Eliezer's last letter from the front
Op-ed: Shortly after his death in the Yom Kippur War, the family received a letter in which the IDF reservist expressed the hope that his son's generation would never have to fight.
Once again the sights, sounds and memories, once again the endless browsing through photo albums and manuscripts – and each time it is just as terrible. Here he is with his friends from Bnei Akiva, in high school, the Golani Brigade, the operation that saved the life of a wounded comrade. And here he is smiling on his wedding day and at the circumcision of his only son, left without a father at less than a year old.
What did he see on the other side of the damned Suez Canal - where he was summoned for reserve duty on the eve of the Jewish New Year in 1973 - that politicians and generals, blind to reality, arrogant and drunk not just on wine, had not predicted or sought to avoid? For those politicians were preparing for war of a different kind – an elections war.
What were the thoughts of Eliezer, newly married and a new father, four days before he was killed, when he wrote that last letter to his wife Miriam, saying the weather was "a little hot, but bearable"? That he hoped to "leave next week, but it's hard to say for sure?"
What went through his mind on the second day of the war, as he stood at the entrance to the bunker, fasting for Yom Kippur and trying with his last remaining strength to deter an assault by swarms of Egyptians, fighting to the bitter end?
He wrote, among other things, in the letter that only arrived after he fell in battle: "In five days, it will be Pasha's birthday (a nickname given to his only son, Elam), and I hope that the celebration will not be diminished by the absence of his father." He could not know that his absence would be forever.
"Apparently, this absentee needs to get used to an atmosphere of 'peace' with our neighbors, even though it is every reservist's hope is that he will be the last warrior, and that his children will not have to fight or join the army."
"The celebration will not be diminished"? Who was going to celebrate a birthday? We were searching for him; we tried in vain to get any scrap of information about Eliezer's fate. He was officially declared missing days later - but there was no miracle to come, and after a year and seven months, we received his body, and it was terrible.
The toll of it we saw in our late mother, who carried the loss and sorrow in her heart every day until her death nine years ago, and our late father, who collapsed suddenly last year, on the day of Eliezer's memorial service, the day after Yom Kippur. He died two weeks later. And like all of us, Elam is now used to the atmosphere of "peace" with our neighbors.
Like his father, he grew up and joined the army, and the hope that our children would not have to fight remained a dream. Even after 42 years, our children still join up - to fight and be killed - just like then.
It is precisely because of the same blindness, precisely because of the same arrogance and brutalization, in a country where failure follows failure, but in a country - luckily for us – where a little light always shines in the darkness.
