KIRYAT SHMONA – Having grown up in this heavily bombarded city just one mile east of the Lebanese border, the Saadia family is no stranger to war. Since the 1960s, the city has been the frequent target of rockets launched from Lebanon.
But a year ago it hit closer to home. Liran Saadia has the tragic distinction of being one of the first Israeli soldiers killed in combat during the Second Lebanon War. He was 21.
“He was killed right over this mountain,” Liran’s father Zion said, pointing to the peak shadowing their home. “So he protected us and this city.”
Zion and his wife Michal were in Thailand when the tragic news reached them. When the war began on July 12, 2006, Liran insisted that his parents continue their vacation and not worry about him.
They spoke with Liran at 12:30 p.m. on July 20. He was killed less than three hours later.
“When I saw the Israeli ambassador coming toward us at the hotel, I ran toward her and said, ‘Please tell me my son is only injured, that he lost a leg or an arm,’” Zion recalled, knowing a visit from a government official can only mean bad news. “The ambassador said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”
That began a long, sad journey back to Israel in disbelief.
“I thought it had to be a mistake,” Michal said. “I had to return to Israel and see the body so I could tell them it was a mistake, that it wasn’t my son.”
The funeral took place under the threat of falling rockets, but the attacks eased for two hours enabling the family to bury their son under a pink and smoky sky. Then they sat shiva in a bomb shelter rather than at home so as not to endanger their guests.
“For two weeks I had a bad feeling,” Michal said, referring to Liran’s transfer from a counseling position in the army to a combat unit three months before the completion of his mandatory service. With a mother’s intuition, she was wary about the move but kept silent. “Every mother in the country knows this feeling, but we all say nothing will happen to us.”
Now, family members are coping with the loss in their own way. The oldest daughter, Hadar, 21, is in the army and has recently been promoted to lieutenant.
“We’re always scared of war and that there will be another,” Hadar said. “But since our tragedy, it’s personal now. We identify. To us it’s no longer just another name announced on the news.”
Yarden, 16, talks about her brother all the time and made a video of him, but her school work is suffering. Aviv, the youngest at 12, doesn’t mention Liran at all, but is quietly mimicking his brother in basketball and drawing cartoons. He even picked up guitar, something Liran did in the last few months of his life.
The parents manage in their own ways.
“From the moment I heard Liran died, I chose life,” Zion said. “It is so difficult for us, but it is the right choice. The other choice is to give up, and then the whole family would collapse.”
Their grief still profoundly apparent, the family is focusing on Liran’s legacy rather than his death. They talk about a vibrant young man who, since his childhood, gave selflessly.
“In life we only knew this much of Liran,” Zion said holding up two fingers a couple inches apart. “After he died, we saw so much more of him through his friends and people who come to visit us.”
Liran gave away a hard-earned top-of-the-line computer when he was 15. When he was 12, he saw a classmate selling cheap toys to help his family makes ends meet. Liran bought one to help his friend. And in his army years, Liran would bring friends home with him every weekend —soldiers with no family in Israel and nowhere to go on Shabbat (the Sabbath).
Building on this, the family established a scholarship fund in Liran’s name and is building a house for lone soldiers called Liran’s Home. The city of Kiryat Shmona donated a plot of land and a Christian ministry from Germany has taken up the cause, but the family is seeking additional sponsors.
The cost of Liran’s generosity was high for the family.
“He gave too much in the end,” Michal said. “He gave his life.”
For more information or to donate to Liran’s Way, e-mail: bedarkeyliran@walla.com
Aug 14, 2007
Taking Matters into His Own Hands
Two years after the Gaza pullout, one man starts from scratch
AVNEI EITAN – Under the blazing Golan sun, dry wind and flies whipping through the moshav, Yuval Matzliah sits at a handmade wooden picnic table and talks about the last two challenging years since being expelled from Gaza along with 8,500 other Jewish residents of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
“Life won’t return to what it was in Gush Katif,” he said. “But we will return there, hopefully in another year. I love this land more than I loved anything in my life.”
Matzliah lives in a 90 square-meter (968 square-foot) temporary house, called a caravilla, on this collective farm near the Syrian border. He hasn’t found employment or received a permit to build a permanent home.
But Matzliah has taken matters into his own hands. The tables, ice cream hut and two wooden guesthouses on the moshav are his handiwork, an attempt to create jobs for both him and his neighbors.
