1985-1986 Rothberg Yearbook

Yc
T T
L isten to this one,
D o y o u k n o w w h a t it means?
L isten, and I ’ll tell you.
On Y om Ha’Zikaron I talked to an Israeli friend, a
commander in the Israeli army now studying at the
University. He was listening to the songs on the radio.
He explained to m e the words o f the lilting Hebrew
m elody, o f a young wom an and a young man. They kept
m eeting by chance and fell madly in love. He went back
to war and was killed having forgotten to ask her name;
that was the sharpest mem ory for the woman he left.
Many potential years o f promise are lost in a second.
War scares on the radio illicited m y concern and m y
friend replied:
“Why do you worry? It’s I who will be on the front
line. I’ll be the one out there busting m y ass. It’s m y life
on the line.”
The war o f Lebanon left him a self declared old man
at twentjr^our years of age. He describes himself as a
special breed o f Israeli ^ p n e with sensitivity, yet Sabra,
unafraid to d־be4101‎ j n appropriate circumstance. As a
commander he leads his troops in battle:
“In Lebanon I asked m yself, what am I doing here?
For the first tim e I realized that I had to make it through
alive...”
The ambition which every eighteen year old North
American takes for granted was suppressed for his four
years o f service, A commander volunteers an extra year
of service. Why did he volunteer to be a commander?
came from a family which has always taught me to
A friend o f his suffered a trauma while in Lebanon.
As he was on patrol he spotted an armed man flee into a
house. He knocked on the door — N o answer. Entering
the house he saw a fat old woman seated in a rocking
chair.
“Where is he?”
She said she didn’t know. The open barrel of the gun
suddenly grasped his attention and he shot them both,
through the old woman and the man she was sitting on.
How many died because they thought? He didn’t think:
“Thank God for that”, said m y friend. He then went
on to describe a hike with heavy packs and equipment:
“And when you climbed one peak and looked with
exhaustion toward the next, you were told that it was
only the halfway mark upon which you looked.”
By the end people were carried on stretchers because
they could walk no farther. At times on training marches,
some soldiers would fail to switch directions with the
group when they fell asleep on the march. It was they
who lost weekend leave.
>“N obody but an Israeli can understand how an Israeli
thinks”.
He said that only now are the Europeans developing a
sense with recent terrorist incidents in Europe. “They are
going wild over there; you should see the security at their
airports.” For an Israeli, he says the toughness develops
out of necessity.