March 29, 1999
 

 
                    Hell No, They  Won't Go
                    

                    ZE'EV CHAFETS
 
 

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon
                    because we don't love our children
                    enough. It is our job, not theirs, to
                    stand up to the cynical grown men
                    who use them to save face, to avoid hard decisions or the risk of
                    political defeat.

                    It has become a cliché: our soldiers in South Lebanon are dying for
                    nothing. But soldiers never die for nothing. They die for a reason; or
                    in this case, reasons.Soldiers are dying because we made an
                    enemy of the Shi'ites of South Lebanon. In 1982 they greeted us as
                    liberators, friends who broke the PLO grip on their land. I know this
                    because I was there, a guest in the homes of some of the major
                    Shi'ite leaders. We promised them we'd leave and they were
                    grateful. Seventeen years later we're still there, and they hate us.

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because generals -- especially
                    discredited and demoralized generals -- don't surrender land. We
                    had direct or indirect control of a strip of territory north of the
                    Lebanese border dating back to the late 70s. After the 1982 debacle,
                    the General Staff was afraid to give it up. So they named it "Security
                    Zone" and invented a bedtime story about its strategic importance.

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because security is the third rail of
                    Israeli politics. No politician in his right mind -- not Shamir, Peres or
                    the sainted Rabin -- was prepared to give up a "Security Zone" to the
                    enemy, which is what the Shi'ites had become. Soldiers are dying in
                    Lebanon because the politicians needed a bogeyman. They chose
                    an old favorite, the domino theory. Give up Bint Jbail to the Shi'ites,
                    and Kiryat Shmonah will fall, and then Jerusalem. Thirty years ago,
                    Americans died in Vietnam because the loss of Saigon would mean
                    inevitable Communist world conquest.

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because Prime Minister Netanyahu
                    has no intention of "tucking his tail between his legs." He's a winner,
                    always has been, always will be, and if a few dozen kids have to die
                    to prove it, well that's geopolitics for you right there.

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because Ehud Barak, one of the
                    fathers of the Security Zone concept, is afraid of telling the truth in
                    the middle of a tight campaign. He's OK with a few dozen more body
                    bags; after the election, "within a year", he'll fix everything by making
                    a deal with the Syrians (who, after all, have every reason to want to
                    take pressure off of Israel).

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because their former commander,
                    Yitzhak Mordechai, and the other generals of the centrist party, are
                    not about to admit that they are personally responsible for losing the
                    war to Hizballah. Mordechai couldn't defeat 800 guerrillas with the
                    combined forces of the Northern Command. He couldn't whip them,
                    as defense minister, using the entire Israeli army. But make him
                    prime minister and he'll clean the whole thing up. In the meantime,
                    nobody gives a more lugubrious (televised) military eulogy.

                    Soldiers are dying in Lebanon because they are, most of them,
                    teenagers who don't know any better. They think that combat will
                    make men of them, test their mettle, impress the cool girls. Most of
                    them also sincerely believe they're defending the northern border.
                    When the wounded are interviewed in their clean hospital beds, they
                    say they can't wait to get back to their units. They've got the fighting
                    spirit. There's no end to what generals and politicians can do with
                    the fighting spirit of teenagers.

                    Mostly, though, soldiers are dying in Lebanon because we don't love
                    our children enough. It is our job, not theirs, to stand up to the cynical
                    grown men who use them to save face, to avoid hard decisions or
                    the risk of political defeat. We, the generation of the Bar-Lev line, are
                    obliged to tell Bibi, Barak, Mordechai and the others that we
                    recognize their self-serving rhetoric for what it is because we've
                    heard it before; and that we're not going to let them make corpses of
                    our children because they, themselves, lack the brains and balls to
                    put an end to the futile, pointless war in South Lebanon.

                    There are various ways to do this. One is to vote for a party that
                    unequivocally favors immediate, unilateral withdrawal (right now I
                    am leaning toward "Yesh," the women's rights list). Another is to tell
                    kids who don't want to serve in Lebanon that it is perfectly all right,
                    and encourage them to make their military choices accordingly. Most
                    of all we need to raise our own voices. In a country that drafts kids
                    right out of high school, it is the parents who have to hoist the banner
                    of resistance, fill the streets and city squares (and the jails, if
                    necessary) and proclaim, on behalf of our children: "Hell no, they
                    won't go."

                    Not an original slogan, but it sure beats the hell out of Kaddish.
 
 

                                  The Jerusalem Report