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The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon by Jacobo Timerman
The Longest War
167 pages, Paperback
First published November 12, 1982
About the author
Jacobo Timerman
4 books12 followersJacobo Timerman was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel in 1980. He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly newsmagazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, he criticized all repressive governments and organizations, regardless of their political ideologies.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 3, 2018
A personal reflection in journal form that offers insight into a specific historical event in Israel's history but also opens a conversation on a significant paradigm shift in Israel. That shift being from defender to aggressor. This shift was very disturbing and it seems to the point of being heart wrenching for Timerman as he watched Israel's leadership take their nation down a violent and dangerous path.
Timerman voices concern for the authoritarian behaviour of Israel's leadership. Timerman's own personal circumstances forced him to experience an authoritarian regime first hand. Timerman devoted many years of his journalistic work to exposing the violence and corruption of the military regime in Argentina during the "Dirty War". Timerman highlights the similar behaviours and tendencies now being exhibited by Israel's government.
The book is small in size but a dense and deeply personal examination of a country moving dangerously close to authoritarianism and militarism. Timerman's own arrest, torture and imprisonment in Argentina gave him very personal and unique insights into the damage he was convinced was being caused by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Given current events in Gaza (April 2018) one can't help but view Timerman's "The Longest War" as prophetic.
Timerman voices concern for the authoritarian behaviour of Israel's leadership. Timerman's own personal circumstances forced him to experience an authoritarian regime first hand. Timerman devoted many years of his journalistic work to exposing the violence and corruption of the military regime in Argentina during the "Dirty War". Timerman highlights the similar behaviours and tendencies now being exhibited by Israel's government.
The book is small in size but a dense and deeply personal examination of a country moving dangerously close to authoritarianism and militarism. Timerman's own arrest, torture and imprisonment in Argentina gave him very personal and unique insights into the damage he was convinced was being caused by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Given current events in Gaza (April 2018) one can't help but view Timerman's "The Longest War" as prophetic.
May 30, 2012
After being tortured and imprisoned for being a Zionist and liberal critic of the Argentine government, Timerman is ignobly deported by the military to Israel where he arrives just in time for the invasion of Lebanon in ‘82. This was Israel’s “Vietnam”—the first war instigated by the first right-wing government, and arguably the first war that Israel waged that wasn’t defensive. Timerman wrote in the first months of the war which was allegedly waged to push back PLO forces, but ends up destroying whole cities, thousands of civilians, and the morale of the Israeli army. Israelis organize groups like Peace Now to protest Ariel Sharon’s cynical adventure to force regime change in Lebanon. Timerman’s reporting is more jeremiad and impressionistic than comprehensive and this wouldn’t be a good historical introduction to the war. Still, as a document of moral protest against the Israeli government by an impassioned liberal Zionist, Timerman’s diagnoses are, sadly, still valid 30 years later.
December 7, 2018
I remember feeling that summer like being on a raft of impotent rage, afloat on an ocean of indifference. And now, reading again after all these years Jacobo Timmerman's sober reflections I recognize from a more recent time the same motives, the same justifications, the same blunders and I wonder: why didn't we learn?
May 19, 2015
So interesting to see how much and how little has changed since the 80's
May 3, 2024
AN ISRAELI ASKS WHETHER THIS WAR WAS REALLY NECESSARY?
