A community on the frontline - Yehuda Shlezinger

by Yehuda Shlezinger

Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron, has suffered around 20 terrorist attacks in recent weeks, including the murders of Eitam and Naama Henkin and of Yaakov and Netanel Litman • But residents insist: Our covenant with this place is a covenant of blood.

The Nir hesder yeshiva Photo credit: Yonatan Shaul

In a tiny, locked room on the first floor of the Nir hesder yeshiva (a religious school where students incorporate mandatory military service with Torah study), is a memorial wall honoring students and alumni who fell in battle or in terrorist attacks. There is room for 20 photos on the wall. Fifteen are taken by pictures of students who fell in the Six-Day War, in Lebanon, and a string of vicious terrorist attacks in Hebron. Two of the remaining five spots now contain empty frames, reserved for two alumni murdered in recent weeks. Their pictures are still being prepared. 

The two victims are Eitam Henkin, shot along with his wife Naama in a drive-by terrorist attack while driving home in Samaria with their four children, and Yaakov Litman, murdered with his son Netanel in a shooting attack near Hebron while driving to his daughter's pre-wedding celebration. 

The Kiryat Arba region, on the eastern outskirts of Hebron, has been among the areas hit hardest by the current surge of terrorist violence. In addition to the killings of Henkin and Litman, resident Avraham Asher Hasno was run over and killed by a truck driver after his vehicle was stoned by Palestinians, and fellow resident Meir Pavlovsky was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack. All in all, the area has seen around 20 attacks -- stabbings, car rammings, and shootings -- over the last two months, which ended in varying degrees of injuries. 

The situation has prompted hundreds of Kiryat Arba residents to march to Jerusalem and demonstrate at government buildings, demanding that something be done to restore security to their homes and roads. 

Fewer than 7,000 people live in the tiny regional council, and everyone knows everyone else.

The main focus, however, has been on the Nir hesder yeshiva, which has lost two alumni in the latest terror wave. The injured Pavlovsky also frequented the yeshiva regularly in recent years. 

And everyone's lives are intertwined: Shlomi Levinger, the brother of Kiryat Arba council head Malachi Levinger and son of the famous rabbi Moshe Levinger, is both an alumnus of the Nir hesder yeshiva and the headmaster of the school where the late Litman taught. He is still trying to make sense of everything that has happened. 

"Two impossible incidents," he says of the attacks that killed Litman and Henkin. "What was supposed to be the happiest day, a daughter getting married, turned into the most painful thing possible. It is true that losing both a mother and a father, like the Henkins, is painful, but to lose a son is unfathomable. Netanel Litman, may he rest in peace, was a sweet kid. A prodigy. A yeshiva boy with tzitziyot [tassels] on display and peot [sideburns]. This combination of a father, a son and a wedding is extremely difficult.

"To think that Dvir, the youngest son, watched his father and brother being executed. It raises some very painful associations." 

'Zionism does not need anyone's approval'

The Nir hesder yeshiva is one of the oldest of its kind in Israel. It was established in 1970 by a group of settlers. Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, 79, who headed the yeshiva for many years and was one of the founders of Kiryat Arba, recalls: "To start our lives here we had to rent the Arab Park Hotel and turn it into a Jewish place. That was in the beginning, when the Movement for Greater Israel was just established. In those days there were activists from the Right and the Left as well -- religious and secular, all in support of settlement.

"We wanted to get onto the land and build a settlement, but we couldn't get government approval. So we went to Labor Minister Yigal Allon for advice. We told him that we were waiting for government approval. He said, 'Are you crazy? You want approval? That is not how Zionism works. We have never asked anyone for approval.' We understood what we had to do and we settled on the land. If we had waited for approval we wouldn't have our communities today.

"We rented the hotel and made it kosher for Passover. From then on we just kept living in it. The Left fought us, but Menachem Begin proposed that the government adopt a decision worded in such a way that would not officially recognize renewed settlement in Hebron but instead would recognize 'renewed establishment of a yeshiva in Hebron with the presence of families in the surrounding area.' That was the first and only time that the government decided to build a yeshiva. It was always first a settlement then a yeshiva was built. Here, it was the other way around."

