For Dr. Jonathan Friedlander, the photography exhibit at UCLA\’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History evokes vivid memories of the Sunday morning in 1991 he arrived at the central bus station in Be\’er Sheva and discovered a place where worlds collide.
During World War II, the Japanese army forced as many as 200,000 women and girls from mostly Asian countries to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers and officers. About 80 percent of these \”comfort women,\” as the Japanese euphemism of the time termed them, were the daughters of mine workers and farmers in Korea, which was under Japanese occupation.
Lisa Weinmann-Myara, a State University of New York graduate who settled in Jerusalem with her Israeli husband 16 years ago, is waging a vigorous defense of her soldier son, who faces a court martial on charges of disgracing himself and the army by allowing a Palestinian mob to steal his automatic rifle when it stormed the car in which he was hitchhiking through the West Bank.
A new coded message has entered the chilly lexicon of Israeli anxiety. \”Heavy fighting is taking place in Lebanon,\” intones the news reader. Hundreds of mothers and fathers with soldier sons serving across the northern border know immediately what that means. There are casualties, but the families have not yet been notified.
Gil Wiener, the husky soldier who dragged out the first survivor of the Nairobi bombing to be saved by the Israeli dog squad last weekend, is a 29-year-old architecture student working his way through college as a lifeguard at the Hebrew University swimming pool in Jerusalem.
The first thingItzhak Frankenthal did after his son\’s murder was exact threepromises from his wife. First, he said, the couple would not blameGod. Second, they would thank God for at least allowing them to havetheir son\’s remains to bury. Many Israeli families never receive thebodies of their loved ones killed by war or, in Arik Frankenthal\’scase, by terrorists. Lastly, Frankenthal made his wife promise thattheir life without Arik would go on. After sitting shiva, Frankenthal walked intohis children\’s room, turned on the TV, and told them that they mustgo back to doing normal things.
Israel signed the Oslo peace agreement with itsold enemy, Yasser Arafat, because by 1993 the alternatives had becomeinsufferable. The Palestinian intifada, a revolt of thestreet, was sapping the morale of the Israeli army, fighting a futilesix-year battle with one hand tied behind its back. Nightlytelevision footage of soldiers in combat fatigues, chasing teenageboys wielding slingshots and petrol bombs, was undermining Israel\’sdeterrent credibility in its confrontation with the Arab states aswell as its international moral case.
It\’s a long way from an Israeli combat platoon to Newport Beach,but Inbal Adar and Tsahi Levi are trying to bridge the geographicaland cultural gap.\n\nBoth Adar, 20 years old, blond and in a miniskirt, and Levi, 22,ruggedly handsome and in jeans, are lieutenants in combat infantryunits of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Since the beginning of this year, 103 Israeli soldiers have died in, or on their way to, war in Lebanon. Twelve lost their lives in a botched marine commando raid last week. The total death toll since the 1982 \”Peace for Galilee\” invasion nowstands at about 1,200, and since the pullback to the South Lebanese security zone in 1985, some 500 soldiers have died.
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