A week later, when I was back home in the States after a “political pundit tour” of Israel with other journalists, the tranquil scene we had observed became the bloody launch of a new and violent wave of hostilities. Hizbullah crossed over into Israeli sovereign territory to abduct two soldiers (leaving eight others dead), prompting retaliatory bombing by Israel that has rapidly escalated into something approaching full-scale war.
I remember one earnest young Israeli soldier telling us last week that all the action was in Gaza. He sounded almost envious. I now wonder if he was one of those taken hostage. They’re all just kids. That’s the way it is with war, but in Israel more so, because everybody goes into the military right out of high school. Gilad Shalit, the 19-year-old seized in the Gaza raid, symbolizes every parent’s worst nightmare. “He’s our Jessica Lynch,” explained one of our Israeli guides, recalling her dramatic rescue by American commandos in Iraq. Twelve-year-olds come home from school in Israel asking, “Have they found him yet?”
This takes a toll on families knowing the sacrifice they might have to make. We had Friday night Shabbat dinner at the home of Rabbi Daniel Gordis and his wife, Elisheva, in an upscale neighborhood of Jerusalem. They moved to Israel from Los Angeles in 1998, a time when peace seemed a step or two away. Now they question whether they did the right thing as they see their children maturing far beyond their years, with matters of life and death not just something you see on CNN. Their 19-year-old daughter is in the Army, assigned to intelligence. Her Curious George stuffed monkey sits vigil on her empty bed. Their 16-year-old son is already in training for an elite corps that he hopes to join once he graduates from high school. A younger son, who is 13, tells of being taunted when he was the only one in his class who supported the pullout from Gaza.
The country lives with a sense of lost time, of lives postponed because of military service. Men serve four years; women, three years—which means they don’t begin college until age 23. Orthodox religious groups are exempt from service, which Rabbi Gordis finds difficult to accept emotionally. He notes that these young men will set aside their pacifism to destroy a bus stop if they find the advertising objectionable, and he resents having to put his son’s life on the line while sparing theirs. But he adds that he’s come to the reluctant conclusion that it’s better to keep weapons out of the hands of people that zealous in their beliefs.
The rise of a political center in Israel is the most important political development since the right-wing Likud displaced the liberal Labor Party in 1977. But Kadima, which means “forward” in Hebrew, is still more of a mood than an ideology, and the rise of extremist groups like Hamas and Hizbullah threaten Kadima’s very reason for being. The coalition headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is the first totally civilian government, and there is no one in power with real military leadership experience. Israelis agree on one thing: that if you convey weakness to the Arab world, the consequences on the ground will be disastrous. Olmert must be tough, but he has done it in ways that are counterproductive. For example, we were told that the initial bombing of Gaza took out the transformers that supply electricity. Transformers have to be ordered from abroad, which takes time. In the meantime, Gaza gets 50-60 percent of its electricity from Israel anyway, and having bombed Gaza’s electric plants, Israel had to boost the supply it was sending into Gaza. It’s hard to see what Israel gained from this venture other than worldwide condemnation.
Washington recoils from anything that looks like collective punishment on the Palestinians. But practicing restraint in urban warfare is an oxymoron. The fact that President Bush has two more years in office is vital to how Olmert handles this crisis. Bush is popular in Israel even though he didn’t take an activist approach to solving the Palestinian question. It’s understood that Bush will green light just about anything the Israelis do.
In Israel, we heard repeatedly that this is the first phase of the next war and that it’s about more than Hamas and Hizbullah, it’s about Syria and Iran, and stopping an Iranian nuclear weapon program. There’s a growing realization in Israel that given Bush’s domestic weakness, this may require a unilateral Israeli strike. We were told the only thing that frightens Israel more is no one doing it.
