Fifty Years
Fifty Years
Ever since the Yom Kippur War I’d been waiting for August 17th 1975. That morning I hugged my parents and set off alone. Those days no self-respecting 18-year-old would allow his parents to accompany him to the recruitment gates of the IDF.
Israel was still reeling from the Yom Kippur War. I soon had a never-smiling officer certified with PTSD, and a company commander who should’ve been. The trauma of the war permeated our training. Being young, we weren’t afraid of fighting or dying; but we were apprehensive about sharing tents with the loud and rough-looking soldiers from other corners of society. My third day in the army I worked in the kitchen, lorded over by a cruel badmouth. It was soul-crushing, and it was going to continue for Three. Whole. Years. Would we ever return to a normal civilian life, such as we’d just so blithely left behind?
We did, of course. We didn’t, because we changed. I eventually walked out taller, confident, experienced, and a wee bit wiser. We owned our society and country because we’d toiled for them and served them. Love or hate it, this was our home, our society, our country, acquired with our sweat, exhaustion, accomplishments, determination, and in some cases, our blood. We were part of something larger than us, but by dint of our exertions, it was part of us.
In recent years our government and its supporters have drummed into us that we’re privileged snobs who have taken them for granted while foisting upon them values they loathe. Rather than universal values, rights, and governance, they prefer a pre-Enlightenment Judaism built on land and chauvinism. As their response to the blood-curdling bestiality of our enemies has transformed Israelis into brutal war criminals and mass-killers of children, our leaders damned us as weaklings who would serve the interests of our enemies rather than destroy them. They’ve emptied solidarity of its claim to organize society, by insisting war is more important than ending it in return for the hostages.
And so, on the morning of August 17th 2025, I donned one of the “Bring them Home” T-shirts I always wear and walked to a nearby intersection where 150 fellow citizens stood with flags and a megaphone demanding an end to the war. Additional thousands did the same at 300 intersections all across the country. As the day wore on and protestors blocked highways and interfered with life as usual, a series of Cabinet ministers damned us, culminating with our Prime Minister, who announced, early in the afternoon, that our support for Hamas would cause future October 7ths.
Towards evening, we drove down to Tel Aviv, and joined the thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands marching from Savidor train station to the square we’ve re-named Hostages Square, which we overflowed for the entire length of King Saul Boulevard. Demanding an end to this horrible war, an end to the killing and suffering on both sides, and especially, the deal for the return of the hostages, which has been on the table for over a year and is spurned by our government. Einav Zangauker, most prominent of the hostage parents, cited from a snippet of film of her tortured son Matan: Shout for me! “So shout for him, for all of them!”
We did. 300-400,000 of us. Shouting together, at the top of our lungs. Being part of something larger than us, defiantly owning our country by dint of our determination. Still, after 50 years. Even after 50 years.
