This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2149

Hizbollahstan: How an Israeli Cindy Sheehan and the Four Mothers movement pushed the Lebanon retreat that plunged Israel into war

July 23, 2006

The website of the Four Mothers group, which spearheaded Israel's Lebanon retreat, is a case study in defeatism and denial. The grassroots movement enabled the Israeli government to manipulate public opinion in favor of a retreat from Lebanon.The group's 'peace' efforts set the stage for the attacks which Dr. Daniel Pipes termed "Israel's Unnecessary War". A 2000 article already predicted that "Hizbollahstan" would be the immediate result of Israel's show of perceived weakness.The ignominious abandonment of Lebanon, which was hailed as a victory by Islamists,whetted their appetite for more, and enabled the terrorist group Hezbollah to spread it's influence into Gaza and the West Bank and build up an arsenal of 13,000 missiles on Israel's border Those missiles are now being fired into Israel in an unprecedented assault on Israeli towns and cities...http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2135

The decision of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak to withdraw from Lebanon and leave Hezbollah to literally and figuratively take up positions in old Israelis outposts has lead to six years of violence and attacks. A Jerusalem Post article detailing the fighting at Moshav Avivim, one kilometer from the border recounts that:

"... Wednesday was Avivim's worst day so far in the current fighting with Hizbullah and one of the worst days in the history of the long-suffering community.

Earlier in the day, two IDF soldiers were killed and nine wounded in a clash with Hizbullah forces on the Lebanese side of the border. The forces had been sent in to destroy a Hizbullah outpost directly opposite the moshav.

The outpost was originally built by the IDF and abandoned intact after prime minister Ehud Barak ordered a hasty withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000..."http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291951810&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israel's ignominious and suicidal retreat was the direct result of a movement spearheaded by Orna Shimoni, a bereaved mother whose son Lieutenant Eyal Shimoni was killed in Lebanon. His bereaved mother Orna Shimoni became an "Israeli Cindy Sheehan's and became part of a group of 3 other mothers which garnered public and political support for an anti war /Lebanon withdrawal movement.

The sucess of the Four Mothers for pushing for Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon using the public sympathy for bereaved mothers proved to be a death knell for the sons of countless others,and for scores of Israelis now falling victim to the Hezbollah missile attacks which were a direct result of the withdrawal. The deaths of 2 soldiers today at a Hezbollah base in an abandoned Israeli outpost is a case in point. Israel is at war and now is not the time for recriminations, but the Four Mothers movement should be pointed out as a reminder - since the Israeli public is known to have should memories, and might be tempted to work out a deal before Hezbollah has been vanquished.

A press release about the dismantling of the organisation was published in 2000 is a mixture of denial and willful deceit and tragic irony in light of the present war which was a direct result of the Four Mother's initiative.

Ha'aretz 3.6.00

Members of the Four Mothers movement on Saturday met at Kibbutz Gadot to announce the dismantling of the organization, after their struggle for the withdrawal of the IDF from south Lebanon was crowned successful.

The organization_s chairwoman, Rachel David, said it was fitting the organization should be dismantled in the same place it was conceived, after the 1997 disaster that claimed the life of 73 soldiers and officers when two Yasur helicopters en route to Lebanon crashed to the ground.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Friday told representatives of the organization that the plans for a withdrawal were not only election promises, but a realization that the IDF's presence in south Lebanon gave Israel no security advantage.

http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/four.htm

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In an article written right after the withdrawal, journalist Ehud Ya'ari predicted with clairvoyant precision that Israel would come under attack and that any hiatus in violence was used for them to arm with the help of Syria and Teheran , and noted:

*The first, short-term priority is to "digest" the newly acquired territory, which contains 100,000 Shi'ites, most of whom have spent their whole lives under the administration of Israel's Lebanon Liaison Unit.

*But in the long term, Hizballah is bound to be grappling with the question of how to exploit the new situation in order to export the creed of armed struggle to the Palestinians.

*Hizballah's main effort has been supported by Iran and encouraged by Syria. All these will, in my opinion, want to underline the fragility of the situation on the northern border

* It's enough to listen to the Hizballah spokesmen's carefully calculated rhetoric to understand that their goal from now on is not to rest on their victory laurels, but to turn their model of armed Jihad into an example to be followed. (see article below)

"...Hizballah's main effort has been supported by Iran and encouraged by Syria. All these will, in my opinion, want to underline the fragility of the situation on the northern border. Stones have already been hurled at the fence, and I would be most surprised if at some point they don't try to test Israel with a lone sniper here or an explosive charge there. Nasrallah's approach is undoubtedly to create a state of permanent tension along the border, even if there is no shelling right away. He has already made it clear that he has a weapon of deterrence to wave at Ehud Barak: Safed, Hatzor, Karmiel and the outskirts of Haifa are now within Katyusha range. Hizballah could use this capability not only in response to any massive retaliation launched by Israel, but also to open up a "Second Front" in the event of a renewed outbreak of violence in the territories. Israel, according to Nasrallah, is "weaker than a spider's web."

The Shebaa farms could serve as a trigger for Hizballah violence, but don't constitute a target in their own right..." 7/6/2000

------------------------------

Hizballahstan

Ehud Ya'ari, Jerusalem Report Magazine, 7.6.00

http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/hizbal.htm

June 19, 2000

From the ramparts of the castle of Beaufort all the way to the Mediterranean shore, the majority of the territory that was once known as Fatahland, and that later became the Israeli-controlled security zone, has now turned into Hizballahstan. The bottom line: Israel has, pure and simply, handed over control along the length of its northern border to a party that has declared Holy War against it. If, before the withdrawal, the open-fire regulations for IDF soldiers guarding the border were to shoot any armed, unidentified element on sight, they now have to keep their safety catches firmly closed even as a Hizballah fighter waves his rifle across the fence, less than a hundred yards away from houses on the perimeter of Upper Galilee communities.

Without any exaggeration or resort to poetic license, the IDF is now deployed outside the lounge window of my Aunt Devorah's house in Metullah; Hizballah sits just across the fence in Kafr Kila, recruiting into its ranks the young Shi'ites who used to help with the cherry-picking in Devorah's orchards. She spotted a few of them on TV sporting new stubble and the yellow flags of the new lords in the area, saluting Hizballah secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah at the victory rally he held on May 26 in liberated South Lebanon. Some of the new recruits can, by the way, still be reached on their Israeli cell phones, but that won't be the case for long.

For the first time in a quarter century, since the end of 1975, the Good Fence is locked and all traffic across the famous border point has stopped. This new reality won't change even if the U.N. realizes all its plans for upgrading UNIFIL from six to eight battalions and deploying them along the electronic wire of the international border line. UNIFIL doesn't have any real mandate to operate against Hizballah. Rather, its brief is to assist the Lebanese government in enforcing its authority. In any case, only a fool would believe that Italians, French, Danes or Australians, should they ever appear, would put their heart into continuing from the point at which the IDF left off. We have already witnessed how UNIFIL officers from the command headquarters in Naqura were invited to Bint Jbeil to listen to Sheikh Nasrallah make a mockery of the Security Council and explain that he has no interest in its resolutions. Naturally, it didn't occur to them to get up and leave as the crowd of thousands bellowed out an oath of allegiance to Iran's leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Sure, it would be nice if the Foreign Legionnaires were to come in place of the UNIFIL soldiers from Fiji or Ghana, or in addition to them, but it won't make a huge difference. Lebanon is no Sierra Leone, but the Blue Helmets aren't likely to clash with the turbans.

