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of soup and talk.
    It was during one of those late nights that he revealed to me his thoughts on his time in the Gaza Strip. “When I was given the orders that described my role as military governor, I was aghast. They were identical to those of the British high commissioner, or governor of Palestine. I was not only representing the foreign occupier, I was the governor. I could not help recall how I, as a young man, was determined to fight the British who ruled Palestine and whom I considered foreign occupiers. You really never know how things will turn out in this world.”
    When I first went to the army archives in Tel Aviv to look for information about my father’s career, an employee who assisted me immediately recommended that I look up the Gaza Report. “It is one of the defining documents written by your father,” he said. In this document, he expresses how appalled he was when he entered Gaza to take up his command. I have come to recognize the document’s language and tone as my father’s voice: he comes across as clear, unemotional, and analytical, yet unyieldingly critical of his superiors and the military establishment in general.
    It was several days after Gaza was captured that he was sent in. Chaos reigned: “Israeli soldiers and border police were there with no clear orders and no clear command center, which led to rampant disorder and looting.” My father quickly set up his command, arrested the looters, collected arms from the locals, and restored order. He set up guidelines to restoring basic services like healthcare and education. He conducted a census that accounted for each family, whether they were refugees and if so from what town or village they had been exiled. The report had accounts of education levels, property, livestock, and a whole host of information about the place and its people.
    As military governor of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, my father realized that he knew virtually nothing of their language, culture, or their way of life. He did not like the fact that he needed translators in order to communicate with the people he governed so he made a personal decision to study Arabic, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “In conversations with the locals, I was amazed to learn that they were not seeking vengeance for the hardship we caused them, nor did they wish to get rid of us. They were realistic and pragmatic and wanted to be free.”
    Under immense pressure from the Eisenhower administration, Israel was forced to give up the conquered territories in March of 1957. Although inthose days Israel was receiving no money from the U.S. government, when the American president gave the word, my father had two weeks to get out. He was out in two days, but he was deeply troubled. My mother and my sister Nurit told me many times that this issue tormented him for months. “He could not sleep at night, and he would talk of nothing else,” Nurit said. My mother told me similar stories.

My father inspecting groups with Israel’s second president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
     
    I was not yet born, but I can imagine his frustration when he learned he would have to go back on his word. I heard him talk about this many years later, saying: “I was assured by my superiors that I could tell the people of Gaza that if they cooperated with us they would not be returned to Egypt. The local leadership believed me and cooperated and then when we left Gaza they paid a heavy price for this.”
    In an article he wrote after he retired, he brought this up again:
     
As the one whose destiny it was to inform the leaders of the towns and villages in Gaza on that cold day in April 1957 that the Israeli government decided to forsake them, I can testify to the looks on the faces of people who at first did not want to believe what they were hearing and then realized what they had brought upon themselves by believing the Israeli government. 1
     
    My father’s next