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A Yom Kippur reflection

As we enter Yom Kippur, here’s a little anecdote to help us remember that we aren’t islands, and not only do we all need help, but we also need to give help.

A Package From Home, a grassroots organization based in Jerusalem that has been providing care packages for IDF soldiers for many years, also organized Respite Weekends for soldiers who had been severely wounded during their service to the country. Here’s the organization’s founder and director Barbara Silverman describing a recent weekend at Jerusalem’s Inbal Hotel for 15 soldiers.

“[The soldiers] were directed to their rooms where they were greeted with a welcoming basket of fresh fruit. Later that evening, they left for a banquet dinner at the
beautiful Papagaio restaurant, a short distance away.

At the restaurant, I was, once again, struck to see how young these soldiers were. I noticed a young man who was painfully thin and asked our liaison at the hospital about him. He explained that his wounds were not visible but rather he had suffered extensive internal surgeries and was now just beginning to be able to enjoy normal food.

Some of the soldiers were wearing artificial limbs and they were in the process of receiving
rehabilitation treatments to teach them to how use these aids properly. Each soldier had his own story to tell. After being in the hospital for so many months, the group was delighted to be able to share this weekend together. Several other diners at the hotel reported that a wonderful time was had by all.

They spent Friday afternoon visiting the nearby Sataf Cheese Farm, where they learned how different cheeses were made. The farm was wheel chair accessible and extremely enjoyable. Later that day, they enjoyed hanging out and swimming at the hotel pool before getting ready for Shabbat. That evening they shared a festive Friday night dinner and on Saturday, they enjoyed the famous Israeli breakfast and the incredible Shabbat buffet lunch. That evening, they left the hotel, rested, relaxed and feeling ready to face the next round of operations and rehabilitation treatments.

When the soldiers take their oath of allegiance to the IDF, they hold a Bible in one hand and their weapon in the other hand. They promise to protect the Land of Israel and the People of Israel. When they say the People of Israel, they mean all of us, where ever we live and not only those of us living inside of Israel. These soldiers have fulfilled their obligation and they have paid a heavy price. When they complete their treatments they will be living with the memory of that heavy price. Those memories will last a life time.

Following the weekend, Silverman received the following letter from the soldiers.

We thank you for your warm hospitality and that you gave us a place in your hearts. Because of people like you it is possible to believe in the realization of dreams.

With great appreciation….

The severely wounded from Tzahal and the volunteers from the Rehabilitation Center in Tel Hashomer Hospital.

“In order to fulfill an old dream
There is a need for one million dreamers who don’t blink their eyes…
And are willing to come close to their dream
Those who still remember how to ease the pain…”
Words by Ehud Manor – from the song Little Dream.

G’mar Hatima Tova.

A different kind of tower on 9-11

I may have been one of the few people to have almost totally missed the horrifying events of September 11, 2001.

I was in miluim (reserve duty) and stationed at the military prison at the Megiddo intersection on the way to Afula. It housed a couple thousand Palestinian security prisoners who were awaiting trial for alleged crimes ranging from belonging to a terror organization to throwing Molotov cocktails at cars, to planning terror attacks, to probably just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As a military policeman, until that year, my duties each year at whatever similar prison dotting the country that I was sent to entailed, opening alot of gates, accompanying prisoners to see their lawyers, doctors, families on visiting day, and bascially enabling them to receive the basic neccessities of food, shelter and medical care. Unarmed and at arms length of the prisoners, we MPs were always watched over by armed to the teeth combat soldiers, sitting in tall guard towers with birds eye views of the primarily outdoor compound.

But this year, due to a combination of budget difficulties and shortages of IDF units, our miliuim assignment was to take over the towers and guard a different batch of MPs. On 9-11, I received the noon to 6 pm shift and the midnight to 6 am shift. However, instead of one of the towers facing inward toward the prisoner action, I got the plum position of the tower facing the bustling Wadi Ara road, Road 65, which led to the Megiddo intersection. The directive – to make sure there were no attempted infiltrations.

What that really meant is that I got to watch traffic for six hours, and sing as many Beatles songs as I could remember. It was another uneventful shift and nearing the end, the only item of interest was a car pulled over to the road right outside the fence, with the driver changing his flat tire.