The hope in the corridors of the U.N. and in Jerusalem, that regular troops of the Lebanese Army will be sent south, also remains a distant one. According to the assessments, a deployment on a scale of two to three brigades could rein in Hizballah's control over the territory and could only aid stability. But all that Syria had allowed Lebanese President Emile Lahoud to do by press time was to send down a few hundred gendarmes to protect the Christian villages that had been the target of raids and looting. The Lebanese gendarmes in their mottled uniforms, submachine guns at the ready, make for good photographs, but nobody in Lebanon takes them seriously. They represent nothing more than a means for the puppet government in Beirut to display nominal sovereignty without impinging on the de facto control seized by Hizballah in the first 48 hours after the Israeli evacuation. Syria managed to create a vacuum in South Lebanon that, predictably, has been filled by Hizballah. True, Nasrallah conceded power in the Druse sector in the southeast to the militias of Walid Jumblatt and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party. Hizballah also tolerates an Amal armed presence in the Shi'ite areas. But overall superiority belongs decidedly, unequivocally, to Hizballah. For our part, the Lebanese State is only our theoretical neighbor. Our actual, immediate neighbors belong to a movement created by Iran, that is totally mobilized by and loyal to Iran's political agenda.

Regretfully, it's hard to imagine this as the beginning of a wonderful friendship. It's enough to listen to the Hizballah spokesmen's carefully calculated rhetoric to understand that their goal from now on is not to rest on their victory laurels, but to turn their model of armed Jihad into an example to be followed. Hizballah is not parting with its weapons. On the contrary, it has recently introduced improved anti-air missiles from Teheran - via Damascus of course - as well as heavier 240-mm Katyushas, third-generation anti-tank missiles like the Coronet and so on. Hizballah isn't interested in the antiquated tanks and slow-rolling artillery left behind by the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army. It couldn't move them quickly enough out of the arena, up north to Baalbek. It is almost certain that Hizballah won't be in a hurry to set the North ablaze. It took them 17 years of fighting to rid Lebanon of the Israelis (and now, for the first time, they have admitted to a loss on their side of 1,300 men). What they need now is a new strategy. Even if they decide to heat things up on the still-disputed frontier slopes of the Hermon, this would involve a problematic departure from the kind of warfare they are used to. The U.N. has ruled, in Israel's favor, that the Shebaa farms, which Israel has not left, are not Lebanese territory but Syrian. In any case, the Shebaa territory is part of the Golan Heights, and not Israel proper. The Shebaa farms could serve as a trigger for Hizballah violence, but don't constitute a target in their own right.

Hizballah's options lie elsewhere. The first, short-term priority is to "digest" the newly acquired territory, which contains 100,000 Shi'ites, most of whom have spent their whole lives under the administration of Israel's Lebanon Liaison Unit. Thousands of residents in the new Hizballahstan lost their incomes with the break up of the South Lebanon Army and the sudden severance from Israel. Many villages used to receive water and electricity from us and are in pressing need of an alternative supply. Nasrallah now has to spread his network of educational, medical and religious institutions into the villages of the region. The movement's military infrastructure rests on these services everywhere else in Lebanon. Hizballah has indicated that it would be happy for some investment from the Beirut authorities or from bodies such as the U.N. Development Project. However, all this is really a case of Hizballah making the right noises to give the impression of bowing its head before the state authority, having declared that it is not assuming what it calls any "security authority" for itself. But in the long term, Hizballah is bound to be grappling with the question of how to exploit the new situation in order to export the creed of armed struggle to the Palestinians. Intelligence reports already reveal signs of attempts by Hizballah to penetrate the Palestinian arena with the help of Islamic Jihad and some of the Hamas leadership in exile. The plan is to sneak into Israel a number of Palestinians who've been recruited, for example, from Turkish universities and sent to Iran for explosives training. Hizballah also intends to launch a massive indoctrination campaign to undermine the position of those who support a rapprochement with Israel.

Nasrallah asserts that in Lebanon, Israel suffered military defeat for the first time, and he promises that this is the beginning of a new era. He preaches in favor of an Intifada "outside of the Oslo framework," as distinct from the short outbursts of violence that occur now and again in the territories. His words are already having an impact in certain circles. The Palestinian press is very admiring of Hizballah and its methods. And some meetings have been held to discuss the lessons of Lebanon, albeit so far nothing more than that. Arafat has chosen to dismiss Nasrallah's claim that the withdrawal was a military victory for Hizballah. Hizballah's main effort has been supported by Iran and encouraged by Syria. All these will, in my opinion, want to underline the fragility of the situation on the northern border. Stones have already been hurled at the fence, and I would be most surprised if at some point they don't try to test Israel with a lone sniper here or an explosive charge there. Nasrallah's approach is undoubtedly to create a state of permanent tension along the border, even if there is no shelling right away. He has already made it clear that he has a weapon of deterrence to wave at Ehud Barak: Safed, Hatzor, Karmiel and the outskirts of Haifa are now within Katyusha range. Hizballah could use this capability not only in response to any massive retaliation launched by Israel, but also to open up a "Second Front" in the event of a renewed outbreak of violence in the territories. Israel, according to Nasrallah, is "weaker than a spider's web."

The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, which had to be brought forward and assumed a different format due to the sudden collapse of the SLA, is a dangerous gamble. One can only marvel at the courage of Barak for having taken so much responsibility on his shoulders - against the advice of most of the top echelon of the army and the intelligence branches, contrary to the approach of his more influential ministers (Yossi Sarid among them), and despite the quiet warnings he got from American and Arab officials alike not to speed up the pull-back. If it transpires that any hope for an agreement with Syria has vanished, the gamble will be even riskier. And all the more so if the Stockholm talks with Arafat's representatives end in failure. What's more, Barak is now obligated to fulfill his promise of a strong Israeli reaction to any attack from Lebanon, just as he kept his word to withdraw by the summer of 2000. The first challenge from across the border must be met with a huge and very painful blow to Lebanon and Syria alike. Not a surgical air strike, but a series of blows that put the Syrians in a state of shock. The prime minister made a mistake by allowing his bureau chief, Danny Yatom, to give the other side advance notice that there is no chance of another Israeli land incursion into Lebanon. As is usual here, people speak too much at the wrong moments. If we so much as hint to Hizballah and the Syrians that Israel is prepared to tolerate chronic disquiet along its northern border, that's exactly what we'll get.

-----------------------

MIM: Excerpts from Barak's speech on the eve of withdrawal from Lebananon where he mocks "the bleak prophecies of the extremists who wish to scare us away from reaching a peace agreement" is a study in perfidy. That Barak was considering running for reelection instead of being tried for treason,underscores the skewed perceptions, and cowardly stance of the non religious leaders who denied Israel's divine claims to Israel, and pushed the idea of a democratic country which would rather commit national suicide then claim their rightful inheritance. In an obscenely cynical gesture,that Barak, who is a committed secularist, used the words of a prayer to justify his betrayal of his people. Barak's subsequent deference to Arafat at the Camp David summit ,when he grotesquely demurred to the terrorist leader upon entering the premises with President Clinton in tow, spoke volumes about Israel's self abnegation. This lack of national pride invited scorn, derision, and ultimately attack from Israel's enemies. As was pointed out in Jerusalem Post article in 2000:

The Left in Israel, over represented in Barak's government, is increasingly critical of the use of force in general. Moreover the Pavlovian response of the international communiyt to the possibility of retaliation is to call for restraint, despite the fact that such behaviour constitutes a reward for the agressor and an invitation for further agression.The attraction of unilateral withdrawal, lay in the ability to carry it out without an Arab partner, solely on Barak's order.

