Kharra b-Lebanon II
Maybe it finally hit the fan.
There may be no point now going into such detail on my experience in all the other places that many heard of for the first time during the current Lebanon mess as I did for Haifa in the last posting. I was still surprised at the lack of basic geographic and historical knowledge of even people reporting the news on television, although I could understand much of it in retrospect. It first struck me early on in the fighting when an evidently intelligent woman at a news network reported on "a town called Tyre", as though that might be some recently incorporated town. As, indeed, is Nahariya, properly identified as a resort town, hit by Hizbollah rockets. Then, maybe the same day, Haifa was identified as a resort town; rather than an important port (and) industrial city. Some of my amusement at that was obviously a result of my specific familiarity with those places, but an unusual degrees of historical ignorance by native born Americans was evident even before many had removed History from their required school curricula.
I have had no involvement with any of the previous invasions / incursions into Lebanon except outrage, especially at the 1982 one by Sharon. Yet I was one of the first Jewish soldiers coming from Palestine to enter Lebanon (Moshe Dayan was earlier and lost his eye there). We were sent there to help in ensuring the new independence of a Lebanese state (especially to help ensure an Allied victory over the fascist axis). Yossel and I took the train from Haifa north. There may have been a stop in Nahariya with its few thousand inhabitants then. We certainly knew of it because that's where members of Kibbutz Hazorea used to spend their vacations with fellow Yeckes. Some time after the border station (Ras en Nakurah), came a substantial station; Sour (I believe) the signs said. Recalling my gymnasium French (who had controlled Lebanon between the two world wars) and other things I had learned, I knew this was Tzur, the (Ashkenaz) Hebrew version of Tyre, one of the most ancient, and long one of the most important, cities in the world. Along with Sidon (Saida) and (then) lesser Phoenician cities (e.g. Berytos - Beirut), it controlled shipping throughout the Mediterranean 3000 years ago, establishing colonies, like Carthage; and, judging by the book of Kings, apparently helping greatly in the building of the Jerusalem Temple; due to the friendly relation between Solomon, King of Israel, and kHiram of Tyre.
A few years later I did get to Nahariya. That was in another army and another war; fought ostensibly to carry out a U.N. resolution for the partition of Palestine into two independent states. You may want to take that as evidence that the State of Israel, the only one actually proclaimed then, was never really a Zionist one, since I was far from the only non-Zionist to participate in its founding; while the ultraright "New Zionist" terrorist outfits opposed the U.N. resolution along with the Palestinian Arab leadership. But that would upset both its enemies, who like to refer to it as the "Zionist entity"; as well as its current leaders who find it useful to pretend that their version represents the spirit of the founders who were clearly led by the (Old) Zionists.
We had just succeeded with "Operation kHiram" during which the "Arab Liberation Army" of Fawzi al Kawukji, apparently a Syrian, who had spent the World War years in Berlin, was routed from the Upper Galilee and fled to Lebanon in one of the last actions of the war. I was in the 9th ("Oded") Brigade, and had been one of the first dozen or so soldiers into Tarshiha; where I witnessed some unpleasant things I thought Jews don't do (but nothing even approaching the sort of things that have become public since; e.g. in Eli Wiesel's autobiography). When it was all over, a truck with as many of us as could fit in took off for Nahariya to celebrate.
Among other places I have been to and mentioned now are Kfar Gileadi, "a town called Tiberias" and Afula, but as I add this to the posting, the time has come for the cease fire ordered by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 to become effective. In the (tentative) hope that it will be heeded better than the earlier decision mentioned, and that the stupid slaughter since its passage, designed almost overtly to help cover some general's ass, will really end, I shall end this, so I can watch the news.
There may be no point now going into such detail on my experience in all the other places that many heard of for the first time during the current Lebanon mess as I did for Haifa in the last posting. I was still surprised at the lack of basic geographic and historical knowledge of even people reporting the news on television, although I could understand much of it in retrospect. It first struck me early on in the fighting when an evidently intelligent woman at a news network reported on "a town called Tyre", as though that might be some recently incorporated town. As, indeed, is Nahariya, properly identified as a resort town, hit by Hizbollah rockets. Then, maybe the same day, Haifa was identified as a resort town; rather than an important port (and) industrial city. Some of my amusement at that was obviously a result of my specific familiarity with those places, but an unusual degrees of historical ignorance by native born Americans was evident even before many had removed History from their required school curricula.
I have had no involvement with any of the previous invasions / incursions into Lebanon except outrage, especially at the 1982 one by Sharon. Yet I was one of the first Jewish soldiers coming from Palestine to enter Lebanon (Moshe Dayan was earlier and lost his eye there). We were sent there to help in ensuring the new independence of a Lebanese state (especially to help ensure an Allied victory over the fascist axis). Yossel and I took the train from Haifa north. There may have been a stop in Nahariya with its few thousand inhabitants then. We certainly knew of it because that's where members of Kibbutz Hazorea used to spend their vacations with fellow Yeckes. Some time after the border station (Ras en Nakurah), came a substantial station; Sour (I believe) the signs said. Recalling my gymnasium French (who had controlled Lebanon between the two world wars) and other things I had learned, I knew this was Tzur, the (Ashkenaz) Hebrew version of Tyre, one of the most ancient, and long one of the most important, cities in the world. Along with Sidon (Saida) and (then) lesser Phoenician cities (e.g. Berytos - Beirut), it controlled shipping throughout the Mediterranean 3000 years ago, establishing colonies, like Carthage; and, judging by the book of Kings, apparently helping greatly in the building of the Jerusalem Temple; due to the friendly relation between Solomon, King of Israel, and kHiram of Tyre.
A few years later I did get to Nahariya. That was in another army and another war; fought ostensibly to carry out a U.N. resolution for the partition of Palestine into two independent states. You may want to take that as evidence that the State of Israel, the only one actually proclaimed then, was never really a Zionist one, since I was far from the only non-Zionist to participate in its founding; while the ultraright "New Zionist" terrorist outfits opposed the U.N. resolution along with the Palestinian Arab leadership. But that would upset both its enemies, who like to refer to it as the "Zionist entity"; as well as its current leaders who find it useful to pretend that their version represents the spirit of the founders who were clearly led by the (Old) Zionists.
We had just succeeded with "Operation kHiram" during which the "Arab Liberation Army" of Fawzi al Kawukji, apparently a Syrian, who had spent the World War years in Berlin, was routed from the Upper Galilee and fled to Lebanon in one of the last actions of the war. I was in the 9th ("Oded") Brigade, and had been one of the first dozen or so soldiers into Tarshiha; where I witnessed some unpleasant things I thought Jews don't do (but nothing even approaching the sort of things that have become public since; e.g. in Eli Wiesel's autobiography). When it was all over, a truck with as many of us as could fit in took off for Nahariya to celebrate.
Among other places I have been to and mentioned now are Kfar Gileadi, "a town called Tiberias" and Afula, but as I add this to the posting, the time has come for the cease fire ordered by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 to become effective. In the (tentative) hope that it will be heeded better than the earlier decision mentioned, and that the stupid slaughter since its passage, designed almost overtly to help cover some general's ass, will really end, I shall end this, so I can watch the news.
posted by solar_sol | 11:50 PM
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