ERIC SILVER

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem

Everyone's Vied,

hen an Israeli
soldier was beat-
en last week in
Hebron by
Palestinians and had his gun
stripped from him (later
returned by Palestinian
police), it marked a sense of
national degradation.
But now it's worse. The sol-
dier, Sgt. Assaf Myara, faces a
court martial on charges of
disgracing himself and the
army by allowing a Palestinian
mob to steal his automatic
rifle when it stormed the car
in which he was hitchhiking
through the West Bank.
Lisa Weinmann-Myara, a
State University of New York
graduate who settled in
Jerusalem with her Israeli hus-
band 16 years ago, is waging a
vigorous defense of her son.
Sgt. Myara, 19, whose
humiliation was seen on Israeli
and international television, is
recovering at home from his
stoning and beating by Bir
Zeit University students. They
were demonstrating for the
release of Palestinian security
prisoners. The civilian driver
escaped immediately, but the
sergeant was trapped.
At a time when the army's
deterrence is being chal-
lenged daily in Lebanon, Sgt.
Myara has been savaged in
the Israel Defense Forces and
the media for failing to open
fire when his life was in dan-
cut his head. "He was trying to hold
ger. His M-16 gun was not even
his gun close to him so that they
loaded.
wouldn't get it, and to protect his
A senior officer said: "It is incon-
head. He was pulled out and was
ceivable that Palestinian demonstrators
trapped between the door and the car.
could reach him so easily, hit him and
He was on the ground and surround-
take his weapon — and all of this
ed by Palestinians.
without his doing a thing.
"He was still trying to pro-
It is simply disgraceful."
Sgt. Assaf Myara
tect his head and the rifle
The British-born
crouches o n the
At that point, there was no
Weinmann-Myara hit
ground as his M-16 possibility of a getaway.
back. "If he had used his
assault nif e is taken They were kicking him and
gun," the 41-year-old
from him and he is
beating him on all parts of
mother insisted in an
surrounde d and
his body. Assaf realized that
attacked I), y stone-
interview this week, "the
what they were really after
kid wouldn't be alive today. wielding
was his gun. That was
Palestinia y who
They would have lynched
something that worried
were prote sting
him."
him. He knew the rules. It
Israel's r efusal to
Assaf, she claimed, was
was taken by force."
release po litical
in shock after a rock came
Weinmann-Myara,
prisoner.
through the window and

groups, would steal from
it and inhabit it. So, I
can't leave the country."
She will never feel the
same about the IDF,
Photo by AP
however. "My second
son," she said, "is a
high-flier. He intended
to go for the top in the
army. He wanted to be
in a combat unit, to be
an officer, to serve on
the front line, to be in
Lebanon, to give as
much as he could give.
"Today, his attitude
has changed. He says if
he has to do his three
years' compulsory ser-
vice, he'll do it. But he
will not volunteer for a
combat unit. He will go
for a 9-to-5 job. ... Liad
would say what many,
many people have said:
`It appears that the army
likes its heroes dead."
Weinmann-Myara
First came to Israel to
study at Hebrew
University, but left to
take a degree in interna-
tional marketing at
SUNY. At Hebrew
University she met her
future husband, Arieh,
now an executive at the
Jerusalem Hilton.
The family has been
reinforced in its convic-
tion that "what Assaf
did was the only thing
possible" by visits from
dozens of Assaf's old
school friends and hun-
dreds of sympathetic
phone calls.
"They've done everything —
washing him, putting ointment on,
changing bandages, cleaning his
wounds," his mother said.
Weinmann-Myara, disabled by
spinal injuries she suffered in a road
accident 10 years ago, is worried
about the long-term effect the attack
will have on her son.
"The physical wounds will heal,
but he's not a talker," she said.
"We'll need to give him psychologi-
cal help to get him over this trau-
ma."
The IDF, it seems, has other
plans. "The intention," said a senior
officer, "is to sentence him to
lengthy imprisonment." ❑

The Israeli soldier beaten
in the West Bank last week by Palestinians
now faces an army court martial.

whose younger son, Liad, is due to be
drafted next year, confessed that the
prospect of a court martial left her
torn between logic and maternal emo-
tion.
"My mother's instinct says: Lisa,
the Zionist ideology that you came
here for no longer exists; that I've
given years of my life to this coun-
try; that we and our children have
arrended 20 funerals of friends killed
terrorists over the past 10 years.
Enough is enough. It's time to move
on.
"That's my gut instinct. But logic
says that it doesn't work that way. If
everyone was to run away when they
were injured, the country would fall
to pieces. ... Thieves, in this case
Yassir Arafat and the terrorist

12/11

1998

Detroit Jewish News

31