It was 2:00 A.M. when the company commander's jeep reached a checkpoint near Ariel. A few days after Tisha B'Av, I stood and stopped Palestinian vehicles heading east, toward Tapuah Junction.
The delay was necessary because sterile terrain was needed to evacuate Jews from their homes – a decision by a prime minister elected with right-wing votes and who carried out radical left-wing policies. The company commander got out of the car and asked me honestly: Do you want me to transfer you to another position? I replied in the negative. This is the task and it needs to be done. Israel's security above all.
Other Days - Parallel Lines
"These are other days, different cases and different people," the protesters say, but it's hard not to notice the parallels. Time and time again I return to the days of trauma, of thinking about whether to refuse an order, of the clear understanding that not only is there no need to refuse, but that there is no connection between operational activity and disengagement. This is the task and it needs to be done. Israel's security above all.
Most of the demonstrators were reservists. Protest rally against the disengagement in Kfar Maimon, 2005, photo: Ziv Koren
On the eve of the current Tisha B'Av fast, a memory of another fast burns in me – Yom Kippur, when the rift kicked me full force. A month and a half earlier, Israelis had been uprooted from their homes in Gush Katif, and synagogues were set on fire by Palestinians. On the morning of the boiling Yom Kippur, while fasting, I was on a tour around Ariel, where the perimeter fence would later be erected. Finally, I found myself at Ariel University for closing prayers, in a community of displaced persons from Netzarim.
I was shaking with fear. There was an orange skullcap on my head, but the uniform, the olive uniform, was to me for only a moment a mark of shame. I didn't evacuate, I didn't uproot, but I had no doubt what the people who had been expelled from their homes would feel during closing prayers.
I went into the plaza where the prayer was taking place, and the worshippers all looked at me. I felt like a stranger. Then they continued to pray, and sang, and cried, and cried, and cried, "A gate was torn for us when we locked a gate," and I cried with them. My friends, my brothers, who a moment after they were uprooted and torn from their homes, knew how to distinguish between those who carried them from their settlement and the young fighter who was in combat and who wanted to pray with them. This is the task and it needs to be done. Israel's security above all.
This is not the end
For the past 17 years, I have been watching the girls' prayers in the Neve Dekelim synagogue on Tisha B'Av and crying. For the past 16 years, I have been going that day to the Segula military cemetery, to the grave of my friend Yoni Sharabi, who was killed dozens of meters away from me in the Second Lebanon War.
Gaza village, during Operation Protective Edge, photo: Gini
The white hairs have since multiplied, the belly has grown, and our officers are slowly taking off their uniforms and joining us on civilians. In Operation Protective Edge they arrived in uniform straight from Gaza, now some of them will arrive moments after a demonstration, but this is an alliance forged in the blood of our friend who was killed. This is the task and it needs to be done. Israel's security above all.
After the disengagement, the feeling was that everything had collapsed. Just before the Second Lebanon War, there was talk of a convergence plan that would have torn me out of my home. Now many believe that Israel is changing into a dictatorship. But from the height of the years and the great difficulty, it can be said clearly: Even when it seems that everything is lost, this is not the end.
The state will survive, and we must not now, as then, break the rules and abandon. 17 years after Lebanon, 18 years after the disengagement and 2,000 years after the destruction of the Temple, we must continue to defend and protect the Temple at all costs. This is the task and it needs to be done. Israel's security above all.
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