June 1982 War: First Hand Account: Why Israel Went Into Lebanon

Nadene Goldfoot
I, an American teacher from Oregon,  was  living in Safed, Israel  in the northern Galilee at the start of the Lebanon invasion.  My husband and I, with our German shepherd,  had moved to Safed after completing our education in the Ulpan in Haifa in 1980-1981, and then moved to Safed in August where I taught English in the junior high.

During Spring break one of the other students in my Ulpan class had visited Kiriat Shimona, which was north of Safed near the Lebanon border by the Good Neighbor Fence, and wound up the whole duration living in a bomb shelter along with others.  They were receiving so many attacks that they couldn't be out in the open.  On the way to Safed, we passed an apartment building where a rocket had fallen in its back yard just 2 weeks before.  That's when I started to get a little worried.

The PLO had made life in northern Israel intolerable by repeated shelling of Israeli towns a little closer than my city of Safed.  What I hadn't realized was that 15,000-18,000 PLO terrorists were camped out in many places in Lebanon.  5,000 to 6,000 were foreign mercenaries coming in from Libya, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka, Chad and Mozambique.  Our IDF had found enough light arms and other weapons to equip 5 brigades.  Their arsenal included mortars, Katyusha rockets and extensive anti-aircraft weapons.  They had brought in hundreds of T-34 tanks into the area.

Syria had permitted Lebanon to be a haven for the PLO and other terror groups.  They had brought surface-to-air missiles into Lebanon which created another danger for Israel.  Israel was being protected in part by Major Hadad of the Christian Militia whose soldiers patrolled the border.  He was a good friend.

Israel had struck and had commando raids but couldn't stop the growth of the PLO army and could not sit around and wait for more deadly attacks against defenseless citizens.  They had to act against the terrorists.

On June 15, 1982 I was on a bus going down to Haifa to the Rambam Hospital to check on my elbow.  I had fallen and crushed it and had broken the bone as well and it needed  to have the 7 screws taken out.  I noticed a lot of tanks going up the hill which I had never seen happen before, but couldn't get answers from the people on the bus due to my lack of speaking Hebrew well.   I got to the hospital and it was almost deserted which was very peculiar.  This place was usually as popular as a department store sale day. I found the doctor's office and saw all 3 doctors, one of which was from Michigan and looked just like Paul Newman,  who had done the operation.  They  told me they could not help me right now.  We were about to be in a war with Lebanon and they, being an army hospital, would be very busy setting a lot more bones.  I should go home immediately.  Maybe they could do the operation next summer.

I taught with Ned, an American teacher,  who lived in Carmiel, a more modern city nearby.  He was called up to serve in the army a week before at one o'clock in the morning and called me to tell me that he was home for the night and was okay.  Andy, the other English teacher was also home and okay.  Even our dog's vet was called up and was serving as a medic in the army in his period of milueem service.  With these other English teachers in the army, I wound up handling all the classes along with Margolite, the Russian "English" teacher with a very thick accent.  I had reported in at the school on my day off knowing that they would be needing me.  No one had to phone.  Anyway, I lived just across the street from the school.

Avram, who lived in Hatzor, had a birthday and while we were driving there we saw lots of IDF hitchhiking to get to their posts.  Everyone gave them lifts.  It was the patriotic thing to do.  Otherwise, I was at home baking cakes for soldiers who would grab a bite to eat with coffee at kiosks set up along the way.

At this point we had 170 men killed already.  Students in school were hysterical as they all had family members in the army.  Some of my 8th graders were used in the hospital to translate or just to help out, as we had the enemy in there as well and not all nurses or doctors could speak Arabic.  One of my students told me that they saw a lot of things that a 14 or 15 year old boy shouldn't have to see in the ward.  It was quite traumatic for him.

All we knew was that the PLO was finally run out and that it was time something had been done about it.  The UN had done nothing to help Israel while the North had lived in bomb shelters.  Everyone was very upset about the casualties on both sides, but even Lebanon was happy, especially Major Hadad, of the Christian Militia whose men had attacked the PLO.  Little did we know at the time just how they had done  which wasn't kosher.  I was glued to the radio for the short English reports we could hear and read every word in the Jerusalem Post, our English newspaper.  It finally came out that Sharon had allowed Hadad's men to take care of the PLO's, and they did so, as quietly as possible, most likely with knives in their tents.  Sharon received all the blame, being the General.

During the whole episode, the elevator in our building had broken down, and a soldier on leave blew our TV reception accidentally by cutting into a live wire, so we have problems just getting along.  It could have been much worse if our soldiers and Hadad's soldiers hadn't stopped the PLO, I now realize.

Resource: Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G bard and Joel Himelfarb
Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot

CNN's Lying About Israel

by Nadene Goldfoot

While watching CNN’s Iranian coverage Sunday night June 21st, the reporters started talking about how American presidents have in the past needed to confront friendly countries they disagreed with. They immediately brought up Israel in 1982 and stated that Israel slaughtered the Lebanese, and that Reagan had to tell Begin to stop and he did.

Five minutes or less later they brought up Israel again with the same subject of presidential interjections saying that Isael slaughtered the Gazans, and was told to stop by the American president. All this was in reference to Obama’s lack of wanting to interfere with Iran’s political situation right now.

