Israel at 75; A Soldier Tribute

Yitzhak Rabin & Yitzhak Kotler, 1967

As Israel is observing its solemn Memorial Day, and then will be celebrating 75 years of independence; as the kibbutz where I was born had just celebrated 100 years after its establishment, its Aliyah on the ground and conquering the land; and as this political blog (minor as it is in comparison) is celebrating 15 years of existence; I was deliberating long and hard how to commemorate it all, and what to write in tribute. I wanted, for once, to avoid criticism and stick to the positive. Politics are down on a day like this, remembrance is up.

Then it hit me. I realized that nothing would be more appropriate, more significant than to remember a soldier who’d died (one of many) defending the state of Israel. He was my best buddy in the army, and died in a battle behind enemy lines more than 53 years ago. Back then, upon his death, I wrote a piece in his memory that came out in a memorial book dedicated to him and his life; very common in Israel back then when honoring falling soldiers, especially from kibbutzim. At the time I was only 22 and wrote what I wrote straight from the heart. It wasn’t meant for posterity, or aimed at any literary merit. But here it is, without any grammatical corrections or stylistic fine-tuning, translated from Hebrew by me.

The Straightforward Sabra

Yitzhak Kotler, aka Iky

His image—the image of the barefooted sabra, who looks you straight in the eye, quick and agile, knows everything, free of doubts, who doesn’t stop to think, but thinks while running, in khaki shorts and blue shirt; the image of the sabra who always takes the initiative into his own hands; the sabra of the side satchel, the topographic map and the tembel hat; the sabra who plows the land length and width but never sows; the sabra who never stops because he knows he was born too old, 2000 years old; the sabra with the red army boots, with the lieutenant’s ranks on his shoulders, always charging forward, always ahead; the sabra of no problems—everything is going to be all right; the sabra who falls righteous.

His self-confidence and endless energy prevent me from writing about him in the past tense: since he lived always in the present, but with plans lined up for the future. And though his body is no longer with us, it doesn’t mean his spirit and soul are absent. We will never again see his smiling face, but his strong will, his belief that actions always speak stronger than words, will always be with us. He was not a scholar and didn’t leave books behind for prosperity; he was a man of action, of doing tangible things. In that sense—he still is.

He didn’t have many time gaps to fill with deep thoughts. He concluded one deed and already knew what the next one would be. Maybe I won’t remember him along the way, maybe he will be forgotten in the living of the day-to-day—the way others are forgotten, and the way we’ll all be forgotten—but at the hours of doing things, of building something real and worthwhile, we’ll know that that was Yitzhak Kotler’s—known to all his friends as Iky—that was his wish too; that he planned for it and believed in it. When we’ll travel abroad and see the world; when we’ll bear children; when we’ll build a new kibbutz; move the water lines in the cotton fields, play basketball and dance Israeli dances—we’ll remember him.

We’ll remember him when we’ll be out hiking on the slopes of the Galilee mountains, and see the cactus bushes with their prickly orange sabra fruits, as first and foremost an Israeli youth; in his life and in his death. We’ll remember him as the image of the real sabra, running to work in the field of his kibbutz; eager to guide and lead younger kids in the inner city; gladly joining the army, yearning to fulfill his duty. We’ll be remembered Iky as the sabra who grew from the soil of the land, only to return to it too soon; before even producing fruits. The sabra who was destined to die in his twenties.

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Paradise Lost — The Ashkenazi-Mizrachi Fault Line

Kibbutz Heftzibah, circa 1970

My childhood village is so far away these days, yet I never really left it. I’ve been aware of this notion, this conundrum for a long time, yet the stories about ‘The Battle Over the Hassi Stream’ between the residents of the city of Beit She’an and the members of kibbutz Nir David—and the beautiful pictures from the ‘Valley of the Springs’ that are decorated these stories—keep driving this point home again and again. This new battle, as if on purpose, seems determined to reopen old wounds and make them fresh once more.

