Even stones can break

by Chen Kotess-Bar
Ma'ariv, March 2, 2007

All those who knew Raphael know that he died on February 28, 1998. Raphael and Erez Gerstein, father and son, died together. The same roadside bomb killed them in Lebanon. Eight years and one day apart.
At 3:00 a.m. Wednesday night, Raphael Gerstein died. Eight years and one day after the death of his son, IDF Brigadier General Erez Gerstein, Commander of the Liaison Unit in Lebanon. Away from the lawns of Kibbutz Reshafim, where Erez grew up, away from the battle field where he became a living legend. Raphael Gerstein died in hospital.
I first met Erez when he was commander of the Golani commando unit. At the time I was a reporter with an army magazine. Oh, those days of innocence... Nothing was more important that the Golani commando. God only knows how much we disliked the paratroopers. We nurtured great dreams. Young people's dreams, oblivious of how quickly time flies. Future became present, then past. The living became the dead. Erez and I became close friends.
Eight years after he was killed, I am still trying to figure out what happened. And I am not the only one. This year we spoke of Erez more than ever. Events came full circle only to break loose again: during the second Lebanon war, while on a helicopter, flanked by Chief-of-Staff Dan Halutz and the Commander of the Ground Forces, Benny Gantz; later in the Golani Division Command Room; in the name shuffle trying to guess the next Chief-of-Staff's identity; during my own private breakdown. Erez was omnipresent with his huge presence, wrinkled brow, ample gestures, half-swallowed words…
Erez was killed on a Sunday. On the same evening we drove to his house to meet the love of his life - his wife Hertel. And Omer, his only son. Raphael was asleep in his living-room armchair. Just like Erez, half-reclining, his body slightly turned. Their body language was so similar. "I never knew", he retorted when he was told about his son's valor and bravery that had earned him mythical status.
For eight years Raphael collected every single detail about his son's death. He kept clinging to his grandson, Omer, in his need to preserve his own son's presence. He wanted to write a book, to tell the whole world about Erez. "Due to Erez I became acquainted with IDF's highest ranking officers", boasted the man who came from Argentina to make his home in a kibbutz. Amiram Levin, Gabi Ashkenazi, Kaplan, Moshe (Chico) Tamir, Mofaz – all were familiar faces in Shula and Raphael Gerstein's home. Erez' death became an open wound for all of them. But Raphael's wound was different. In the words of Erez' friends from the Golani Corps – Raphael was mortally wounded. He let go of life. Israeli poetess Dalia Rabikowicz once wrote – Even stones can break. Raphael Gerstein was once as hard as stone. But then his son died and all that changed.
Raphael's heart grew weaker and weaker. He took almost no interest in the second Lebanon war. He was only interested in the past, in Erez and what he used to be. For the first time he didn't attend Erez' memorial service in the kibbutz. Minister Shaul Mofaz wished him speedy recovery in his speech after the service. But everyone knew he would not recover. He would not return to the kibbutz or ride his bicycle to visit Erez' grave. Raphael was dying and would take his great grief to heaven. Erez would not be there at his graveside to say Kaddish (the prayer for the dead).
A few years ago I quoted from Prof. Assa Kasher's eulogy for his own son who had died in an accident: "The division between life and death is quite clear. But there is a no man's land in between, a twilight zone. I think of my son as of someone who is still alive. As for me, I am living among the dead." Raphael, who was no stranger to this twilight zone, agreed with every word.
On Wednesday, a few hours after the memorial service for Erez, Raphael lost consciousness. "Father of late Brigadier General Erez Gerstein died of a serious condition" said the news bulletins. Just like that. Modern medicine does not recognize dying of sorrow.
For eight years Raphael kept saying that Erez was waiting for him. Erez, as Raphael knew all too well, was never too patient. This week was no exception.