I about fell out of my chair, and me home from the hospital after only six days after having open heart surgery. I could not believe what CNN was telling the world; twice relating how we slaughtered people!

I was in Israel starting in 1980, living in Safed from 1981 to the end of 1985, and remember the Lebanon War very well. Safed is in the Northern Galilee and was very close to the Lebanon border. In fact, my favorite department store was in Kiriat Shimona, which was north of us and they drove to many times. I had been to the "Good Neighbor Fence."

That’s not what happened at all, of course. We do not go around slaughtering people. What happened was that Lebanon was made up of a minority of Christians and a majority of Muslims. The Christians were led by a Major Hadad who patrolled the border of Israel and Lebanon, and he was considered our very good friend. In fact, Major Hadad would come to our hospital for R and R, and we had an agreement with him to take his family into Israel if G-d forbid anything happened to him.

Evidently the Palestinian Muslims had gone in and slaughtered the Christians at some point. Sharon was Defense Minister who apparently did not know that the Christian Falange had gone into Sabra and Shatilla camps to exact revenge on the detestable Palestinian Arab PLO slaughterers of the Lebanese Christians. Sharon was blamed for the attack and was fired by Menachem Begin. It was an eye for an eye attack of Lebanese against Lebanese.

Eventually Sharon was exonerated. It was the Christian militia who did the killings and not the Israelis. That didn’t seem to enter into CNN’s reporter’s verbage, though. To me it shows that CNN never did report the facts correctly in the first place or their reporters wouldn’t have said such things in the first place.

I was there living through the whole experience. When it started I was on a bus going down the hill from Safed headed for Haifa to go to the hospital, and was alone. I had fallen in Haifa while at the school where I lived (Ulpan) and had crushed my right elbow which also had broken the lower bone and was scheduled for a talk with the doctors about when they could take the six screws out of my arm that was holding me together. What I saw was Israeli tanks coming up the hill as we went down. Upon arriving at the hospital, I was told to go back home as fast as possible, that a war was starting and the doctors would be too busy to deal with me. They expected lots of wounded soldiers coming to their hospital. Here I was, a West Coast American, in the midst of my first Israeli war.

After arriving back in Safed, I checked out the bomb shelter in our apartment building. Almost everyone lived in apartments. Homes such as I left in Portland were unheard of. The bomb shelter couldn't take in dogs, and we had brought our German shepherd with us. She was my baby and I was not about to leave her in the apartment alone, so knew I wouldn't be in any bomb shelter. Luckily, we lived on the bottom floor anyway. I thought we might be safe.

My job became baking cakes for the soldiers to eat. All these eighteen year olds had to get to their posts, and did a lot of walking to them. Coffee and cake booths were set up so they could eat something. All these teenagers must have been experiencing sugar-highs. It was good, though. It gave me something to do so that I couldn't shake with fear. I was helping.

Being a teacher, I somehow knew instinctively that the school would need me. I reported to school the next school day (my day off) and found all the men teachers in the army, and that I truly was needed. I taught in the city's junior high, which was across the street from my building. The children were hysterical when they heard a helicopter landing at the hospital up the block from our building. All their family; uncles, brothers, fathers, and many women were in the army, and of course they feared for their lives. They'd huddle in corners while I taught English. One time I remember just stopping my lecture and looking at them. They looked back and said, "Keep talking, Nechama." I did. They needed to hear something familiar. So that's what I did during the Lebanon War. It's something that can't be forgotten.

What my 9th graders did was something amazing. They were needed in the hospital to speak English to the Lebanese or Arabic. They were translators. They told me that they saw things they shouldn't have at their age. They did see the need for English, though, as it was a language they used to speak to the Lebanese. After all, we took in anyone who was injured. Our students studied languages a lot. What was amazing to me was seeing the Arab kids helping the Jewish kids with Arabic studies and vice versa with their Hebrew studies. They all helped each other with English.

I saw units of men with white beards patrolling our streets. They were men left behind to protect us. Women stepped in and took over their husband's jobs. Of course we also had many women teachers in our building, and the Vice Principal was a woman who took over for the principal who had to report into the army. You just didn't see hardly any men on the streets. We were a city of women and children.

As for the Gazan war, CNN never remarked that Israel had been under attack for eight years and it was its citizens who were under missle attack. They never reported that finally Israel said, "Enough", and told the world many times that they wouldn’t take the attacks anymore, no matter what Condoleeza kept saying, and that the Gazans would have to stop or suffer the consequences. The Gazans were warned and did not stop. Israel did everything they could to lessen the harm to the Palestinian citizens, even putting their own lives in harm’s way many times. Nothing was mentioned of this-only that Israel slaughtered them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I’m saddened to see such an international TV station play such a heavy role in discriminating against Israel, and that its reporters have done such a sloppy job. They seem to have no idea of the terrible consequences that can happen when so many people hear these horrid lies about Israel. After all, it takes very little for so many people to turn against Jews; even today. As for CNN-I now have more reason to watch Fox News, and have lost a lot of respect for CNN's reporting skills.