Author Jacobo Timerman wrote in the first chapter of this 1982 book, “Israelis are proud of their coolness in hard times. They are mistaken. They inflict on themselves an unnecessary burden that weighs heavily on their psyche, on their spiritual conflicts, on their morale… The Israelis don’t actually feel they are in a war when the air force bombs Arab bases. All the planes always, almost always, come back. Only when the infantry takes part do they admit that they are at war.” (Pg. 3, 5)
He notes, “now there is a sign of disquiet in the air, caused by the figure of Sharon… there are mixed emotions about the general, a certain ambivalence. Without him, perhaps, there might have been no war; but now that we are at war, it is best that Sharon, a great soldier, is in charge. We prefer no war at all, but it is better to win…. In no other war has morale relied so much on each citizen’s individual relationship with one single personality.” (Pg. 5-6)
He argues, “never before… had the Jew had occasion to feel guilty and ashamed for collective damage inflicted on others. Throughout the Diaspora he was always the victim. His previous wars were in defense against aggression… For the first time, war was not a response to provocation. Before… it had been preventative…” (Pg. 11) He continues, “Veterans of the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars knew that the Israelis had always waged war to clean fight… Now, for the first time, cities were being destroyed and masses of civilians had been killed.” (Pg. 12-13)
He observes, “The Israelis can put up with the notion that some of their soldiers are tempted by the opportunity [when] plunder comes to a victorious army… They can accept the possibility that an individual soldier may be driven to acts of extreme violence. All the soldiers know the humiliation and torture that await them if they become prisoners of the Arabs. But never before had they transgressed certain moral limits.” (Pg. 14-15)
He reports, “Many things are occurring for the first time. For the first time Israel had attacked a neighboring country without being attacked… For the first time Israel brought destruction to entire cities… For the first time the Israeli press joined them in their successful mission of lying to the public. For the first time officers and men did not know the objective or the goals of the campaign. For the first time the actual damage inflicted on the invaded country was hidden along with the number of deaths.” (Pg. 21)
He states, “the defenses set up patiently … over so many years did not protect us from our internal madness because they kept us obsessed with the madness of others, of those outside. We believed ourselves indestructible because we were watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen.” (Pg. 25)
He asserts, “If nobody can stop us, that means that nobody can threaten us, If Galilee was quiet up to a year ago when our air force bombed Beirut, I ask in simple and banal terms, in the least politicized way possible, what are we doing in Lebanon? If we have such a powerful army, why couldn’t we do what we wanted without destroying cities and massacring thousands of civilians?” (Pg. 31)
He suggests, “The Israeli people will fool themselves if they begin to believe---or let themselves be led to believe---that the political solution will be a result of the horrors produced by the invasion. Before the war there was already enough margin to work out a political solution. A lot of patience and honesty would have been required, but it was feasible…” (Pg. 39)
He says, “General Sharon needs our approbation or passivity for his grand geopolitical plans. He resorts to those magic formulas wielded by the military when they disdain civilian control of their actions, to those elixirs that cure everything but only if applied without answering any questions. We are deceived so that Sharon can put Lebanon under our protection, keeping the 500,000 Palestinians there as third-class citizens… [Sharon] must keep the Israeli citizen in fear; he has accomplished it. He needs our fear, he has it. Even in our country, they make the Jew live in fear.” (Pg. 45)
He argues, “The life of survival here in Israel is the true Jewish identity. To try to guess at the possibility of survival in remote places, to beg for it with new words, different from those of forty years ago, wrapped in new subtleties and artifices but essentially the same, whether in Princeton or in Paris or in Lima, is almost like complicity with the horror, and irreverence in the face of so much pain.” (Pg. 64)
He contends, “it is already established that after the war… the Israeli Army [will have] lost something more important than talent and resources. It lost credibility, the final and deepest reason for its effectiveness: the conviction of each soldier that nothing about the causes and objectives of a war was hidden from him. This conviction freed him to devote his energy and imagination to combat. The efficiency of the Israeli Army was not rooted in the supremacy of its weapons, but in the purity of those weapons.” (Pg. 68)
He states, “Those who deceive them are the same ones who opposed signing the peace treaty with Egypt. They have always said… that peace solves nothing. That is why they maintained that the agreement with Egypt would die with Sadat’s death. Wrong. That the agreement would collapse with the first conflict between Israel and an Arab country. Wrong. That Egypt would exchange its smiling face for an aggressive one upon receiving the Sinai. Wrong.” (Pg. 79)
He says, “While it Israeli avoids saying so to himself, he perceives that there is no military solution to his security problem. It is futile to remind him that all the European fantasies of collective security based on the strength of bayonets led to World War II. In Israel’s case, the application of such historical references means becoming mired in sterile controversy. The Israeli only accepts analysis of his situation if it is conceded that his is unique.” (Pg. 103)
He points out, “It makes no sense to argue that the Palestinians fighting Israeli invaders in Lebanon are terrorists… it is evidence to all fair-minded Israelis who have not been terrorized by government propaganda that the military suppression of 10,000 guerrillas … who arose from the heart of a population of 4,000,000 Palestinians will give us at most a tenuous five-year interlude, until the next generation of guerrillas … is ready to resume the armed struggle… the new wave of fighters will be more radical, better trained, and more desperate.” (Pg.108)
He asserts, “the militants…will declare that it is impossible to budge one millimeter from our position of force, that it is perilous to abandon our position of superiority because there is no acceptable peacemaker. Yet our might and superiority have not brought us peace, nor helped us achieve security. What good is power if it has been incapable of gaining these objectives?” (Pg. 125)
He observes, “in his speech last night, the Prime Minister resorted to the powerful fare of 1,500,000 Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. The Diaspora Jews turned very sad… But if our Prime Minister had spoken of the nineteen young Israelis---they, too, were Jews---killed only twelve hours before, perhaps a Diaspora Jew might have thought of asking whether taking Beirut was really necessary.” (Pg. 154-155)
This book will appeal to those seeking critiques of the Lebanon War.