Among the graduates of the Nir hesder yeshiva throughout the years are some big names in the settler leadership. The school gained prestige and men from the nationalist-haredi stream flocked to it. The late Eitam Henkin was taught by Rabbi Avraham Smotrich, now better known as the father of Habayit Hayehudi MK Betzalel Smotrich.

"Rabbi Eitam [Henkin] studied here for years, even after he got married. He joined the rabbinical institute and served as the editor of the yeshiva newspaper," says Avraham Smotrich.

"We had an educational relationship that evolved into mutual appreciation and friendship. Eitam was a great talent. When he was killed, and the papers said his wife was a graphic artist, I said that an artist had married an artist. He had a special talent for pulling out details, finding connections and putting together a coherent picture. He was a champ. His absence is painful, but the biggest sorrow is over what the world missed out on."

Shlomi Levinger, who heads the school where Litman taught, describes a special, beloved elementary school teacher.

"During former Education Minister Shay Piron's term, the Education Ministry adopted the slogan 'moving toward learning with meaning.' That describes Rabbi Litman exactly. I always asked to see syllabi at the beginning of the year. He could have shown me exactly what he would teach on the fourth of Shvat. He was that organized," says Levinger.

"Whenever I wanted to talk about the model teacher, and how an educator should be, I would give him as an example."

The void left by Litman in his first-grade class teaches us something about how complicated life has become in Kiryat Arba recently. On Sunday, Levinger photographed three of Litman's students holding a photo of their slain teacher.

"The students mainly ask technical questions, but we don't wait for the children to ask," he explains. "They understand what's going on. They are worried about rock throwers, they talk about fear, but not about their own fears -- they say their parents are afraid, but they also feel a sense of duty. At this early age they already, truly feel a sense of duty that makes them stronger."

The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Noam Waldman, joins the conversation. He is the son of Eliezer Waldman, and his youngest son attends the first-grade class that Litman taught.

"The first- and second-graders understand that we are here on a mission. They learn in the weekly Torah portion that ever since the biblical spies committed their sin all of the Land of Israel is our mission. Of course they can understand that," he says.

"For a long time my son has been telling us, 'I don't want to go to the army because people die there.' It makes sense for children to have fears. Now that Rabbi Litman has been murdered he is suddenly asking, 'Dad, but Rabbi Yaakov wasn't evil and those who die are evil. So why did it happen to him?' I explained to him that Rabbi Litman was a righteous man, a holy man, an angel who gave his life for the Land of Israel. Once he heard that he said, 'I am ready to go to the army.' I guess he was afraid that he had it coming, and now he understood. That is the children's reality. They understand.

"He gets very afraid. He says to us, 'Mom, Dad, you're not leaving Kiryat Arba.' He really cries. Of course there are concerns but we explain to him that we need to overcome. We cannot let these fears paralyze us. It only helps prepare properly and continue courageously on our special mission in Hebron and all of Israel."

'We must never show fear'

The residents of Kiryat Arba are trying to go about their daily routines as though everything is normal, but the security threat is palpable. There are concrete slabs at every hitchhiking station; soldiers detain an Arab man roaming the streets to check his papers; troops are on edge, jumpy whenever they see a vehicle standing still for too long; demonstration posters against the government and the Arab public hang on bulletin boards and inside the yeshiva; even a photojournalist who doesn't look as if he belongs raises suspicions.

"We have to keep living as always," says Rabbi Eliezer Waldman. His son, Noam, adds that "there are more security and patrols during the hours when people are coming home from work. Of course it affects the residents, there are those who drive less, walk around less."

The elder Waldman says, "You can't blame families that take the dangers of living in such a place into consideration, but generally speaking, the approach is that where there are no Jews, or just a few Jews, that is where the danger is greatest. Where there are many Jews, the danger lessens.