At one point, he looked up at me, and over the din of the traffic, shouted out something. I couldn’t really make it out and asked him to repeat it. I could only hear “plane… crash…building.”

I smiled and nodded, and counted down the minutes until my replacement arrived at 6. He told me to go straight to the command tent and see what was on TV, that I wouldn’t believe it. When I got there, there were about 50 soldiers gathered around the TV.

“What’s going on?” I asked one friend. He filled me in on the chain of events, each one seeming more infathomable than the previous. I wanted to sit down, glue myself to the TV and try to comprehend the enormity of the events as they were still unfolding. But I had to eat dinner, shower, and try to sleep for two or three hours. Because at midnight, I went back up the tower for another six hour shift.

By the time I saw the sunrise on September 12, the rest of the world was in shock and mourning the thousands of casualties. I climbed down from my tower, trudged to my tent, and fell into a long dreamless sleep.

IDF chief of staff confined to quarters

When I was in basic training in the IDF many years ago, I had a leave cancelled because while cleaning my M-16 rifle, I lost a little internal pin. Apparently, I wasn’t the first, because the pin even had a name – the Shabbat pin – because if you lost it, it meant you stayed on the base for Shabbat.

I flashbacked to those days when I was reading last week that a revolver was stolen out of the Tel Aviv office of IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The thief, a young soldier on guard inside Ashkenazi’s inner sanctum, also stole his credit card data which was used by a third party to purchase NIS 2,000 worth of items. The decorative handgun was a gift to Ashkenazi from a US military counterpart.

According to Ha’aretz, the investigation into the incident exposed serious lapses in the arrangements for protecting Ashkenazi. Along with the security provided by the General Staff Security Unit, a number of positions on the office’s security perimeter are still being carried out by regular troops assigned to guard duty. These troops are not required to go through rigorous combat training, nor are their backgrounds substantially screened. The Military Police’s investigation revealed that the suspect had been involved in fights and a stabbing, and had piled up debts to underworld figures.

So, I was wondering, what would be the appropriate punishment for Ashkenazi for the breach of security? If I got confined to the base for a weekend for losing my Shabbat pin, I think he should at least have to do a couple shifts of guard duty at the Kirya, the IDF headquarters where he sits. However unlikely that scenario is, it somehow makes me feel better about my army service.

IDF battles swine flu with extra leave

Whether you call it swine flu or Mexican flu, the number of cases of the virus H1N1 in Israel continues to creep up.

Since the flu first reached here in late April, just days after it was identified in Mexico and the US, there have been anything from 300 to 542 confirmed cases, depending on which newspaper you read. And, according to one Israeli paper, the total number of flu cases has more than doubled in the last two weeks alone.

Earlier this week, the IDF decided to take some preventative measures, after an increasing number of troops came down with the illness.

The problem, the IDF discovered, was with soldiers who had come into contact with Jewish American youngsters as part of the Jewish Agency’s Taglit-Birthright program, where they bring Jewish kids from the US to Israel to experience the country.

According to Ynet, some 20 soldiers working with Taglit youth contracted the H1N1 virus over the last few weeks. These soldiers then returned to their units, and infected their fellow comrades, raising the number of sick servicemen to several dozens. Units affected – including one Navy torpedo boat – had no choice but to declare a temporary shutdown.

Now the IDF has decided not to take any more chances. This is the nation’s security we’re talking about after all. The army’s chief medical officer has ordered soldiers who work with Taglit to take five-days leave to make sure they are flu-free.

Out in the civilian world as well, flu continues to spread. Last week, the PM, Bibi Netanyahu canceled all his meetings after a close associate tested positive for swine flu.

The health maintenance funds (Kupat Holim), now responsible for treating swine flu patients, are also feeling the crunch. When my husband phoned a contact in his health fund to try to bring forward a doctor’s appointment it took him three days to get hold of her, and when he finally did she said she was too busy dealing with swine flu cases to talk.

