Uri
Avnery
September
13, 2014
THE LAST
war has come to an end, the next war has not yet started, so let's use the time
to speak of many things.
Of Hannibal, for example.
Hannibal? The man with the elephants?
The very
same.
HANNIBAL,
THE Carthaginian commander who is considered one of the military geniuses of
all times, was a hero of my youth.
At the
time, we were in dire need of national heroes. Anti-Semites all over the
Western world were claiming that the Jews were cowards by nature, shirkers
unable and unwilling to fight like men. They just collected the money while
others died for them.
Looking
for heroes, we found Hannibal.
Carthage was founded by refugees from Tyre in South Lebanon, whose inhabitants
were Canaanites who spoke a dialect very close to Hebrew. The name of Carthage
is derived from the Hebrew Keret Hadasha (New City"), and the name
Hani-Ba'al means Ba'al, the Canaanite God, has given – more or less the same
name as Netanyahu – Yahu, short for Jehovah, has given. Like Theodor as in
Herzl and Dorothy as in de Rothschild.
Who could
be closer to our heart then this great fighter, who led his army, with its
dozens of elephants, across the Alps into North Italy,
who gave his orders in Hebrew? Even the mighty Romans paled when they heard the
shout: "Hannibal ad portas" ("Hannibal near the
gates", often falsely quoted as "ante Portas")!"
One of
the greatest Zionist poets, Shaul Tchernichovsky, the translator of Homer's
Odyssey, affirmed our closeness to the Carthaginians, telling us that they were
the greatest maritime force in the ancient Mediterranean,
even before the Greeks. We were proud of them.
IN A
strange way, Hannibal came up in the recent Gaza war. Not that any of
our commanders were modern-day geniuses. Far from it. But something called the
"Hannibal
procedure" was one of its most terrible phenomena.
Who
coined the term? Some officer with an inclination for ancient history? Or just
an insensitive computer, the same which called this war "Solid Cliff"
– while a human robot gave it the English name "Protective Edge"?
At the
height of the fighting near the town of Rafah
(Rafiah in Hebrew) on the Egyptian border, a squad of Israeli soldiers were
trapped by Hamas soldiers and most of them were killed. One Israeli was dragged
by the Palestinians into a tunnel. The first impression was that he was
captured alive, perhaps wounded.
The Hannibal Procedure went
into action.
THE HANNIBAL PROCEDURE is
designed for just such an eventuality. Of all the nightmares (or rather
daymares) of the Israeli army, this is one of the worst.
This
needs some explaining. In war, soldiers fall into captivity. Often this is
unavoidable. In combat situations, in which further resistance becomes
senseless suicide, soldiers raise their hands.
In
medieval times, prisoners-of-war were often held for ransom. For officers and
political leaders that was a welcome source of income, a good reason for
keeping prisoners alive and well. In more modern times, after the laws of war
came into being, prisoners are exchanged when the war ends.
During
World War II, many Jewish soldiers from Palestine
who had volunteered for the British army fell into German captivity.
Surprisingly, they were treated like all other British prisoners-of-war and
returned safely home when it was over.
There is
nothing dishonorable about being captured. True, Stalin sent multitudes of
returning Soviet prisoners to penal camps in Siberia,
not because they were dishonored but because he was afraid that they had been
infected by capitalist ideas.
SO WHY
are we different?
Jewish
ethos is quite explicit about this. The "redemption of prisoners" is
a paramount commandment of the Jewish religion.
At the
root of this moral order is the ancient phrase "(the people of) Israel are
responsible for each other". Every Jew is responsible for the survival of
every other Jew.
This had
to be taken literally. If a Jew from Alexandria
was taken prisoner by Turkish pirates, rich Jewish merchants in, say, Amsterdam were obliged to
pay the ransom to get him released. This is very deeply ingrained in Jewish
consciousness, even in contemporary Israel.
During
the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, when the Israeli army was fighting Arab
regular armies trained by Europeans, prisoners were taken by both sides,
generally reasonably well treated and exchanged after each war. But when the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict became "asymmetrical", things became
more complicated. On the one side a regular army, on the other hand armed
militants (a.k.a. freedom fighters, a.k.a. terrorists).
