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In the thick of the fight

Ahron Bregman feels the force of a military memoir

May 6, 2016 07:19
Hard fighting in Lebanon. Different generations of Israeli soldiers were scarred by the experience

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PumpkinflowersBy Matti Friedman
Biteback Publishing, £12.99
Reviewed by Ahron Bregman

My generation of Israeli soldiers prepared the ground for a book like Pumpkinflowers. We were the young soldiers who, in 1982, invaded Lebanon, in what came to be known as "The Lebanon War", and reached the gates of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. Three years later - by then, I was no longer a soldier - my fellow Israelis withdrew from the Beirut area to set up the "security zone" in southern Lebanon. There, they manned outposts and patrolled the area to keep Hizbollah - the guerrilla organisation set up by Iran in Lebanon - away from northern Israel. But this security zone was to become Israel's Vietnam.

A fierce war was fought there between Israeli troops and Hizbollah fighters in which scores of Israelis were killed in ambushes - and in accidents: on February 4, 1997, two helicopters collided, killing all 77 soldiers on board. It was a bloody, yet forgotten, war fought mainly by young Israeli troops who rarely complained.

Matti Friedman, who was born in Toronto and later became a correspondent for the Associated Press, served in the Israeli army in Lebanon and his book, which is part memoir, part reportage, tells the story of Israelis who finished high school and then found themselves in "a forgotten little corner of a forgotten little war".