After Manuela Dviri’s son Yoni fell in Lebanon on February 26, 1998, she received a condolence letter from Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then serving his first term as prime minister.

“I replied to the letter asking to meet because I wanted to look him in the eye so that he could tell me that my son had died for a reason, that it was the right thing for him to be there,” Dviri said. The meeting never took place.

Today, Dviri once again finds Israel embedding itself in a “security zone” in southern Lebanon, with Israeli soldiers killed or wounded by the Hezbollah terror organization with increasing frequency.

“The situation is truly terrible,” she told The Times of Israel this week in a phone conversation. “It’s hard to think that I lost a son in 1998, and if he had lived, likely his children would be serving [in Lebanon] now. Just the thought gives me chills.”

Born Manuela Vitali-Norsa, in Padua, Italy, in 1949, Dviri moved to Israel in 1968 and married an Israeli. The couple had three children, Eyal, Michal, and Yoni, the youngest.

After her son’s death during his military service, Dviri became a prominent voice of the iconic Four Mothers movement, launched by bereaved mothers in 1997 to advocate for pulling the IDF out of southern Lebanon. That movement was instrumental in bringing about Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 after controlling about 10 percent of its northern neighbor’s territory for 18 years. An estimated 675 soldiers were killed during that period.

Even while Yoni was alive, Dviri said, she had wondered if the Israeli military presence in the territory of its neighbor was truly useful to protect the country’s north. After tragedy struck, the question became more urgent.

“During the shiva [Jewish week of mourning], many showed up at the house, including the defense minister and several generals,” she recalled. “I asked everyone if it was really necessary for us to be there, and soon I understood that it was not.”

She pointed out that today as well, many in the military do not believe that the security zone — especially its latest expansion, including the capture of the iconic Beaufort Castle — will be a decisive factor in protecting Israel’s north or dismantling Hezbollah.

“Our very generals in charge of the north say there’s no need for it from a military standpoint,” she........

© The Times of Israel