So I walked around for the next 10 hours with the heavy knowledge that the son of David Grossman, one of Israel's most famous and beloved authors, had been killed in battle only a few days after his father, together with Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, published in Haaretz newspaper an open letter that called upon the government to negotiate a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
I was in a taxi, on my way to meet my friend Chani, when the news was released at the end of the 8.00 p.m. news broadcast, as is the custom. In a netural voice the announcer recited the names of all the young men who had been killed that day, ending with, "It is now permitted to announce that the name of the twenty-fourth soldier who was killed yesterday is Uri Grossman, 20, son of the author David Grossman. That is the end of the news, from the Voice of Israel."
Later I found out that at least five acquaintances who work in the Israeli media had known about Uri's death all day, but not one of us had mentioned it. I told one friend that I was really touched by this show of respect. He looked at me strangely and said, "It's basic, no?"
I think it is very difficult for someone who is neither Israeli nor a Hebrew speaker to understand why Israelis mourned Uri Grossman's death collectively. Although it was surely not his purpose in writing this piece for the Guardian's Comment is Free blog, Arthur Neslen shows how easy it is for an outsider to misread Israeli culture.
David Grossman's son was not a political symbol. His death was not "one of those moments when icons are brought low." Israelis who didn't know David Grossman personally joined him in mourning his son's death because David Grossman was the voice that expressed our intimate feelings - about family and about death, for example. His stories for children are so well known and beloved - stories like the Itamar series, or Uri's Special Language ( “Uri is almost two years old, and he’s beginning to talk,” it began. “Even Uri’s parents don’t understand what Uri is saying.”), which he wrote when his son was two years old. And because his novels, like Someone to Run With (for teenagers) and See Under: Love are such beautifully written expressions of both universal themes and uniquely Israeli experiences.
Although Grossman is usually grouped together with Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua under the rubric Generation of the State - novelists who started to write after Israel's founding in 1948 - he is in fact the only one of the three who was born after 1948. Yehoshua and Oz rose to prominence in the early 1970's with novels like The Lover (Yehoshua) and My Michael (Oz) which are iconoclastic and individualistic compared to novels by the previous generation of writers, the Palmach Generation, but are still very much concerned with grand themes like the Future of the State and the Situation of the Jews. Grossman, who became famous in the mid-1980s, is also concerned with these themes, but he approaches them from a gentler, more accessible and human perspective, and he is much more in touch with the current Zeitgeist. It is impossible to imagine Oz or Yehoshua writing the lyrics for a smash hit Hebrew hip hop song, for example.
Grossman simply knows how to express what we are feeling. So when his son died, we thought about all the people we knew who had been killed or badly wounded over the last month, and we identified with him because we knew so many grieving families and friends of dead soldiers who were going through the same pain. Because this is a small country, and everyone knew someone who had received an emergency call up notice for combat duty in Lebanon, or someone who had died or been injured, or someone who had lost a loved one. And I knew a lot of people who responded without hesitation to those call up notices, even though they were ambivalent about the way the war was being directed and even though they left behind jobs and small children. And we knew David Grossman would express our inarticulate thoughts, which is what he did in the eulogy he wrote for Uri. It was published on August 16 in Yedioth Ahronoth, and I have translated it below. But first, I would like to correct a few errors in Mr. Neslen's article.
I asked a lot of people - friends, the staff at my local cafe, the guy who works in the corner grocery, taxi drivers, journalists - whether it was true that "students in high school are required to paste the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) coat of arms of the Sword and Olive Branch into their copybooks and write under it the caption 'Our army hates war and wants only peace.'" They all looked at me with complete puzzlement and told me that they'd neither undergone such an experience in school nor heard of any such thing.
It is not true that the contacts Israelis make during their mandatory national service (which is called sadir in Hebrew, not miluim; miluim is the term for reserve duty) set them up for jobs in the future. That concept is as outdated as the English old boys' network. Strong and lasting friendships are formed in the army, it is true, but the most prestigious jobs in contemporary Israel are in high tech, and one does not become a computer programmer in a combat unit.
Also, many Israelis are ambivalent about the army's role in the West Bank as an occupation force rather than a combat force, but that is a huge issue that is way beyond the scope of this article. I raise it only to point out that, while Yariv Oppenheimer, the secretary of Peace Now, who is quoted in the article as saying that he felt like "killing" those who refused to serve in Lebanon (and please, let us not take the word "killing" too literally), does oppose the occupation, he makes a point of serving his annual reserve duty because he also opposes the politicisation of army service. If the Left thinks it's okay to refuse service in the West Bank, then the Right will be justified in refusing to evacuate settlements. And beyond that, to steal a phrase from Mr. Neslen's article, lie dragons. (P.S. I do have friends who have refused to serve in the West Bank. It was an incredibly difficult decision for them, they did pay a high price for it, and I do not feel comfortable judging them because I have never served and I understand how complex their feelings are).
