After finishing high school in Toronto, Matti Friedman decided to go to Israel. He was required, like others of his age, to do army service, a teenager who had never held a gun. Friedman later became a journalist and has written several books about the Middle East. His latest, Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier’s Story, is about troops in the late 1990s defending the “security zone” that Israel established in south Lebanon. “Pumpkin” was Israel's name for a hilltop military outpost there. “Flowers” was the code word for soldiers felled in action. Our conversation has been edited for length.

Jennifer: The first section of your book deals with a young Israeli soldier, Avi, who was killed at the Pumpkin in a terrible helicopter crash. You never met Avi. Why write about him rather than one of his peers who were also killed? Just because Avi had a rebellious streak?

Matti: I knew the story needed to start in 1997, when the hill became notorious because of the helicopter crash that killed 73 soldiers. I looked for soldiers who had been on the hill before I arrived. I went around the country meeting different guys who had passed through this strange outpost in the 1990s and I also spoke to parents of soldiers who had died at the outpost.

I learned about Avi in one of these meetings and then met his parents. It turned out that Avi had not only been at the outpost, but he had written a considerable amount about being there. Most of us didn’t do that. We were extremely young and we didn’t think that what we were seeing was important and we were preoccupied with just getting through. As soon as I saw his writing and saw he had a unique pair of eyes, I knew I could write about him.

Jennifer: Your story focuses on a hill that has been obliterated from both Israeli and Lebanese memories. But you have resurrected its history. In fact, the name of your book reminds me of the poem by John McCrae that every Canadian recites on Remembrance Day: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row …”

Matti: I hadn’t made a connection to the floral name of my book and that most floral of Great War poems. You are absolutely right. The red flowers, the blood red poppies in Flanders, represent soldiers who fought in World War I. “Flowers” was the radio code for casualties of Israeli soldiers who fought in Lebanon.

Jennifer: During the time you served in the Israeli army, Israeli mothers were pushed to protest their sons’ involvement in fighting the guerrillas in Lebanon.

Matti: The group called Four Mothers was formed shortly after the helicopter crash. At this point, the country is starting to think about the Lebanon enterprise. The catalyst for this change in public opinion was the group of mothers who got together to start a protest movement.

The country believed there was a need for a security zone between Lebanon and Israel. But after a year or two of very active protest and a growing casualty toll in Lebanon, public thought shifted. The idea of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon went from being a dream to a reality.

The mothers were very tenacious in their activities. It is a demonstration of what a small number of citizens can pull off in a democracy. In the 1990s there was a broad peace movement in Israel which really believed we would get peace and have a better future. Then in 2000, Israel withdraws from Lebanon. The next spring the peace process collapses. It collapses with the rise of the Hezbollah (a Lebanese-based terror organization) and the worst wave of terrorism Israel had ever seen.

What we have now is a Middle East that is much worse than anyone could have imagined. Reality in this region has not been kind to the Four Mothers and the peace movement. What is going on now was born out the darkest dreams of those on the right.

Jennifer: A Canadian friend of yours travelled safely through Lebanon and you decided to go see the country yourself, hiding your Israeli identity and assuming the posture of a Canadian backpacker with no command of Hebrew and no Israeli past. That must have been wonderful and terrifying.

Matti: It was both. After I came out of the army, I expected to forget about my experiences at Pumpkin, but I couldn’t. It wouldn’t leave me alone. I became fixated by the need to go back to this hill and see it as a civilian. When we were soldiers, we joked that the place was so beautiful we would come back to hike there as tourists. For everyone in my unit it was impossible because they were Israelis and couldn’t cross the border. But I realized after the arrival of my friend that as a Canadian, I could.

Two and a half years after my discharge I flew to Toronto and then flew to Lebanon as a Canadian and spent a few weeks there and had the most incredible time and saw the place with a different set of eyes.

Jennifer: What you also learned was they still hated Israelis and Jews even after the withdrawal.

Matti: My expectation was that I might come away hopeful. It was the Canadian in me that thought these allegiances to Hezbollah might all be artificial. People would get along and make things better because they would see the humanity in the other. I didn’t find that. I found deep antagonism against Israelis and Jews, even though no one knew I was Israeli or Jewish. I realized these feelings were deep.

Jennifer: The whole peace movement in Israel has been turned on its head. The voices of protest have dwindled; they are still there but are mostly ignored. Why stay in Israel? Why not come back to Canada?

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Matti: I came here when I was 17 and I still find Israel incredibly compelling and I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Here it is easy to be Jewish. The cops are Jewish, the crooks are Jewish, the hookers are Jewish. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. You don’t have to think about being Jewish here. You just are.

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