Guy. A kind of man like that with a special nickname. The kind of man there are no words to describe. Lt. Col. Jonathan Tzur (Bernstein), commander of the Nahal reconnaissance battalion, was killed on Saturday morning in a battle with Hamas terrorists while galloping from his home in Kedumim to his soldiers in Kerem Shalom. Yehonatan (34) was the father of Netta, Arbel and Dagan. A loving man for the beginning, who grew up in Yitzhar and became a legendary commander in his lifetime.
I never met the guy face-to-face, but I had an hour-and-a-half phone conversation with him. I approached him as someone who was a good friend of her son Sarel, commander of the Givati Patrol who was killed in Operation Protective Edge. At the time, I was working on writing a book about construction. After talking to a guy, I felt for the first time that I could finally figure out who Benya was.
It was because those who spoke to me across the line were very similar in their rebelliousness, fortitude, dramatic storytelling ability, and mischievous sense of humor. Barnish managed to revive her sons for me, and also spoke openly about the aspects of his life that were identical to those of her sons – the difficulties with the religious framework and the military bureaucracy. When I finished the work, I sent him the book with thanks and a dedication.
When I saw the announcement of his death, I gasped and ran quickly to look for the recording of the call. Fortunately, I found her immediately. I called his family and asked if they could come, hand over the recording and interview them. Thus I found myself driving on the road from Ofra to Kedumim, crossing Huwara, which has become a ghost town, ascending the steep and winding road between the olive trees to Mount Hemed, a small outpost on the outskirts of Kedumim and the most beautiful place in the country.
On my way I thought it was just one. One of at least 1,200 fallen and murdered, each of whom is a hero and deserves a newspaper article, but because of the monstrous scale of the disaster will hardly get a small picture. This thought weakened me, but I decided to stick to my small task, bring the recordings to the family and sketch the character of a guy here.
The dizzying landscape at the top of Mount Hemed hits me. How beautiful our country is and how beautiful is the house built by a young man and first on the edge of the wild cliff, a house they entered about a year and a half ago. The façade of the house is surrounded by stone arches, topped by a beautiful wooden pergola. The young vine planted by a chap weaves from the earth to the stone pillars, climbs to the wooden beams and kisses a blue sky. Here in this place his wife chooses to be photographed.
"Jonathan loved this vine very much. Every time he returned from the army, he would throw his bag and weapon at the entrance and run to take care of the vine. 'Look how she grows,' he would be amazed every time," says the new widow. "He was very proud of this garden. After the treatment of the vine, he would make some good steak at the barbecue on the terrace and dine like that with a glass of wine from his wine cave, and then return to work in the garden again until night."
Gentleness and strength
In the garden, an old bright blue Beetle car is proudly displayed. "With this car, he tried to explain to me why it was worth it for me to go out with him," she recalls with a smile. "He told me, 'I'm in a kingfisher, I have a motorcycle and I have a beetle.' Kingfisher did not impress me, nor did the motorcycle, but in front of the beetle I could no longer remain indifferent. We plowed the country with her, and she had endless mishaps. Among other things, every time they pressed the brake, the horn worked, too." First, she describes funny situations, in which every accident or stop was accompanied by the deafening sound of the rogue horn and the shocked looks of passersby.
After they got married and their eldest daughter Neta was born, Barnesh and his friend Yehuda Herman renovated an old truck together. "It took them several months to turn the truck into a luxurious bed and breakfast with all kinds of patents. After losing his son to his best friend, who is one of the few people in the world whom Jonathan really admired, Herman became his best friend. Herman - Jonathan's second wife, that's what I always called him. With this truck we traveled all over the country for a month and a half. By the way, Jonathan's third wife was the gardener."
First explains that she was one of the few in the world who called him by his official name. "A guy is the military nickname. I wanted there to be separation. At home, when he takes off his uniform, he will be a man and a father, not a general. Behind the warrior hid a man with a sensitive soul, who wrote songs. After he read the poems to me, at the height of his quest for me, I was captivated by magic.
"There was infinite gentleness about him. It's hard to understand this complexity. Jonathan is an extremely strong man. He carried very heavy loads alone, and with one hand he could easily kill a man, but he is also a soft, sensitive and wise man. It is clear to me that in his last moments he fought wisely and heroically against the terrorists. There's a song he really liked and he would always joke that it was the song for the funeral. I told him what a funeral, you are invincible. Sometimes heroes die, too, that's what I told little Grain, who asked how it was possible that his heroic father died. We played this song on a loop at the end of the funeral."
Barnish's tenderness was especially directed towards his grandmother Hannah, whom he loved and admired. In her last years, he literally dined with her physically. He was the one in charge of taking care of her when she became ill with cancer. Among other things, he prepared a wish list for her, such as being at a concert by her admired singer, Julio Iglesias. A fellow worked to fulfill his grandmother's wishes. He would come to her for Shabbat together with friends, and Grandma Hannah would pamper everyone. After she died, a young man built a small shack in her memory near his house, which he named "Grandma Hannah."
The hut serves as a pampering and relaxing corner for soldiers. Inside it is a picture of Grandma Hannah and moving words written by a young man and first in memory of Grandma and gratitude to the soldiers. It is difficult to understand how a person who devoted his life to the army as a senior commander operates a pampering corner for soldiers during short vacations.
Snowstorm
Next to the vine, she listens with tears in her eyes to the recording of a guy's conversation with me. In the recording, Barnish recounts how the friendship with her sons began. At first, tension developed between the two, and even a kind of confrontation, but a month after her son was a sergeant in the Rimon Patrol and a guy from the combat platoon, "we began to realize that we were too similar.
