platoon leaders. Down in Israel, the gentle women of the armyâs grim notification machinery picked up phones. A car with a few officers moved through suburban streets. Th e news dropped like a boulder into a still pond: parents, siblings, girlfriend, friends. Later that day the information reached the training base of the Fighting Pioneer Youth at the encampment by the desert highway, then made its way to a sergeant in charge of the twenty recruits beginning their three years of service in the brigadeâs antitank company, one of them me.
Th e sergeant called one of the new kids aside. It was Dani, for whom army service was a step on the way from a middle-class childhood to a doctorate on the modern history of Lebanon, a hiatus spent as a medic training to save lives and dreading the possibility of actually being called upon to do so. Just then we were standing in three rows trying with desperate ineptitude, and under threat of punishment, to precisely line up the toes of our new red boots in accordance with an order from the sergeants. But the discipline was abruptly relaxed, the first time this had happened, and no one was sure what to do. Boots began to stray from the line. Th ere was bad news about someone Dani knew from home. A hill in Lebanon, a mortar shell. We all saw him start to cry, and there was the Pumpkin again.
Not long after that our platoon was convened in a classroom to hear a war story told by a slight sergeant. It was Yaacov, from the incident at the Falcon Bend the year before. He was now at the desert base training the two dozen men of the engineering companyâs new draftâthis was a sister platoon, housed in tents next to ours. Th ey were with us in the classroom. Anytime we were allowed to sit down our heads dropped and we fell asleep, but this didnât happen when he told us about that night. It was a gripping story, an awful story with no virtue to redeem it, and I think it was meant as a first warning about our future beyond the training base. Th e outpostâs name was familiar to me by now.
Th e engineering company had always been in charge of the Pumpkin, so at first we looked at those recruits with a mix of pity and envy; our unit had a less perilous assignment. Th e engineers were on their knees that summer, and everyone knew they were cursed.
While we were still in basic training someone high up decided the engineering company had suffered enough and that our company had not. Papers moved around in an office somewhere; a document was signed by a distracted officer, stamped, filed by a clerk, fates thus decided. Th e engineers were moved off the hill to a part of the security zone that was supposed to be safer. Th ere, near the border fence one night, an officer triggered a booby trap with his radioman, and both of them died.
29
W ITH THE PASSION of the new proselyte, Bruria approached drivers at intersections and shoved the Four Mothers petition through the windows of their cars. She pounced on unsuspecting visitors to the kibbutz library. She had a button that said GET OUT OF LEBANON IN PEACE , blue letters on a white background, and wore it everywhere. There are pictures from her daughterâs wedding where you see it pinned to her dress. Things in Lebanon seemed to be getting worse. N early one hundred soldiers died that year, 1997, in and around the security zone: the helicopter crash, a squad of commandos who walked into a Hezbollah ambush along the coast, five infantrymen trapped and incinerated when a shell lit a brush fire, a steady drip of others.
The women posted their manifestos on kibbutz bulletin boards and used their connections to get important people to meet them. Few took them seriously. The government ignored them, and public opinion was somnolent. It was common to hear said, by men of course, that the mothers were âspeaking from the uterus.â Bruria tried hard not to say where she thought the men were speaking from.
In the fall of that
Th e sergeant called one of the new kids aside. It was Dani, for whom army service was a step on the way from a middle-class childhood to a doctorate on the modern history of Lebanon, a hiatus spent as a medic training to save lives and dreading the possibility of actually being called upon to do so. Just then we were standing in three rows trying with desperate ineptitude, and under threat of punishment, to precisely line up the toes of our new red boots in accordance with an order from the sergeants. But the discipline was abruptly relaxed, the first time this had happened, and no one was sure what to do. Boots began to stray from the line. Th ere was bad news about someone Dani knew from home. A hill in Lebanon, a mortar shell. We all saw him start to cry, and there was the Pumpkin again.
Not long after that our platoon was convened in a classroom to hear a war story told by a slight sergeant. It was Yaacov, from the incident at the Falcon Bend the year before. He was now at the desert base training the two dozen men of the engineering companyâs new draftâthis was a sister platoon, housed in tents next to ours. Th ey were with us in the classroom. Anytime we were allowed to sit down our heads dropped and we fell asleep, but this didnât happen when he told us about that night. It was a gripping story, an awful story with no virtue to redeem it, and I think it was meant as a first warning about our future beyond the training base. Th e outpostâs name was familiar to me by now.
Th e engineering company had always been in charge of the Pumpkin, so at first we looked at those recruits with a mix of pity and envy; our unit had a less perilous assignment. Th e engineers were on their knees that summer, and everyone knew they were cursed.
While we were still in basic training someone high up decided the engineering company had suffered enough and that our company had not. Papers moved around in an office somewhere; a document was signed by a distracted officer, stamped, filed by a clerk, fates thus decided. Th e engineers were moved off the hill to a part of the security zone that was supposed to be safer. Th ere, near the border fence one night, an officer triggered a booby trap with his radioman, and both of them died.
29
W ITH THE PASSION of the new proselyte, Bruria approached drivers at intersections and shoved the Four Mothers petition through the windows of their cars. She pounced on unsuspecting visitors to the kibbutz library. She had a button that said GET OUT OF LEBANON IN PEACE , blue letters on a white background, and wore it everywhere. There are pictures from her daughterâs wedding where you see it pinned to her dress. Things in Lebanon seemed to be getting worse. N early one hundred soldiers died that year, 1997, in and around the security zone: the helicopter crash, a squad of commandos who walked into a Hezbollah ambush along the coast, five infantrymen trapped and incinerated when a shell lit a brush fire, a steady drip of others.
The women posted their manifestos on kibbutz bulletin boards and used their connections to get important people to meet them. Few took them seriously. The government ignored them, and public opinion was somnolent. It was common to hear said, by men of course, that the mothers were âspeaking from the uterus.â Bruria tried hard not to say where she thought the men were speaking from.
In the fall of that
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