In the early the 1980s, I had the opportunity to share a room with Canadian diplomat Lt. Gen. Eedson Louis Millard "Tommy" Burns at Carleton University in Ottowa. Three decades earlier, as head of the United Nations observer mission to Israel between 1954 and 1959, Barnes had instructed the Israeli and Egyptian armies to not come within 500 meters of the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. A furrow was dug into the ground to mark the armistice line in those days.
On April 29, 1956, coinciding with the Lag B'Omer holiday, 21-year-old kibbutz security officer Roi Rotberg set off on horseback to expel infiltrators who had crossed the armistice line and entered the fields of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. His mare returned without its rider. Rotberg was murdered, his body abducted and mutilated. He was returned for burial the following day.
IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, who happened to be there for a joint wedding of four couples, eulogized Rotberg. What resulted was one of the formative documents for the State of Israel. He spoke of the fate of the people living in Zion, charged with "bearing the heavy gates of Gaza" like Samson in the Bible. There are several versions of the eulogy. This is the one Dayan recorded afterward:
"Yesterday morning Roi was murdered. The silence of the spring morning dazzled him, and he did not see those waiting for him in ambush on the furrow line. We must not seek Roi's blood from the Arabs who are in Gaza, but from ourselves. How did we close our eyes instead of looking squarely at our fate, from seeing our generation's mission in all its cruelty? What we forgot is that this group of youths sitting in Nahal Oz is carrying Gaza's heavy gates on its shoulders – gates on the other side of which crowd together hundreds of thousands of eyes and hands, praying for us to become weak so that they will be able to tear us apart. Have we forgotten this?
"We know that in order to extinguish the hope of our extermination, we must be armed and ready, day and night. We are a generation of settlement, and without steel helmet and artillery barrel we wouldn't be able to sow crops and build houses. Our children will not live if we do not dig shelters. Without the barbed wire fence and machine gun, we would not be able to pave roads or drill for water.
"The millions of Jews who were destroyed for lack of land watch us from the ashes of Israeli history, demanding that we settle and rebuild the land for our people. But over the furrow border, a sea of hatred and desire for revenge surges, waiting for the day our tranquility dulls our readiness, for the day we listen to the despicable ambassadors of hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our weapons.
"The bloody and torn body of Roi call out to us, and only us. For we have pledged that our blood shall not be spilled in vain – and yesterday we were once again tempted, listened and believed. Today we will have our self-reckoning. We will not be deterred from seeing the loathing that accompanies and fills the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, who sit and wait for the moment their hands can get our blood. We will not avert our eyes, or our hands will be weakened. This is what has been decreed for our generation. This is our life choice: to be ready and armed, strong and uncompromising; or allow the sword to fall from our fist and have our lives cut short.
"Roi Rotberg, the blond boy who went from Tel Aviv to build his home on the gates of Gaza, to be our barrier. Roi, the light in his heart blinded his eyes and he did not see the flash of the dagger. The yearning for peace deafened his ears, and he did not hear the sound of the murderer in ambush. The weight of Gaza's gates on his shoulders overwhelmed him."
In our shared room in Canada, I talked with Burns about that eulogy. As a faithful U.N. man, Barnes patiently and diplomatically placed the responsibility on Israel. In response, I hung up the famous picture of the boy from the Warsaw Ghetto, lifting his hands in surrender to those who had come to kill him.
The events of last week reminded me of that conversation, Dayan's eulogy and the reasons for Rotberg's death. Everything has changed, but everything remains as it was. In the absence of the other side coming to terms with our right to exist, we, and our enemies, are sentenced to continue carrying the heavy burden of Gaza's gates.
