FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – At Café Marly in Paris, in front of two cappuccinos and the Louvre, you understand what André Malraux meant when he invoked victory for those who “make war without loving it.” Vitali Paly is a 34-year-old Israeli reservist who loves Paris and Europe in general – “here you are calm and friendly” – and who has been involved in two wars. Immediately after the Russian invasion he fought in Ukraine and then, after the 7th, in Gaza. He took a three-day break to come to Paris and watch Bernard-Henri Lévy’s film L’Ukraine au coeur, Ukraine in the Heart, in which he appears in a scene at the front with his friend Alex. Vitali admires the queue in front of the Louvre, “but tonight I’m flying to Tel Aviv and on Monday I’ll be back in Gaza.”
Let’s start with the first war. How did a Jewish Israeli of Belarusian origin end up fighting in Ukraine? “In Israel, I had my quiet life in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, and my job as the head of a company that raises funds for real estate investments in Ukraine.” My friend Alex worked with me, he is of Ukrainian origin and comes from Odessa. When the Russians invaded on February 24, 2022, we couldn’t believe it. We watched Telegram channels and our friends in Ukraine told us scary things. For a whole week we asked ourselves how we could help them. Then we realized that if we really wanted to do something for her, there was only one way to go.
How did you manage To? “They organized a kind of foreign legion in one base. But there were too many obsessed twenty-year-olds, they looked like hooligans. I didn’t like them, war is not a game. Then they told us to go to Dnipro, and there we made ourselves available to do anything useful. We are not professional soldiers, but like all Israelis we have completed three years of military service and one month of military service per year. So they asked us to train the less experienced soldiers. We did this for a month, then they went to the front. We wanted to start with a different group, but we felt we couldn’t let them down. We reached them two days later to fight with them. You can’t imagine how they reacted when they saw us arrive. Morality is everything.”
When did you return to Israel?
“After four months, when I felt that I had to think again about my life, about my work, about my family, to whom I had not said anything. If you too perish, you won’t be able to help anyone. But Alex and I now had the right contacts and now we are also supporting the Ukrainians from Israel.”
Now there is Gaza.
“On the morning of October 7th, messages came from my friends on the kibbutzim: “There are hundreds of them, they are going to kill us.” As a reservist, I waited for the call, which actually came. In the destroyed kibbutzim I saw unimaginable things, pure, absolute evil. I don’t like Netanyahu, after the war he will be swept away. But now we have to stop the terrorists.” Are you not afraid of involving innocent Palestinians? “Surely it is our fear. But this evil must be eradicated.
What is the difference between the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza?
“In Ukraine the Russians capitulate immediately. In Gaza, Hamas men never surrender. They boast that they love death more than we love life, they strive for martyrdom, they long for it. Yet the two wars are one and the same.” Why? “Putin hosts Hamas and Hezbollah in Moscow, supported by Iran, which supplies the drones to bomb Ukrainians. And Putin managed to divert the world’s attention with Gaza. On one side are Europe and the West, on the other the dictatorships. You Europeans have a wonderful civilization, but remember that massacres are taking place not far from the Louvre that also affect you. In Ukraine and Gaza, I fought against people who want to eradicate our democracies and our way of life. I would like to return to Paris soon after their defeat.