From Persia to Iran

by Arieh Eldad
Ma'ariv, March 2nd, 2007

And Haman said to King Ahasuerus: There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from all other peoples, and they do not keep the king's laws. Therefore, it does the king no profit to suffer them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who do the work, to bring it into the king's treasuries.
This short quote from the Book of Esther embodies the history of anti-Semitism and illustrates the threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It has it all: Israel is hated because Israel is different and there is incitement against the people of Israel because they are different. This hatred is reflected in the ancient forms of anti-Semitism, Greek or Christian, directed at the very faith of Israel, as well as its modern translations, Russian or German, and also Muslim: the Germans incited against the Jews because of they controlled the international media, and because they pulled the strings and instigated other countries against Germany; communist Russia was spreading rumors that the Jews were imperialistic agents, acting all over the world to spread capitalism and cosmopolitanism, the archenemies of revolution. These two elements, the old and the new, converge under the umbrella of Muslim judeophobia: Jews are the enemies of the prophet and the allies of the American Satan.
And there is also profit to be made: genocide will be followed by plunder; power will come to whomever manages to cause a whole nation to join the hatred bandwagon. And another thing: the paradigm of pathological hatred, embedded herein is also to be found at work in any line of anti-Semitism: Jews are different, they are useless, they have no right to exist, and therefore it is alright to exterminate them.
The Jews in the Book of Esther tried to escape their destiny. They tried to become Persians. Mordechai bore a Persian name, even though his father name was Yair, a Jewish name. Esther bore a Persian name, even though her father's name was Avichail, a Jewish name. She lives in the king's palace and shares his bed, while Mordechai waits at the king's gates. Even though they changed their names and managed to approach the ruler, there comes Haman and moves to destroy them. This is how the emancipation of Persian Jewry went down the drain, just as the emancipation of European Jewry went down the drain generations later. Despite the "equal rights" for Jews promoted by the French revolution, the opening of the ghetto doors and their integration into society, Haman was out in the streets of Paris shouting "Death to Jews" after the Dreyfuss trial; Herzl could hear the trains rolling on their way to Auschwitz. He was sure that diaspora was a disease and that anti-Semitism was its symptom. He was sure that once the Jews were no longer an exiled nation, the plight of the Jews would be over. This is how we came back to our ancestral home, God willing, and thanks to the strong Zionist spirit, spurred on by the oppression that chased us out of every country: "Jews, go to Palestine!" read the graffiti in Poland and Russia. So now, when we are a free people in our own country, those who hate have taken to shouting: "Jews, get out of Palestine!" The European neo-fascists and the Islamofascists hate us because we are no longer dispersed and we have managed to come back to the land of our forefathers.

The claim that Jews have no right to an independent state in the Land of Israel because it belong to the Arabs only serves the ancient logic that we have no right to exist at all – it is alright to exterminate us. Delegitimizing the Jewish people as sought by Haman, and sealed with the king's ring, is the logical echo heard in Iran, modern day Persia, who is denying the rightful claim of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, and should therefore be allowed to pursue the nuclear arms race in order to exterminate the Jews. All those who join the anti-Israeli chorus under the pretense of the justified right to self-defense of the "Palestinian people", all those who accuse us of apartheid and the IDF troops of being Judeo-Nazis, all those who falsely accuse us of genocide in Jenin, Beirut or Gaza, are denying the moral right of the Jewish State to exist in the Land of Israel, and empower the hardened hearts of the old and new anti-Semites who seek our extermination.
These Jew haters do not really care if we are dispersed or concentrated in one place. When we were dispersed, the world produced Torquemada and Chmelnitsky, Hitler and Stalin; when we have gathered in our land the world produced Sadam Hussein, Arafat, Haled Mashal and Nasrallah. Haman alias Saddam Hussein swings at the end of his rope, only to be reborn as Ahmadinijad, still threatening to destroy Israel. The annihilation of Israel is the one objective perpetrated by the Hamans of every generation.
When we were scattered in the Diaspora, we depended on the favors of Ahasuerus for salvation. Not to mention that salvation was never guaranteed, that is why Purim is a miracle for us. During the Holocaust we had no Ahasuerus. With our return to our land we became masters of our own fate, and we are also responsible for it, that is why we must not rely on other nations to do our work for us. As befits the conclusion of the Book of Esther, the Jews must rise to exact revenge on those who hate them.