Now there’s talk of testing all the 5,000 or so visiting athletes due to fly in any day to take part in this month’s Maccabiah games. Any that test positive will be refused entry. Deputy Health Minister, Ya’akov Litzman told reporters: “I don’t want to reach a situation in which another 5,000 people come here and just increase [the incidence of] the disease.”

Well, it’s still early days yet. Like much of Europe, flu season in these parts usually only begins in November. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

A ’shelter’ from the storm

Well, our IDF Home Front Command nationwide air raid siren that marked the public’s participation in the weeklong Operation Turning Point 3 war preparation exercises took place yesterday.

While most people at work dutifully filed into designated rooms or shelters as the wailing siren sounded at 11 am, those citizens on the street or in their cars pretty much went about their business as usual. The army and police announced that they were satisfied with the response.

At our office, one of our interns, Ben, recorded the event in cinema verite style (I have a cameo as one of those who ‘oops’ arrived a few seconds after the allotted three minutes to enter the shelter).

We all thought we did well, until I got back to the office and found my assistant in her room asking if I knew when the siren was going to go off. Oh well, I’m sure it won’t be the last test – real or simulated – that we’re going to have.

Nostalgia Sunday – Dubon

See this guy? See the jacket he’s wearing? It’s called a dubon and, in the Seventies, whether you were in the Israel Defense Forces or not, this was your winter coat in Israel. It wasn’t simply a matter of fashion. The dubon was all there was to wear.

My significant other did some spring cleaning the other day and decided to donate his dubon to charity. This gave rise to some sentimental sighs and a discussion about the pros and cons of this iconic coat. First of all, there was the name, which means “teddy bear” — a perfect combination of playfulness in the service of the ferociously serious military function of keeping soldiers warm.

Then, there was the jacket itself, designed for the Israeli winter. For someone like myself, coming from New England ski country, the dubon was no match for a down parka or something called a “snorkel” that was all the rage for a couple of years (it zipped up over your nose).

But, as was pointed out to me, what the dubon lacked in insulation, it made up for in acreage; it covered every exposed centimeter of your upper body and was, therefore, perfect protection against the elements of the Israeli winter. Which boils down to a lot of chilly rain and not enough central heating.

The fact that there were only men’s sizes to be had just added to the dubon’s glamour. For example, a Scandinavian kibbutz volunteer — looking much like the fantasy version pictured here — traipsing around the communal kitchenette in wooden clogs, chain-smoking “Noblesse”, baking apple cake and hogging all the baking pans, while casually sporting an oversized dubon — the kind with the really good lining — was also sending a very clear message that she had access to men with dubonim. Bitch. You know who you are.

In fact, most dubon-wearers looked more like these guys here. Men and women, all wore standard issue dubonim, available in small, medium, large and extra large. To this day, girl soldiers look like they’re swimming, nay drowning, in their dubons. But, as my friend Efrat put it, “Of course I had one. Everyone had one. It’s the most Israeli you can get.”

If you were in the army, you wore olive drab. If you were in the navy, you got blue. Air force guys got polyester bomber jackets. (The camouflage version didn’t show up till the Nineties, after the first Gulf War, when loan guarantees required the IDF to procure a certain amount of gear from US manufacturers).

And if you served up in the Golan, you got the brass ring, the uber-dubon called the Hermonit, after white-capped Mount Hermon, which provided total body coverage against the snow. Again, as someone from New England, I can only sniff and say, “You call that snow”?

And here’s that Scandinavian babe again! But believe me, she was never issued one in real life. You had to do a lot more than bake cakes to score a Hermonit.

Israel’s next ambassador to the US – it cudda been me

There’s a warm glow in the bellies these days of many Israelis who immigrated from the US. One of our own – historian and author Michael Oren – has been named to be ambassador to the US.

Oren, whose books include Six Days of War: June 1967, The Making of the Modern Middle East and, most recently, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, made aliyah in 1979, only a few years before me. It just confirms that if I had buckled down more, had been a whole lot smarter, and like wearing ties, I might have gotten that posting myself.

While many nationalities in our melting pot have strong representation in the upper echelons of government, business and culture, it seems like we former Americans have been under-achievers, or maybe just too timid to push ahead in the the Middle Eastern environment here. Maybe, we just can’t work the protekzia button the way others have been able to.

