Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
Yesterday, at the time when Major Bar Pelach - killed in a firefight with terrorists - was laid to rest, I was present at an event put on by the Nefesh Yehudi Organization on Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. Together with a thousand students, I listened to Kitri Maoz, the Director of the Ammunition Hill Heritage Site, tell the following story:
"After the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan was signed in 1994, it was agreed that Jordanian soldiers and Israeli soldiers who had fought in the Six Day War would meet on Ammunition Hill (in Jordanian territory before the war) to bring closure to the fierce battle that was fought there. A Jordanian delegation arrived and the senior Jordanian officer, who had grown old, looked right and left and announced: 'This is not the place where we fought. This can't be it.' His Israeli hosts told him: 'Yes it is. This is where the famous battle between us took place.' But he was not convinced and said: 'No, we fought on an empty hill, surrounded by wilderness.' As he spoke, he pointed to the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, the Ma'alot Dafna neighborhood, the adjacent government complex and National Police Headquarters. 'None of this was here!' he declared. The Israelis explained once again: 'You are correct. We built all this after the war. When it was yours, it was wilderness. Now that it's ours, it's not.'
The message was clear: We are preoccupied with building, not destroying, with life and not with death. And we build with intensity and at a pace that our enemies cannot grasp."
Condolences to the Pelach family. May we continue to build.
