Yakov Springer, who taught school in Bat Yam, near Jaffa. He was one of the few survivors of the armed revolt in the Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943.
Yakov was a veteran of Via Mila, the heart of Jewish resistance against Nazism. During the war, the European newspapers noted that in Warsaw, for the first time in two thousand years, the Jews had fought in a battle. “Who knows if the spirit of Israel will not rise again from the ashes of Warsaw,” one Polish newspaper mused. Yakov took part in the revolt of two hundred Jewish young people. For them it was simply a question of how they were going to die. They wanted to show that they were not insects. “We wanted to choose to die our own way,” said Stefan Grayek, a leader of the uprising. He lived the rest of his life in a little house on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. “On the street we saw scenes that the human mind cannot imagine: infants, alive, in the arms of their dead mothers, piles of dead children, and around them other children squatting on the ground, waiting for their turn.” Yakov Springer, a man much like Grayek, would also fight for possession of East Jerusalem, where a little bit of his marvelous Jewish Warsaw had been planted, the Warsaw of rabbis, street kids, intellectuals—a city that by then existed only in the faded memories of the few who had survived its extinction.
It was partly with Springer in mind that Yitzhak Rabin, on April 19, 1993, paid homage in Warsaw to those who had taken up arms against the oppressors: “Where are the writers? And the rabbis? And the doctors? And the musicians? And the children? Where is Janusz Korczak? Doesn’t my people exist anymore? In human history, the rebels of the ghetto will be remembered as those who kept the embers of honor alive. We have risen from the ashes of the martyrs; the courage of the combatants in the ghetto is the cornerstone of Israel’s foundation.”
The community of Bat Yam paused to weep for its noble fellow citizen, and Yakov Springer’s daughter came back from Sinai, where she was serving in the army.
There was also Andrei Spitzer, who lived with his wife, a convert to Judaism, in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Andrei had immigrated from Communist Romania in 1967, the year in which the tiny Jewish state was attacked by the Arab powers. His wife received death threats from Black September after Andrei’s murder, and agents from Mossad, the Israeli secret service, flew to Holland to bring her to safety in Israel. Another of the victims in Munich was Eliezer Halfin, the son of Lithuanian Jews who had lost all their relatives in the Holocaust. The Nazis had killed twenty of Eliezer’s relatives. The USSR had denied him an expatriate visa dozens of times and even prohibited him from participating in international competitions, out of fear that Eliezer “the Zionist” would make statements in favor of Israel. He was the last Halfin male. The last victim of Black September was Yosef Gutfreund, who also left Romania, after spending months in prison under the accusation of “Zionist propaganda.” He was legendary for his generosity toward Egyptian soldiers dying of thirst in Sinai.
The day after the massacre of the athletes, all the Israelis in Germany put on the kippah in mourning, as did the Jewish athletes from the French, English, and American delegations. The shameful decision not to bring everything to a halt was morally bankrupt, and gave a green light for future massacres. The distribution of medals started again, gold and silver stained with blood. The Olympic celebration was dead, but the competition went on and on and on. Israeli rabbis came to drape the coffins with flags bearing the Star of David. In Frankfurt that night, about fifty Jewish graves were vandalized. None of the Arab delegations sent any condolences to Israel. Not one.
When the bodies arrived at the Lod Airport, there was no fanfare to greet them, only silence and a dignified sadness. Waiting for them was the great Moshe Dayan, with the look of a kibbutznik who had interrupted his work in order to weep for his children. There was also Yigal Allon, who had started fighting in the clandestine Jewish army at the age of thirteen. There wasn’t a single shop open in the entire country; the Jewish people were unified in suffering, just as they had been throughout their history. Tunisia offered to take the bodies of the terrorists—everyone wanted them. Libya won. Ambassadors from all the Arab countries were present at the burial in Tripoli. They were there to celebrate the “martyrs’ wedding.” The atmosphere in Israel was different. After reciting the Jewish Kaddish over the graves, the People of the Book went back to their homes. The next day was the beginning of the Jewish New Year, but there was no room for joy. That new year opened with all thoughts turned to the children of the eleven victims. Those children were, and are, the why of Israel.
Three Righteous Men
There is one image that explains Israel better than an abundance of words: it is the dance for disabled members of the army. During the grand opening ceremony for the celebration of independence, the disabled dance in their wheelchairs, led by young people who leap around them, take them by the hand, dart away and back again. There is joy, not sadness, on those faces that are at once so young and so mature. Their pain, their disabling, is part of Israel, a citadel-state that for more than half a century has tragically walked between life and death.
On Israeli television we saw a celebration of the return to life of three people in a bar on a pedestrian street in Jerusalem. In 2002, a suicide bomber had blown himself up there, killing eleven people. A girl who had been there, and had believed herself dead but then recovered, cajoled her friends into having a little party. Another victim had returned almost to normal after four years of therapy; he brought along his brother, who was hit in the head and could no longer talk or move normally, and who will never get better. The one young man didn’t let go of his disabled brother’s hand for a minute; he hugged his brother, made him eat and smile. The others in the group joined his efforts.
Disabled war heroes are often the protagonists of Israeli soap operas. Much attention goes into sports for the disabled; at the Special Olympics in Athens in 2004, Israeli competitors obtained first-place results. Among them were Keren Leibowitz, a swimmer whose legs were paralyzed in an accident while she served in the army, who won a gold medal and two silver. Yizhar Cohen, a forty-one-year-old blind swimmer, came home with three gold medals. Yitzhak Mamistalov, who has cerebral palsy and swims with only his right hand, earned two gold medals and one silver. Inbal Pezaro, eighteen years old and wheelchair-bound due to a malformation of his dorsal spine, won a silver and a bronze medal in swimming.
More than ten thousand people have been wounded by terrorism; Israel itself is a giant wound. During the darkest times of terrorism, the hospitals have become repositories of anguish and ravaged bodies. The victims arrive in shreds. Staff have been hired to help the relatives of the victims recognize what is left of their loved ones. Those who plant the bombs are aiming for total destruction. It is a war against the hearts, souls, and bodies of the Jewish nation. Nearly four in ten Israelis have survived attacks, lost family members, or had family or friends wounded. Civilian victims and survivors often come from disadvantaged families. The most vulnerable are deaf and blind people.
Immediately after an attack, while the ambulances are taking the injured away, they are classified as anush (serious), benonì (moderate), and kal (light). The classification includes psychological trauma. Pieces of metal are added to the explosive in the terrorist’s vest or backpack, and the blast sometimes completely severs limbs. Many children have had their faces burned or their hands rendered useless; some have had their sight ruined forever. There are trembling elderly people, totally dependent. There are people who go insane and don’t want to live anymore because they are haunted by the sound of the explosion, and they seclude themselves in their homes. Naturally, the focus has been mainly on the people killed in terror attacks, but more than eight times as many have been wounded. This is the true face of the war against the Jewish people: Jews scathed and scarred, living reminders of the horror of the bombings. They require years of costly and complicated physical and mental rehabilitation. Israeli doctors estimate that 40 percent of the injured will have permanent disabilities. In a small nation like Israel, the wounded produce a ripple effect through
