Kesher Talk

Supporters of Israel pride themselves on the sensitivity and morality of the Jewish army, but can morality overdose into madness? Cantor Moshe Keinan, father of Sgt. Avihu Keinan, asked those questions, accusing the army of “cruelty,” as he stood over his son’s open grave on the eve of Rosh HaShanah. Then, like Israel itself, torn between anger and tenderness, he started singing a Yiddish lullaby that he used to sing to Avihu to put him to sleep, and now to tuck him into the ground.

It was the day after 27 reserve pilots signed a petition that they would refuse to bomb Arab civilian targets. In response, an air force commander defended the Israel Defense Forces as the most moral and ethical army in the world.

Meanwhile in Gaza, where Avihu’s unit was stationed, Israeli intelligence identified a small residential apartment building as a terrorist den. Indeed, the building was later found to contain rockets, rocket launchers, grenades and suicide bomb-belts.

Though it was suggested that Israel bomb the building from the air, the IDF, fearing civilian casualties, ordered Avihu’s unit to search door to door. The soldiers knocked on the first apartment door, asking that the terrorists surrender.

Instead, at least a half-dozen women, children and elderly people emerged from the apartment, filling the vestibule and stairwell alongside the soldiers. The soldiers sent a dog to sniff around on the second floor. They heard a gunshot; the dog was killed. Avihu and his men followed up the stairs when a volley of bullets hit Avihu in the head. Six others were wounded.

It was the last night of the old Jewish year when Keinan, 22, was buried in the West Bank village of Shiloh, as the cantor cried: “My son’s blood was less important to the IDF than [Palestinian] blood. No other army in the world has this policy… Mein yingeleh ... mein tayare (My young one, my cherished one.)” Avihu is survived by his parents and four sisters.

posted by Judith @ 10/16/2003 02:51:15 PM