“I decided I had to put the past behind and take care of my children,” he said. “So I began to look for a way to make a living. The state wasn’t doing anything, so we had to look on our own and we were starting from zero.”
Avnei Eitan, a religious community, took in 22 families from Gush Katif. The government built two rows of square orange houses, one floor each with no insulation. They remain undecorated and bleak. Breaking up the monotony are the large containers in backyards holding the families’ belongings.
A year into his exile from Gaza, still living in a hotel with his wife and three daughters, Matzliah sank into depression. When their son was born—and nearly died due to complications—his wife urged him to snap out of his despair for the sake of the family.
“I’m 32, I’m still young,” Matzliah said, “Imagine someone who is 50 years old, or sick or handicapped. How does he start over? I’m living well compared to most.”
According to a report by the Gush Katif Committee, Matzliah is right. Thirty seven percent of the settlers are still out of work, although Matzliah disputes that as too low a figure. Some 500 families are on welfare. And since many residents don’t have jobs, they are spending their compensation checks on daily needs rather than saving to build a home. Less than 1 percent of the settlers have started building permanent housing and most could be living in temporary housing for another five years.
The Ministry of Commerce says family income has decreased by 40 percent, with many receiving no income for two years. Young people face large gaps in their education, scarred from the trauma of eviction and switching schools several times.
Gaza’s Jewish communities once provided a high percentage of Israel’s agricultural produce, but of the 400 farms and other agricultural businesses that once operated in Gush Katif, only 33 have been compensated with land.
Matzliah’s parents, immigrants from France, were some of the first people to settle in Netzer Hazani in Gush Katif 30 years ago. Matzliah worked on a cow farm there, running the milking machines. He is also an expert carpenter.
He refused his first compensation check of 50,000 shekels (about $12,000) and told the government to hold it until they are ready to give him the whole sum they owe him.
So Matzliah, which means “he succeeds” in Hebrew, built two tzimmers (popular guesthouses in the north), in order to start making a living. He employed his neighbors and their children to help him build so they could also have some work.
While the tzimmers are charming and can accommodate a family of eight, there is a glut of them in the north. Matzliah hopes people will come because they want not only a place to stay, but a fascinating story. He is shocked when Israelis tell him they wish they could trade places because of all the compensation he got from the government.
“What compensation?” he asked while soberly noting that the small falafel and ice cream business he established barely pays salaries and will do even worse when tourism hibernates in the winter.
“Think of a man who has everything—a house, money in the bank and work,” he said. “Then all of a sudden he has nothing. You can’t imagine.”
AVNEI EITAN – Under the blazing Golan sun, dry wind and flies whipping through the moshav, Yuval Matzliah sits at a handmade wooden picnic table and talks about the last two challenging years since being expelled from Gaza along with 8,500 other Jewish residents of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
“Life won’t return to what it was in Gush Katif,” he said. “But we will return there, hopefully in another year. I love this land more than I loved anything in my life.”
Matzliah lives in a 90 square-meter (968 square-foot) temporary house, called a caravilla, on this collective farm near the Syrian border. He hasn’t found employment or received a permit to build a permanent home.
But Matzliah has taken matters into his own hands. The tables, ice cream hut and two wooden guesthouses on the moshav are his handiwork, an attempt to create jobs for both him and his neighbors.
“I decided I had to put the past behind and take care of my children,” he said. “So I began to look for a way to make a living. The state wasn’t doing anything, so we had to look on our own and we were starting from zero.”
Avnei Eitan, a religious community, took in 22 families from Gush Katif. The government built two rows of square orange houses, one floor each with no insulation. They remain undecorated and bleak. Breaking up the monotony are the large containers in backyards holding the families’ belongings.
A year into his exile from Gaza, still living in a hotel with his wife and three daughters, Matzliah sank into depression. When their son was born—and nearly died due to complications—his wife urged him to snap out of his despair for the sake of the family.
“I’m 32, I’m still young,” Matzliah said, “Imagine someone who is 50 years old, or sick or handicapped. How does he start over? I’m living well compared to most.”
According to a report by the Gush Katif Committee, Matzliah is right. Thirty seven percent of the settlers are still out of work, although Matzliah disputes that as too low a figure. Some 500 families are on welfare. And since many residents don’t have jobs, they are spending their compensation checks on daily needs rather than saving to build a home. Less than 1 percent of the settlers have started building permanent housing and most could be living in temporary housing for another five years.
