In Israel.
A 'Terrible Silence

It's almost as if Israelis don't
want to deal with the political or
psychological aspects of the war.

INA FRIEDMAN

Special to The Jewish News

T

he Lahmi family of
Ramat Gan was not at
home when the missile
struck.
Visiting a relative at the
time, they recognized their
building from a televised
report from the damaged
area.
"When we got home we
found the place a shambles:
the walls were cracked, the
windows shattered, and the
furniture absolutely
destroyed," recalls 19-year-
old David Lahmi without the
least hint of emotion. "But I
can't say we had any sense of
having been saved by a twist
of fate, or anything like
that."
What features more sharp-
ly in the minds of the Lahmi
family today is the hassle of
getting their home put
together again.
"I think we've been more
affected by the stress of the
renovations — dealing with
the bureaucracy, running
around from pillar to post —
than by the experience of the
war," is David's candid
assessment. Neither does he
feel that the overall experi-
ence has changed his
outlook.
"The war seems like an-
cient history now," he says.
For other families in the
building, most of them elder-
ly people, memories of the

Ms. Friedman writes from
Israel.

war are still fresh. Tikva
Vivante says she gets
palpitations whenever she
recalls the terrible "boom"
that shook her sealed room
as the missile landed just
yards from her apartment.
Tova. and Avraham
Reichenbach, both pen-
sioners, still seem somewhat
stunned by the extent of the
destruction and their subse-
quent displacement (like the
other residents of the
building, they lived first in a
hotel and then in a rented
apartment for about eight
months). But when asked
whether they still think
about those first hours after
the missile struck, they, too,
tend to brush past the war
quickly — though in this
case to an earlier, far more
traumatic event.
"We're Holocaust sur-
vivors," Tova replies, pull-
ing up her sleeve to reveal
the large number tattooed
on her arm. And when que-
ried about any change in
their outlook or political
views, as a result of their ex-
perience, Avraham quickly
ducks the issue by declaring,
"We are not politicians!"
His response is not an un-
common one. On the con-
trary, stripping the war of
any manifest political
significance has been a
recurrent response among
Israelis since the day they
dismantled their sealed
rooms. It's almost as if they
choose to regard the event as
an instance of force majeur,
or at any rate not something
from which they and their

government should draw
any operative conclusions.
Strangely enough in a
country that is forever
analyzing its every move
and motive, there hasn't
even been speculation about
either the broad or narrow
political and social ramifica-
tions of the war.
Few have debated, for ex-
ample, whether Israel's stra-
tegic position was enhanced
or prejudiced by its conduct
during the war. And on a
completely different level
and scale, even fewer have
shown interest in whether
Israel's soaring rate of
violence within the family
(32 women have been
murdered by their spouses or
ex-husbands since the end of
the war) is not somehow
related to the fact that
rather than off to battle,
as in the past, Israeli men
spent the most terrifying
moments of the Gulf War

The entire country
has simply
repressed the
subject.

helplessly sequestered with
their spouses and children
(and often parents, in-laws,
and siblings, to boot) in seal-
ed rooms.
Even the postwar revela-
tion that countless gas
masks were defective and
would have provided as
much protection against
poison gas as nylon sheeting
provided against the conven-
tional warheads raised little
more than a ripple of
outrage from the Israeli
public.
Those masks, by the way,
have yet to be replaced, even
though Saddam Hussein
remains firmly in power and
virtually no Israeli believes
that all his missiles have

been destroyed. The ex-
planation for this blase at-
titude in the face of lurking
danger, concludes Ha'aretz
columnist Gideon Levi, is
that the entire country has
simply repressed the subject.
"In 1973 we suffered a
trauma and in its wake an
endless catharsis of protest,
involvement, respon-
siveness, discussions, peti-
tions and demonstrations,"
he writes. "In '91 we suf-
fered a trauma that, from
many standpoints, was no
easier to bear, and in its
wake — terrible silence."
The paradox is that
although the Gulf War was
the least punishing of
Israel's conflicts, it,
nonetheless, assumed terri-
fying proportions as some-
thing of a peek into the
future, almost a "dry run" of
the kind of harrowing war
that may yet come to pass.
That would certainly explain
why Israelis closed the lid on
it as quickly as possible.
Yet inevitably there is also
a political dimension to such
behavior. "Repressing the
subject has enabled us to
evade not only painful
memories but also a
penetrating political discus-
sion of what the next war
will be like and how it can be
averted," Mr. Levi observes.
Such a debate might also
help clarify what Israel is
prepared to pay for a polit-
ical settlement. "But that is
precisely what the repres-
sion was meant to avoid," he
believes. "The war is never
mentioned; we don't refer to
its price; we don't reflect on
the odds that it will recur,
and so there's no need to
change anything."
And it must be said that
especially at a time when
preserving the status quo is
being touted as priority for
Yitzhak Shamir's govern-
ment, those words ring
disturbingly true. ❑

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

23

