...
...Up on the horizon, looming on the highest ridge and hunkered like a cancerous growth on the neck of the entire body politic, was the Beaufort Castle, the massive Crusader fortress from which the PLO for years had ruled—and frequently rained arbitrary death—over much of south Lebanon, over these welcoming people...
...Urged by my companions to get the hell out of there, I finish my tiny cup of coffee and take a sip of the accompanying glass of cold water...
...I've done a complete 180-degree turn...
...The aged Imam, so the story goes, has been taken to an Israeli military hospital, where he is slowly recovering from his long ordeal in captivity...
...He pops out of the office and returns a moment later with a thin, neatly-dressed gentleman in tow...
...Half an hour later I find myself arguing with the noted leftist journalist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery...
...We agree that the siege of Beirut has become an unintended propaganda prize for the PLO...
...Eli Geva, the officer who asked to be relieved of his command because he couldn't continue shelling Beirut, declines to be interviewed by the press...
...We don't know what the hell's going on there now...
...I was taking part...
...The interdependence is reassuring and gratifying...
...A skinny dog was chewing a flap of the soldier's scalp...
...May they not become casualties...
...1 thought as we barreled into Lebanon, our gun barrels and cannons bristling symbolically at all and sundry...
...War affords other forms of license as well: Bursting across a border without the formalities of passports or other permission provides a genuine ripple of pleasure...
...The dog scampered away...
...I have little reason to believe that the majority of the press corps here is any different...
...On Saturday night we dined at a Chinese restaurant in Nahariya and joined the crowds strolling that little resort town's main drag, and later ate ice cream at the popular Penguin Cafe...
...It was not...
...Still, if the long-rumored Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon was about to take place, my unit didn't really believe it would be called in...
...But that was different...
...from what I gather, fair-minded...
...In my very first paragraph here I wrote: "According to one published estimate Israel will fire more shells during just this 24-hour period than it did on all fronts throughout the entire Six Day War...
...That sobered us...
...Did the government mislead the people...
...And I'm surprised by what he has to tell me...
...The Beaufort has fallen...
Vol. 7 • October 1982 • No. 9