We are both settlers who come from religious backgrounds. Both her sons and I hated the religious bureaucracy very much, and it influenced our faith. How did a lot of Capricorn cook with his mother's milk end up for a six-hour preservation and a milky sink and meat? We were both a little fed up with it. I didn't want things that made me angry to affect communication with God. I think her sons had a continuous relationship with God. Her son believed in God very much and knew that He was his father and watched over Him, and he also knew that He was getting out of the way, that he was a naughty boy. It explains to you how it is possible that when he traveled on Shabbat, he would say the prayer of the way."
Benya Sarel, Photo: IDF Spokesperson
As with the religious framework, so too with the military framework, which the two debated all the time.
"In every position he did in the army, Benya would say, 'That's it, this is my last job.' For me, too, it was just like that. In every role I said, 'Enough, that's it, I give it and then come to life.' Together we went crazy from mediocrity in the army, from the cumbersome organization where things don't move. Education and military values were very important to her sons, but what drove him crazy was internal politics. It's unpleasant to say, I'm still a military man, but the IDF is a very mediocre organization," says Barnish in the recording.
"After I finished my position as the company commander at Rimon, I went to a company commander course and then took unpaid leave. I was at a time when I was very hesitant about what to do next, and the person with whom I spoke at length about the dilemmas was her sons."
Barnish and Herman went on a crazy motorcycle trip to North America, which lasted four months. At one point, they got stuck in a fierce snowstorm and took shelter in a secluded cabin, without any contact with the outside world. "Suddenly we realize that Walla, Memorial Day today," Baranesh describes. "We took a flag, hung it together with a grenade flag and started crying for all the friends we had lost. It was something difficult to explain. Everything I hadn't absorbed for many years in Israel, I absorbed there. I accepted such meaning, the importance of the job, and understood what I needed to do. We were rescued from there and ended up in a motel that had internet. Who was the first person I called to talk to? Construction. I said, 'Dude, I've decided,' and he said, 'You don't have to tell me what. I am happy. I knew that's what you would decide.'"
After Memorial Day, Baranesh and Herman managed to celebrate Independence Day as well. "We hunted geese because we had to barbecue on Independence Day," a chap recalls, laughing. "I had a kosher knife with me for slaughter, and I took a slaughter course in Israel, so we could eat chicken, so we celebrated Independence Day with a Canadian Swan barbecue."
Tame the Beast
Upon returning to Israel, along with the decision to continue in the army, Baranesh made another decision, to establish a home with a beginning. Baranesh's family says that first she managed to do something that no one could, she tamed the wild animal. At first they lived in an ordinary neighborhood in Kedumim, but once Rishon took him for coffee on Har Hemed.
"He immediately said to me: 'First of all, how dare you hide this amazing place from me? We walk around the country debating where to live, and it's just here next to us. This is our home, only here.' He just fell in love with the place right away." At first they lived in an extended caravan, but when a guy left for three years of school, he began building their dream house, until it was turned into a cozy palace with panoramic views. Along with the love for the land, he had a love for man. Every person. Recently, for example, he jumped into demonstrations in Kaplan out of curiosity. "He didn't see them as the other side," she says. "I was shocked when he told me he had gone to a demonstration. I asked him: 'What about you and these people?' He said: 'That's not what you think, it's valor. It's something powerful.' He looked at them as people. It was important for him to understand what they were feeling. He had the ability to connect even with those who had opposite views of his own."
"He left behind a trail of people in love everywhere," says his brother Asael. They sit together on the balcony, father Chaim, mother Rivka and brothers Tzuriah, Achinoam, Asael and Aryeh, embarrassing the son and the eldest brother. "When I enlisted in Givati I was a young soldier in the Rotem Battalion and he was the company commander of the operational company. We caught a line together in Nahal Oz. We would get off a tour and go have coffee together. In training, too, we would sit together. He sat with me and my friends without any distancing. A company commander stands and explains to young soldiers how to clean the Negev. This is not a normal sight. Then he would go and sit on a cigarette with the guys at the headquarters, the most broken people in the battalion."
They bring up more and more stories together and die of laughter that is replaced by tears. "Even as a child, because of his activism, he was constantly injured," says his mother, Rebecca. "One time the brakes on his bike were destroyed while going downhill, and he fell and got stuck in something sharp. There was a hole under his lip and he started laughing that now he could drink through it with a straw."
Alongside the nonsense and antics of a guy, they depict a serious man who knows exactly what he wants. "He would always say, 'I won't stay in the army to waste time,' he didn't have the strength for all the advancement wars in the army," his mother says. "He'd say, 'If you give me a great role, if you don't, I've got so much to do out there. I'm only marching forward, I'm not going to be cancer for side roles.' He invented this word, for cancer. That is, to step aside."
Most of all they lack the one who was the champion of practicality. "Even when I had an experience myself with Jonathan, I was always happy to hear him talk about it afterwards," says Asael. "It was always much better than reality itself, because he would tell it wonderfully."
When her son was killed, a fellow eulogized him at his grave and struggled to recover from the loss. A few months later, he was offered two roles. "I was offered to be from the Kingfisher platoon, because I started there," says a chap in the recording. "It was a very flattering proposal because I wasn't a kingfisher inspector. But at the same time, I was offered command of the Givati Patrol. I couldn't say no. With all the prestige of Kingfisher, going to fill the slot of her sons meant a lot more to me. Because of the story on Memorial Day with the snowstorm, every Memorial Day connects me with her sons."
He gave the book about her sons to the guy to his mother, Rebecca. "I saw the book with your dedication and started reading," she says, "I told him, 'It's too similar, just don't end up the same.'"
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