Read Online The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine by Miko Peled - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Miko Peled
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the return home was very difficult.
Meanwhile, my father helped to found the Arabic Literature Department at Tel Aviv University. He gained a reputation as a serious and innovative scholar and later became the first Israeli professor of Arabic literature to introduce studies of Palestinian prose and poetry into the academic curriculum. He taught at Tel Aviv and Haifa Universities until he retired for a second time in 1990.
While we were still in the U.S., my father started writing a weekly opinion column in Ma’ariv , a mass-circulation daily newspaper published in Israel. Because of his résumé, everyone expected him to align himself with the Israeli government’s narrative, which claimed that Israel had been viciously attacked by three Arab armies in 1967 and defended itself heroically because it had the wits and, more importantly, the moral high ground. This narrative also claimed that Israel’s rights to the land of Israel were absolute, if not for religious or historical reasons then for military and security reasons.
But he saw things differently. He came out and stated publicly that the 1967 War was not an existential war but a war of choice:
I was surprised that Nasser decided to place his troops so close to our border. He must have known the grave danger into which he placed his forces. Having the Egyptian army so close allowed us to strike and destroy at any time we wished to do so, and there was not a single knowledgeable person who did not see that. From a military standpoint, it was not the IDF that was in danger when the Egyptian army amassed troops on the Israeli border, but the Egyptian army. 1
He fiercely criticized the army’s building of an expensive defensive line in the Sinai Desert along the shores of the Suez Canal. He thought the army should be mobile and agile and that throughout history defensive lines had proven themselves to be costly and ineffective. This line was later named Kav Bar-Lev , or The Bar-Lev Line, after Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War 2 , the Egyptian army stormed through the Bar-Lev Line and it proved to be a disaster, providing no defense at all. After the war everyone liked to joke:
Question: “What remained of the Bar-Lev Line after the war?”
Answer: “The villas of the contractors who built it.”
In response to a comment made by Israel Galili, who was a cabinet member and a major policymaker under Golda Meir’s premiership, my father wrote yet another article, calling to allow the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to conduct democratic elections 3 . Galili’s claim, often heard since, was that had there been democratically elected Palestinian representatives, Israel might have considered negotiations, but in the absence of such representatives Israel had no choice but to maintain the status quo. My father thought Galili’s claim disingenuous—after all, it was Galili’s Israeli government that was preventing the Palestinians from conducting elections in the West Bank and Gaza.
In another article my father wrote in his column on the third anniversary of the Six-Day War, my father compared the government’s inaction and lack of courage to act to achieve peace, a peace that he said was made possible thanks to the tremendous victory that the army delivered, to the lack of courage and inaction that characterized the same government in the weeks leading up to the war. He wrote of the great sacrifice he along with everyone else felt in having to return portions of the Land of Israel in return for peace. “I would be less thanhonest had I denied that I too have deep regard for these lands that for the sake of peace must be left outside the boundaries of our State.” And he continued to speak with great emotion of the experiences of his youth: “It was not out of obligation, but rather love for this country that in my youth I traversed its length and breadth.” 4
In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir gave a speech in
Meanwhile, my father helped to found the Arabic Literature Department at Tel Aviv University. He gained a reputation as a serious and innovative scholar and later became the first Israeli professor of Arabic literature to introduce studies of Palestinian prose and poetry into the academic curriculum. He taught at Tel Aviv and Haifa Universities until he retired for a second time in 1990.
While we were still in the U.S., my father started writing a weekly opinion column in Ma’ariv , a mass-circulation daily newspaper published in Israel. Because of his résumé, everyone expected him to align himself with the Israeli government’s narrative, which claimed that Israel had been viciously attacked by three Arab armies in 1967 and defended itself heroically because it had the wits and, more importantly, the moral high ground. This narrative also claimed that Israel’s rights to the land of Israel were absolute, if not for religious or historical reasons then for military and security reasons.
But he saw things differently. He came out and stated publicly that the 1967 War was not an existential war but a war of choice:
I was surprised that Nasser decided to place his troops so close to our border. He must have known the grave danger into which he placed his forces. Having the Egyptian army so close allowed us to strike and destroy at any time we wished to do so, and there was not a single knowledgeable person who did not see that. From a military standpoint, it was not the IDF that was in danger when the Egyptian army amassed troops on the Israeli border, but the Egyptian army. 1
He fiercely criticized the army’s building of an expensive defensive line in the Sinai Desert along the shores of the Suez Canal. He thought the army should be mobile and agile and that throughout history defensive lines had proven themselves to be costly and ineffective. This line was later named Kav Bar-Lev , or The Bar-Lev Line, after Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War 2 , the Egyptian army stormed through the Bar-Lev Line and it proved to be a disaster, providing no defense at all. After the war everyone liked to joke:
Question: “What remained of the Bar-Lev Line after the war?”
Answer: “The villas of the contractors who built it.”
In response to a comment made by Israel Galili, who was a cabinet member and a major policymaker under Golda Meir’s premiership, my father wrote yet another article, calling to allow the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to conduct democratic elections 3 . Galili’s claim, often heard since, was that had there been democratically elected Palestinian representatives, Israel might have considered negotiations, but in the absence of such representatives Israel had no choice but to maintain the status quo. My father thought Galili’s claim disingenuous—after all, it was Galili’s Israeli government that was preventing the Palestinians from conducting elections in the West Bank and Gaza.
In another article my father wrote in his column on the third anniversary of the Six-Day War, my father compared the government’s inaction and lack of courage to act to achieve peace, a peace that he said was made possible thanks to the tremendous victory that the army delivered, to the lack of courage and inaction that characterized the same government in the weeks leading up to the war. He wrote of the great sacrifice he along with everyone else felt in having to return portions of the Land of Israel in return for peace. “I would be less thanhonest had I denied that I too have deep regard for these lands that for the sake of peace must be left outside the boundaries of our State.” And he continued to speak with great emotion of the experiences of his youth: “It was not out of obligation, but rather love for this country that in my youth I traversed its length and breadth.” 4
In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir gave a speech in
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