settling the land but which, “without the steel helmet and the barrel of the gun

settling the land but which, “without the steel helmet and the barrel of the gun, will not succeed in planting a tree or building a home.” Still, if | was part of a generation that understood the need for military preparedness, strength and a readiness to fight if we were to survive in the Middle East, the 1956 war also brought home to me the need to consider how we fought. This meant grappling with a contradiction wired into Zionism from the start: the need to take up arms to defend our state, while recognizing the Jewish moral code that was its foundation. When the Israeli armed forces were established in 1948, Tzahal’s doctrine included the principle of tohar haneshek — “purity of arms” — and an explicit requirement for our soldiers to use the minimum necessary force and do all they could to avoid civilian casualties. Putting “purity of arms” into practice was always going to be hard. All arms kill. In all wars, civilians die. But that did not make the principle, or the need to be aware of it in combat, any less important. Even if the soldier called on the make that judgment was someone who had mentored me from the time I was six, and whose military prowess I had come to respect. Even if it was Yigal Garber. His parachute jump on the first day of the 1956 war went smoothly. But the battle for control of the Mitla Pass turned out to be the most deadly of the war. It was also unnecessary. Under Israel’s pre- war choreography with the British and French, the very fact of our landing near the Mitla Pass was to be the trigger for an Anglo-French attack. In fact, Arik Sharon, the commander of Battalion 890, received orders from Tel Aviv not to take the pass. Only grudgingly, did they let him send in a reconnaissance force to establish whether it was safe to cross. The reconnaissance company walked into a trap. Machine-gun and mortar fire rained down from Egyptian troops dug into the caves and other natural defensive positions above the pass. It took hours to extricate the stranded men. Yigal’s unit fought its way in from the eastern side of the pass. A small group from the reconnaissance force managed to get a foothold on the western side. Almost 250 Egyptians were killed. But 38 Israeli paratroopers also died, the largest single toll in any battle since 1948. Battered and bitter, the surviving men from the reconnaissance force parachuted into the southernmost part of the Sinai, near Et-Tur on the Red Sea. Yigal and the others headed overground to join up with them. By the time they got there, Egyptian resistance had all but ended. Yigal’s company had a brief exchange of fire with several dozen hold- outs in the Egyptian force. The Egyptians surrendered. And then, apparently, Yigal and his fellow paratroopers shot all of them dead. 48 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027896