Israelis awoke on the morning of January 29th eager for the much-anticipated return of three IDF soldiers, taken hostage more than three years before. As citizens of a news-addicted nation, they expected a deluge of radio and television broadcasts covering the prisoner swap with the Lebanese terrorist organization, Hezbollah, that would bring Omar Suwad, Benny Avraham, and Adi Avitan back to Israeli soil. Instead, breaking news reports described a horrific suicide bus bombing on one of Jerusalem’s main thoroughfares, meters away from the Prime Minister’s official residence. Once again, a deadly terrorist attack had rocked Israel’s capital. Between 9:30 a.m. and 12 p.m., live coverage of the bombing site preempted reports of the prisoner exchange.
And yet, beyond the bomb’s blast radius, life continued as usual. Israelis have become uniquely adept at sticking to their routines, having acclimated to living in a state of conflict. Over more than three years, scores of terrorist attacks have taken the lives of hundreds of civilians. Suicide bombings have themselves become oddly routine. Even after news of the bombing was reported, conversations in offices, taxi cabs and at falafel stands continued to focus on the prisoner exchange. While the attack caused Jerusalem’s downtown streets to be cordoned off for the better part of the morning, the rest of the country calmly went about its business.
Yaniv Berman, a 27-year-old MA student and journalist, explained the difference between national mourning for Israel’s “boys”—with its elaborate memorial ceremonies—and the grieving for victims of suicide bombings: “In Israel, every couple of months we experience a tragedy like this—a bombing where 10-20 people die,” said Berman, sitting in his downtown Jerusalem office, just meters away from the site of a Sbarro pizzeria that was bombed at the outset of the intifada. “We cannot put on this kind of ceremony each time a bomb explodes. It just happens too often. No country can deal with so much grief on prime time for such a long time. I realize this is going to sound insensitive, but when those 11 people exploded on the bus, they were a number to us. Most of us had never heard of them and for us, it was just ‘another bombing’ in a non-ending series of bombings.”
By contrast, the names of the three kidnapped soldiers have become etched in the mind of every Israeli. And though it has been understood for some time that they had almost certainly lost their lives, many were still devastated when, at noon, the three soldiers were officially declared dead. “I still held onto the hope that the soldiers were coming back alive to their families, until the news at 12 p.m. that officially announced that the soldiers were dead,” said Limor Siton, a resident of Modi’in, a town located just inside the green-line, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. To her, the news brought similar emotions as that of then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995. “I was very sad when I heard [the soldiers had died],” said Siton. “My hope was destroyed.”
In early October 2000, I.D.F. Staff Sergeants Omar Suwad, Benny Avraham, and Adi Avitan (z”l) were kidnapped by Hezbollah from the Har Dov area on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. For the past three years, the soldiers’ families have rallied public support, both in Israel and abroad, seeking to find any relevant information about the fate of their sons. “The families of the soldiers became public figures and received a lot of importance in Israel,” says Eidit Avraham (no relation to the soldier), a student at Hebrew University who spoke to New Voices between classes at the school’s Mount Scopus campus. “In particular, Benny Avraham’s father became a real spokesman for the families. It broke my heart to see him on TV the day that his son’s body was returned to Israel. It amazed me to see how much he aged since his son was kidnapped.”
According to the prisoner exchange agreement orchestrated through German mediation, Israel agreed to free more than 400 Palestinian prisoners as well as three-dozen prisoners from Lebanon, Syria and other Arab states in exchange for the soldiers’ remains and the return of kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum. In addition, several dozen bodies of Hezbollah fighters killed in battles with Israeli forces were returned to Lebanon.
Israelis across the political spectrum responded to the prisoner exchange with feelings of relief, primarily that the families now knew the fate of their sons. “It was all about the families,” said Anat Ravid, a 21-year-old discharged intelligence officer, speaking over the phone from her office at a high-tech firm in Herzilya. “I don’t think that the country would have agreed to pay such a high price if it weren’t for the families and the battle they fought, by keeping the issue in the news. I think that the government’s hand was forced by the families and their battle.” Ravid watched the memorial ceremony for the three abducted soldiers on television with her 19-year old sister Yasmin, who currently serves in the IDF’s Intelligence Corps. “We made a pact that if either one of us was ever taken hostage or killed that we would not want the state to pay such a high price. We also wouldn’t want our families to pay such a high price.”
There is little doubt that Israel’s government and its citizens paid dearly in the hostage negotiations. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis support such concessions as a necessary evil to bring the country’s fallen soldiers home. As terrorists know all too well, the policy of Israeli governments has long been to make sure soldiers return, alive or dead, whatever the cost. “The precedent was set 20 years ago, after the Battle at Sultan Ya’akoub [during Israel’s campaign in Lebanon in the early 1980s], when the government exchanged bodies for a few thousand terrorists,” says Gil, a 25 year-old law school student at Hebrew University. “In terms of the price that we paid, there isn’t much that the government can do. The precedent was set years ago and the prevailing public opinion in Israel is that you need to pay a very high price to get the prisoners back.”
