Israel Democratic Party leader Ehud Barak apologized last week for the deaths of 13 Israeli Arabs during the riots of October 2000, which marked the outbreak of the Second Intifada. He was prime minister at the time. There are quite a few people who are willing to be moved by this, even though they understand this is nothing more than a stunt, a transparent ploy to garner votes ahead of the September election.
I am not moved by this apology; in fact I find it infuriating. I can only speak for myself, but I believe quite a few of my brothers and sisters in the South Lebanon Army community in Israel are now asking themselves: Where is our apology?
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I am a bereaved daughter and sister. Quite a few Israelis, mainly IDF officers and senior defense system officials who dealt with southern Lebanon within their framework of their service, know my family as the "dynasty of death." My father, four of my brothers and two of my nephews were killed in that terrible war in South Lebanon. My brothers were wearing South Lebanon Army uniforms when they fell in battle. I was recently recognized by the Defense Ministry as a bereaved sister.
I have lived in Israel since the 1990s. I built a life in Haifa, established a family and sent my sons to serve in the military. I do not regret this. As the daughter of a South Lebanon Army family, I continue to believe in the historic alliance between the Israel Defense Forces and the South Lebanon Army. I also believe that there is more to this alliance than security interests. We are joined together by common values, a shared war ethic, and I also believe, a shared destiny. Those who have not fought shoulder to shoulder, and those who were not there and did not witness this comradeship with their own eyes cannot understand the significance of this alliance. I remember, as a girl, my parents hosting IDF soldiers, officers, and sometimes very senior IDF officers, in their home. We treated them like family, no less.
Who would have thought that the day would come when this alliance would be violated? We never guessed the day would come when the IDF would abandon southern Lebanon without preparing us in advance. There were those who somehow succeeded in gathering some of their possessions and their family and taking them across the border. The rest were abandoned to their fate, meaning to Hezbollah. It seems to me a majority of Israelis can imagine the bloodbath that ensued.
Those who managed to cross the border were saved from Hezbollah's massacres and looting. But nothing could prepare the families for such rapid displacement from their villages and towns, their communities, their extended family, their language and their culture. Nineteen years later, the sense of trauma and shock have yet to subside. We were forced to accept a new reality: We would never again be able to see those relatives that remained behind. I have never seen most of my family since that day; and when my relatives died, one after another, I was unable to visit their graves.
As I have already said, I do not purport to represent the entire South Lebanon Army community. But the sense of betrayal continues to sting. I do not know how many people were killed, and how many families were decimated following Israel's decision to withdraw from Lebanon, but one thing is clear: This was not a specific event that spun out of control but the intentional violation of the alliance.
But we do not need Barak's request for forgiveness, nor are we interested in one. Our friends and brothers, veterans of the IDF and defense establishment, who unlike Barak, did not abandon us, continue to accompany us in our struggles and our difficulties and have done so since that fateful day. Their friendship will not compensate for the crime, but it at least shows us that there are those in this country who are decent and moral and no less importantly, people of conscience.