Sure, there’s Tal Brody in basketball, Bank Hapoalim’s Shari Arison in business, Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann, and Dore Gold, Ron Dermer and Ari Harrow in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s inner posse, as well as many more which I’m sure you’ll remind me of.

But when a fellow countryman, even one you don’t know personally, achieves the heights that Oren has, it’s reason to be proud. And Oren, evidently has many reasons to make us proud. Besides being one of the world’s foremost historians on the Middle East, Oren is a mensch, according to his fellow IDF reservist Dan Gordon.

Gordon, writing in his blog, described an incident during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, in which he and Oren were serving in the Army Spokesman’s unit on the front lines.

We hooked up with the ambulance in a wadi or deep ravine. Flairs were going off above us, which meant that Hizbullah knew we were there and were hunting for us. We served as the covering force while the fallen were evacuated.

Later Michael’s daughter, who was serving as a social worker in the Golani Brigade, called Michael on his cell phone. Her unit had taken a lot of wounded; most of them were her friends.

Michael turned to me and said, “My daughter needs a hug. Can I borrow your car?” The two of us drove down from the Lebanese border to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Michael spent a half hour with his daughter; gave her a much needed hug and then the two of us drove back near dawn to rejoin our unit.

That is the kind of man Israel’s ambassador designate to the U.S. is. He wouldn’t hesitate to endanger his life not only to recover wounded, but to recover the fallen, and though exhausted himself, drove round trip, four hours to give his daughter a hug when she most needed her father’s love.

Politics aside, and Oren’s been bashed for being both too Right and too Left, as a person representing Israel’s interests in the US, there’s every indication he’s going to walk right down the middle. And if he finds the job too taxing, I’m available to help out as long as I don’t have to wear a tie.

Day of Remembrance

Remembrance day. Oddly enough, this is the one “holiday” that I always feel thoroughly connected to. Not sure why. I’m just not really a spiritual fellow. Ever since I was a little boy I had dreams of serving in the IDF. For years it was just fantasy and of course the first time I ever fired a gun as a soldier the reality of what being a soldier really meant sunk in.

I was lucky enough to serve in the IDF during a “quiet” time – relatively. It was before Israel pulled out of Lebanon and a few years before the second intifada started. I knew some guys who were seriously wounded in Lebanon, one guy in my unit killed himself during basic training (at home on a weekend off) but other than those instances, I didn’t personally know any soldiers who died.

So what do I usually think about during the sirens? I think about my friend who lost five of his former soldiers in a horrible brush fire in Lebanon during a firefight with Hezbollah, just a week after he was discharged (I’d met one of the guys the week before at my friend’s army release party). I went with him to two of the funerals. I think about the father of an old roommate who was killed by a sniper as he got out of his tank during the Yom Kippur War just hours after the ceasefire was declared. My roommate was 11 months old at the time. And I think about the history of my unit, the Seventh Brigade, and the sacrifices they made as they fought to protect our borders from our enemies in every single one of Israel’s wars. Victims of terror is another story all together. Some good friends have narrowly escaped with their lives (but with both physical and psychological scars), others I’ve known did not.

Photo courtesy of kodak agfa from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Overdue kudos for winged communicators

After reports surfaced that Hezbollah had succeeded in eavesdropping on IDF soldiers talking on their cell phones during the Second Lebanon War, the army began investing heavily in creating its own proprietary, super-secure cellular network, dubbed Afik Rahav (”Wide Channel”).

But even in the “resounding success” of the latest round of military action against our enemies, this past winter’s Gaza operation against Hamas, was marked by some cellular communication backfirings, as both the IDF and Hamas attempted to rile up the general public on the opposite side by placing calls to random numbers.

But back in the day, communications among and with forces in the field were even trickier. Pre-state Zionist military forces used the low-tech method of carrier pigeons to get messages around the land, and recent Ha’aretz coverage of the aviary units has succeeded in prompting the IDF to honor its communications-minded predecessors.

