I have a dream “A Sacred Trust: Stories of Our Heritage and History”

Location: Yerushalayim, Ir HaKodesh, Eretz Yisrael reproduced from “A Sacred Trust: Stories of Our Heritage and History”

Today is a very special day. Today I celebrate my 55th birthday. I will no longer be called for reserve duty. From basic training when I was eighteen years old until today, 27 years have passed, nine of them in the service of my country. Nine years? Officers serve 45 days each year in the reserves. I am retiring as a lieutenant colonel. I decided to walk through Yerushalayim. I wanted to see the sights, smell the scents, listen to the sounds of the city as a civilian. It was not easy to walk briskly past the Machane Yehuda marketplace; so many people crowded the narrow sidewalks. I continued along Yaffo Road, turned right at King George Street and followed it as the street name changed to Keren Hayesod. By the time I reached the bottom of Keren Hayesod, I was a bit tired. The lovely shade trees of Liberty Bell Park beckoned me. I crossed Jabotinsky Street, walked down the steps at the entrance, and sat down on a bench. Children played in the park. For a while, I sat and watched Israel’s new generation. Then I closed my eyes and I dreamed. I dreamed. I was a paratrooper in one of the battalions assigned to capture the Old City during the Six Day War. I was within earshot when Colonel Ahmon responded to a call on the radio from Chief of Staff General Haim Bar-Lev. “You must enter the Old City immediately and capture it.”

Paratroops Brigade Commander Mordechai Gur confirmed receipt of the order. Then he signaled all the unit commanders to listen on their radios. I heard him say: “Paratroops Brigade 55. We stand on the heights overlooking the Old City. In a little while, we will enter into the ancient City of Yerushalayim which for a generation (since 1948), we have dreamed of and striven for. Our brigade has been granted the privilege of being the first to enter. Now, move to the gate! We will hold our victory parade on the Temple Mount.”

Commander Gur’s order turned the m mentous assault on the walled city into a race among all the units under his command. They raced toward the Lion’s Gate. Tank commander Sergeant Ben Gigi, a Moroccan born tinsmith ordered his gunner, Moshe Haimovsky to open fire, aiming for the upper hinge of the left door. The door canted backwards under the impact, permitting him to see through into the Old City itself. Behind him was Commander Gur, driven in his half-track by Sergeant Ben Tsur. Gur ordered Ben Tsur to turn sharply to the left. The Temple Mount lay in that direction. The Israelis leaped out of their tanks and halftracks, and ran up the steps of the Temple Mount, making sure there were no enemy soldiers. Commander Gur was leading. He broadcast to all units: “Cease fire! The Temple Mount is in our hands. Repeat. The Temple Mount is in our hands.”

Gunner Haimovsky was peering through the periscope of his tank when he saw the wind unfurling a blue and white flag atop the crescent of the Dome of the Rock. Another flag was raised on the Western Wall. We paratroopers stood silently, watching. I was overwhelmed. I was conscious that we were the first Jewish soldiers to reach the Western Wall since the Roman destruction of the second Holy Temple almost two thousand years before. I reached to touch the stones. The stones felt wet, as if millions of Jews had cried there before me. One of the company commanders withdrew his tefilin from a velvet pouch and began the morning prayer service. It was the first time a Jew had davened at the Kotel in nineteen years. Then chaplain of the army, Rabbi Shlomo Goren appeared on the scene. He was carrying a Torah in one hand and a shofar in the other. Two crewmen lifted Rabbi Goren to the top of a tank. He sounded the shofar. Then he jumped down from the tank, continuing to blow as he ran all the way to the Temple Mount. Clutching the Torah, Rabbi Goren led forty paratroopers in a chassidic dance. The soldiers shouted Yerushalayim Shelanu, Yerushalayim is ours! The dancing ended. Bareheaded soldiers donned their helmets, as they repeated the blessing being recited by Rabbi Goren: Baruch atah ... shehecheyanu v’keymanu v’hegeyanu lazman hazeh. [Ed. Blessed are You ... Who has kept us in life, has preserved us and has enabled us to reach this moment.] Rabbi Goren continued with Yizkor to commemorate the soldiers who had fallen in battle in defense of the Jewish state. He followed this prayer with Hatikvah. I rubbed my eyes, startled. The dream was so real. In my thoughts, I had relived the capture of Yerushalyaim. I had been one of those paratroopers who made history. I focused again on the playing children. Would they have to wear a uniform as I did or would they be able to grow up, unafraid?

