Other than reading the extensive special
sections of the Shabbat newspapers devoted to it, I hadn't planned any particularly
special means of commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Six Day War.
After all, I had been an American-Jewish high school student during that war,
and though it ultimately greatly affected the directions my life was to take,
I'd be hard pressed to say that my involvement with it was personal.
On the 15th anniversary of the Lebanon War, however (in 1997), I did feel a need
to commemorate. Put rather simply, this was because 15 years earlier I had ended
up reading those newspapers on the Golan Heights, at an outpost on the Syrian
border, having been called up when the war broke out. My reserve unit replaced
enlisted units that had entered Lebanon.
After a bit less than a week, we were in Lebanon as well - stationed on the southern
outskirts of Damoor. There we stayed, impatiently, until our 45 days were over.
The next summer we were once again in Lebanon, this time facing the Syrians to
our east. And in January and February of 1985 we were there again - on the costal
road, just north of the Litani River. We were the troops who withdrew from that
area without being replaced, the first troops of the lenghty and drawn-out Israeli
withdrawal from Lebanon.
Lebanon of the winter of 1985 was very different from the Lebanon we met in June
1982. If at the start of the war Israeli troops felt they were being warmly received,
by the time of our withdrawal we were clearly protecting only ourselves. We were
expected to travel light on our patrols in order to be quick on our feet. For
that reason we were instructed to leave some of our pouches empty. I invariably
filled mine with objects I collected during our patrols - objects which I held
onto throughout the month, and then brought home with me.
Upon being released I organized what I had collected into an exhibit - each item
placed within a nylon envelope and kept within a cardboard carton built to seem
like an army supplies box. These were taken out and displayed on the walls of
wherever I had the opportunity for an exhibit.
Those exhibits started around the winter of 1986 and became relatively popular.
After the popularity waned and the exhibits stopped, the envelopes were placed
back in their box, the box was placed in a closet, and the exhibit faded into
the past.
In 1997, to commemorate 15 years since the Lebanon War, I converted the contents
of the box into a web-based exhibit. My HTML skills at the time were very limited,
and the outcome left a good deal to be desired. But it didn't really matter -
the server on which the exhibit was housed shut down a couple of months after
I'd posted it.
This web-based rendition is much closer to what I wanted to achieve. Yet at the
same time it also raises difficult questions. The original exhibit consisted only
the items in the envelopes with their titles exhibited next to them. On the web
it would seem that some explanations of what is in the envelopes is called for,
but have I added, or detracted, by adding comments? I've resisted the urge to
expand the range of this exhibit. Quite a few years ago I word-processed my originally
handwritten, and later typed-out, diaries from my stints in Lebanon. I could have
included extensive parts of these here, but that would have made this a very different
project. If anyone is interested in reading those journals, they can contact
me and I'll consider sending them.
Hanging above this entire project is a question that for me is the most problematic: perhaps the entire effect of this exhibit is lost when instead of seeing the real objects, we see only photographs of them.
I don't have the answers. I do know that for many years I've wanted to post this
exhibit to the web. Now I've finally done so - my contribution to remembering
the Lebanon War.
January, 2004