In December, the newspaper reported that the Haganah’s dovecote at Kibbutz Givat Brenner was in danger of being destroyed and petitioned to preserve it, following Shaul Sapir, 81, who delivered the Haganah’s pigeons, and Aharon Landsman, 73, who trained them, as they visited the dovecote. This would have been a shame, since the Tzrifin base’s “monument to the unknown pigeon” (for real) was retired long ago, with few testaments remaining to remind us of the once-crucial section, which was incorporated into the IDF in the Fifties.

Then, a few weeks ago, the paper reported with glee that amid great fanfare and top-brass attendance,

Pigeon trainers who dispatched carrier pigeons for the Palmach and Haganah, the Yishuv’s military forces, were invited to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Israel Defense Forces Teleprocessing Branch at Tel Aviv University….

Senior Field Commander Major General Ami Shafran spoke glowingly of the pigeon corps, giving respect where it was finally due:

“The pigeon trainers from kibbutzim Ramat Rachel, Beit Hashita, Mishmar Hashiva and Negba, and from the dovecote at Givat Brenner, are some of those who laid down the [nation's] infrastructure, and they are a part of the strong foundation on which our present capabilities were built.”

Image courtesy Copper Kettle from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Would-be women of the IDF busted shirking and snogging

The way the Israeli army interfaces with religion is not so straightforward, which makes sense in a land where the separation between synagogue and state is still being sorted out. The IDF’s Rabbinate came under scrutiny this winter for attempting to boost soldiers’ morale on shaky theological grounds.

And the Rabbinate is notorious for being stingy when it comes to handing out shaving exemption papers for soldiers looking to be able to wear beards based on their interpretation of Biblical commandments, sometimes telling soldiers that they’re “not religious enough” to qualify for the exemption. But if it’s a rabbi’s goal to foster observance, he ought to embrace the individual’s interests, regardless of that individual’s flaws or hypocrisies.

In a society where we are constantly being pigeonholed due to what we’re wearing on our heads and elsewhere on our bodies, I don’t know about you, but my inclination is to say, “Please don’t put me in a box. I’m a real person, not a tidy category.”

Of course, embracing the religious grey area gets trickier when we’re talking about exemption from serving in the army altogether. Ditching the draft is relatively common among Israel’s Orthodox, for better or for worse, and the mechanisms for obtaining exemptions on religious grounds are relatively straightforward, making pleading religious a tempting option even for those who might not necessarily truly have theological qualms with the experience of being a soldier.

After years of turning a blind eye, more or less, to this phenomenon, the IDF is getting smart and trying to crack down on young women who “lie” and plead religious. Sure, it’s possible that a young woman who is too observant to serve, whatever that means, might experience a lapse in faith, but in general, if the army’s detectives catch you making out with someone, you should probably suit up.

“We need those girls, Lt. Col. Gil Ben Shaoul, deputy commander of Israel’s military recruitment center,” told The Associated Press.

The Israel Defense Forces says the surveillance program began last year and has caught 520 young women, many who admitted they did not deserve the religious exemption and signed up for military service.

….Catching the draft-dodgers is fairly straightforward: It takes one weekend, said Ben Shaoul. The young women are usually caught driving on Saturday, drinking or smoking.

Many who attempt to shirk the draft justify doing so on the grounds that women aren’t given “real” opportunities in the IDF.

“I served for two years doing nothing. All the girls do nothing,” said Shiran Cohen, 24, a university student. She said she was assigned to check on ammunition stockpiles during her service, but was frequently sidelined by men in her unit.

Although being a woman in the army can’t be easy, this excuse simply doesn’t hold water. I have fond memories of my days serving in the IDF’s Shiryon (armored corps) unit, where everything I learned about tanks was taught to me by women.

On the first day of tank training, the training officers took me and my fellow conscripts out to the open field and gave us a powerful demonstration of tank maneuvering and weaponry. The audience loved it. When the demo was over, the tanks pulled around and parked by the bleachers where we sat. The hatches opened, and out came four women from each vehicle. Surprise surprise. The bleachers shook with hooting, extra applause and jumping up and down as a special reaction for the ladies. It was a bit embarrassing, and it might serve to highlight how rough it must be to get respect as a woman soldier, but the point is that the opportunities are there for those who are motivated to go after them.

Image of Israeli modern Orthodox teenage women courtesy sethfrantzman from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

 

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