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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
May the coming
Rafael Eitan: Israel's Top Soldier
By SIMON GRIVER
. World Zionist Press Service
year be filled
JERUSALEM — There is
more than meets the eye to
Rafael Eitan, Israel's 11th
with health and
v1n3ri
happiness for
nacn
to all
all our family
our friends
and relatives
and friends
ABE & SYLVIA PEARLMAN
RHEA, HAROLD &
. MERRIL ROWE
RAFAEL EITAN
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
ROBERTA & JERRY MALIN
Dennis, Jeff, Cari & Alissa
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
DAVE & ETHEL NATINSKY
,
.
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
ROZ & SID PELTON
Plantation, Florida
y
,
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
MRS. BEN BENESON & FAMILY
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
• e
ilk
ray a 4.
a .we
r.
411,
and longest serving chief of
staff. On every rung of the
military ladder he managed
to impress his superiors, but
never to the degree that any
of them expected him to
reach the more senior
ranks.
However, Eitan always
seems to have an extra
trick up his sleeve. Even
when he became the chief of
staff in 1978 he was viewed
as a "yes" man who would
leave politics to the politi-
cians. He was considered a
brave and talented man, but
mainly a practical soldier
who had neither the
shrewdness, ability nor am-
bition to exploit his position
to make political state-
ments.
Eitan has been involved
in numerous highly pub-
licized controversies, at-
tracting the wrath of the
Labor Alignment for his
hard line views on territo-
rial concessions. He even
fell afoul of government cir-
cles over his handling of the
Sinai withdrawal.
But Eitan's military
credentials are impecca-
ble. Born in 1929 in the
Jezreel Valley moshav of
Tel Adashim, where he
still lives, his father was
Moshe Kaminsky, one of
the founders of the
Hashomer movement.
Eitan left school at 13,
preferring the practical
life of farming. He has
never fully shaken off the
stigma of being a man
who is no intellectual,
even though he later
studied for several years
at various military col-
leges.
At age 17 he joined the
Palmach and during the
War of Independence he was
wounded while fighting in
the Katamon quarter of
Jerusalem. He was
wounded twice more, near
Tiberias, in the early 1950s
while conducting a reprisal
raid for which he received a
bravery citation, and at
Kantara in 1968.
In the Sinai campaign of
1956 he was a battalion
commander, in the Six-Day
War a brigade commander
and shortly after the Yom
Kippur War was placed as
head of Northern Com-
mand. In 1977, he was pro-
moted to the head of general
staff and became chief of
staff the following year.
Eitan always avoided
journalists before becoming
chief of staff. But the
taciturn "moshavnik" sud-
denly transformed himself
into probably the most
interviewed and publicized
chief of staff Israel has ever
had.
His first media cam-
paign was ironically that
the press should be more
restrained in criticizing
Israel. His assertion that
the West Bank and Gaza
were needed if Israel
were to be properly de-
fended was seen by the
Labor opposition as
grossly violating the
bounds of his respon-
sibilities.
Eitan's negative ap-
proach to evicting settlers
first on the West Bank and
later in Sinai brought him
reprimands from Defense
Ministers Ezer Weizmann
and Ariel Sharon. In Sinai
he publicly told settlers that
he would try to change gov-
ernment policy on the
evacuation. Rumor mon-
gers had it that only Prime
Minister Begin's personal
admiration of Eitan saved
him from being fired.
Eitan was also attacked
for reducing the sentences
of soldiers found guilty of
shooting to kill Arab protes-
ters. And only a week before
the Lebanese invasion some
Knesset members were
angry because he had said
that the only solution to the
problem of the PLO was a
military one.
But in matters purely
military nobody can find
fault with Eitan. The execu-
tion of the Lebanese war
could not have been more ef-
fective. One of his
peacetime achievements
was to reduce the number of
training fatalities by 40
percent.
It is therefore ironic
that his 26-year-old son
Yoram was killed in 1981
when piloting a practice
flight. Eitan had lost his
only other son who died
during an asthma attack
when just 10. These
tragedies are shared by
his wife Miriam and their
three daughters.
Eitan is still very much
the farmer who disdains the
"cocktail circuit" and is no
after-dinner speaker. Mak-
ing no bones of his dislike of
modern sophistication, he
yearns for the austere val-
ues of the pioneering days
and regrets what he sees as
the negative values that af-
fluence is introducing to Is-
raeli society.
But inevitably history
will judge Eitan's military
career by the war in Leba-
non, during his record fifth
year in office.
American
Red Cross
Time on
your hands?
We could use
those hands.
Join us.
A Riblic Sernce of ThG Newspaper
& The AdverbAing Council,PO
Friday, September 17, 1982 107
Best wishes for a
happy, healthy
New Year
May the coming
year be filled
DENNIS, MONA,
ROBYN & SETH STERN
lariDn
with health and
111\15 illt13"2
happiness for
to all
our friends
all our family
and relatives
and friends
LOU & ESTHER STYBEL
JERRY, FRAN, MARCI
& MARK UZANSKY
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
MR. & MRS. GERALD CLAYTON & FAMILY
:
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
AARON & TILLIE ROSEN
We wish our family and friends a
very healthy, happy and prosperous
New Year
MR. & MRS. HARRY SCHLOMPER
,.
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
,
LOS ANGELES, CA.
NATE & SARA FEINSTEIN
,
.,. ,
xFfs. -
,
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
AVRUM & CLARA FEINSTEIN
-
tf
,..
,
;,-
.
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
LIZ & LOU FREEMAN
,
,
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
THE FRIEDMAN'S, EARL,
ADELE, HELENE, MICHAEL
'l am
Anc'-
,.
Wishing all our family and
friends a year of
health and happiness
HELEN SOLARZ & FAMILY
-