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As history repeats, unwilling to be driven out

BY MATTHEW McALLESTER | Newsday Staff Correspondent

July 26, 2006

Shimon Biton, head of the Residents Committee in the border village of Avivim, decided to remain in his home under the threat of rocket attacks from Hezbollah guerrillas that are pounding populated areas in northern Israel. (Newsday / Moises Saman / July 25, 2006)

AVIVIM, Israel - The scars on Shimon Biton's body, still hurting after 36 years, tell him to stay.

"I've lived here 40 years," said Biton, 44, head of the residents' association at the collective farm here on the border with Lebanon, which has become one of the main launching sites for Israeli army attacks into Lebanon. "Hezbollah hasn't pushed me out. They've tried before."

In fact, it was Palestinian guerrillas who penetrated the Israeli perimeter from Lebanon on the morning of May 22, 1970, and used a bazooka to ambush a school bus. Biton was 7 years old. He and his father were on the bus, which was taking children from Avivim to a school in nearby Rehinia. The dead included eight children and four adults. Biton's father was one of them. Biton's injuries kept him in a hospital for six months.

Big news at the time, now a footnote in the history of Israel's troubled northern border, the Avivim bus attack taught Biton and others in the tight-knit community a lesson that holds to this day.

"That we need to stay here," said Biton, who speaks in short, unhesitating sentences. "I learned that this is the State of Israel and you need to stay here at all costs. ... It's something you don't forget."

There are usually 450 people living in Avivim. Now, there are about 50 men, looking after the thousands of chickens that provide income for many of its families. The men are also keeping guard and helping the army, which has established a position on a nearby intersection from which tanks roar over hills to battle Hezbollah.

The women, children and elderly of Avivim have all been evacuated to a resort designed for vacationing soldiers in the coastal city of Netanya.

Two Katyusha rockets, fired by Hezbollah, have hit Avivim in the past few days, causing no injuries. Lebanon is only a few yards from the perimeter of the farming community, or moshav.

The 1970 attack informs much of what Biton and his fellow residents do. Thirty-six years ago, the moshav was peopled almost entirely with the members of the extended Biton and Peretz families and the two names are still numerous in the community. Each year, on May 22, the people of Avivim gather at a memorial to commemorate the bus attack.

For Biton, "the tragedy," as it's known here, shaped his life. He still keeps black-and-white photos within reach in his home, where he spoke yesterday.

One picture shows a bus, peeled open by the two blasts of a bazooka fired by the Palestinian infiltrators. The second, which is framed, shows a little boy on a stretcher being rushed to a hospital by a nurse and a paramedic. That's Biton.

"It was a regular day," he said, matter of fact, unemotional. Booms from artillery and rockets fired in yesterday's battle along the border punctuated the conversation, but he ignored them. "We were going to school in a nearby moshav. On the way, we were ambushed by terrorists with a bazooka. I don't like to describe it. I was a child. My father was there. There was every kind of explosion."

Shrapnel, he said, tore into his torso and shoulder. "Scars always hurt," he said.

At the age of 24, Biton made a career choice that some might consider surprising. He became the driver of a school bus - on the same route where the bus was attacked in 1970. He did the job for 18 years and is now head of the bus service in the local municipality.

What is it like to drive past the spot where his father was killed and his own body torn open?

"It's like butterflies in the stomach," he said, "because I've got children in the bus with me."

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