The Ministry of Commerce says family income has decreased by 40 percent, with many receiving no income for two years. Young people face large gaps in their education, scarred from the trauma of eviction and switching schools several times.
Gaza’s Jewish communities once provided a high percentage of Israel’s agricultural produce, but of the 400 farms and other agricultural businesses that once operated in Gush Katif, only 33 have been compensated with land.
Matzliah’s parents, immigrants from France, were some of the first people to settle in Netzer Hazani in Gush Katif 30 years ago. Matzliah worked on a cow farm there, running the milking machines. He is also an expert carpenter.
He refused his first compensation check of 50,000 shekels (about $12,000) and told the government to hold it until they are ready to give him the whole sum they owe him.
So Matzliah, which means “he succeeds” in Hebrew, built two tzimmers (popular guesthouses in the north), in order to start making a living. He employed his neighbors and their children to help him build so they could also have some work.
While the tzimmers are charming and can accommodate a family of eight, there is a glut of them in the north. Matzliah hopes people will come because they want not only a place to stay, but a fascinating story. He is shocked when Israelis tell him they wish they could trade places because of all the compensation he got from the government.
“What compensation?” he asked while soberly noting that the small falafel and ice cream business he established barely pays salaries and will do even worse when tourism hibernates in the winter.
“Think of a man who has everything—a house, money in the bank and work,” he said. “Then all of a sudden he has nothing. You can’t imagine.”
Aug 13, 2007
Golan Druze Live in ‘Syria’—and in Denial
MASAADE, Golan Heights – Though you didn’t cross a border or get your passport stamped, many people in this Druze village on the northern Golan Heights will insist you are in Syria, not Israel.
It takes awhile to get into their thinking, but the answers are simple: Why do you not take Israeli citizenship? Because we’re Syrian. Why do you not serve in the Israeli army or permit anyone from your community to do so? Because we’re Syrian. Why are the Druze in the Haifa area pro-Israel and you are opposed to the state? Because they are Israeli; we are Syrian.
The Druze, a tight-knit religious sect based on a form of Islam, populate many Middle Eastern countries and are loyal to the nation in which they live. The community is usually closed but friendly and the men fight on behalf of their nation. It gets a little confusing in Israel though. In such a young state, borders are not what they used to be; and the Golan was in Syrian hands until 1967 when Israel seized the strategic plateau in the Six Day War. Syria failed to regain control of the Golan during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations, but instead a tenuous quiet on the border interrupted by occasional threats and military buildups, and now talks of trading the Golan for peace. Unlike with Jordan and Egypt, with whom Israel has peace treaties, Israelis and anyone with an Israeli stamp on his passport are prohibited from traveling to Syria.
Many Druze in the northern Golan were born in Syria, held Syrian passports and all of them have family on the other side of the border. The culture is extremely land-oriented, however, and therefore the questions get confusing.
“All of the air of the Golan Heights is Syria,” said Ghassan Sabra, who owns a shop in the town. “The residents of the Golan Heights are Syrian. That’s it. Maybe during the day you can be confused, but at night you remember where you live.”
Sabra, who moved with his family from Syria to present-day Israel when he was one, said he doesn’t encourage his five children to integrate into Israeli society because they don’t actually live in Israel—so they don’t need to.
These sentiments run wide in the community, enforced through religious rulings prohibiting taking Israeli citizenship and joining the army, the latter an offense punishable by death. Integration is not only unnecessary, but also amounts to treason.
Israelis in the area are concerned about giving back the Golan, but the majority of the Druze look forward to the possibility and even expect it.
“It is 1,000 percent certain that Syria will return,” Sabra said.
Despite their dislike of the Israeli government, the Druze here are friendly with Israelis and have no animosity toward anyone who visits their villages. Druze and Israelis attend each other’s weddings and funerals, play soccer and work together. There is no intermarriage but there is peace.
Peace on a wider scale, between Israel and Syria, is also expected one day. Sabra said he wants to travel freely between Damascus and Haifa. He insists Syria wants peace as much as Israel.
Hassan Jawad Batheesh, an imam and elder in the community, was more pragmatic.
“Masaade is my homeland,” he said. Life was good under Syria, Batheesh insisted, and it is fine now under Israel, but, “As an Arab I would like Syria to come back to govern the Golan Heights.”
And if there’s no peace between Syria and Israel?
“That’s not my problem,” he said.
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