Much has been made of the fact that, according to polls published during the first two weeks of the war, the vast majority of Israelis supported a military response to the Hezbollah attack of July 12. The poll results were often interpreted by those who had - shall we say - a certain agenda to mean that Israelis were a bloodthirsty lot who wanted to wade into Lebanon and kill lots of people. Er, no. I don't think so. People simply thought that, after six years of Hezbollah's cross border incursions, abductions (including the bombardment and attempted abduction of civilians in Al Ghajar), military buildup right on our border and Katyusha bombardments, enough was enough. The army needed to secure the northern border to prevent further Hezbollah attacks. Whether Israelis were right or wrong in believing that military action would achieve that goal and whether they understood the long term consequences of the military actions are different questions. The point is that nobody was sitting around sharpening his bayonette and muttering "let me at 'em." Nobody wanted war, for heaven's sake. It's just that a lot of people thought it was a necessary evil, to deal with what was perceived as an existential threat.
Finally, and I say this as gently as possible, I think it is in poor taste to take the death of a 20 year-old boy-man and try to make it into a negative political symbol - a means of taking Israeli society to task for perceived wrongdoings or a lack of political correctness. That is a very unkind thing to do in the face of the Grossman family's pain, and I hope very much that none of them ever happens to read Mr. Neslen's article.
The eulogy appears below. It is long and it is much more beautiful in Hebrew (Hebrew link here; thanks, Joni), but I did not have the heart to edit it.
*****
Uri Grossman
Uri my dear,
Over the past three days almost every thought has begun with the word “no”. No, he won’t come back. No, we won’t talk, and no we won’t laugh. No, there won’t be another boy like that, with the ironic look in his eyes and the fabulous sense of humour. No, there won’t be the young man who was so wise beyond his years, no there won’t be that warm smile and healthy appetite. No, there won’t be that rare combination of determination and gentleness, no there won’t be his straightforwardness and his wise heart. No, there won’t be any more of Uri’s infinite gentleness, and no there won’t be his inner quiet that calms every argument. And no we won’t watch The Simpsons or Seinfeld together, and no we won’t listen to Johnny Cash. And no we won’t feel your strong hugs. And no we won’t see you talking to Yonatan as you gesticulate wildly, and we won’t see you hug your beloved sister Ruthie.
Uri my love, throughout your short life we all learned from you. From your strength and your insistence on going your own way. For choosing your own path even if there was no chance you would succeed. With astonishment we watched your struggle to be accepted to an officers’ training course. You knew you would be a good officer, and you were never satisfied with being anything but the very best you were capable of. And when you succeeded I thought, Here is a man who has such a simple, sober understanding of his own abilities. He is completely free of pretension and arrogance. He is completely unaffected by what others say about him. His source of strength lies within himself.
That is the way you were from the time you were a child. You were a child who lived in harmony with himself and his environment. A child who knew he belonged, who knew he was loved, who knew his limitations and understood his uniqueness. And truly, when you forced the army to submit to your will and accept you as an officer, it was clear what kind of an officer and human being you would be. And now we hear from your friends and your soldiers about the officer and the friend, about how you would wake up before everyone else to arrange everything and go to bed only after everyone else had fallen asleep.
And yesterday, at midnight, I looked at the house that was quite a mess after hundreds of people came to visit and comfort us, and I said, Well, now we need Uri to help us tidy up.
You were the leftist of your battalion, and they respected you, because you stood by your beliefs while carrying out all the missions you were assigned. I remember your telling me about your “checkpoint policy,” because of course you spent a lot of time at the checkpoints. You said that if there was a child in the car you stopped, you always started by trying to calm him down and make him laugh. And you always reminded yourself that the child was about Ruthie’s age, and that he was very afraid of you. And how much he hates you, and that he has reasons to hate, but in spite of that you would do everything in your power to make that terrible experience easier for him, while simultaneously doing your job without compromising.
When you entered Lebanon, Mum said that the thing she feared most was your “Eliphelet’s Syndrome.” [Eliphelet is the hero of a poem by Nathan Alterman, about a naïve soldier who unquestioningly sacrifices himself for others; the poem was set to music and sung by Arik Einstein, amongst other famous Israeli singers. According to the Hebrew bible, Eliphelet was the name of one of King David’s sons]. We were very afraid that, like the Eliphelet in the poem, if it was necessary to save a wounded soldier, you would run straight into the line of fire, and you would be the first to volunteer to “restock the supply of ammunition when it ran low” [a line from Alterman’s poem]. And that just as you were your whole life, at school and at home and during your army service, just as you always volunteered to give up your furloughs because another soldier needed the break more than you did, or because someone else’s situation was more difficult – so you would behave there, in Lebanon, in the terrible face of war.
You were my son and also my friend, just as you were to your mother. Our souls are connected to yours. You were a person at peace with himself, a person whose company was a pleasure. I cannot express properly the extent to which you were someone to run with [reference to the title of Grossman’s novel for teenagers, Someone to Run With]. On each of your furloughs you would say, “Dad, let’s go talk." And we would go out together, usually to a restaurant, and sit and talk. You told me so many things, Uri, and I was so proud to be the keeper of your secrets. That a man like you chose me as your confidante.