Suddenly, I started dreaming again. I was a reservist. We all expected another war, but no one thought that the Egyptians and Syrians would simultaneously attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar year. I was in the synagogue with my family as were many other soldiers who were on leave for the holiday. It was 1973. Less than six years had passed since the last war. The first few days of the war, seventy thousand Egyptians overran the Sinai. The Syrians attacked the Golan Heights, trying to seize what land Israel had achieved during the Six Day War. Even though it was easy to mobilize both active soldiers and reservists, because, for the most part, they were in the synagogues, it took almost a week for Israel to drive back the enemy. Because of the surprise attack, four times as many Jewish soldiers were killed as during the Six Day War. Israel has always been on the defensive. The PLO did not recognize Israel’s right to exist. They never accepted the 1947 United Nations partition plan. Israel does not have to prove its right to exist ... we only want to find a way to live in peace with our neighbors. We have been searching for a way for the past 45 years.

My dream continued. It seemed that all I was thinking about was the wars I fought. It was as if I was playing a videotape of my combat experiences. Israel’s defensive position became offensive at Entebbe. It was early July 1976. An Air France plane bound from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked, refueled in Libya, and landed in Entebbe, Uganda. The Israeli hostages were separated from the 250 passengers. Because so many of Israel’s citizens are Holocaust survivors, refugees from Hitler’s death camps, the separation reminded them of the selections at Auschwitz. They waited dejectedly, reliving their anguish. The world waited for Israel’s reply to the hijackers, who demanded the release of forty Arabs held in Israel and thirteen incarcerated in Europe for terrorist acts. Meantime,Defense Minister Shimon Peres and army chief of staff General Mordechai Gur developed a military plan. I was called to active duty. I was one of the paratroopers that flew on that liberation mission. The daring rescue of the Israeli hostages, under the command of General Dan Shomron electrified the world. The released hostages told the waiting press when they landed at Ben Gurion Airport that the first Israeli soldier they saw entering the compound where they were held whispered: “We’ve come to take you home!” Twice during my military career, I personally witnessed a major historical event.

My mind raced forward, to 1981. It was not until after the bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq that Israel revealed its apprehension of a news leak before it actually happened. Israel had to make certain that Iraq would not achieve nuclear capability. France and Italy were helping Iraq build its reactor and were indifferent to Israel’s pleas to halt this development. They were customers for Iraqi oil. After Israel’s successful destruction of the Osirak reactor, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said: “Better a condemnation and no reactor, than a reactor and no condemnation.” He knew that the world would not publicly understand Israel’s preemptive strike for self-protection. It was not until the scuds fell on Israel eleven years later that he was proven right. Very little time elapsed between Israel’s lightning strike against Iraq and its embroilment in its longest, most controversial war. The Lebanese War, originally called Operation Peace in the Galilee, was fought with the hope of destroying the PLO forces in Lebanon that were shelling and subjecting Israel’s northern borders to terrorist incursions. The controversy rages until this day: was the war offensive or defensive? Was it necessary for six hundred Israeli soldiers to lose their lives? The whole time that war was being fought, I wondered if it would ever end. And then came the scud attacks with Operation Desert Storm. Israelis sat like lame ducks through the winter months of 1991, while one person was killed, twelve died indirectly, two hundred were injured, 1,645 families were evacuated from Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan and 4,095 buildings were damaged. We wondered if we would have to use the gas masks that were distributed by the civil defense authorities in the event that poisonous chemicals were attached to the scud missiles. The kits with the gas masks also contained syringes for injecting atropine (an antidote for nerve gas) and powder and gauze for use in case our skin was exposed to mustard gas. I had to select a room on an upper floor of our building, prepare it as a sealed room, with taped windows and plastic sheeting in the event that it would be needed. Can you imagine my grandchildren’s hysteria? The TV station broadcast continuously, to familiarize people how to use the equipment. Our nerves were taut as we waited the alert siren sounding throughout the country eighteen times between January 18th and February 25th. Tears trickled down my eyes as I stared at the children and wondered about their future, for my dreams that day in the park were filled with pain. Would the migration of Russian Jews continue? And the Ethiopians that have already been absorbed as Israeli citizens, how will they fare? How many Americans will make aliya? What will this country be like in the twenty first century? Will Israel ever achieve the respect of the nations of the world? Will they ever stop condemning her? Three thousand years ago the prophet Isaiah described the glorious time when peace would reign supreme, when the word for war will have been eliminated from every dictionary. He prophesied: And it shall come to pass in the end of days, That the L-rd’s House shall be established at the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills. And all nations shall hurry to it. And many people shall go and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the L-rd, to the House of the G-d of Jacob, And He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His path. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the L-rd from Yerushalayim. And He shall judge between the nations and shall decide for many people; And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ I pray that I will live long enough to be part of that peace. I pray for my children, for your children and for all the world’s children.