Hong Kong is an international city, and Hong Kongers love travelling. At least that’s what we all say. Yet, most of my friends from Hong Kong were bewildered when they heard that I am going to study in Israel. The Middle East is a faraway and mysterious land. A mythical beauty covered with a glamorous veil. We are quite aware of the veil and even quite willing to discuss about the veil embroideries, but few are interested in removing the veil and getting to know the beauty.
That was how I was when I arrived in Jerusalem, completely ignorant and full of unrealistic imagination. I got off the airport bus at the central bus station and couldn’t connect what I saw with the blurry and mythical image in my head. It was crowded and noisy. All sorts of people moved around hastily. I couldn’t believe I flew all the way over and ended up in a place that felt exactly like a busy corner of Hong Kong. The next day I went up Mount Scopus and moved into the Students’ Village. There it was quiet and almost isolated. This time it didn’t feel like Hong Kong, but it still didn’t match my imagination. In fact it didn’t feel like anywhere. It could be anywhere in the world. I opened google map and found myself right next to a grey dotted line. 1949 Armistice Agreement Line, it says.
“The 1949 Armistice Agreements are a set of armistice agreements signed during 1949 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria to formally end the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and establish armistice lines between Israeli forces and Jordanian-Iraqi forces, also known as the Green Line.”[1] Wikipedia told me.
I gradually came to understand that every day I walk around a piece of land that was “under Jordanian control” before 1967, and that I live 1 km away from one of the bloodiest battlefields of the legendary Six-Day War of 1967. The battle for Ammunition Hill was a critical battle that enabled Israel to take East Jerusalem, and there the Israeli soldiers encountered unexpectedly strong Jordanian resistance.
On a lazy afternoon I took a walk to the “Ammunition Hill Memorial Site”. The staff that was on-duty was rather unenthusiastic. “Yes there’s a museum here, but you are not allowed to visit it unless you book a tour. No there are no available English tours to be booked now. When will there be an English tour? I don’t know. But you can pay 10 sheckles and go to the open area to look at the site if you want.” And so that was what I did.
It was a sunny and beautiful day. A few tour buses carried dozens of schoolchildren to the site where they ran around the open area excitedly, jumping into the war trenches to hide from and chase around each other, or climbing on the tank and war jeep that were placed there. The first thing that caught my attention was a stone house, which from the caption I understood that it housed the Jordanian on-call unit and that the dead bodies of 17 Jordanian soldiers were found near the house at the end of the battle.
“Our soldiers fought like heroes, but yours like Fedayeen (suicide attackers)”
These were the words of one of the Jordanian captives, according to the text on the near-by caption. The Israeli paratroopers buried the 17 Jordanian soldiers in the trench, and placed a “moving sign” that reads, “Buried here are 17 brave Jordanian soldiers, June 7, 1967.”
I walked into the trench. It was narrow and meandering. I shuddered at the thought of hiding in these trenches and passing by dead bodies anytime on the way. Yes I am blessed, to know nothing about war, which is why I can stand in a war trench and contemplate war and peace. For those who were here during the battle, I guess it would have been a luxury to think about anything other than staying alive. Here we celebrate “bravery”. Even the Jordanian soldiers, who were the “enemies”, are remembered with respect, because they “fought bravely”.
What is bravery? Standing in the trench I did not feel brave at all. I felt desperate.
“I don’t know why I got a citation, all I wanted was to return home safely”
Somewhere along the trench there is another caption that talks about three soldiers who succeeded in destroying a bunker by attaching bags of explosives to it. The government of Israel awarded them with medals of courage and distinguished service after the war, and the above quote was what one of the soldiers said.
Further ahead stands a huge Israeli flag. It is the “monument in memory of the 66th Battalion’s fallen”. 36 soldiers from the Battalion lost their lives in the battle for the Ammunition Hill, and their names were inscribed on a huge stone tablet. Sociologists claim that heroes who sacrificed their lives on behalf of the collective are at the core of Israel’s founding myths, and therefore fallen soldiers are sanctified and mythologized in Israel.[2] The Israeli flag that flies over the monument seems to signify how the fate of these 36 soldiers was tightly bound with the nation. This was what they died for, wasn’t it?
What about the 17 Jordanian solders who also died here? What did they die for? They, too, are remembered as “brave soldiers”, but unlike the Israeli soldiers, they have no names. (I did not find any mentioning at the site, but according to other sources altogether 71 Jordanians were killed in this battle.[3])
Memory is selective. We choose what we want to remember and we reinforce certain elements while neglecting others. According to the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, social groups establish versions of the past, known as “collective memory”, in order to construct their image of the world and to set boundaries that separate themselves from other groups.[4] I have had no memory of the battle for Ammunition Hill, neither individual nor collective, prior to my visit. Yet standing at the memorial site I understood that this place never ceased to be a battlefield, only now the battle is about memory, about what and how to remember. Bravery and sacrifice, is that what I am supposed to remember?
Yet I know what I will remember. I will remember how I sat on the war jeep while the wind blew on my face, imagining how it would feel if the jeep was heading towards a real battle ground. Fear. That was what I felt. The fear of having to hurt someone in order to protect myself, and the fear of failing to save my own life despite best endeavors. It must be an important battle, for me and for people that I love, if I have to risk my life to fight it. So I also felt the fear of losing, for the consequence of failure might be unbearable. It was a horrible feeling. Maybe I am a pacifist, I thought to myself, but there must be something that I am willing to fight for, or even die for. What am I willing to fight and die for?
“All I wanted was to return home safely”, said the soldier who destroyed the bunker that erupted deadly fire. Perhaps, we are not that different after all. Hong Kongers, Jordanians, Israelis. We want to live and be with our loved ones. Does it take bloody battles to do that?
Here I am, standing on a piece of land that was once distant and mythical. I came because I did not want to be blinded by my imagination. One day I will leave this part of the world and bring back memories. I hope my memories are not invented.
[1] Wikipedia, ‘1949 Armistice Agreements’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements
(accessed on 18th June, 2018)
[2] Karen Tenenboim Weinblatt, ‘Fighting for the story’s life: Non-closure in journalistic narrative’, Journalism 9(1), 46
[3] ’50 Years Later, Ammunition Hill Hero Recalls Key Battle for Jerusalem’, The Jerusalem Post, Feb 6, 2017
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/50-years-later-Ammunition-Hill-hero-recalls-key-battle-for-Jerusalem-480727 (accessed on 19th June, 2018)
[4] Oren Meyers, Eyal Zanberg, Motti Neiger, ‘Prime Time Commemoration: An Analysis of Television Broadcasts on Israel’s Memorial Day for the Holocaust and the Heroism’, Journal of Communication, Volume 59, Issue 3, 1 September 2009, 458