Friends till the end

Tag : punching bearing
Initially, it was by chance that Leibovich ran into Moshe Klughaft,who together with Uzi Dayan had helped organize the mass rally inTel Aviv that followed publication of the Winograd Committee reporton the conduct of the Second Lebanon War. Within a few minutes,they realized that alongside their shared anger at Olmert, therewas another common denominator that bound them, one that excludedDayan: their youth.

Leibovich is a 32-year-old architect and strategic advisor.Klughaft, 28, a media and strategic advisor as well, was also acentral driving force behind the protest campaign led by the IDFreservists and bereaved families against the government's handlingof the war. Both grasped the fact that they were acting on behalfof their generation, and that they have no leadership to turn to.They know that tomorrow, any one of their friends could fall on thebattlefield of a failed war, or be the next kidnapped soldier forwhose return the government will not act.

They also understood that their age and their standing allows thema freedom to act in a manner that would not have been suitable forthe public battle waged by the soldiers' parents and KarnitGoldwasser, Udi's widow. She is, in fact, Leibovich's closestfriend, going back to their days spent as volunteer tutors whilethey were students at the Technion - Israel Institute ofTechnology.

"Tomboy," was how he described Karnit back then. Today, he stillstruggles with the images of her trading in her worn-out T-shirtand sneakers for her tailored suits - the uniform in which sheembarked on her battle to secure the return of her husband.

"The 'tom' ["innocence" in Hebrew] went, and so did the 'boy,'"says Klughaft, who advised the public relations efforts conductedby the soldiers' friends.

Below the belt

The campaigns were indeed quite different. Most of the friends'effort was planned in the living room of the apartment Leibovichshares with Greti Schweitzer, at 3 Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv,directly across from Sokolov House, the building that serves as theheadquarters of the Journalist Association.

"[This is] the struggle of 3 Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv against 3Kaplan Street in Jerusalem - the address of the Prime Minister'sOffice," they said. When Olmert arrived at Sokolov House for apress conference at one point, members of a special police unitcame to the apartment, demanding they remove the banners hangingfrom their porch, signs bearing the slogan from Jeremiah, "Yourchildren shall return to their own country." The banners wereapparently seen as a threat. The friends refused the policerequest.

At least once a week, some 20 people would gather at the apartment;only a few were really close to the fallen soldiers. Leibovich saysthat in some way, he managed to get to know Eldad Regev, who was astranger to him, better than he knew Goldwasser because of thestories about him that he was compelled to hear in order toacquaint himself with the man.

These are very young people who were drawn intimately closer to twofamilies - Goldwasser and Regev - by difficult circumstances. Butthe cooperation with the parents was determined by the matter athand. Karnit Goldwasser's campaign was separate. The distinctcampaigns allowed the friends room to maneuver freely. Theyconsciously chose to promote as their theme a public dialogue basedon old-fashioned ethical values, what Leibovich calls a "retro thatwe made fashionable. This is a dialogue that is very hard forpoliticians to cope with. They don't possess the lexicon."

In parallel, the friends also chose at times to hit below the belt.The parents could not afford to anger those in charge, since thefate of their children was in their hands. "I always reminded Miki[Leibovich] that the one who would sit shivah over Udi would not behim, but rather Karnit and the parents," Greti Schweitzer says.

Some of the liberties taken during the campaign provokedcontroversy. Over the last Purim holiday, they sent a package toevery Knesset member containing a miniature IDF uniform as well asa red-stained dog tag. The gesture was vulgar and tasteless even bytheir standards, and they were surprised by the response. Membersof Knesset who were late in receiving the package sent their aidesto the mail room to find out where it was.

"If you didn't get it, it was like a sign that you didn't exist,"the friends said after the fact, hinting that the crude nature ofthe deed was commensurate with those who make up the Knesset today.

The most moving moment for them was the alternative Passover sederthey held near the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem thisyear - an event that attracted many strangers, who chose to come atthe expense of their traditional family seder. The most frustratingmoment came when the prime minister announced that he wasconsidering declaring the two soldiers as having been killed inaction just days before signing the prisoner swap.

"It's not that they were in possession of any new information,"says Klughaft. "This was meant as a way for Olmert to make surethat afterward no one would say he had ended up with only deadbodies, and had failed once again. This was media spin thatsignaled 'We knew,' and it was meant to stifle any second-guessingover the deal, and maybe even over the war, at a later time."

The friends allowed the parents to lead the public backlash andefforts to lobby the government to reject any a priori declarationof the soldiers as dead. Leibovich agreed with every word, addingthat if the soldiers had been declared dead before the exchange,their remains would not have been returned home for another 10years.

The friends also served another clearly defined purpose: Theyassumed the role of punching bag. If there was any resentment thatcould not be directed toward the parents, it was directed at them.Among the accusations leveled against them was that Leibovich wasmotivated primarily by purposes of self-promotion, and theespecially damning suggestion that their activities were driving upthe price Israel would have to pay to secure Regev and Goldwasser'sreturn.

"What self-promotion?" Leibovich asks in a ridiculing tone. "Tothis day, nobody knows who I am. And the issue of the price wassomething we took into account, but we set out with the assumptionthat there is no justification for the price being a reason for thedeal to take more time."

Parental privilege

Given the leadership vacuum and widespread confusion among thepublic, the friends' camp became the address to which people turnedfor answers to the relevant questions. An amused Leibovich recallshow members of the media asked him his opinion on a possible peaceagreement with Syria, and a New York radio station inquired as tohis view on plans for a final-status agreement with thePalestinians.

Drawing on the experience he accumulated, Klughaft points outnoteworthy differences between the way the public related tofamilies who had lost sons in the Second Lebanon War, and thefamilies of the missing soldiers. Whereas bereaved parents at timesfaced the question of whether it was really their place to expresstheir opinion - if not actual attempts to delegitimize them -nobody dared question whether the families of Regev and Goldwasserhad that same right. Apparently, the bereaved parents' demand toreplace the prime minister was more challenging for the politiciansthan the demand of the kidnapped soldiers' families to freemurderers in exchange for their sons.

Now, the bodies have been returned and nothing has abated. Not theanger, nor the egregious lack of faith. Klughaft is currentlyserving as the point man for memorial ceremonies to be led by thebereaved families, marking two years since the war, this comingMonday. Leibovich and his friends are proceeding with efforts tobring about the release of Gilad Shalit.

"Until the ends of the earth, until every possibility is exhausted,until you are free, I, too, will be a captive," Klughaft wrote aspart of the chorus of a song composed after the kidnapping. NimrodLev wrote the music and performed the song, and Karnit Goldwasserread out the words of the chorus. The words still ring true today.

Now that the bodies have been returned, Leibovich and his friendsanticipate being asked to explain the extent of their contributionto the next terrorist attack likely to be carried out by one of theterrorists released in the deal. "We knew when to release SheikhAhmed Yassin and also when to liquidate him when we had to,"Leibovich says, giving an answer he had prepared in advance. "Ihave no doubt that we will know how to deal with Samir Kuntar oranyone else."

Klughaft says that now everything becomes one consolidated protest."If, until now, Regev and Goldwasser were simply 'abductedsoldiers,' from today, they are also 'reservists' as well as 'warcasualties.'"

The campaigns have not concluded, they've simply merged. The SecondLebanon War refuses to end.