Author Jacobo Timerman wrote in the first chapter of this 1982 book, “Israelis are proud of their coolness in hard times. They are mistaken. They inflict on themselves an unnecessary burden that weighs heavily on their psyche, on their spiritual conflicts, on their morale… The Israelis don’t actually feel they are in a war when the air force bombs Arab bases. All the planes always, almost always, come back. Only when the infantry takes part do they admit that they are at war.” (Pg. 3, 5)
He notes, “now there is a sign of disquiet in the air, caused by the figure of Sharon… there are mixed emotions about the general, a certain ambivalence. Without him, perhaps, there might have been no war; but now that we are at war, it is best that Sharon, a great soldier, is in charge. We prefer no war at all, but it is better to win…. In no other war has morale relied so much on each citizen’s individual relationship with one single personality.” (Pg. 5-6)
He argues, “never before… had the Jew had occasion to feel guilty and ashamed for collective damage inflicted on others. Throughout the Diaspora he was always the victim. His previous wars were in defense against aggression… For the first time, war was not a response to provocation. Before… it had been preventative…” (Pg. 11) He continues, “Veterans of the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars knew that the Israelis had always waged war to clean fight… Now, for the first time, cities were being destroyed and masses of civilians had been killed.” (Pg. 12-13)
He observes, “The Israelis can put up with the notion that some of their soldiers are tempted by the opportunity [when] plunder comes to a victorious army… They can accept the possibility that an individual soldier may be driven to acts of extreme violence. All the soldiers know the humiliation and torture that await them if they become prisoners of the Arabs. But never before had they transgressed certain moral limits.” (Pg. 14-15)
He reports, “Many things are occurring for the first time. For the first time Israel had attacked a neighboring country without being attacked… For the first time Israel brought destruction to entire cities… For the first time the Israeli press joined them in their successful mission of lying to the public. For the first time officers and men did not know the objective or the goals of the campaign. For the first time the actual damage inflicted on the invaded country was hidden along with the number of deaths.” (Pg. 21)
He states, “the defenses set up patiently … over so many years did not protect us from our internal madness because they kept us obsessed with the madness of others, of those outside. We believed ourselves indestructible because we were watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen.” (Pg. 25)
He asserts, “If nobody can stop us, that means that nobody can threaten us, If Galilee was quiet up to a year ago when our air force bombed Beirut, I ask in simple and banal terms, in the least politicized way possible, what are we doing in Lebanon? If we have such a powerful army, why couldn’t we do what we wanted without destroying cities and massacring thousands of civilians?” (Pg. 31)
He suggests, “The Israeli people will fool themselves if they begin to believe---or let themselves be led to believe---that the political solution will be a result of the horrors produced by the invasion. Before the war there was already enough margin to work out a political solution. A lot of patience and honesty would have been required, but it was feasible…” (Pg. 39)
He says, “General Sharon needs our approbation or passivity for his grand geopolitical plans. He resorts to those magic formulas wielded by the military when they disdain civilian control of their actions, to those elixirs that cure everything but only if applied without answering any questions. We are deceived so that Sharon can put Lebanon under our protection, keeping the 500,000 Palestinians there as third-class citizens… [Sharon] must keep the Israeli citizen in fear; he has accomplished it. He needs our fear, he has it. Even in our country, they make the Jew live in fear.” (Pg. 45)
He argues, “The life of survival here in Israel is the true Jewish identity. To try to guess at the possibility of survival in remote places, to beg for it with new words, different from those of forty years ago, wrapped in new subtleties and artifices but essentially the same, whether in Princeton or in Paris or in Lima, is almost like complicity with the horror, and irreverence in the face of so much pain.” (Pg. 64)
