DAVID TWERSKY
know what
to
do with her.... Finally our officer sighed, and
said to her,
"Go
do it. Go get your kids out."
[The camp was in ruins but] eve ry building had a bunker.
Our orders were you couldn't throw hand grenades in. First
you had to check if anyone was in there. We found some old
ladies in one bunker, dropped them a rope, got them out and
took them on stretchers
to
a field hospital collection point.
591
Yeshev spoke offeeJing caught between the "cynicism" of Begin and
Sharon and that of" the terrorists," "and we were the sacrifice."
This test imony corresponds to my own, less direct, experience.
We were unde r severe pressure not to loot , to treat the local popula-
tion with respect and, even when on night guard duty, not to shoot
unless fired upon. The silence, confusion, lack of information, and
general incompetence of the various Israeli public and press rela–
tions agencies were enormous. When I called a friend at the govern–
ment press office to find out about the latest figures for civilian casu–
alties , that is , the figures the Israeli government was announcing, I
was told , " We're not touching that. You have to get hold of Yaakov
Meridor's spokesman [because] Meridor's in America." When he
suggested I try the IDF spokesman, I asked whether they wouldn't
discuss only the Israeli casualty figures, to which my friend replied,
" I guess so." Still, this failure in itself does not explain the accep–
tance in the West of those initial, impossible statistics, and the gen–
eral hostility toward Israel.
Attempting
to
dissect surgically the Western response, Edward
Luttwak wrote a piece in the
Times
called "The Lebanese Numbers
Game." Luttwak thinks that the Israeli action received a prejudi–
cial , unfavorable response because "by doing what they did the
Israelis upse t a fundamental expectation of how events should
develop in the struggle between a Western power and a liberation
organization ....
It
is not that the P L. O. as such enjoys sympathies
that deep ; on the contrary, Israel no doubt would, if it came to that,
re tain the ultimate support of most of its present critics. It is rather
that liberal-l eft opinion is profoundly uncomfortable with military
victory-unless it is won by a liberation front. ... The West is not
supposed to win." In his haste to make his point, Luttwak justifies
Israel's "pursuing the PL.O . all the way to Beirut" and laments that
America did not do the same with the Vietcong and with Hanoi . But
I think that he misses an important point. Not all of Luttwak's
