Amos Oz - The Slopes of Lebanon

Yediot Aharonot, June 21, 1982

GRANDIOSE EXERCISES IN geostrategy have always been the favorite pastime of the Revisionists, our hawkish right wing. As early as sixty or seventy years ago, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky would move armies with a breath from his mouth, draw new frontiers for many nations, set superpowers against one another, and reorder the world with a flourish of his sharp pen, as though straining to supply the Zionist enterprise with a crown of invisibility or with seven-league boots. *Sometimes the Labor movement would react to these whims with a faint smile, like a wise old man watching a child.

Menachem Begin, who does not have Jabotinsky’s poetic talents, did inherit from his mentor the lust for drama and for the euphoria that comes from sweeping, impetuous moves. Although circumstances made it virtually impossible for Jabotinsky to go beyond writing articles and composing poetry, Begin woke up one morning with an accelerator and with a real steering wheel in his hands: all the power of Israel, power that had been built, piece by piece, step by step, sacrifice by sacrifice, by four generations of Zionist pioneers.

And Begin used that power in the name of peace for Galilee, for purposes very remote from peace and very far away from Galilee.

This is the first of all our wars in which we went to battle not to repulse a threat to our very existence but to get rid of an irritant, and mostly to change the map of the region.

One can argue about the most effective course of action against the terror of the PLO: Is it best to use the full strength and power of the IDF, or is there, perhaps, another way?

Wherever our foe turns

We will shadow him day and night;

Into his inmost chambers,

Pursuing his every footstep,

Armed with a sleeping draught,

And with a slender needle.

— NATAN ALTERMAN

Above and beyond the argument about what methods of warfare to use, there is the simple fact that a dispute between the two peoples who live in this land cannot be solved by force. If we do not seek a solution through compromise, the bloodletting will never end.

But the Begin government did not initiate this war for the sake of establishing peace for Galilee. Peace for Galilee has gradually become — or was it actually meant to be, from the outset? — an excuse for the realization of a typical Jabotinskyan fantasy: to cut the knot of historic conflict between us and the Palestinians with one smashing blow; to change the face of Lebanon and perhaps even that of Syria; to help the Americans contain the influence of the Soviet Union; in short, to create a dramatic turning point in the whole scenario. This intention was disguised so that the Labor party leaders could be dragged, as though possessed, into giving a weak and stammering “Aye,” seemingly agreeing with Begin on the essentials, even as they tugged at his sleeve, begging him to slow down, just a little.

This business will not end well because this time, once again, the leadership of the Labor party has failed to understand the tear that Begin is making in the fabric of our national consensus of many decades — a consensus by which we launched a full-scale war only when our very existence was in danger, a consensus by which we responded to irritants and attrition only with limited, measured, calculated use of military force, only with “a slender needle.”

I don’t want to speculate or express all my apprehensions here. The fighting is still going on, and each day the dead are being gathered up from the battlefield to be brought home. Could it be that Begin and his government are planning yet another round of war—“peace for Lebanon”? “peace for Syria”? “peace for the Free World”?

If the Labor movement continues to stand paralyzed by fear of the masses and continues to be satisfied with mealy-mouthed, whining mutterings about how “we were not party to the preliminary consultations,” then there may be no point to its continued existence. It might be better if it climbed onto Begin’s bandwagon, or perhaps even joined the Likud (“as an autonomous faction!”) and tried, as the current saying goes, “to change Begin from within.” Its place will then be taken, of necessity, by a different opposition, which will declare courageously: There is an abyss between us and the hawkish right wing. We seek an honorable compromise, while they fantasize about a decision made in blood and fire.

In the meantime, until we have an opposition here, where will we hide our shame?

Davar, June 22, 1982

THE WAR WAS born of a lie. From the very start, it was a war initiated by Israel, a ready-made war waiting only for an opportunity or an excuse. It wasn’t intended to fend off a threat to Israel’s very survival. It was intended to rid us of a relentless irritant, even though that irritant in fact hadn’t been felt for the last ten months. There had been complete quiet along the Lebanese border. Not a single casualty in ten months in the towns and villages of northern Israel. It is spurious to claim that the war began on Sunday, June 6, 1982. It began on Friday, June 4, 1982, at three o’clock in the afternoon, with a massive air raid on PLO targets in Beirut; the intention was to provoke the PLO into shelling villages in Galilee. But this was already a rerun of a previous performance. There had been an earlier attempt, in April, “to provoke a shelling barrage on Galilee”; however, at that time the PLO refused to play ball. But this time their stupidity won out, and they did start a barrage.

“Peace for Galilee” is a deceptive phrase. War, even when it is fully justified, should not be called “peace.” Only in the world of brainwashing and tyranny described by George Orwell do such slogans as “War is peace,” “Slavery is freedom,” and “Ignorance is power” prevail.

Begin’s true goal was the classic Jabotinskyan one: to use force not in order to repel force, but primarily to reshuffle the world, to install a pliable regime in Lebanon, to conduct a “preventive” war against Syria, to wipe out the Palestinian problem, to perform a free service for what Begin likes to call “the free world.” In short, to change the face of the Middle East in one blow. Begin knew very well that there was no national consensus on these goals, so he chose a spurious starting point from which to deceive not only the soldiers, not only the opposition, but even part of his own coalition.

I do not understand the tendency of many mainstream Labor party people these days to assign the responsibility for this war to Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan, and to depict Begin as being led, without a mind of his own, by these two. On the contrary: Sharon is a clumsy but obedient instrument. The adversary is Begin and Beginism.

THE LIMITS OF OBEDIENCE

Begin has the legal right to give orders to the army by virtue of his majority in the Knesset, even though his majority is slim and was achieved partly by manipulation. We must remember, however, that for the past ten years Gush Emunim and its allies have used such arguments as “the will of God” and “the call of conscience” in order to trample on the authority of the Knesset — that is, the authority of the people. For ten years most of us have tried to uphold the law, rightly claiming that if this is not a people ruled by the due process of law, there will be a deluge of anarchy, civil war, and, ultimately, dictatorship. As long as this country is a country ruled by due process of law, and as long as it operates within the broad limits of international law, we must recognize this government — distasteful though it may be to some, including me — as our legal government. Here, of course, we are confronted by the crucial question: Where are the limits of obedience? A former student of mine, now an army officer, came to me and asked at what point I thought it was his duty to refuse to obey orders. Should he fight in Lebanon even though it was against his conscience? I answered: “If you refuse to obey a legal order, then anything goes. You should do this only if you have come to the conclusion that the entire state has become a criminal state.” “But what if I am given an order to cut off Beirut’s electricity?” he asked. I replied: “That is a legal order.” “But what if I am ordered to cut off the water supply? Or to shoot at unarmed people?” he wanted to know. “In that case,” I said, “disobey, and stand trial. Because that last would be a blatantly illegal order, according to the precedent set by the Supreme Court in the Kafr Kassem trial. *That would be passing the limit of obedience.”