"That is not to say that there are no threats. There are threats. The government needs to take steps. The IDF needs to take action in a way that won't show weakness. And we need to go on with our lives."

His son adds that "we believe that if we continue to drive as usual, it will have an effect. The Arabs aren't acting out of desperation; they are acting out of hope – the hope that they will be able to kick us out. In the meantime, more [Jewish] families are arriving, housing projects are sold at record speed, and we are doing everything in our power to destroy their hope that we will not be here anymore."

Eliezer Waldman listens to the hourly news update and comes back optimistic.

"They are reporting that [Israel will exert] increased pressure on the Arab population. That is good. We are demanding that Route 60, the main axis that runs through Judea and Samaria, be closed to Arabs," he says. "Likewise, if Israel were to openly declare that every time young [Palestinians] gather and throw rocks and firebombs at IDF troops we will shoot to kill, those things would not happen anymore. We need to declare a state of emergency. Why is it that in France, after one attack, albeit a big one, they declare a state of emergency, and here, when the attacks are ongoing, they don't?"

Noam agrees with his father and says that "Hebron needs to be shut down and pressure on the residents needs to be stepped up. Mothers who are proud of their children for stabbing Jews need to understand that this will affect their income, that their normal lives will be affected. Then they can do a cost-benefit analysis."

The Waldman family is not afraid to criticize the military.

"We have no doubt that the current commander [of the Judea division, Col. Yariv Ben Ezra] comes from a place of devotion and desire to restore safety," says Eliezer Waldman.

"The dispute is over the method. The commander's working objective is not to disrupt the lives of the Arab residents, even at the expense of jeopardizing Jewish citizens. That is the attitude. He even handed out candy to Arab children thinking that he could create a friendly atmosphere. The problem is that what they see is an Israeli commander handing out candy. They see a weak commander who didn't come to fight."

'Willing to die'

Despite the recent tragedies, and perhaps because of them, talk of giving up, of crises of faith, is unacceptable, even at the Nir hesder yeshiva.

"Does the price undermine our faith? Of course not!" exclaims the yeshiva head. "Our connection to Kiryat Arba is historical; our covenant is a covenant of blood. There is a willingness to die. We want to live in this land. We love life, but we know that in order to receive it, to be worthy of it, there is a price to pay. All the students at the yeshiva feel that devotion is not momentary. It gives your life great meaning."

Despite the recent string of difficult incidents, most of the residents don't think this is the worst spate of violence the community has experienced. They recall the 2002 murders of Col. Dror Weinberg along with three Kiryat Arba residents on an emergency response team, and of nine soldiers at the Cave of the Patriarchs. They recall other incidents. But even they can sense that the current wave is different.

"There is something about the knife attacks that makes it feel very close," says Smotrich.

"A gun and a rock are operated from a distance. Stabbings create a sense that anyone who passes by you on the street could pose a threat.

"The nature of the attacks is an alarming combination of knives and blood. The world is headed toward 'cleaner' wars with planes and bombs. They may cause more damage, but sitting behind a plasma screen is cleaner and more sterile. Even [Israeli songwriter] Naomi Shemer once wrote that 'the Arabs like their murder warm and damp and steamy. If they ever get the freedom to realize their dreams, we will be yearning for the good, sterile poison gas used by the Germans."

A military source responded to the criticism of Ezra, the Judea division commander, saying, "These remarks are extremely upsetting. [Ben Ezra] is one of the top officers in his unit and in all the IDF. He hasn't gone home over the last two months, even when he had a baby girl, due to his devotion and sense of duty."

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit issued a statement saying, "The IDF is operating in Judea and Samaria, working day and night to ensure the safety of the citizens. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit rejects the allegations made against the commander of the Judea Division, an accomplished officer who has been combating terrorism in Judea and Samaria in his current role and as the commander of the Duvdevan unit in the past."

Yehuda Shlezinger

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=30001

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