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PARTISAN REVIEW
bled imagination only. Jewish power, as embodied in the Israel
Defense Force, has become a reality to be reckoned with-though it
has developed faster than the political wisdom that should inform its
use or restraint. The Likud government, in power for more than five
years, has made official policy the groping of the spirit for the pools
of Hebron; and its annexationism, coupled with the extremist
"rejectionism" of Israel by the PLO, made probable the clash in
Lebanon-in which I participated as a gunner with the Israeli
artillery.
It
was my first war, my first brush with its cruel strokes of pride
and heroism, stupidity and death.
It
is impossible to sum up even
now, almost two months after this unusually long Israeli war began.
As of this writing, it is not yet over: Israeli artillery and tanks still
surround Beirut, the PLO is still in western Beirut, Israel and Syria
still face off in the northern Be' eka Valley. And the dust, the moral
and political ambiguity raised by the convoys of Israeli vehicles
crossing the border, has not yet settled. The nervous twitch of the
Israeli seige in western Beirut, the hesitation, are results not only of
American pressure, but of internal debate and second, and third,
thoughts.
One wonders-one cannot help it given the government's
(deliberate?) obfuscation, its lack of candor-who played whom for
the fool. The image of Isaac Rosenberg plunging back toward his
own death on April Fool's Day, in the Great and Utterly Unneces–
sary War between the capitalists of Europe, that image at once
heroic and suicidal, will not leave me. I wonder, Why? For what?
Not being Hindu, I hesitate at throwing away this one life, however
foolishly li ved.
Throughout Israel, people are questioning this war. This may
not seem unusual to an American after all the self-flagellation in the
States over Vietnam (whether justified or not). But Israel was differ–
ent. Until this war. Yesterday, a full colonel in the regular army, that
is, a career officer, resigned his commission because he could not
square the demands of his conscience with a possible all-out assault
on Beirut. He said that he would be unable to look the parents of his
dead soldiers in the eye after the attack.
The nation Rosenberg dreamed of has come to be; its frighten–
ing normalcy might jolt him out of his dust. The skepticism about
Zionism recorded by Alfred Doeblin (author of
Berlin Alexanderplatz)
,
that aJewish state might be established ("but for how many?"), that