MIM:Barak's pompous speech was reminscent of Chamberlain's 'peace for out time' speech after arriving in the UK announcing the results of his meeting with "Mr.Hitler".

Therefore, I can tell you that there is no basis to the bleak prophecies of extremists who wish to scare us away from reaching a peace agreement. These are the same prophets who warned us about the duplicity of Sadat when he visited Jerusalem, and of the Katyushas falling on Kfar Saba following the signing of the Oslo Agreement. These are the same prophets who would not dare to withdraw from Lebanon. It is these prophets who are unwilling to make the effort required to end the cycle of bloodshed. We are prepared to make the effort.

I am saying to the world: Israel is pursuing peace because it is strong, and because it possesses self-confidence. Israel is pursuing peace because it seeks a future that is more secure, and it seeks new hope for its children... http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches%20by%20Israeli%20leaders/2000/Address%20to%20the%20Knesset%20by%20PM%20Barak%20on%20the%20Camp%20Dav

Excerpts from Address to the Knesset by Prime Minister Ehud Barak on the Camp David Summit July 10, 2000 Israeli citizens, we face crucial decisions in the days ahead. Just over a year ago, the Israeli people elected this government by a sweeping majority, and provided it with a mandate to lead the country - not in order to maintain the existing situation, but in order to change the situation at its very roots - to ensure a more secure future for Israel, and to provide hope for our children. We fulfilled our promise to end the 18-year tragedy and to bring our sons home from Lebanon; ... and we will act in a similar way, leaving no stone unturned, in an effort to end the bloody 100-year conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. We will act with determination, courage and resourcefulness, while insisting on separation from the Palestinians, and upholding our assurances on these critical "red lines":

  • No return to the 1967 lines.
  • A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
  • No foreign army west of the Jordan River.
  • An absolute majority of the settlers in Judea and Samaria living in settlement blocs under our sovereignty.
  • Israel will not accept moral or legal responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem. In the elections, the Israeli people provided us with a clear and decisive mandate to lead the country, to identify problems and resolve them, and to identify challenges and confront them from positions of strength and with self-confidence. In our history, there have been governments which have preserved the existing situation and there have been governments which changed the very roots of the situation, and promised a better future for all our children.
  • Thus did the Provisional State Council act, under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, when it established the state, in spite of the fierce internal opposition.
  • Thus did the Begin government act when it broke through the circle of enmity surrounding Israel and made peace, despite the strong opposition of the right wing.
  • The Rabin government took this path, when it paved the way towards [reconciliation with] our Palestinian neighbors, in spite of the bloody incitement in the streets, and this is the approach of the present government under my leadership.
  • The great leaders of Israel set out from here, from united Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, in order to meet with the great and important leaders and to make the crucial decisions of Israel's history.
  • Today, I wish to depart from Jerusalem for Camp David, in order to complete the peace-making mission begun by the late Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin.
  • I will not be traveling alone. I will be joined by two million voters who entrusted us again with leading the country. I will be joined by the Israeli public and by citizens who are open to change, and who seek peace, hope and a strong and modern Israel built upon the foundations of security and peace - a state which will put an end to thirty years of coping with the burdens of ruling over another people, enabling its citizens instead to focus their energies and talents on domestic needs, on the Galilee and the Negev, on the elimination of social deprivation and inequality, on education and hi-tech, on science, the technological revolution, the 21st century and the future of all our children.
  • I am joined by millions of youngsters, adults, immigrants and veterans who wish to give peace a chance, and are asking the prime minister to do everything possible in order to try and end the cycle of bloodshed, and to bring peace, while maintaining our red lines.
  • I feel the acute pain but also the hope of Yitzhak Frankental, whose son Arik was killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack; the pain and hope of Smadar Haran who lost Yael, Einat and Danny in a cold blooded terrorist act, and of Yehezkel Cohen whose son Noam was killed in a terrorist attack.
  • I feel the pain and the hope of thousands of anxious bereaved families. In my heart, I also feel the hurt of the pioneering Israeli settlers in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
  • I fully understand the depth of sincerity and anguish in their cries .
  • I have been a soldier for over 35 years. In fighting for peace, just as in war, even when it is painful and difficult, I will not take my eye off the target; I will keep my hand steady on the helm and the compass. Therefore, I can tell you that there is no basis to the bleak prophecies of extremists who wish to scare us away from reaching a peace agreement. These are the same prophets who warned us about the duplicity of Sadat when he visited Jerusalem, and of the Katyushas falling on Kfar Saba following the signing of the Oslo Agreement. These are the same prophets who would not dare to withdraw from Lebanon. It is these prophets who are unwilling to make the effort required to end the cycle of bloodshed. We are prepared to make the effort.
  • My head echoes with the recognition which the late Menachem Begin carried with him when embarking on his mission for peace: "The difficulties of peace are certainly preferable to the pain of war. War destroys life, ruins dreams and sows bereavement and loss." I am embarking on my journey in order to try and return with an agreement that will strengthen Israel - an agreement that will be presented to the people for their approval, as it was the people who sent me and provided me with the mandate. Mr. Speaker, distinguished Members of Knesset, I am saying to the citizens of Israel that peace is not simply a matter of ceding parts of the land that we love. Rather, it is the key to a profound change in our entire lifestyle. Peace will bring about real change in the lives of each and every one of us. Peace will bring foreign investment, the continuation of economic growth, higher employment and more jobs. It will lead to greater funding for education, health and infrastructures.
  • Peace will reduce social inequalities and deprivation, and will provide equal opportunities for all, including those who have fallen behind. I wish to tell the Palestinians that Israel's military strength was established in order to defend ourselves and to enable us to achieve peace.
  • We cannot be threatened on the battlefield. We will not be defeated in war. Israel is the strongest military power in the region. We will continue to preserve Israel's military strength in the future in order to consolidate the stability of peace and to deter the opponents of peace who believe that they can hurt us.
  • This military power, backed by a profound sense of moral justice, will bolster peace and ensure that it is preserved. I am saying to the world: Israel is pursuing peace because it is strong, and because it possesses self-confidence. Israel is pursuing peace because it seeks a future that is more secure, and it seeks new hope for its children...
  • In the name of you all, citizens of Israel, parents and children, the people of Israel, I depart today from Jerusalem, our eternal capital, in order to carry Israel forward. I will exhaust every opportunity to bring peace and security, carrying in my heart the prayer of peace of the Jewish people since time immemorial: "Bestow peace, goodness and blessing, life, favor, kindness and mercy upon us and upon all Israel Your people." The prayer ends:" Blessed art Thou, Almighty God, who blesses His people Israel with peace." I will conclude with the words of the Psalmist: "The Almighty will grant His people strength; the Almighty will bless His people with peace
  • ---------------------------------------------------
  • The movement that shaped the Lebanon pullout
    By Leora Eren Frucht, Jerusalem Post, 8.6.00

    Ronit Nachmias, Bruria Sharon, Zahara Antavi and Rachel Ben-Dor of Four Mothers.
    Photo by Ariel Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post

    http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/movement.htm

    (June 7) -- How did the Four Mothers become one of the most successful grassroots movements in Israeli history - and what does its victory mean for the future? --

    They were spat upon, called traitors, and dubbed by one army commander "the four rags." They were a few women whose sons served in Lebanon and felt their view was as valid as that of any general's - and didn't hesitate to say so.

