Author tells audience of ‘heavy price’ paid by Israeli soldiers

by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Staff Writer

When noted author and historian Michael Oren came to the Princeton University campus on Sept. 14, his talk was billed as Violence in the Middle East: A Campus Perspective. But from Oren’s first words, it was clear that he was bearing the weight of memories of the Middle East from a very personal perspective.

“One month ago, at 3:30 in the morning, I, together with several Israeli reserve officers, army media, and an IDF rabbi, gathered on an unpaved, dusty road,” said Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, as he addressed about 30 students at the university’s Center for Jewish Life/Hillel.

“There was shooting everywhere and tanks moving up the road. The battleground was 200 meters up the road, and the war was set to end in another five hours,” he said. “Coming down the road was a flatbed truck carrying four stretchers. On each stretcher was a bundle under a blanket. Our job was to keep the press away.

“I’m thinking about these four boys being brought down on a flatbed truck,” he said, “and I’m thinking about the history and how we got there.”

So began Oren’s presentation — part catharsis, part history lesson, part dispatches from the front lines of this summer’s war.

Oren, who served as an Israeli Defense Forces liaison to the international press during the war, holds a doctorate in the history of the Middle East from Princeton. He is the author of the definitive Six Days of War: June 1967 and The Making of the Modern Middle East. His next book, Power, Faith and Fantasy: The United States in the Middle East, 1776 to 2006, will be published in 2007. A A native of West Orange, the 51-year-old Oren made aliya in 1979.

As he spoke to the students about the war, Oren stressed that Israel had mounted its response to Hizbullah under the best possible diplomatic circumstances. “Hizbullah was purposely placing [Katyusha rockets] in civilian areas in order to get us to inflict a lot of civilian casualties,” he said. “The world was overwhelmingly supporting Israel’s case. Even the Saudis were rooting us on. The Israeli population was, to an unprecedented degree, united behind this war.

“But much of the bombing was squandered,” he said. “It wasn’t until the last week of the war that the government concluded that the air war was doing more harm than good. And before you knew it, the world was pressing for a cease-fire.”

The Israeli fighting force was also straining because the IDF has been retooled into what is basically “a large SWAT team,” in Oren’s words. “There was this notion…that we can operate as a smaller, smarter, streamlined army,” he said. “Reserve duty is economically prohibitive. So reserve units didn’t train for five years.”

During the war, Oren noted, Hizbullah succeeded in firing 4,000 rockets into Israel. He called the cease-fire achieved by Israel “shaky.”

One positive outcome of the war is that Hizbullah’s mini-state in Lebanon, its elaborate array of bunkers and arsenals, was completely destroyed, according to Oren. Another is the fact that Israel killed an estimated one-quarter of Hizbullah’s fighting force. And, he said, despite the shortcomings of the IDF’s not-so-well-trained reserve force, Israeli reservists responded without question to the mobilization. “The fact is,” he said, “100 percent of those who were called up left their jobs, left their families, left their computers, and went off to fight for their country.

“But we don’t get our boys back,” he said. “We paid a very, very heavy price — 119 soldiers killed.”

At this juncture, Israel faces tremendous challenges, Oren said. He predicted that in the future, Katyusha rockets fired from the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be “far more deadly.” And, he said, Israel faces a monumental threat from Iran.
But he thinks about that dusty road in the North of Israel one month ago. As he stood by the flatbed truck that was bearing the bodies of the four dead soldiers, Oren said, he looked up the road and saw an IDF commando group approaching.

“Their faces were creased with fatigue. Their uniforms were covered with dust,” he said. “They had come to say goodbye.

“I was overwhelmed by the sight of them,” he said.

“They were unbroken, undefeated, standing very tall. They said goodbye, and then they went back for the last five hours of the war.”

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A chance to tell Israel’s side

MICHAEL OREN’S appearance at Princeton University’s Center for Jewish Life/Hillel was made possible through the support of Hillel International, according to CJL executive director Rabbi Julie Roth.

“This is somebody right on the front lines [who can] help students unpack the implications of a war that happened when they were on their summer vacation,” Roth said. “The fact that 30 students could have a conversation in an intimate setting is a kind of privilege we want to extend to our students as part of our responsibility to keep the conversation going.”

Oren’s talk came as pro-Israel activists on campuses around the country are bracing for widespread debate over the past summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah.

“It’s very important to get the discussion going,” said Ian Brasg, an 18-year-old freshman from Toronto, in an interview before the program. “I think Oren has a lot to say. He’s in a good position to comment on the current situation in Israel from an objective perspective.”

Toronto Jews are experiencing a backlash against what are viewed by critics as Israel’s bullying tactics in Lebanon, Brasg added. “So I think it’s important to get some talk on campus about Israel advocacy. In my eyes, it’s where anti-Israel sentiment is gaining strength.”

Elissa Harwood, a 20-year-old sophomore from Virginia Beach, Va., and a member of PIPAC, the Princeton Israel Public Affairs Committee, was confident about that challenge. “Based on events this summer, I would not be surprised if pro-Israel students face increasing challenges,” she said, “but there are so many resources at our disposal and many campus activists are so well trained, I’m sure we’ll be able to be a positive voice.”

PIPAC president Zvi Smith said he was concerned that anti-Israel sentiment on the Princeton campus will increase in the wake of the war. “There’s a lot of anger right now,” said Smith, a 21-year-old sophomore from Los Angeles. “It’s important that we have an event that gives the Israeli side of things.”

— MARILYN SILVERSTEIN