Israel's cultural code of captivity and the personal stories of Yom Kippur war Ex-POWs

Armed Forces and Society

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 94-105

  Gavriely, Dalia ^a  

^a BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

Author keywords

Arab Israel conflict; Autobiography; Cultural code; POWs; War

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748310657     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X05282531     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Elliott Gruner, Prisoners of Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 231-35.
2. Elliott Gruner, Prisoners of Culture, Ibid., 225-26.
3. According to the official Israel Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson's Web site, during the Yom Kippur War, 242 soldiers were captured on the Egyptian front, 68 in Syria, and 4 in Lebanon - all told, 314 POWs.
4. In 1979, Lieutenant Colonel Assaf Yaguri published his autobiography, Living with Them, They Are All Mine [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Idanim).
5. Three other autobiographies were published after 1998: Avi Weiss, A Prisoner of Egypt on the. Yom Kippur War [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, Israel: Ministry of Defense, 1998) [to be distinguished from another Avi Weiss, an intelligence officer, mentioned in the text];
6. Yaakov Ariel, The Road to Damascus: Memories of Captivity [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, Israel: Sifriat Poalim, 1999);
7. and Arie Segev, I Didn't Complete the Assignment [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, Israel: Halonot, 2001).
8. One biography was written after the death of ex-POW Hillel Onsdorfer: Menachem Michelson, Hillel from the Mezach Strong-hold [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, Israel: Miskal, 1997).
9. Scattered, sporadic stories were published from 1973 to 1998.
10. Ronen Bergman and Gil Meltzer, "The Prisoner from the Cairo Hilton," Yedioth Aharonot [Seven Days, Weekend Supplement], December 31, 2004.
11. Susan Katz Keating, Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America (New York: Random House, 1994);
12. and John Hellmann, American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
13. See, for example, Anita Shapira, "History and Memory - The Case of Latrun, 1948" [in Hebrew], Alpayim 10 (1994): 9-41.
14. See Nir Toib (director and producer), The Chinese. Farm: Rashumon [in Hebrew] (2004).
15. Shai Ginzburg, "Shaul Friedlander: Between History and Autobiography" [in Hebrew], Teoria Vebikoret 17 (2000): 220.
16. Lewis A. Coser, ed., On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) [originally published in 1925, in French];
17. see also Bernard Lewis, Recovered History: Remembered, Invented (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975);
18. and Barry Schwartz, "The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory," Social Forces 61 (1982): 374-402.
19. Maurice Halbwachs, "Autobiographical Memory and Historical Memory: Their Apparent Opposition," in The Collective Memory (New York: Harper, 1960), 59.
20. Hayden White, "The Value of Moralitivity in Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry 1, no. 1 (1980): 5-29.
21. In contrast to the absence of Israeli research on the cultural dimension of captivity, several articles and books deal with the psychological aspects of the phenomenon. See, for example, Amia Lieblich, Seasons of Captivity: The Inner World of POWs (New York: New York University Press, 1994);
22. Yuval Neria, Zehava Solomon, Rachel Dekel, and Kami Ginsburg, "Yom Kippur POWs - Indicators of Adaptive Difficulties and Treatment and Rehabilitative Aspects" [in Hebrew], Chevra Urevacha - The Social Work Quarterly, 20, no. 2 (2000): 159-74;
23. and Zehava Solomon, "Residues of Long-term Stress among Yom Kippur POWs" [in Hebrew], HaRefuah 128 (1995): 65-71.
24. Gruner, Prisoners of Culture, 37.
25. The Masada ethos, an ancient ethos from the Second Temple period, tells the story of a group of Jews who committed suicide rather than fall into Roman captivity. Daniel Bar-Tal, The Masada Syndrome: A Case of Central Belief (Jerusalem: The International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1983).
26. The Military Justice Law (1955) relates to the issue of captivity.
27. During January 2005, prior to concluding the draft of this article, I patticipated in a program televised on the Israel Broadcasting Authority's Channel One, Politica. Part of it was dedicated to a discussion of the issue of POWs. As aresult of the broadcast, several POWs turned to me, especially the prisoners' wives, who expressed their desire to tell me their personal stories.
28. Michelson, Hillel, 129.
29. Ronen Bergman and Gil Meltzer, "The POW Who Talked (and Got a Citation for It)" [in Hebrew], Yedioth Aharonot, October 10, 2003.
30. Josef Bar, "Many of Us Didn't SleepNights and Sang Sad Songs," Yedioth Aharonot, June 2, 1974.
31. Weiss, Prisoner of Egypt, 86.
32. Alex Doron, "On a Clear Day You Can See Damascus" [in Hebrew], Maariv, December 30, 1999.
33. Yitzchak Letz, "God, Oh God, Let It Be Over" [in Hebrew], Anashim, April 28, 1998.
34. During World War II, Hanna Senesh volunteered to parachute into Hungary to help the Jews there escape. She was caught by the Nazis, tortured, and murdered.
35. Letz, "God, Oh God."
36. Michelson, Hillel, 117.
37. Bergman and Meltzer, "The POW Who Talked."
38. Rami Tal, Ronen Bergman, and Gil Meltzer, "The Man Who Told Everything" [in Hebrew], Yedioth Aharonot [Special supplement: Thirty years after the Yom Kippur War], October 5, 2003.
39. Ariel, Road to Damascus, 53.
40. Liat Ron, "POW Forever" [in Hebrew], Maariv, September 15, 2003.
41. Bar, "Many of Us."
42. Sima Kadmon, "Israel Abandoned Us" [in Hebrew], Yedioth Aharonot [Weekend supplement: Seven days], Octobers, 2003.
43. Sima Kadmon, "Israel Abandoned Us" Yedioth Aharonot [Weekend supplement: Seven days], Octobers, 2003. Ibid.
44. Yaguri, Living with Them, 12.
45. July 26, 2005.
46. Dalia Gavriely, "The Cultural Dimension of Strategic Surprise and the Yom Kippur War - The Representation of War in Israeli Culture 1967-1973" (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 2005).