Gilad Shalit is home today, after five years and four months as a captive of Hamas. My initial reaction, as an Israeli, reflecting on these developments in Berlin, looking mostly at Israeli written press online: I think it is wonderful that Shalit’s mental and physical condition is good enough for him to be able to appreciate his return.
As for the “home” he will find, others have written about the Israeli society he left in contrast with the one to which he returns. I wish instead to comment on two significant symbolic questions: Was the “price” paid for his return justified? And, the more difficult question which requires the help of a philosopher to address: what is the nature and meaning of his homecoming?
The first issue concerning the “price” paid for the safe return of a soldier seems to me and to most of the Israeli public as a no- brainer: one has to save the life of a soldier sent in one’s name. This issue has been covered in the German press I follow in Berlin, praising the commitment of the Israelis to their own people. However, the Israeli press’ apparent need to declare Hamas inhuman concerns me.
I am happy that Shalit is healthy, and recognize that the call in the Palestinian street today to capture other “Shalits” so that other prisoners will be released is obviously morally wrong. Yet, the parallel Israeli use of “price tag” to refer to the urge to hurt Palestinians, as well as the attacks upon what is conceived as the memory of left wing and secular Israel, specifically focused upon the Rabin Assassination, are no less morally wrong.
The attacks, about which Vered Vinitzky Seroussi has extensively written, seem to appear at moments of peaceful interaction and are deeply problematic. Last week, graffiti on the memorial site read: “free Yigal Amir” [Rabin’s assassin]. Perhaps the positive lesson from the discourse on “prices” is that it cannot be read in a vacuum: talking about costs involves agents, past and present, besides its seemingly benign metaphoric suggestion of the economy of life and death.
On the nature of the homecoming and its meaning: the first thing to note is the orchestrated take-over of Shalit by the state of Israel, which manifested itself, as was expected, in the swap of Shalit from the Hamas to the hands of the Egyptian state, and from Egypt to the Israeli state (the army was the first to greet him and dress him in uniform) and only then back to his family. It was significant that Shalit, the 25-year old captive soldier, wore his uniform and saluted Prime Minister Netanyahu, Security Minister Ehud Barak and the Chief of Staff upon his return, as he did. The Israeli collective partook in the state ceremony, in consuming the constant news reporting: flying flags and slogans greeting the returning soldier, and playing songs on radio, some were written for the occasion. Motti Neiger in a short Facebook status update suggested all this is proof that the Israeli media is used first and foremost for maintaining the cohesion of the Israeli collective. It was a classic media event in the sense of Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz. It made things expected, almost already rehearsed and habituated, like any other ritual, combining a memorial ceremony with holiday festivities.
But the return of specific young man, Gilad Shalit’s homecoming, his return to his family, reveals complexity and perhaps hope, beyond the meaning of the official ceremony.
In a short article published in March of 1945 in the American Journal of Sociology entitled “The Homecomer,” the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz wrote that the homecomer differs from the stranger in that he returns to a place that used to be his home, yet, it cannot be the home he left. Schutz reflected on returning veterans of WWII, but one cannot help but think of the relevance to his personal history, a German émigré scholar in America, who was forced to leave home in Europe for political and ethnic reasons and could never find the home he left behind. Merging dimensions of time and space, Schutz writes: “home is a starting point as well as a terminus.”
Two year ago, Shalit’s father, Noam, took the Israeli flag off the roof of his house, demonstrating against what he saw as the lack of action to return his son. A few days ago, he was photographed flying the flag again, after the decision to return his son home in a swap for 1027 Palestinians accused in terrorist action and kept in Israeli jails. Shalit, the father, signified the key symbol of the starting point and terminus of home: the flag on the roof. More, we learned that its mere existence is not enough—it had to be removed and re-placed.
Life at home means intimacy and familiarity. Upon his return, PM Netanyahu greeted Shalit with a citation from an old, well known song: it is so good to have you back home. To his parents he said: I returned the boy back home. This tension between the public homecoming (the song refers to a traveler returning home) and the homecoming of the child to his parents was no small part of the discussions of whether to “pay the price” for Shalit’s return. The other part, the national commitment to do everything to return prisoners home, played a large role in the public pressure to release Shalit, as it is one of the premises of obligatory conscription.
Yet about the young man, the homecomer himself: upon his release, Shalit told the Egyptian Press: “I am happy for the Palestinian prisoners to be released, hope that they won’t return to fight Israel. I hope that this deal will help advance peace.”
May the home he comes to find make his hope realizable.
A very sensitive and captivating piece. Thank you, Irit, for your wise words. It was a fascinating read from where I am now (London). Like you, I share Gilad’s hope that peace will prevail.