He contends, “it is already established that after the war… the Israeli Army [will have] lost something more important than talent and resources. It lost credibility, the final and deepest reason for its effectiveness: the conviction of each soldier that nothing about the causes and objectives of a war was hidden from him. This conviction freed him to devote his energy and imagination to combat. The efficiency of the Israeli Army was not rooted in the supremacy of its weapons, but in the purity of those weapons.” (Pg. 68)
He states, “Those who deceive them are the same ones who opposed signing the peace treaty with Egypt. They have always said… that peace solves nothing. That is why they maintained that the agreement with Egypt would die with Sadat’s death. Wrong. That the agreement would collapse with the first conflict between Israel and an Arab country. Wrong. That Egypt would exchange its smiling face for an aggressive one upon receiving the Sinai. Wrong.” (Pg. 79)
He says, “While it Israeli avoids saying so to himself, he perceives that there is no military solution to his security problem. It is futile to remind him that all the European fantasies of collective security based on the strength of bayonets led to World War II. In Israel’s case, the application of such historical references means becoming mired in sterile controversy. The Israeli only accepts analysis of his situation if it is conceded that his is unique.” (Pg. 103)
He points out, “It makes no sense to argue that the Palestinians fighting Israeli invaders in Lebanon are terrorists… it is evidence to all fair-minded Israelis who have not been terrorized by government propaganda that the military suppression of 10,000 guerrillas … who arose from the heart of a population of 4,000,000 Palestinians will give us at most a tenuous five-year interlude, until the next generation of guerrillas … is ready to resume the armed struggle… the new wave of fighters will be more radical, better trained, and more desperate.” (Pg.108)
He asserts, “the militants…will declare that it is impossible to budge one millimeter from our position of force, that it is perilous to abandon our position of superiority because there is no acceptable peacemaker. Yet our might and superiority have not brought us peace, nor helped us achieve security. What good is power if it has been incapable of gaining these objectives?” (Pg. 125)
He observes, “in his speech last night, the Prime Minister resorted to the powerful fare of 1,500,000 Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. The Diaspora Jews turned very sad… But if our Prime Minister had spoken of the nineteen young Israelis---they, too, were Jews---killed only twelve hours before, perhaps a Diaspora Jew might have thought of asking whether taking Beirut was really necessary.” (Pg. 154-155)
This book will appeal to those seeking critiques of the Lebanon War.
March 2, 2026
Undoubtedly those of us sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, especially in light of the Gaza genocide, will find passages in this book frustrating, given Timerman’s liberal Zionist illusions about Israel’s history pre-Lebanon invasion and at times severe denunciations of Palestinian politics. Nonetheless, this book is worth reading, less for the history of Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion, which has been better-documented elsewhere, but for how it shows Timerman, someone undeniably committed to human rights, grappling with the consequences of Zionism, a cause he had supported his entire life, and how that ultimately led to a savage, human rights-destroying, militarized monstrosity. Much of the book appears prophetic, as Timerman’s pessimistic analysis of where Israeli politics was going, in spite of the resistance to the war at the time, has ended up far worse than he could have imagined.
February 16, 2024
“Nothing can replace the need of a people to organize into a state in the territory in which they live and which belongs to them. The alternative our [Israeli] government offers, no matter how it masks it, is to continue repressing the Palestinian people until we destroy their will to live and liquidate their national identity. It’s incredible that such a policy is being considered by the very people who demonstrated that this is impossible, that it is immoral, that it is criminal.”
March 3, 2024
interesting to see how little has changed since the ‘80’s and interesting to read such a personal and honest take on the first part of the lebanon war
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November 19, 2024Complicated thoughts on this one , but an important book to provide perspective on the ‘82 invasion of Lebanon.
May 20, 2024
This book was amazing it was from the heart. It tells the story of the PLO-Israel war in Lebanon from a Israeli who lived during the war. I highly recommend it
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews