| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027895)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027895" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2354 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Looking more closely, I saw a wooden box, the kind we used in Mishmar |
| Hasharon to crate oranges. It was filled with hay. At first, I thought the stirring |
| inside was a family pet. Then, I saw it was a baby. I said nothing until we had |
| left. "Was that really a child?" I asked Yigal. "A baby?" He replied, with a tinge |
| of sadness but also a look that seemed to convey surprise at my naivety: "Yes. |
| They don't have room for him." |
| * ** |
| My evolving feelings about the Arabs, the other people with dreams of what |
| they still saw as Palestine, would become more complex as my childhood drew |
| to an end. As mentioned, I barely registered the fate of the absent villagers of |
| Wadi Khawaret. |
| And yet as I got older - in my teens - I came to understand why the |
| Palestinians were fighting us. Before the 1956 war, Dayan gave a brief speech |
| that had a powerful impact on me. It was a eulogy, but it was for someone |
| Dayan didn't know personally. His intended audience was the rest of the |
| country. He spoke in Nahal Oz, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza often |
| targeted by fedayeen. In April 1956, a group of Arabs crossed from Gaza and |
| began cutting down the wheat in Nahal Oz's fields. The kibbutz security officer, |
| a 21-year-old named Roi Rotberg, rode out on horseback to chase them away. |
| The intruders opened fire as soon as he got close. They beat him, shot him dead |
| and took the body back over the armistice line. The corpse was returned, |
| mutilated, after an Israeli protest through the UN. |
| With Israeli newspapers full of agonized accounts of what had happened, |
| Dayan's message was that we should not blame the Arabs for Roi Rotberg's |
| death. We should look at ourselves, and the neighborhood in which we lived. |
| "Why should we talk about their burning hatred for us?" he asked. "For eight |
| years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps of Gaza, while before their |
| eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages where they and their |
| fathers dwelt." Of course, they hated us and the state we were building. Rotberg |
| had allowed his "yearning for peace to deafen his ears, and he did not hear the |
| voice of murder waiting in ambush." Dayan said the danger was that other |
| Israelis had become similarly naive. "How did we shut our eyes, and refuse to |
| see, in all its brutality, the destiny of our generation?" A generation which was |
| 47 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027895 |
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