By H. Applebaum
SAN DIEGO — When I visited Israel as a young woman, in 1972, I went on a tour with Henri, a leader of the moshav that was at the foot of the Golan Heights. He explained how the Syrians shelled Israeli farmers as they worked in the fields. Farm workers were constantly being killed and maimed. Imagine a huge gun emplacement on the hills overlooking Imperial Valley. Imagine the bravery of farmers working the fields despite the threat from above.
The Golan Heights was riddled with Syrian bunkers and sturdy gun emplacements. A very brave Syrian Jew, Eli Cohen, managed to discover where they were. For that he was tortured and hung in a public square in Damascus, but not before he had transmitted his information to Israel.
In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel’s Golani Brigade finally put an end to the assault on the farmers. When they mounted the heights, in the midst of fierce gunfire, they engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and there was a great loss of life. The Syrians had a military base there, complete with underground living quarters, which I later saw.
Israel, always magnanimous in victory, offered to return the Golan in exchange for peace. The three ‘NO’s was the Arabs’ answer:
“No negotiation
No recognition
No peace.”
As the years went by and another war with Syria in 1973, Israel realized the Golan was too strategic to be in the hands of an enemy. In 1981, the Knesset formally annexed it. On March 25, 2019, the United States formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.
After WW II, Russia and Poland annexed German territory, which they still hold today. Under international law, territory annexed in a defensive war is legal, but Russia and the Arab countries condemn Israel because there is a double-standard when it comes to Israel.
On my last trip to Israel, I toured the Golan, but this time from the heights. I saw the beautiful wineries and pomegranate fields. I visited the Druze village which was spared from the Syrian civil war because Israel controls the area. The driver of my tour bus was a Druze. What pleased me most though, was the sight of the fields below where farmers can now tend their crops in peace.
While there is periodic rocket fire from Gaza into peaceful Israeli towns today in the south, and ordinary people are sometimes killed, the farmers in the north no longer have a threat from the guns of the Golan.
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Applebaum is a freelance writer based in San Diego.