My Word: Wide awake in a war

It was a few words but a big concept. Israeli journalist Kalman Liebskind coined more than a phrase last week; he summed up an existential Israeli condition. 

Speaking at a conference sponsored by Makor Rishon and Bnei Akiva yeshivot and ulpanot, Liebskind declared that “Israeli society can be divided into those who sleep peacefully and those who can’t sleep at all.”

I gave his words some thought in the early hours of the morning. I’m in the “can’t sleep” brigade, the proud but concerned mother of a combat soldier reservist. There are those who count sheep and doze off and those who count the number of days of service – which even for a reservist stretches into the hundreds – and it keeps them awake.

It wasn’t the first time Liebskind, a member of the National Religious community, had used the phrase. It appeared in his Maariv column in November, but this time there was a major difference – Liebskind wasn’t referring only to the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society, which largely refuses to serve in the army, but to the country’s leading politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and influential journalists.

“We have had a tendency, for a long time, to divide Israeli society into different divisions. The most well-known division – and sometimes the correct one – is in relation to Prime Minister Netanyahu: yes Bibi or no Bibi.

“There are also other divisions, such as Right and Left, religious and secular, and more,” Liebskind said. “What divides Israeli society in the last year and two months is the question of who sleeps at night. There is a group that does not sleep, and a group that sleeps well. Most of our press sleeps well at night because a large majority of our journalists, in general, do not have a son in Lebanon or a son in Jabalya.”

Netanyahu, who is obviously often called on to work in the middle of the night, served in an elite unit. In 1976, he lost his brother Yoni in Operation Entebbe – one of the most daring hostage rescue operations in history. But, as Liebskind opined, Netanyahu does not stay awake wondering whether his sons are in danger, nor should anyone belittle the sleep problems of parents of soldiers serving in places other than Lebanon and Gaza.

Liebskind, whose nephew fell in battle in Gaza and who has many relatives and friends serving in the IDF, made his remarks following a particularly combative press conference ahead of Netanyahu’s taking to the witness stand in the many court cases against him.

Seven soldiers had fallen that day, but the focus of media attention returned to the government’s proposed judicial reform.

Pre-October 7 draft refusal

SHORTLY AFTER Liebskind’s remarks hit public awareness, I was given more food for thought for my sleepless nights. Last Saturday, speaking at an event in Beersheba, former state attorney Moshe Lador invoked a pre-October 7 argument over refusal to serve in the IDF as a response to the judicial reform.

He declared: “Pilots who have completed their compulsory service and now serve on a voluntary basis are not only allowed but, in my opinion, are obligated to say, ‘If that’s the country you’re striving for and are going to create through force and bullying, and are going to be the dictators of, I won’t enter the cockpit and fly this plane because I don’t have to.’”

His comments met with condemnation across the broad political spectrum – from those who sleep and those who don’t. Lador should know better than to drag the IDF back into the political discourse. Pilots and other members of elite forces who declared a strike of the political kind during the turmoil of 2023 must decide whether they’re going to serve – which means following orders from the government to the IDF – or not.

Lador is not the only former senior figure to try to revive the nightmare chaos that played a role in weakening the country ahead of the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity. Former prime minister Ehud Barak has renewed talk of “a civil war.”

And former defense minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon will stop at nothing to attack Netanyahu’s government, going so far as to claim (without basis) that this right-wing government is committing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He might as well submit a list of the loved ones of the sleep-deprived directly to the international courts in The Hague.

It should keep us all awake that these people reached such high positions in the first place.

AND AS if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the extremism within the haredi sector also raised its head again. At the beginning of the war, I found myself in the midst of a demonstration of zealots from the Peleg Yerushalmi sect, who were blocking a main road in Jerusalem while chanting: “We’ll die and not draft.” My response was admirably restrained, given my lack of sleep and the reason for it.

Almost farcically, a recent social media campaign complained that haredim can’t sleep at night for fear someone will knock on the door and arrest them for draft dodging. Since few haredim use social media, the campaign was obviously aimed at the rest of us. And “insensitive” would be too polite a word to describe it. The phrase “a knock on the door” means only one thing in Israeli society: that an army representative has come to inform a family of the death of a loved one.

Earlier this month, former Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef told yeshiva students: “If a draft notice arrives, tear it up. Do you have a toilet at home? Flush it down.” Apparently, that’s not the lowest he can go. Last week, Yosef, a spiritual leader of the Shas party, said, “Even if one is idle [i.e., not studying Torah], he is forbidden to join the army.”

Shas founder Arye Deri spoke of relatives “who went into the army wearing a kippah and came out not wearing a kippah.” Public consultant Binyamin Lachkar posted on X in response: “Dear Arye, there are those who go in the army and don’t come back at all.” He correctly pointed out that if the haredi leadership doesn’t trust its students to remain religious, the problem lies in their education, not the army.

The IDF has gone to great lengths to prepare a framework for Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox soldiers. I know of one soldier who went in with a kippah and beard and came out with impressively long sidelocks. 

Is IDF service suitable for every single young haredi man? No. But there can no longer be an excuse for mass exemptions. As Liebskind wrote in November: “Imagine a burning apartment building where one neighbor brings a fire extinguisher, another runs with a bucket, a third sprays water with a hose, but the neighbor in apartment 13 on the fourth floor just sits and explains why he can’t help. Is that a neighbor anyone would want to have?”

I am in favor of everyone, including ultra-Orthodox and Arab citizens, doing some kind of national service. Those who can’t serve in the IDF should serve in a civil framework, but more than 800 soldiers have fallen since October 7, 2023, and some 12,000 have been wounded in combat. We need reinforcements. Prayers need to be backed up by active service.

My colleague Herb Keinon – who has had his unfair share of sleepless nights – made an eloquent plea for unity this week.

“... it’s as if the war were over, the hostages were all home, Iran was no longer a threat, all the Israelis displaced from their communities were back in their homes, the economy was humming along, and Israel did not have to refurbish its standing in the international community,” Keinon wrote.

“What Israel needs is a compromise, and finding one – finding a way to appoint a chief justice for the Supreme Court and three new Supreme Court judges – should not be beyond the capacity of a nation that dismantled the Syrian military in 48 hours and incapacitated much of Hezbollah with exploding beepers and walkie-talkies in two days.”

The country needs to pull itself together. Reject the polarization and politicization. To use the phrase popular before the sleep analogy caught on, people from all sectors need “to get under the stretcher” – lehikanes mitachat la’alunka – and carry their share of the burden as in a military stretcher drill. 

Then we can all have a good night’s sleep and help turn sweet dreams into reality.