It so happened that not so long ago I wrote a short story titled, ‘The Kibbutz is Burning’ (yet to be published) in which young people from Beit She’an invade my kibbutz, set it on fire, and engage in a life-and-death battle with kibbutz members over the kibbutz’s dining room. And while the protagonist of the story is my late father, David—a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, a salt-of-the-earth kind of a person who escaped three labor camps during that war, and a veteran member of that kibbutz—the heart of the story is pounding on the fault line dividing the haves and the have-nots, and the deep yearning to go back to the old ‘values’ that had built the kibbutz.

A kibbutz modeled on the one where I was born and grew up, Hephzibah, which in the glorious pictures of Nir David, with the aquamarine stream running through it, you can actually see on the other side of Gan Hashlosha—or the ‘Sachne’ as we called it back then—nestled under Mount Gilboa. Growing up we didn’t know it belonged to kibbutz Nir David. It belonged to us, all of us, courtesy of mother nature. As kids, we used to walk there barefooted. Swim there day or night, without a care in the world. Only later came gates, fences, guards, paved roads, showers, and restrooms. The magic was gone. Or almost gone.

Which brings me to the current situation in kibbutz Nir David, and the battle over access to the Hassi Stream. I have no idea how to resolve this intractable situation, this clash of wills, though one solution that was suggested in 2015— “to set aside a section of the stream for public use”—seems to me to be taking the right approach needed for a reasonable, decent compromise. However, as reported in The Times Of Israel, it “is still stuck in the planning system.” Wouldn’t you know that?

Strangely, it reminds me of a different kind of clash, here in America, between President Trump and the renowned journalist Bob Woodward. In his latest book, ‘Rage,’ and in an interview Woodward gave recently to ‘CBS 60 Minutes,’ he said he asked the president, “… do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave, to a certain extent, as it put me – and I think lots of White, privileged people… we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country?”

President Trump—again, wouldn’t you know that?—responded mockingly, “You, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you, wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

That, indeed, is the problem with some privileged, have-it-all people. For them, it’s my way or the highway. Not only do they lack the capacity to understand the other side, but they also don’t seem to care to understand it at all. It may be—in America as in Israel—that it’s not exactly, or simply ‘justice’ that the under-privileged, the have-nots are asking for but ‘understanding.’ After all, in the case of the citizens of Beit She’an—or the larger population of what used to be called the ‘second-Israel’—what does ‘justice’ really mean?

Certainly not the dislodging, the uprooting of the kibbutz and its members away from the beautiful place they have worked so hard to build and give it to them instead; or as is the case with the Sachne, make a national park out of the kibbutz. Just as in the case of the African-American population of America, what would ‘justice’ be for them? Returning to Africa (as few now do)? Reversing the turning of the wheel-of-history? Give reparations—how much, really?—for descendants of those who died many years ago? (In Germany’s case, reparations are for surviving Jews who were directly affected by the Holocaust.) Take the white people’s money and places away and hand it to them?

No. That’s not justice. That’s more like injustice. What they are looking for, I believe—both in Israel and in America—is understanding. Inclusion. Sharing. Collaborating. Acknowledgment of past grave mistakes. This can be achieved, you see, but not with a president who has no clue as to what hunger—both for food and recognition—is. Not with kibbutz members from the ‘first-Israel’ who may still think that that beautiful stream was given to them by God (not that they are believers)? They were Chalutzim once, pioneers of the ‘Tower and Stockade’ settlements, who received the land—spring-fed warm pool and narrow stream included, a la ‘Garden of Eden’—from the ‘Jewish National Fund.’ The Arabs certainly lived there before them.

Which reminds me of something else, too. The last time I jumped headfirst and swam in that beautiful, paradisaical pool, was in the winter three years ago. I visited Israel on the occasion of my mother, also a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, 90th birthday. It was cloudy and cold that January day my brother drove me to the Sachne. I told him I won’t leave the old country without swimming again in my ‘fountain-of-youth.’ We were almost by ourselves there. Us and nature. Like old times. But we had fun galore. And then we sat on a wooden bench and my brother brought his Finjan, his coffee kit, and made us strong cups of black coffee to warm our shivering bones. And as we sipped the coffee and talked, looking at the argentine, peaceful waters while guarded by the rocky Mount Gilboa, paradise—if for a fleeting moment—was found again.

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