Israelis pay homage at site of worst rocket strike

TEL CHAI, Israel Sep 3 (Reuters) ''There's that rocket,'' said Benny Lavi, one of dozens of Israelis visiting an impromptu memorial put together by soldiers to mark the site of Hizbollah's deadliest attack in the Lebanon war.

An Israeli flag was posted in front of the pile of twisted metal and charred tree branches at Tel Chai, near the Israeli border with Lebanon, where one of nearly 4,000 rockets fired at Israel killed 12 soldiers in a parking lot on August 6.

The reservists had gathered to await orders to head into Lebanon, just eight days before a United Nations-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting.

Since the truce took effect, officials say thousands of Israelis have visited the scene of that attack, where family members have also posted photographs on a stone wall and a tree, and the daughter of one slain reservist left him a letter.

The memorial just north of the border town of Kiryat Shmona has fast become a symbol of the vulnerability many Israelis feel about a war that failed to stop rocket barrages and forced hundreds of thousands to flee or head to shelters for weeks.

The war killed 157 Israelis, two thirds of them soldiers. Nearly 1,200 Lebanese died, most of them civilians.

''This disaster symbolises something that has long been part of our life in Israel,'' said Lavi, of Kiryat Shmona, where rockets have struck from time to time since the late 1960's when Palestinian guerrillas were based in Lebanon.

Yossi Golan, 64, a veteran of three Arab-Israeli wars, said: ''It hurts to see how the fighting isn't over yet, and probably won't ever be. Each war plants the seeds for the next.'' ISRAEL'S ARMY Many seem to be drawn to the parched rocky hilltop at Tel Chai to pay tribute to an army many in Israel view as sacrosanct. Israel has a compulsory draft and many men later serve in the reserves.

A blow to the Israeli armed forces can often evoke more public emotion than an attack on civilians.

''Over the years the importance of our soldiers has gained mythological proportions,'' possibly due to Israel's continuing wars with Arab neighbours, said Eyal Zisser, a West Asian historian at Tel Aviv University.

At the memorial, Ran Feingold, 34, of Tel Aviv, who often does stints of reserve duty, said: ''This could easily have happened to me. It's one of those banal cruelties of war, you're sitting, having a cigarette, drinking some coffee, and boom a rocket strikes.'' Adding to the symbolism is the fact the memorial is located just metres (yards) from the site of a legendary battle between Jewish and Arab gunmen, that took place before Israel's birth.

Most Israeli children are taught in school how the commander of those Jewish gunmen, Yosef Trumpeldour, had proclaimed just before he and seven others died in the 1920 battle: ''It is good to die for one's country.'' Lily Mustaki, a 46-year-old Tel Aviv toymaker visiting the site wasn't too sure.

''Is it good to die for your country?'' she asked. ''I would say no, it is better to live.'' REUTERS LL KN1935