Our seared memories
By Yitzhak Laor
Haaretz, March 25, 2004
Israeli memory has some marvelous characteristics. It can bear an old sheikh's grave and call it the grave of Otniel Ben Knaz (the first judge in Eretz Israel following the death of Joshua), and even turn it into a territorial dispute between nations. But that same memory tends to forget what happened on Purim only 10 years ago, and what had been the tradition of Purim until then, meaning the Purim tradition of children taking to the streets in costume, and often in parades.
But the carnival tradition has been put to an end. The Purim holiday tradition born in secular Tel Aviv in the 1930s was destroyed by an American named Baruch Goldstein. His connection to our new Purim with its "special deployments of the security services," has been forgotten in the Israeli memory. On the other hand, we are ordered to remember that "anyway, they started," and that any examination of "their reasons," is "surrender to terror." That's how Goldstein has been forgotten as the person responsible for the ruination of the holiday that starts our spring season.
Moreover, that last Purim was also the opening of the "tradition of mass terror attacks," we are also ordered to forget in our culture of selective memory. Instead, we are supposed to remember "there are extremists on both sides," but that "the IDF does not belong to either one of those sides." All these orders to remember, together with other orders, now form the system of reasoning that an Israeli provides himself with regard to the difficulties of life, which might be less difficult than the lives of the Palestinians but nonetheless, as far as the dead are concerned, the death rate is always 100 percent.
Now, with the Pesach vacation coming and the spring practically aflame with blooming flowers, turning the season into self-imposed curfew in Jewish homes out of fear of the vengeance attacks for the killing of the Hamas leader, it is easier to see what was very difficult to argue to Israelis throughout the year, because of the sanctity of the army, the sanctity of the custom of blaming "them," no matter what the chronological order of the events, no matter what the logic behind them. It is easier to show that the policy makers and the uppermost echelons of the army have not the slightest interest in our daily lives. They are completely blind not only to the suffering of the Palestinians, but also to the interests of daily life, the simple, difficult lives of Israelis.
Only a few hours before the killing of Ahmed Yassin we were told by an official source that it is not recommended to travel to Istanbul and Sinai this Pesach. Whether that was preparation for the killing of Yassin or simply coincidence, now we know it is dangerous to visit even our own nature parks, the only parks the poor of our country can afford to visit, not only this Pesach, but perhaps next year, too, on the anniversary of Yassin's killing, and perhaps henceforth ever after.
The settler rightists and the army have in common a faith in "Jewish fate" - in any case, it's always the same thing, always, and what does it matter if we killed him now or later and what does it matter if we killed him or someone else and what does it matter if killing him had no military value. That's the common denominator between the army and the settlers: the daily enlistment into service, from which only death will free us. In any case, there's no such thing as a private life.
Nonetheless, it is still a mistake to think there was no military logic behind the killing. Yassin is a symbol. For killing a symbol (on both sides) the response is a mass massacre. Thus, in response to the response will come a response. In response to the terror, which will be in response to the killing of Yassin, while we go skyward in buses and entertainment spots, it will be possible to attack the Strip in a way that was impossible beforehand, not because of the living Yassin but because the rolling operation hasn't rolled in enough blood - and it's already been proved that under cover of the images of the horror of attacks on us, in other words, the people on the buses or in the markets or at work, the army can conduct more bloodied raids. No matter what the tangible nature of the disengagement from Gaza, practically it means more and more killing.
No management of an economic enterprise that ran its affairs the way our defense establishment runs our affairs would remain on the job very long. But the army remains outside the realm of criticism. Searing the minds of the Palestinians, that famous strategy formulated by the chief of staff, is also erasing something from our brains.