    They challenged military dogma and, last week, with the withdrawal of the last Israeli soldier from Lebanon, they claimed victory.

    By then, the Four Mothers movement had arguably become one of the most successful grass-roots movements in Israeli history, scoring - in the eyes of supporters - a victory for democracy and sanity; in the view of critics - a triumph of defeatism.

    The Four Mothers movement was spawned on February 4, 1997, the night two helicopters over Moshav She'ar Yashuv en route to Lebanon collided, killing all 73 soldiers on board.

    That night the cost of remaining in Lebanon was put into razor-sharp relief for many Israelis, among them, Rachel Ben-Dor of Rosh Pina and her two friends Ronit Nahmias and Yaffa Arbel of Kibbutz Gadot. The three women had raised their sons together (Ben-Dor used to live at Gadot before moving to Rosh Pina) and watched them go off to the army together to serve in Lebanon.

    "We were always full of concern and fear, but we felt there was no choice: we were told that they had to be in Lebanon and that's all there was to it," recalls Nahmias, whose son served in the Golani Brigade.

    "But the night of the helicopter disaster was a turning point for us. Families very close to us lost their sons and we realized that if not today, then tomorrow we too could lose ours. And we began to ask, Why?"

    THE GOVERNMENT position - that the security zone was necessary to protect residents of northern Israel - began to ring hollow for the women as they watched Katyusha rockets rain down on nearby communities.

    Ben-Dor, who teaches at Tel Hai College, two kilometers north of Kiryat Shmona, recalls going to work along a route where Katyusha rockets regularly fell moments before or after she passed by.

    All the while, the price of remaining in the security zone was getting higher and higher with each ambush, helicopter crash and roadside bomb.

    They were bolstered by pronouncements of the Kochav Yair Circle, a multi-party group of MKs that included Yossi Beilin (Labor), who were also questioning the handling of the Lebanon issue. Ben-Dor and her friends began staging roadside protests, lobbying Knesset members, and circulating petitions, all aimed at removing the IDF from Lebanon.

    At first they were ridiculed and patronized. "Many of my neighbors on the kibbutz thought it was a passing phase, that I'd get over it," recalls Nahmias, who works as a personnel director at Gadot's factory.

    In media encounters, the women were pitted against political and military experts who would smile benignly, express sympathy for all mothers worried about their sons, and explain that the women didn't really understand security issues.

    "The media and military tried to portray our message as a purely emotional one," recalls Linda Ben-Zvi, the American-born head of the movement's English-language division.

    "They patronized us. But that was a great miscalculation because it was that emotional message that touched people. And by the time they realized that, the numbers had shifted and support for us had grown," says Ben-Zvi, a professor of theater at Tel Aviv University, whose son served in Lebanon.

    By then, the movement had become a threat.

    "People from the security establishment tried to frighten us, saying we were causing damage to our own children, strengthening the enemy. They would call me and say, 'you just don't know what damage you're doing,'" recalls Nahmias, who rejects the charge - one that critics of the movement continue to make today.

    "If I had believed that for a moment, I wouldn't have continued," she maintains.

    Among the most vocal accusations were those of Golani Brigade commander Col. Shmuel Zakai who dubbed the movement "the four rags" (and later apologized), and Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein, chief liaison officer in south Lebanon, who said that public calls for withdrawal endangered him personally.

    Gerstein was later killed in Lebanon.

    The accusations didn't smother the debate; if anything, it just became more acrimonious.

    Extensive media coverage, mounting casualties in Lebanon and ultimately, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's election promise to withdraw the army from the security zone all helped galvanize more support for the movement and its goal. It soon counted among its members not only mothers, but fathers, sons and citizens from all over Israel, and at one point collected 25,000 signatures for a petition to withdraw from Lebanon.

    DID THE Four Mothers movement merely reflect the Israeli public's growing malaise over Lebanon and ride that wave of discontent?

    "When we began, Lebanon was a silent war. No one talked about it. There was very little support for a withdrawal, let alone a unilateral withdrawal," maintains Ben-Zvi. "We didn't just reflect public opinion, we shaped it."

    "The main contribution of the movement was to legitimize the public debate over Lebanon," says Gadi Wolfsfeld, a Hebrew University professor of political science and communications. "Before they came along, debating what we were doing in Lebanon was a taboo subject; it wasn't patriotic to raise it."

    "You can have millions of disgruntled people, but if no one mobilizes them, nothing changes," says Bar-Ilan University sociologist Prof. Dafna Izraeli.

    "This movement was unquestionably a success because it managed to mobilize people and give a voice to that malaise."

    How did three or four determined women manage to mobilize public opinion?

    For one thing, they were mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon and among their ranks were bereaved mothers who had lost their sons in Lebanon. That touched a deep chord in Israeli society.

    "From the beginning of the involvement in Lebanon, there was confusion concerning the goals of the war," says Prof. Yaron Ezrahi of the Israel Democracy Institute. "I think the mothers who saw this, particularly the bereaved mothers, just couldn't tolerate the idea that the lives of their sons could be extinguished without a compelling and unambiguous, rational reason."

    "In traditional military cultures, the men go off to war to fight for their women, and the women are assigned the role of heroic mourner. When women refuse to play this passive role and instead become voices of protest, that has a very strong echo. And that's what happened here," says Ezrahi, who also teaches political science at the Hebrew University.

    A MORE prosaic explanation is that these women ultimately won respect and attention because they were well-connected. Many not only had sons serving in elite units in Lebanon, but husbands in the military as well.

    At one point, for instance, the Four Mothers movement included the wife of OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Amiram Levine.

    So while they were derided by military officials on talk shows, they were taken more seriously behind the scenes. Nahmias recalls visiting the base of her son, who served in Golani, and finding that many high-ranking officers privately shared her doubts about the wisdom of remaining in the security zone.

    "This bolstered me tremendously," recalls Nahmias. "Other mothers reported similar encounters. We saw that there were in fact many viewpoints about Lebanon."

    Nahmias's own son didn't mind her activity, she says, but he continued to believe in the necessity of the security zone - until he finished his military service and his views changed, she notes.

    Ben-Zvi's son, Arik, became a student organizer for the movement after completing his term in Lebanon.

    Other soldiers were less comfortable with their mothers' involvement. One of the original Four Mothers, Yaffa Arbel of Kibbutz Gadot, withdrew early on at the request of her son who was serving in the elite Egoz unit.

    WOLFSFELD says the media catapulted the movement into the limelight.

    "The Four Mothers were very active and deserve credit, but I can't separate their activity from that of the media, which raised their status enormously. If the Four Mothers hadn't existed, the media would have invented them," he says.

    Wolfsfeld argues that the media went far beyond reflecting the changing public opinion, and actually accelerated it by giving generous coverage to anyone in favor of a withdrawal.

    On the other hand, he notes that for many years the media were guilty of accepting the consensus view on Lebanon - that the security zone was necessary - without question or criticism.