Israel
holds a large number of Palestinian prisoners, some sentenced, some held in
"administrative detention" (i.e. on suspicion only). Their number
varies between 5000 and 12,000. Some are political prisoners, some active
members of fighting organizations ("terrorists"). Some have
"blood on their hands", meaning that they either did the killing
themselves or helped the killers by hiding them or providing them with money or
weapons.
For many
Palestinians, it is a holy duty to get them released. For many Israelis, this
is a crime. The result: constant efforts by Palestinians to capture live
Israelis, in order to exchange them for these prisoners.
The
tariff is going up all the time. When Palestinians demand a thousand of their
prisoners in return for one Israeli, Israelis are outraged, but also flattered.
Many indeed believe that this tariff is fair, but they are outraged
nevertheless. In 1985, three Israeli soldiers held by a pro-Syrian Palestinian
organization were exchanged for 1150 Palestinian prisoners.
In every
such event, Israelis are torn between the obligation to "redeem
prisoners" and the determination "not to deal with terrorists"
as well as "not to surrender to blackmail", especially concerning
prisoners with "blood on their hands".
The first
priority is always to try to release Israeli prisoners by force. This is a very
risky undertaking. In the ensuing shooting, the prisoner's life is at risk.
Often it is uncertain whether he was killed by the captors or by the
liberators.
The
Israeli sportsmen who were killed during the Munich Olympic games of 1972 were probably
killed by the poorly trained Bavarian police. The autopsy results are still
secret. The same happened to a class of Israeli schoolchildren in Ma'alot in Northern Galilee, who were captured by Palestinian
guerrillas and perished in the exchange of fire.
In the
famous Entebbe
operation, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was ready for a prisoner exchange until
he was persuaded by the army that the rescue operation had a very good chance
of success.
The
dilemma reached its peak in the Gilad Shalit affair. The soldier was captured
("kidnapped" in Israeli parlance) by Palestinians who emerged from a
cross-border tunnel. (Our army drew no tactical conclusions from the incident,
until the latest war).
Shalit
was held in captivity for five years. Frantic efforts by the army to discover
his place of captivity bore no fruit (luckily for Gilad, I must add). From week
to week the public pressure for an exchange grew, until it became politically unbearable and
Shalit was exchanged for 1027 Palestinian prisoners. The army was furious, and
on the first opportunity rearrested all those who had been released.
The
latest round of negotiations directed by John Kerry broke down because
Netanyahu refused to free a number of prisoners he had already undertaken to
release.
Somewhere
on the way, the Hannibal
Procedure was instituted.
THIS
ORDER is based on the conviction that prisoner exchanges must be prevented by
all means – quite literally.
In such
cases, the first few minutes are decisive. Therefore, "Hannibal" puts the entire responsibility
on the local commander, even if he is a mere Lieutenant. No time for waiting
for orders.
When
soldiers see their comrade being dragged away, they must shoot and kill – even
if it is almost certain that their comrade will also be hit. The order does not
say explicitly "better a dead soldier than a captured soldier" – but
this is implied and widely understood that way.
If the captors
and their captive disappear, the whole neighborhood has to be flattened
indiscriminately, in the hope that the captors are hiding in one of the
buildings.
At the
height of the Gaza
war, that is exactly what happened. An Israeli squad fell into a Hamas ambush.
All the soldiers were killed, except one – Hadar Goldin - who was seen being
dragged into a tunnel. Assuming that he was captured, the army went berserk,
razing scores of buildings in Rafah to the ground without warning, shooting at
everything that moved.
In the
end, it was all in vain. The army decided that the soldier was already dead
when his body was captured, and now demands the return of the body, so as to
fulfill another Jewish duty: "to bring a Jewish body to a Jewish
grave".
DURING AND
after the war, this incident led to a furious debate. Why, for God's sake, not
let soldiers be captured? Isn't a live captured soldier better than a dead one?
If for his return a number of Palestinian prisoners have to be released, so
what?
This is a
profound moral debate, touching the roots of the Israeli ethos.
David
Ben-Gurion once wrote: "Let every Hebrew mother know" that she is
handing over her son to responsible officers. Thanks to Hannibal, some Hebrew mothers may now have
serious doubts.
As for
Hannibal himself, I wonder what he would have thought about this.
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