In reference to the article by Amos Oz, which appeared in Yediot, by Emile Tubiana

How beautiful it is to speak about humanity and being humane! Who would not like to be in this position? But alas, the world is quite round but not yet humane. This world is far from being what we want it to be. First, the human beings of this world must above all be fed, housed, and cleaned, before being dragged into stories of humanity. Today, neighbors hardly speak with each other. I have had the chance of having survived the Second World War, under the German air raids and artillery fire. Tens of my family had left their lives under the debris. Then came the escape, from fear of the bombs and of typhus, which leaves deaths with its passage.

Death haunted us everywhere; we headed towards the farms and the mountains. But, even if we moved away from the bombs, we carried in us the germs of typhus, this one had not spared us. We were without care or hygiene, thrown in caves, without food and especially far from the authorities. Yes, it is an experience. I have known the blind shootings of the Arab legion of Jordan, which each time left some innocent ones dead in the streets of Jerusalem. I have known the Iraqi army, which joined the Arab legion to destroy our outpost of the kibbutz, which was not far from the kibbutz Ein Hashofet and Mizra. I have known the blind shootings of the Syrian army against the kibbutz Ein Gev.

In 1952 I was recalled to military service, in order to drive out the Syrians who had just occupied two hills. I witnessed the shootings of heavy artillery and mortar, then the rapid shootings of the French machine-guns Hotchkis of the beginning of the XXPme century. There I also saw my comrades falling dead on these hills of Tel el Mutilla, that the Syrians had taken in silence during the night and we had to hunt them down from these strategic hills, which protected the Lake of Tiberias and the entire region. We underwent great losses of human lives.

I have known the threats of Nasser and the fall of his army in the year 1956. I was also a young officer and there too I have seen my companions fall on the burning sand of the Sinai. Then we wanted to live in peace without threat or terror. Israel did not have any ambition to conquer territories nor to occupy the Arab masses. Israel did not have any other choice than to defend itself and conquer grounds in order to move away the danger of being erased from the map of the Middle-East, as the Arabs say it since then, and so does Iran today.

I understand the dream of Amos Oz, but not when the Arabs are lying in wait for the favorable moment to kill Israelis. We are far from understanding Arab mentality. The Jews are guided by more than two thousand years of history and the Arabs are guided by the principles of the Koran according to the Moslem extremists, which do not leave any place, either for compromises or for humane feelings. We are numerous, the Jews who are maybe believers, but neither religious nor fanatic. We cannot allow ourselves to go in opposition to our religion and to our history, which have been the foundation of our identity until this day or to deny our bible, which precisely give us the right to the Holy Land.

We need our religious people, even if they disturb your dream. Without them it would be necessary to start again all the education of Jewish youth and to start to export them to I do not know where, since we would have to recognize then that as Zionists without the bible, we would have eliminated that, what gave us the right to this Holy Land. Have you thought of this hypothesis? I suppose that your parents and millions of Jews had considered it well then. Perhaps your place is not in Israel anymore, just like my place, which is not anymore in my native land.

If the Arabs wanted to live in peace with the Jews, they had 50 years of time to do so. I am certain that when they are ready for peace they will find a humane Israel, ready to sign a peace, which respects our people and the human life and creates peaceful conditions in all of the Middle East, where each one finds his or her dignity. The ball had never been in Israel’s camp, but in the Arabs’camp. France had had its one hundred year war with the English and the Germans. Peace does not come because one wants it, but when the people will be ready and the conditions will permit it.

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