    "The news media in general, and especially the Israeli media, don't like complex stories. The Lebanon story went from 'the heroes protecting the northern settlements' to 'It's time to get out of our Vietnam.' The turning point was the helicopter disaster."

    In both cases, the media overstepped the bounds of fair journalism, he implies.

    Yes, the media gave generous coverage to the Four Mothers movement, says Ezrahi. And in showing closeups of dead and injured soldiers, it also dramatized the war and captured the growing malaise. But that was a legitimate thing to do, he contends.

    "That's the nature of democracy today. The media no longer allows the army to hide the cost of war from the public, and that makes anyone who protests what appears to be a futile war that much more effective."

    In effect, says Ezrahi, the Four Mothers "pointed out that the emperor - in this case the government policy in Lebanon - was naked."

    TOMORROW the movement will hold its last meeting, a symbolic wrap-up, at Kibbutz Gadot where it was conceived. Although the movement's activities are over, its impact continues to reverberate.

    The day after the withdrawal from Lebanon, movement leaders gathered outside the Ministry of Defense to hold a peace vigil.

    Ben-Dor, the founder and chairperson, recalls being approached by several soldiers. "They told me that they were relieved that we had gotten the troops out of Lebanon but that they were also grateful for something else: They said we'd given them a powerful lesson in democracy."

    A victory for democracy?

    "I wouldn't disagree with that," says Wolfsfeld. "Their success is an important sign that people can make a difference. But you also have to remember that they were well-established, articulate women with lots of connections to the political and economic elite and that helped. If one looks at groups of protesters with more working-class backgrounds, one has much less faith in democracy."

    Women's activists note the fact that women spearheaded the ultimately successful national struggle and see it as an indication of what women can achieve.

    FOR SOME, these achievements are overshadowed by a larger question of what the movement's victory means for willingness to fight the wars of the future. Does it indicate a growing reluctance on the part of many Israelis to do battle at all?

    Settlement leader Israel Harel thinks so. "The movement did not rise out of a sense of national responsibility or strategic thinking but rather because its members did not want their kids to be killed. It shows a lack of national solidarity: 'For you people in the north, we are not willing to sacrifice our sons' was the real message.

    "This is part of a broader trend in Israeli society of reluctance to sacrifice and endure casualties."

    Harel adds that such an atmosphere hinders the army's freedom of action, damages its morale and further reduces its deterrent power.

    NAHMIAS rejects the charge that hers was a self-absorbed battle to get her son out of Lebanon. "During the struggle I got calls from people with very close ties to the military echelon who told me they could get my son out of Lebanon, they could even get him out of the army, and they'd do that if I would just stop this protest.

    "They didn't understand that I wasn't doing this just for my son but because I believe that our presence in Lebanon was bad for the country as a whole. Even when my son completed his army term last year, I continued to be active."

    Would she send her son to fight what she considered to be a war for survival?

    She seems surprised at the question.

    "Of course I would. Even in this war I never encouraged my son to try to get out of Lebanon or refuse to obey orders. And in a truly necessary war, I think all of us would be ready to send our sons. We know we have only ourselves to rely on to defend ourselves," says Nahmias, who came to Israel on her own from France at age 16, and later served in the army.

    "I still believe we need a strong army, but we must use it wisely and not allow it to be dragged into a situation like the one in Lebanon."

    Harel is not so convinced. "There may be individuals who feel that way," says Harel, "but the general trend is one of an unwillingness to sacrifice."

    He points to a recent expos* in the Israeli press that revealed that a large percentage of secular youth are avoiding the draft.

    Ezrahi agrees that there is a larger trend at play here, but it's one he considers healthy. "Like youth all over the Western world, Israelis are less willing to sacrifice their lives for anything except self-defense."

    He maintains that "the majority are willing to fight to the last drop of blood if the country is perceived as being in any real danger."

    But who decides what constitutes a "real" danger?

    Ezrahi acknowledges that this is a real problem, and he blames it on the government rather than on protest groups like the Four Mothers.

    "Lebanon established a terrible precedent; it was a war of choice, not an existential war, and the government tried to fool the people into believing it was something else. That has made the public much more suspicious.

    "Now, even a necessary war is not likely to receive automatic support or legitimacy from a public that doubts the government's intentions.

    "So in the long run," says Ezrahi, "the Lebanon War has actually narrowed the options of any Israeli government to act rationally in self-defense because it blurred the distinction between a war of choice and a war of survival."

    That could lead the next Four Mothers-type protest group to shout "the emperor is naked" even when he's fully clothed.

  • ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  • MIM: This excerpt from the Four Mothers website explains how the group got started. The idea of promoting peace among Israelis is in itself a disingenuous ambition. There is no Israeli who does not want peace, and almost no one who has been untouched by war and bereavement . If anyone people has ever wanted peace it is Israel and the Jews. To confuse self defense with a agression, and claim that Jews have the luxury of letting down their guard while surrounded by 22 hostile countries and enemies within who want their demise, is both suicidal and dangerously misguided. The Four Mothers who pushed the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, while ignoring the murderous intent of their enemies, enabled the creation of a terrorist base of operations undermined Israeli security and endangered the existence of the entire country.

    We enlisted politicians from all the parties interested in promoting the peace process and first and foremost in ending the war in Lebanon. Everytime we received publicity, a lot more people joined our ranks, encouraging us to confront the government's entrenched position that "there isn't anyone to talk to", "there is no solution", and other clishes, abandoning us to the calamity of loosing wonderful young lives in the Lebanese quagmire. We engaged polititians from all parties, which were interested promoting peace, and to bring this war to an end. After our movement was established, I chose an additional plan of action, that of educational research. This might lead, in the long term, to peace in our region, with the help of our link with the Jewish Community in the Diaspora, and also the international community.

    Today our message reaches many people in all strata of the Israeli public, who protest about the deadlock and politicians lethargy.

    Let us hope that this protest will cause the government to wake up and bring the tragedy called Lebanon to an end. http://www.4mothers.org.il/peilut/press703.htm
    PRESS RELEASE : March 7, 2000 The "Four Mothers" movement congratulates the Government of Israel for its brave decision to finally terminate the tragedy of the War in Lebanon and withdraw from there. Today we see the light at the end of the tunnel, a light which cannot be denied by the darkness of stagnation in the peace process. For us, it is the closing of a circle, which began with the call of a few individuals in the North and which has engulfed many others. That same cry, which was defamed and rejected, has now become a decision of the government. We hope that we may finally depend once more upon the government to do what it should do in any case, that is, to terminate the war. It is clear to all of us that it is not possible to backtrack from such a decision. The government shall have to find the ways and means to implement its decision and avoid the bloodshed that has become so familiar in the Lebanese arena. Let each one of us return to his home and loved ones. Rachel Ben-Dor, chairman "The Four Mothers"

  • ---------------

    The cry which became a movement

  • http://www.4mothers.org.il/peilut/crying.htm

    Many former commanders of the Lebanese war play leading roles
    as Knesset members or ministers, and continue defending their
    "creation". attempting to frighten and silence anyone who dares
    to claim there is a problem.

    On the night of the helicopter disaster I became forcefully aware of the terrible price we were paying in the Lebanese quagmire. I made up my mind that something must be done to stop the endless bloodletting. My assumption was that if these were the results, there must be something wrong with the means, that we must call for a change, for improvement in the situation; and not accepting it as if it was preordained.

    I made up my mind that something must be done to stop the endless bloodletting.

    I spoke about the need "to do something", with two friends: Ronit Nahmias and Yafa Arbel. We had raised our sons together and had shared various periods in their lives and joys, including the beginning of their army sevice.

    We were now facing profound sorrow and despair, and also a great anxiety about their future. That same week my feelings were reinforced by the pronouncements of the members of the Kohav Yair Forum , who agreed that our ways of handling the Lebanese situation must be reconsidered and a solution to the problem found. The Minister of Defense ( Itzik Mordehai), accused them of weakening the devotion of the soldiers, and their familie's. Yet their words carried hope, revealing that someone was willing to examine the issue of Lebanon and try to prevent the next disaster. It was then that I started thinking that there may be someone who wants to supress the fact about this beeing a protracted and bloody war. Many former commanders of the Lebanese war play leading roles as Knesset members or ministers, and continue defending their "creation". attempting to frighten and silence anyone who dares to claim there is a problem.

    With this in mind I turned to two of my women friends, Ronit and Yafa, who shared my feelings and we wrote a letter of support to Knesset members from various parties, who participate in the Kohav Yair Forum. we were surprised about the prompt replies we received from the most of them, in which they expressed willingless to meet us and continue the struggle.

    Meanwhile the Hakibutz newspaper had published an article entitled " "Mothers in the Service of the Army", in which Eran Shahar expressed his amazement at the resignation with which Israeli mothers accept the fact that, at a certain age, their sons become soldiers, dedicating their lives to political or military
    goals, without even questioning themselves about it.

    I told Eran I feel totally identified with what he had written. after talking it over on the phone, eran asked me to meet him, so he could write down my feelings. I asked my friends Ronit and Yafa to join me. They invited Miri Sela, from our movement, to come too. Our sons serve together in the army. We were asked to describe the way we see the situation in general, and the lebanese problem particullary, in wiew of the fact we live in the north. The article appeared on Passover Eve, under the title "Four Mothers" (a line from a well-known Passover song).

    We decided to adopt this as our name. But we did not imagine that our detractors would use it as an opportunuty to bypass the problem and focus on our being women and mothers. Several times we tried to say that fathers and many worthy citizens joined our protest, but we received publicity, mainly as a new phenomenon.

    We enlisted politicians from all the parties interested in promoting the peace process and first and foremost in ending the war in Lebanon. Everytime we received publicity, a lot more people joined our ranks, encouraging us to confront the government's entrenched position that "there isn't anyone to talk to", "there is no solution", and other clishes, abandoning us to the calamity of loosing wonderful young lives in the Lebanese quagmire. We engaged polititians from all parties, which were interested promoting peace, and to bring this war to an end. After our movement was established, I chose an additional plan of action, that of educational research. This might lead, in the long term, to peace in our region, with the help of our link with the Jewish Community in the Diaspora, and also the international community.

    Today our message reaches many people in all strata of the Israeli public, who protest about the deadlock and politicians lethargy.

    Let us hope that this protest will cause the government to wake up and bring the tragedy called Lebanon to an end.

    Rachel Ben Dor,
    chairman of the Four Mothers Movement. http://www.4mothers.org.il/peilut/hostages.htm

    MOTHERS! LET US BE THE HOSTAGES!

  • Mothers! We ourselves shall replace our sons and become the hostages of the Syrians and the Government of Israel in the outposts of Lebanon! Mothers! There is no time left. Tomorrow another one will die. I call out to the mothers whose sons have been called up during the latest tri-annual round of service in the Lebanon: support this message and join the action. We would like to take the place of our sons in the Lebanese outposts. Our sons, who are defending only themselves, are struck down in the trenches and in the strongpoints, just waiting for an agreement. We are no worse than they in defending ourselves in a trench or in an outpost, and much better than they as hostages of the Syrians and the Government of Israel, until they reach an agreement. At 9 o'clock on Tuesday, February 15, we shall all line up opposite the home of the Prime Minister, in expectation of marching orders for deployment in the Lebanon. Our task is to relieve our sons of their duties and replace them as the hostages to an agreement. SIGNED: Orna, the mother of Lieutenant Eyal Shimoni, whose spirit, soul and dreams have remained in Reichan, Lebanon.
  • JOINED BY: Bruria Sharon, Yemima Ben Menachem, Zahara Antebi, Erna Barzilai, Nira Nidbach, Leah Horowitz, Tsippi Shimoni. GIVE US A CALL:
  • Orna Shimoni, 050-430-565

    Bruria Sharon 052-739-328

  • http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/hizbal.htm

    -------

    http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/enmaa1.htm

    The Four Mothers from the Lebanon War

    Evelyn Hammerschlag, Beit Hillel, northern Galilee.


    Originaly written January 1998, some months after the movement was
    founded, for the jewish newspaper "Nueva Sion", Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    February 1997. A late afternoon with thunderstorms. We had already heard
    much aereal activity that day, in the northern Galilee, near the Lebanese
    border ( were we live ). This allways gives a premonition of oncoming
    troubles.
    And, at that moment , the terrible accident happened: two helicopters,
    carrying some dozens of soldiers each -on their way to Lebanon - crashed
    one into the other, disseminating their pieces and human cargo on the roofs
    and tree tops of a nearby "moshav"....
    These 73 victims were now added to so many others falling every year, in
    this useless stay on Lebanese soil.
    Anguish, despair, impotence.....These were the feelings.......
    And there, this night, in one of the kibutzim in Galilee - four mothers of
    boys
    the same age of those who fell this evening - met. They sat together in
    sadness and asked themselves: " anguish, despair.....BUT WHY
    IMPOTENCE??? Perhaps WE could do something so all our sons woud not
    be cannon- fodder in a laberint without a way out, which has no political
    meaning four OUR PEOPLE??"
    And this was the beginning of their movement. This night it was settled. Out
    of
    this terrible sadness, and strong feeling that SOMETHING HAS TO BE
    DONE!
    They began to manifest on route crossings, and other corners were they and
    their placards were seen: " Retiring from Lebanon in Peace", "Finding
    political Solutions to get out of Lebanon"...
    I saw them, I heard about them, and feeled deeply identified.
    My own son, was serving army on Lebanese soil, for one and a half years
    now, as a paramedic.There are many nights, when we hear the helicopters
    above our home's roof....going for wounded soldiers...That keeps us awake
    and worried...
    But, if I joined the movement, it was for ALL of them.
    Today, the movement counts with some hundreds of activists, all over the
    country. After some months, we were known, heard, we were a reality, a
    presence. All this was achieved in a short time.
    There are interwiews with politicians of all currents, personally or on TV
    debate programs. We make people, think, discuss...also if they have
    opposite ideas. In Januca time we lighted enourmous 8 armed chandeliers,
    reminding our "feast of the oil and the lights miracle", and inviting people
    to
    wish por peace.
    Of course, we can't allways count with the help and understanding of all
    those surrounding us: in the northern town of Kiriat Shmona ( near the
    Lebanese border, and nearby I live ), most of the population is right
    winged.
    And there also exists an existencial fear about what could happen in this
    area
    in the moment when our "tsahal" retires and leaves "jisbala" on his own.
    Sometimes people scream at us : "Our sons should be heroes!!" "They
    should fight!!"
    We have to cope with them, try to explain some facts, try to bring them to
    an
    understanding instead of screaming blind clisches...
    The important thing is not to get "accustomed" to this situation, summing
    joung victims nearly every day, during years, of this useless war. People's
    -
    and specially the government's ideas - have to been strongly shaken. There
    are minds to be opened, to look into the eyes of solutions, of promoting
    PEACE !!
    Only in 1997, 39 soldiers fell on Lebanese soil, many were wounded...and 73
    were killed in the helicopter crash..
    We dont want heroes in a war which is not our's, in a place were we
    got stuck deeper and deeper, and were we should't be!!
    We hope for peace, and should all our sons return home healthy and
    safe. (in SHALOM)

  • ---------------

  • MIM:The Lebanese who came to the Israeli border after the retreat gazed across and stated that they intended to return to their 'homes in Israel' implying that this was just the beginning of their efforts to eradicate Israel. The atrocity of someone who claimed to have been a former prisoner in a jail run by the SLA - appears to be telling a false atrocity story. The journalist notes that he seems "remarkedly buoyant during the presentation" of the alleged mistreatment.

    http://www.4mothers.org.il/articles/heady.htm

    Heady days in Lebanon

    By Michael S.Arnold, Jerusalem Post, 19.6.00

    Special to the Chicago Sun-Times (June 8) - The traffic grows noticeably heavier at Sidon, where several lanes of cars converge under a banner that reads, "All of Lebanon is welcome in south Lebanon."

    But the change is most perceptible just after Nabatiye, where Lebanese Army soldiers check those hoping to proceed further south. Lebanese citizens are allowed in freely to celebrate their country's liberation from 22 years of Israeli occupation. Journalists must produce convincing identification and a compelling reason to visit the area.

    Palestinians are barred entirely, though they come to the area in throngs, traveling over paths they remember from the days when the Palestine Liberation Organization established a mini-state in southern Lebanon - Fatahland, so named for the main faction of the PLO - and staged frequent attacks across the border into northern Israel.

    It was those attacks that led Israel to invade Lebanon, its soldiers greeted initially with rice and flower petals, only to find themselves leaving their "security zone" two decades later.

    The crowds have thinned considerably since the first days after the withdrawal, says Mona Sadiqi, a young Lebanese journalist whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

    Sadiqi has visited Israel's former security zone several times in recent weeks, guiding foreign reporters around for a few hundred dollars a day, a princely sum by local standards.

    On June 4, the day after our visit, she will return again, this time with her family, bringing them for a candlelight vigil at the infamous Khiam Prison. June 4 and 5, in fact, have been proclaimed national holidays in Lebanon, and candelight vigils were held around the country to celebrate the departure of the Israeli enemy.

    Yet Sadiqi still is moved each time she passes the army checkpoint and begins the descent along the winding mountain roads that lead to the Israeli border.

    Southern Lebanon is a splendidly mountainous region, an enlarged version of the Upper Galilee, an area of peaks and crevices largely denuded of trees by Israeli soldiers fearing ambush, its hillsides covered with light green grass and dotted with the spires of village mosques and churches.

    Along its roadsides lie man-made monuments to the occupation, hulls of burned-out tanks and military vehicles abandoned by retreating IDF soldiers or their South Lebanese Army allies.

    And there are other markers whose presence serves as both a celebration and a warning: yellow Hizbullah murals showing the group's trademark Kalashnikovs, the green flags of the rival Amal Shia movement, wildly distorted caricatures of Jewish soldiers with bites taken out of their skulls, a model of an Israeli army helmet neatly pierced by a deadly Islamic sword and looking for all the world like a newfangled Viking helmet or one of those arrow-through-the-head party favors.

    THESE ARE heady days in south Lebanon, a still volatile celebration of the victory of the Islamic Resistance and Lebanese willpower over the cursed Zionist occupiers.

    It is the only time, Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss observes in an interview, that "Israel has withdrawn from Arab territory without leaving behind a flag on an embassy."

    With the government still coy about its willingness to deploy the Lebanese Army in the area, Hizbullah has become the main force in the liberated zone. By and large they have acted with a remarkable restraint that has won them praise from virtually all sectors of Lebanese society.

    "Other than a few thefts and scuffles here and there it couldn't have been a better situation," says Jamil Mroue, publisher of the English-language Daily Star newspaper.

    "For all the fear of ethnic cleansing, the Israeli withdrawal has led to the first instance of ethnic mending in our history."

    Sadiqi describes the Israeli withdrawal as "the happiest day of my life."

    It is perhaps the only time, she says, that she has known real happiness in a life that began during Lebanon's disastrous civil war and has been almost conterminous with Israel's extended presence in her country.

    Though it has been two weeks since the last Israeli soldiers left Lebanon, there is still a sense of celebration along the border. The village of Kfar Kila - site of the Fatma Crossing, formerly known in Israel as the Good Fence - has a downright carnival feel.

    Couples who have come for a weekend outing in the newly liberated areas munch corn-on-the-cob as they search for the Israeli soldiers sitting behind sandbags in a cement tower just over the fence, or gawk at the silent, red-roofed villas of Metulla a few hundred meters in the distance.

    "It's the first time in my life that I've been down in this area," says Yehya Zein, a 29-year-old marketing manager who has come down for the day from Beirut with some friends. "I had to come and see what's happening."

    Hizbullah fighters keeping order in the area conduct a brief search of visitors, confiscating pistols that they line up on top of an old oil drum while their owners stroll the border promenade. Next to the pistols sits a discarded bomb covered with Hebrew writing.

    THE CROSSING itself has been barricaded with concrete blocks after some Lebanese tried to scale the fence in the first days after the liberation.

    Even now, the scene at times gets mildly ugly, with some Lebanese making obscene gestures at the Israeli soldiers or shouting martial slogans.

    The Israelis are largely aloof, sometimes taking photos of the Lebanese taking photos of them. At one point, when a soldier twirls his green-fatigue cap on his hand, a few Lebanese interpret it as a veiled attempt to give them the finger, and tempers rise accordingly.

    "One day you will regret that you ever came to our land!" yells one well-dressed young man, a businessman from Beirut who gives only his first name, Wissam.

    "The Jews came from their Diaspora and occupied our land - Palestine, the Golan Heights, the Sinai. If they want to come and live in peace, that's okay. But they can't come here and try to rule the entire region, treating everyone who's not Jewish as if they're inferior."

    His anger is shared by several other young men in the area, who describe themselves as Hizbullah members.

    "We hope to kick them out of Palestine, too, back to where they came from, to Europe and Germany and Ethiopia," says a house-painter who doesn't want to give his name.

    "They came here and massacred and kicked the Palestinians out of their houses. There was Deir Yassin and 50 other massacres. We will use their own tactics against them."

    Peace with Israel, the man's bearded friend says, is "impossible."

    "They have our blood on their hands," he says. "They're a bunch of murderers. There's not a pair of eyes in this country that hasn't cried because of those rapists and murderers. If one of those Jews looks at me with even one eye, I'll poke out both of them."

    Several Lebanese remark on the incongruity of the scene: they stroll up and down as if on a promenade while the former occupiers sit in a fortified position behind a towering wire-mesh fence that resembles a baseball backstop.

    "We're happy to see them imprisoned behind their own borders," says Ibrahim el-Jouni, who has brought his family down for the day from Beirut. "We're standing here happy and free and they're terrified, hiding in their cage like wild dogs."