I remember how you deliberated once whether or not to punish one of your soldiers who had committed some disciplinary offense. You really suffered over that decision, because you knew it would enrage your soldiers, and also other officers who were more forgiving than you of certain offences. And you did pay a high price for your decision to punish that soldier, but afterward that event became one of the legends of your battalion – a sort of measuring stick for proper behaviour and sticking to the law. And on your last furlough you told me with bashful pride that your commanding officer held up your decision as an example of correct behaviour for an officer.
You lit up our lives, Uri. Mum and I raised you with love. It was so easy to love you with all our hearts, and I know that your short life was a good one. I hope that I was a fitting father for a boy like you. But I know that to be your mother’s son means that you were raised with generosity and kindness and infinite love, and you received all of that in plentitude. And you knew how to appreciate that, to be grateful and not to take any of it for granted.
For now I am not going to say anything about the war in which you were killed. We, your family, have already lost this war. The State of Israel will have to do its own self-examination. We will retreat into our own pain, surrounded by our good friends, enveloped in the enormous love that we feel today from so many people, many of whom we didn’t even know, and I am grateful for their boundless support.
I only wish we all knew how to provide this kind of support and solidarity in different times. This is perhaps our greatest and most treasured national resource. I wish we knew how to be a little gentler with one another. I hope that we succeed in extricating ourselves now, at the very last minute, because even more difficult times are waiting for us.
I would like to say a few more words.
Uri was a very Israeli boy. Even his name was very Israeli, very much a Hebrew name. He was the essence of Israeli-ness as I like to see it. The kind that has been almost forgotten, that is sometimes considered almost a curiosity. Many times I looked at him and thought that he, like Ruthie and Yonatan, was almost an anachronism. Uri with his uncompromising directness and acceptance of complete responsibility for everything that happened around him. Uri who was always the one to take initiative, who was always completely reliable. Uri with his deep sensitivity for suffering, for all emotional pain.
Uri was a man of principle. That word has often been mocked over the past years. Because in our mad, cynical, world it is no longer “cool” to be principled. Or to be a humanist. Or to be truly sensitive to the suffering of others, even if the Other is your enemy on the battlefield.
But I learned from Uri that it is possible to be both principled and cool. That we do need to uphold our values and defend ourselves simultaneously. We have to insist upon upholding our values in the face of temptation to give in to power and simplistic thinking, to give in to the corruption of cynicism and contempt for humanity, which are the true, great curse of those who have lived their whole lives in our disaster-prone region of the world.
Uri simply had the courage to be himself, always, in every situation, and to find his own voice in everything he did and said, and that is what protected him from the destruction, pollution and constricting of his soul.
Uri was also incredibly funny and witty. It is impossible to talk about Uri without mentioning his hilarious brilliance. For example, when he was 13 I once told him: “Imagine if you and your children were able to fly to outer space just as people fly today to Europe.” And he smiled: “I’m not so attracted to outer space, you can find everything on planet earth.”
Or another time, we were driving in the car, and his mother and I were discussing a new book that was attracting a lot of attention and talking about various authors’ reviews, and Uri who was 9 years old piped up from the back seat: “Hey, you elitists, remember that there are simple people back here who don’t understand a word of what you’re talking about!”
Or for example Uri, who really did not like figs, once held a bunch of dried figs in his hand and said: “Remind me, aren’t dried figs just regular figs that sinned in a previous life?” Or when I once hesitated over accepting an invitation to Japan, Uri said: “How can you not go? Can you imagine what it’ll be like to visit the only country in the world where there are no Japanese tourists?”
Dear friends, on the night between Saturday and Sunday, at twenty minutes before three in the morning, our doorbell rang. The voice at the intercom said it was from “the municipal officer,” and I went to open the door and I thought to myself, “That’s it. Life is over.”
But within five minutes, when Michal [Grossman’s wife] and I went into Ruthie’s room and woke her up in order to tell her the horrible news, Ruthie, after her first tears, said: “But we will live, right? We will live just as before, and I want to continue to sing in the choir, and that we will continue to laugh as always, and I want to learn to play the guitar.” And we hugged her, and we told her we would live. And Ruthie also said: “What a fantastic threesome we were, Yonatan, Uri and I.”
And you really were a fantastic team. Yonatan, you and Uri were not just brothers, but soul mates, with your own world and your own private language and your own sense of humour. And Ruthie, Uri loved you with all his heart and soul. He always treated you with such gentleness, and I remember how during our last phone conversation, when we were so happy that the UN was about to declare a ceasefire, he insisted on speaking with you. And how you wept afterward. As if you already knew.
Our lives are not over. We have just suffered a very hard blow. We will draw the strength we need to absorb the blow from one another, from our togetherness, from Michal and from me and from our children and also from the grandparents who loved him with all their hearts – “neshumeh,” they called him, because he really was all soul – and from your aunts and uncles and cousins and from all your many friends from school and from your comrades in arms who accompany us here with such concern and deep affection.
And we will also draw our strength from Uri. He had such a plentitude of strength that it will serve us for many years. He radiated such strong vitality and vibrancy, such warmth and love, and his light will continue to shine on us forever – even if the star itself is extinguished.
Our beloved one, it was our great privilege to live with you. Thank you for every moment you were ours.
Mom, Dad, Yonatan and Ruthie
