Untimely Story

A TV blackout of history

"Hail a Jewish Hirbet Hiza. Who will ever recall that once there was a Hirbet Hiza, which we exiled and inherited. We came, shot, burned, blew up, pushed and exiled. What the hell are we doing in this place? Will the walls not scream in the ears of those who will live in this village?"

The speaker is never identified, but his words have moved Israeli readers ever since the appearance in 1949 of a novella called The Tale of Hirbet Hiza. The story, by now an Israeli classic, deals with the cruel behavior of a Haganah unit ordered to drive Arab inhabitants out of their village in Palestine during the war of independence. Written by Yizhar Smilansky under the pen name S. Yizhar, the story focuses on a young soldier's wrenching self-doubt as he obeys the brutal command to clean out Hirbet Hiza.

Smilansky was a Haganah intelligence officer in that war, and the fictional village of Hirbet Hiza was patterned after a real community where he witnessed similar events. The novella thus deals with a dark side of history that many Israelis would prefer to forget. One of the country's best-known authors, Amos Elon (The Israelis: Founders and Sons), describes Smilansky's work as "perhaps the most conscience-stricken, deliberately guilt-ridden piece of contemporary Israeli literature." Hirbet Hiza is required reading in Israeli high schools and has been translated into Arabic. Last week, however, when Israel's national television network scheduled a filmed version, the showing was canceled 90 minutes before air time by Education and Culture Minister Zevulun Hammer.

Hammer, 42, is a founder of Gush Emunim (Group of the Faithful), the nationalistic religious organization that has pushed hard for the expansion of the Israeli settlements in captured Arab territory. Hammer acted after receiving complaints from two members of the Israel Broadcasting Authority's board of directors that the screening was untimely, given the negotiations under way with Egypt. But the unprecedented cancellation of a TV show prompted protests of censorship from a coalition of artists, authors, lawyers, Knesset members, journalists and TV technicians. TV newsmen vented their feelings by letting Israeli screens go dark for 45 minutes on the day after Hammer's order. An evening program by Israeli singer Shalom Hanoch, as a result, was lost.

In the Knesset, free-speech advocates decried Hammer's decision, while conservatives supported it, regardless of party. The expulsion of the Arabs, said the Labor Party's Amos Hadar, "is the heart of the [Middle East] problem. The film will be a weapon in the hands of Arafat." Said Kalman Kahane, a member of the Poalei Agudat Israel religious party: "I'm definitely for democracy. But when there is an excessive democracy which harms the state's interests, I'm ready to put up with some sort of limitation."

Though Israel's press and TV are routinely subject to military censorship, the Hirbet Hiza incident marked the first time a fictional work had been suppressed for political reasons. Premier Menachem Begin defended Hammer's decision, but Author Smilansky was irate. "I didn't write this story as a conflict between Jews and Arabs," he insisted. "I wrote this as a man who was hurt by what he saw. This story is about Israel, it's about Viet Nam, it's about any place where someone is suddenly caught in war. Instead of covering up what happened, we must atone for it."

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