In their speeches at the memorial ceremony for the three soldiers, both Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz focused on Jewish identity and Jewish values, speaking directly about a “Regesh ha’Yehudi” (Jewish conviction). Shai Ashkenazi, a 27 year-old computer engineer and traditionally religious Jew from Holon elaborated: “This is because we value life and human beings in a way that the other side lacks. No other religion takes this principle so seriously. As Jewish Israelis, we were educated with these values and therefore we are willing to do anything to bring back our soldiers.” “This goes back to the difference between Israel and her neighbors,” Gil added. “We value human life much more. Israel is a very close society where everybody knows everybody else. The saying, ‘Kol Israel Arevim zeh la zeh’ [‘All Jews are responsible for one another’] is actualized here and those values are reflected in our society. The value and sanctity of human life is supreme.”
While consensus opinion supported the prisoner swap, some dissenting voices have criticized the government for agreeing to such steep conditions. “It should never have happened,” says Yohanan Ramati, speaking from his office in Abu Tor, a mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Ramati is chairman of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense, a non-profit research institute devoted to warning others of what he sees as a Muslim threat to Western values. “I think that [the agreement] is a reflection of a defeatist trait in our mentality here, which allows our enemies to benefit from committing crimes against us,” he
said. “After all, the abduction of our people and the killing of soldiers is not something that we should reward and we have rewarded them. We are allowing them to appear as the savior of the Syrians and the Palestinians.”
Danny Labin, a 30-year-old educational media consultant struggled to see the logic behind the prime minister’s policy. Sitting in a bustling Tel Aviv café the morning after the prisoner exchange, Labin wondered aloud why Sharon would be willing to negotiate for the return of soldiers’ bodies but be so reluctant to negotiate with the Palestinians on more important matters. “This seems like a mismatched set of priorities in terms of being able to release this huge number of prisoners and meet the demands of these enemy parties, when it is in exchange for something that in some ways, is so meaningless for the future of the Israeli nation,” he said. “It seems a perfunctory move to create the illusion that Sharon is dedicated to the state of Israel and its people, when such a deal potentially jeopardizes the state and the security of other soldiers and other citizens. It doesn’t seem like a very well thought out decision in term of future ramifications—kidnappings and killings. In some ways, this is a very irresponsible way to encourage future acts of violence against Israeli citizens.”
Even Shai Ashkenazi was frustrated by the risk that the exchange would bring further terrorism: “Even with this ethical basis, the price we paid was still too high….the people you release will carry out the next bombing. You don’t know how may people they will kidnap or kill. This was seen as a victory for the Hezbollah and at all of their celebrations they promised further kidnappings and attacks against Israel. It really irritated me to see this on CNN. They are celebrating their victory while we are burying our dead.” “The thing that really hurt me, in terms of feeling like a frier [‘sucker’],” said Eidit Avraham, “was to watch the memorial ceremony on TV in Israel, which was really difficult and sad, in comparison to the celebrations of the other side, with fireworks and dancing and singing. It gave me the sense that they are dancing on our graves.”
The memorial for the three soldiers was held in a cavernous airplane hangar on the evening of January 29th. All three received full military honors. The service was broadcast live on Israel’s three national television stations, with all regular evening programs cancelled. Jewish prayers of mourning and somber orations made up much of the proceedings, but the most touching moment came when the father of Bedouin soldier Omar Suwad stood at his son’s casket, decorated with the blue and white Israeli flag, and read aloud the Salatui Janazah, the Muslim funeral prayer. As an Arabic melody echoed through the hangar, television cameras panned the tear-soaked faces of Suwad’s family. For a brief moment, the nation focused its attention on this Bedouin family, whose son volunteered for the I.D.F. and sacrificed his life for Israel.
“When the Bedouin soldier’s father got up to read the Muslim memorial prayer, it gave me goose-bumps because it revealed how connected the Bedouin are to us,” says Limor Siton. Gil, the law student, expected nothing less. “I would have been very upset and surprised if it would have been otherwise. The fact that Suwad is a Muslim doesn’t matter at all. The army is very good at that. They keep a very strict and equal regime….to make sure that they don’t differentiate between blood and blood.”
Indeed, in a country where tensions between Jew and Arab run deep, the government’s commitment to all its soldiers, no matter their ethnicity or religion, has produced a rare feeling of unity among Israel’s citizens. For all the sorrow of the event itself, that sense of solidarity may be the most positive outcome of bringing the soldiers home. “I really appreciate Israel’s position in terms of this prisoner exchange,” says Samira, an Israeli-Arab Ph.D student at Hebrew University. “Although there are many things politically that I do not agree with, in this case, I really do appreciate that Israel cares about her citizens who gave their lives for the country. The government really took care of these soldiers and tried to give a sense of security to their parents.” “I am proud to be an Israeli,” says Yaniv Berman. “I’m proud to be part of a nation that puts so much emphasis on the value of life and on respect for the dead and their families.”