    For the most part, though, the border is peaceful, vaguely resembling a petting zoo. Fingers point and a cry goes up when the soldiers are spotted above their sandbags. How young they are, the Lebanese remark.

    Say, isn't that one a Sephardi? they ask, remarkably aware of the divisions within Israeli society. Do they put only the Arab Jews on border duty?

    The soldiers, when they rouse themselves from their seats, take out binoculars to get a closer look at the Lebanese.

    "I don't want to give them the finger or do stupid things," Zein says. "I would like to talk to them if I had the chance, to see what's happening."

    When he waved at one of the soldiers, Zein says, the Israeli responded by blowing him a kiss.

    "Maybe he's a gay?" Zein wonders aloud.

    FARTHER down the border road, a sadder scene is unfolding. A group of Palestinian refugees has climbed to the top of an abandoned building, from where they have their first view of the country they left 52 years ago.

    Elsewhere along the border, Palestinian families separated by a few meters of barbed wire pass messages back and forth, using Israeli soldiers as couriers.

    With access to the Israeli side of the Fatma crossing restricted, however, Palestinians here can only gaze at a land many of them know only from tales handed down from generation to generation.

    "I feel very sad, even bitter today," says Hassan Zaher, a taxi driver whose family originally hails from Acre, gazing out over the Galilee hills stretching south from Metulla. "I'm happy to see my land, but unhappy to see it occupied."

    "I haven't seen my homeland in 52 years," says one woman, who left Acre during Israel's War of Independence, when she was 7. "My only wish is to die there. I don't want to be a refugee, homeless, any more. We'll go back to Nablus and Ramallah as a first step, and from there back to Jaffa and Acre - even as Israeli citizens, if we have to."

    The group is divided over whether the Palestinians should resort to violence to reclaim their land, a common question after Hizbullah's apparent success in forcing Israel out of Lebanon with guerrilla warfare.

    "The only way to go is the Hizbullah way, to fight for your land," says Yussuf Abdel-Ghani, a taxi driver with a degree in political science. "Israel doesn't understand anything but the logic of force."

    A dentist named Zangeri, wearing a Nike cap and speaking fluent English, disagrees.

    "Force can't solve anything," he says. "We're a new people in a new millennium, and we need to find new methods."

    The group has come to the border for different reasons. Zangeri is on a rather desperate search for his roots. He is told that a few Zangeris may remain in a village called Qordana in the Safed region. One or two of his relatives may live in Shfaram.

    He had hoped to find someone on the Israeli side of the border who would search the Galilee for him, giving his telephone number in Lebanon to any Zangeris he encountered.

    Abdel-Ghani, who has brought his young son and daughter to the border, has a different motive.

    "We were brought up with the idea that the Israelis were superhumans with a huge army and air force and bombs," he says. "This visit showed us that the Israelis aren't invincible and if we fight we can get our land back. The Israelis are human, just like us - just as strong and as weak as we are."

    A FEW kilometers away, the Khiam Prison is even more crowded than the Fatma Crossing.

    If the Lebanese government intends to turn the former Israeli position at the Beaufort Castle into an arts center dedicated to the Lebanese resistance, Khiam already has become a place of pilgrimage for those wanting to see a more horrific side of the occupation.

    A few Amal banners line the road leading into the mountain town, but it is Hizbullah, the leader of the battle against Israel, that dominates the entrance to the prison.

    Intense and bearded young men offer visitors bitter coffee beneath a towering Hizbullah banner draped over the prison entrance. Crowning the archway is a photo of Mustafa Dirani, the former Amal security chief still held by Israel as a bargaining chip for IAF navigator Ron Arad, captured in Lebanon in 1986.

    A few meters away, visitors pore over lists of prisoners held in Khiam, those who served as jailers, and 14 prisoners who died from torture and abuse.

    Inside, Ahmed Yihye is holding forth to an agitated crowd on the nine years he spent in Khiam for his part in the Islamic Resistance.

    Standing on a platform in a square where inmates used to be tortured, Yihye, handsome and charismatic, holds his audience of several dozen in thrall.

    The tale he is telling so casually, however, is one to curdle the blood.

    This is where they would blindfold us, handcuff us and hang us by our wrists, Yihye says, demonstrating the posture with the aid of a nearby metal pole. Suspended in this position, he says, the inmates would endure savage beatings, sometimes daily for a period of months.

    Then there were other indignities: being stripped naked and covered in jam - to attract flies - on hot summer days; being doused with ice-cold water in the freezing Lebanese winter; going months without a shower, until every prisoner was covered with lice.

    The lice, however, proved both a diversion - prisoners could pass the time by playing with them - and a blessing, because when a prisoner's infestation became too severe the guards would take him out of his dank and airless cell for a brief spell in the sunlight.

    That was about the only time the prisoners saw the sun, Yihye says, turning off the electricity - newly-installed - for a more realistic effect as he leads visitors on a guided torture tour.

    IT BECOMES increasingly difficult to see as the tour leaves the entranceway and progresses down a narrow, fetid passageway; a sense of vertigo and disorientation begins sets in.

    Now, however, there is the benefit of some natural light in a few cells, an improvement introduced following a Red Cross inspection in 1996, after the prison had been operating for 13 years.

    Here, Yihye says, marking off a small square known as the "chicken coop" at the bottom of one wall, is where they would force us to crouch for 15 minutes at a time with our hands pulled forward over our heads, although we could barely fit in the hole.

    These were the solitary confinement cells, he says, pointing out two tiny rooms which could be closed off from the rest of the prison by a heavy metal door. The other cells - in which six prisoners crowded into an area 2 meters long by a meter wide and 1.8 meters high - seem roomy by comparison.

    Jailers would place the prisoners' food - sometimes army rations left over from the 1973 Yom Kippur War - in a bowl on the ground, step in it, and then kick it across the room to them.

    Electrical wires would be attached to their fingers, and water would be applied to create sparks.

    Women prisoners had electrodes attached to their nipples; he won't be more graphic, Yihye says, because the tour includes several religious women with their heads covered.

    Here, in a courtyard once filled with sharp gravel, a pregnant woman was made to kneel and then was beaten.

    On and on Yihye's description goes, yet he seems remarkably buoyant during the presentation. Did he suffer any lasting physical damage from his incarceration, he is asked?

    Oh yes, Yihye says, and reels off a list. He has two injured vertebrae which cause him constant backaches. A blood virus, and eye problems. Nervous disorders, too. Oh, and also rheumatism.

    Yihye is 32 years old and he says all this with a smile.

    Many in the crowd demand that the SLA men who ran Khiam be jailed there themselves and treated similarly.

    "They wouldn't be able to feel what I felt," Yihye says. "The least that should be done to them is to kill them."

    REVISITING the scene of his torture four years after he was freed, Yihye is asked how he explains man's inhumanity to man.

    "The people who did this are people who love the material things in life, who can be easily bought," he says. "But the fact of my presence here today gives me a sense of pride, because it represents the freedom of my country Lebanon from the cancer that is Israel."

    Outside, dusk is falling over south Lebanon. Lights from villages on the Golan Heights and the Shaba Farms twinkle in the distance.

    To the south, violet light bathes the Upper Galilee. It is hard to reconcile such unspeakable atrocities with a place of such unspeakable beauty.

  • This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2149