I just found the text of the “Letter to an Israeli Mother” that I originally published in the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat at the end of July 1998. I referred to it in this post that I put up here yesterday.
The “Israeli mother” in question was one of the leaders of the Four Mothers movement, that in the three-year period 1997-2000 succeeded in bringing about a “virtually complete” Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
After Hayat published the Letter, I got a call from Ha’Aretz in Israel, who asked if they could publish it as well. Which they did, on August 14, 1998. That turned out rather strangely, since a substantial portion of the Letter was quoting from an earlier report in Ha’aretz… My intent in using those lengthy quotes had been to bring that interesting material to the attention of the Arab readers of Hayat. But I imagine the Ha’Aretz readers already knew it!
In 1998, Bibi Netanyahu was prime minister in Israel. At one level it all seems such a long time ago…
Some of the best quotes I used in the Letter came from 4Ms co-leader Irit Letzter. They came from a report of a meeting she and some of the others had had with a roomful of Israeli generals and high-ranking pols. She told them to their faces:
- “We do not agree with the perspective that, ‘I am a victim; I am threatened; everyone is against me; that’s how it’s been and that’s how it will always be.’ … I seek courage in my leaders, not rigid thinking.”
later, she went even further in challenging some of the country’s weighty religious orthodoxies:
- “When God said to Abraham, ‘Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac,’ Abraham did not argue. We believe that if God had approached Sarah, she would have replied, ‘Forget it. I’m not sacrificing this child.’ She would never have submissively accepted the order… I’m not naive, I don’t bury my head in the sand, but I don’t agree with the warped male notion that war is somehow a challenge, a project, heroic.”
I am really sorry that the Four Mothers movement disbanded immediately after the IDF withdrew from Lebanon. After all, it’s not as though that withdrawal ended all of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors… Far from it.
Does anyone know what became of Irit Letzter or any of those other Mothers? Or, of their sons?
Maybe they just went on and led their lives.
Yes, the withdrawal from Lebanon did not end ALL of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. For that matter, it did not end its conflict with Lebanon. Although the Israelis completely withdrew from Lebanon, and the UN certified Israel’s compliance, that didn’t prevent Lebanon and the “heroic” Hezbollah from manufacturing the pretext of Sheba Farms to continue refusal to recognize Israel. I remember reading news articles after the Israeli withdrawal. Israelis went to the border and said things along the lines of “Now we can be friends.” The Arab response was along the lines of “Now I can kill you.”
But perhaps something else was at stake. The Israeli mothers said that they were not caught in a rigid line of thinking. That meant that they appropriately recognized that warmaking is not necessarily the answer.
The very same line of thinking also recognizes that yes, Israel DOES have enemies. And that unilaterally withdrawing from every conflict area is not always the wisest or smartest decision. Just as Israel is not always right when it chooses to fight a war, it certainly is not always wrong.
I think Helena’s column really misses the point about the Israeli mothers. The mothers were women who thought that the situation in Lebanon was untenable, and that it was time to leave. They are not women who think that their country is a horrible place, that they are responsible for all the injustices in the middle east, that the burden is solely or even primarily on them to change things, and that if they just gave in to every demand made against Israel that we would live in a more “just world.” There is a significant danger in imposing your own beliefs onto other people in an attempt to validate your own position.