War again scars a lovely land

It's been 32 years since I left northern Israel.

The "October War" or "Yom Kippur" war was winding down, troops were returning home and Israel no longer needed a youth from Oregon to drive a fork lift in a packing plant. I was a volunteer, though paid, a "Mitnavin," a word I can't find how to spell.

I left because I was on my way to India and the man I filled in for was coming home from war.

I see Kaytusha rockets are again falling in Kyryat Shmone, the town where I worked, again falling on Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar where I lived. I remember shrapnel scars on walls there where those rockets exploded 32 years ago.

I see the Israelis are again attacking to the north with F-16s and tanks and bombs and troops. I see that Israelis are again fleeing a war, that the lives of Lebanese and Syrians and Israelis are being disrupted or destroyed.

It is a lovely valley through which the Jordan River flows to feed the Sea of Galilee. They grow apples there, and oranges and grapefruit, large yellow globes nearly sweet when ripe on the trees. The people in that valley are farmers, or they work, as I did, in packing houses where the earth's bounty is boxed and shipped to Europe.

I worked alongside Arabs and Jews. I knew no Hebrew and my Russian boss spoke no English. We communicated through a Moroccan, who spoke French to me and Hebrew to my boss.

There were times when I drove the forklift to the wrong end of the plant, or at the wrong time, or brought the wrong box of apples to the line or placed the empty boxes on the wrong truck, because my American French was not good enough when heard with Moroccan ears, my bad accent mingled with his.

Rockets are again flying into the valley. People are dying. The air is torn with the sound of jets ripping above the orchards, sonic booms shaking the walls of the dining hall, the clanking of tank treads on pavement.

We often waited on the highway for long convoys to move north.

I saw the Israelis retake Mt. Hermon from the Syrians then, tank tracers through the night, remember Moshe Dyan threaten Haifez Assad that when Israel is attacked, it will return an attack, the distance between armies is the same in a war that moves in both directions.

That war then was not the first war, nor was it the last. This war will not be the last either, the fields and hills and shepherd dens will witness this battle and many more.

The Sea of Galilee is long and fresh and beautiful, the towns that lie along its banks carry names from our Bible. It is not just water, but so much more, more for us, more for them, too. That is part of what they fight over, part of why the war will not end.

Who wants this war? Who wanted that one?

The Palestinians and Jews are much alike, brothers separated by religion and history, Isaac and Ishmael, each clings to the earth there, each has reason to believe that existence itself depends on hanging on to that soil, rich and full, because to let go is to let go of self, to let go of parents and children, to let go of place.

They cannot share, there is not enough, so this war will go on, merging with the next.

It is a lovely valley at the foot of the brown hills. Anyone from east of the Oregon Cascades would feel at home there; I felt at home there. And I mourn for them, on both sides of the border, on both sides of the conflict, on both sides of history.

There is no end to it, that war over there that is not so far away.