Recently I found in my closet a batch of old columns I wrote for the now-defunct Israeli magazine ‘Hotam,’ way back in the late 80s and early 90s. I looked through some of them, and the feeling was eerie. Here’s a (translated) column I wrote on July 19^th, 1991, just after the first gulf war, during which Iraqi missiles fell on Tel Aviv:

The war was repressed with surprising speed and ferocity. In contrast to the shoddy, haphazard way in which war preparation was conducted, Israeli society organized the suppression effort quietly and efficiently. Israelis emerged in the morning after, looked this way and that, breathed deeply, stuffed their gas masks into the attic, took a bowl of sunflower seeds out to the porch, opened the paper in the sports section, and that’s it. The war slipped into the depths of the national unconscious like a doomed submarine, never to be heard from again.

During my visit in Israel I sat down with friends. We haven’t seen each other for two years. They told me about their work, the kids, life. They spoke openly and willingly, because that’s what we do—we sit and talk. But the war stories had to be pried out of them. Nobody was talking about the war. Why the silence? One may argue that the war, after, all was no big deal. No real devastation occurred. A few people in Ramat Gan and Haifa got scared, packed and left for Jerusalem. One may note that this is how it is here. Everything moves on, and quickly. Life goes on. There was a war, it ended, and now on to the next political scandal, the next celebrity mishap, the soccer ref’s next bad call. in short, back to normal.

These are useful explanations on a certain level, but they are not persuasive; they do not tell the real story. The war was repressed so quickly and urgently, almost violently. And that is telling. The war was repressed because to remember it is to come face to face with notions that threaten the foundations of the Zionist ethos and Israel’s self image.

Israel’s self mage is that of a player, an imposing regional power; an independent agent. Israel is the place where no one should be able to attack the Jews with impunity, tell the Jews where to go, what to do. Israel is the Jew hitting back. American Jewry is the producer and promoter, but Zionism is the prizefighter, and a world champion in his class. The crowd loves him. His enemies hate him. He’s no intellectual, but possesses quick survival instincts and ferocity. But recently there are problems.  His poise in the ring is lacking; he’s given to bad sportsmanship, erratic behavior. He gets carried away, flies off the handle; he’s aging. He’s no longer good for business.

During this gulf war, Israel was not allowed to be itself. In this war, Israel was ordered to sit quietly and experience its scary demons dancing on its head. To remember the war is to admit that Israel is a political and military pawn in the hands of larger forces. To remember the war is to admit that Israeli existence is fragile and exposed. Missiles rained on your house, and all you could do was scotch tape the windows and sit in the sealed room with your gas mask on and wait. To remember the war is not only to face one’s personal fear, but to face the collective national fear, the fear of annihilation, which the characteristic Israeli bravado has long served to mask. To remember the war is to question our sense of self. So we forget. Let’s have some coffee.

But the gulf war happened. Missiles hit Tel Aviv. People sat in their fortified rooms and heard the sounds and the fear of death descended on them. We can rationalize—the people were prepared. America is with us. We could have retaliated but deferred to the Americans. We can speculate—the government wanted a few missiles on Tel Aviv to secure financial and military support from the US. But all these miss the main point. And the main point is a twofer.

First, every external event is on some level a representation of internal events. In addition to what happened, it’s important to understand how what happened was perceived and felt. Repressing the war tells us that it represented a threatening and conflicted event for the collective sense of identity. A conscious processing of the war would help Israeli society understand what‘s scary and why. Confronting our fears is the beginning of neutralizing them; it’s a first step toward understanding fully what is going on and adjusting our perception of reality as much as possible to reality itself.

Second, it is important to understand what happened. The war was just a first act, a testing of the weapons. The test succeeded, the weapons worked. That’s why this war will repeat itself, and on a larger scale. In the not-so-far-future, missiles will fall on Tel Aviv again. And this time they may indeed carry biological agents of destruction. Not necessarily from Iraq; probably not from Iraq. But what does that matter? Missiles will fall without a doubt. All the rest is talk.

Or lack thereof.