Having said that, I feel the need to make some comments. One is that you write: “Palestinians accused in terrorist action.” Some of those Palestinians were not only “accused” – they freely admit and pride themselves on attacking, killing and hurting civilians. The reason I mention this is not only in order to make a CHESHBON (“Invoice”?) with some of the media and the squelching of the vile nature of some of the brutal attacks of some of the Palestinians, but to point out that there are many people in Israel who are appalled by this exchange. Were they willing to “sacrifice” Shalit? Probably so. However, since this was prevented (and I for one am absolutely delighted that it was prevented), one can hear loud voices requesting that Israel uses the death sentence for some Palestinians whose acts can be considered as equivalents to “war crime” or even to use the battlefield to kill specific Palestinians so that no demands can be made in the future for their release. While I hope that these two terrible options will not be pursued, there is a relevant something else that I feel the need to say. If we are to follow Gilad’s, and ours, hope for peace a “Morpheus syndrome” – that is squelching and repressing relevant information – should not be pursued. Good and ugly deeds, toxic pasts, on both sides need not be forgotten. If we are to pursue peace in a way that will not antagonize in a negative and angry fashion sections in the populations, both sides need to know what the real alternative to peace is – a continuation of a nasty, ugly and despicable conflict. Making real concessions for peace does not only mean geographical and demographical wheelings and dealings. It also means knowing and understanding the nasty acts that have been carried out in this conflict. Forgiveness will be nice, but no one needs to forgive if they do not feel like it. The minimum required is the ability and willingness to recognize and remember the past, the WHOLE past, and thus to be able to go along, live together knowing that the shadow of this past needs to loom over our heads if we want real peace. It is this shadow that will remind us – continuously – what the alternative to peace is.
I do want to end my comment by expressing, again, my gratitude and admiration to Irit’s heart-touching and sophisticated response. Thank you!
Nachman
Thanks for the thoughtful piece, Irit.
I would like to add something here that fascinates me. Shalit was returned as an Israeli hero. In his uniform, with Netanyahu, Barak, and every trapping of the state. But this is an outcome, obviously not his “natural” state. For a very long time, even while negotiations were taking place, it was far from clear whether the state will turn him into the symbol. Although there were fertile grounds in the Israeli imaginary landscape for his trasubstantiation from a relatively geeky-looking youngster into a symbol, it wasn’t automatic. Indeed, the work of symbolization was carried out, at times almost single-handedly, by his family. The political fight with the state, replete with demonstrations, processions, and appeals, was long, grueling, and highly uncertain. It is not long ago that the negotiations seemed impossible, and Shalit’s fate quite dim.
It is this aspect, that, for me, is most interesting. Without making him into a war-hero he was made into the focus of public ritual that united most of the Israeli population. If somebody would truly follow this story as a tale of a public representation, I expect we will learn a lot not only about Israeli and Palestinian politics, but about the politics of symbols.
Thank you Iddo, for taking the time to read and respond to the post. I find your perspective on turning Shalit into a symbol and the politics of symbols to be the most interesting and fruitful, also for further inquiry. To add on that, Shalit was made a military hero only around his release. The symbolization and memory work done by his family focused on rather different aspects: the fading, the demanding and the peaceful. The first two were manifested along the battle to gain support of his release, focused on (1) the danger that he’ll dissapear and die– taking the symbolism form the discourse on Ron Arad, which I did not make the blog-space to introduce. This “fading” danger was later replaced by the “Gilad is still alive” demand to return him home. Both have very little to do with him. (2) The ‘peaceful’ message: by publishing a story which Shalit wrote at age 11 about a whale and a fish who decide to play together and make peace instead of staying enemies (it later became clear that the story was heavily informed, or plagiarised, by another children’s tale). It will be interesting to see whether the hero symbol will remain on the level of appreciating his survival, or that there will be more information accumulated about Shalit’s ‘heroism’. Perhaps some of it will not be militeristic and nationalistic. I hope so.
Nachman, thanks much for your comments and thoughts. I chose to look at the symbolic aspects of the discourse on Shalit’s return as they seem clearer to me in their power to mediate, reaffirm but also transgress the ‘conflict’ models as well as the Israeli identity complexities we are used to think with. Clear, many prisoners accused in terror attacks were terrorists. Unfortunately, some will also remain terrorists. I was sad to see coverage yesterday of a former terrorist encouraging school children to become shahids and am not naive to assume that now that Shalit is back and the gesture toward the Hamas is made, it will magically be bestowed upon us with the plea of forgiveness for all. But I am also not sure that we have to look for stories of ruthless terrorists on both sides to fortify our fear that nothing will change. We can indeed hope for memory-in-context and more than the victim’s narrative, and celebrate stories that show that individuals and groups on the Palestinian side think differently about their future. Then an op-ed piece like the one published yesterday in the NY times worrying that the release will encourge more terrorism and that Netanyahu will not make further compromise will have to take into account an infrmed public that imagines their home and habituating it differently.