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On the front

Do I have a warped sense of reality from living in Israel? I was starting to wonder.

Earlier this week, I sent out to friends and family in the US a link to a short video news story my friend Arieh produced for the Media Line news agency on Karkal, the mixed men-women combat unit that my daughter is currently training for.

Arieh traveled down to the border with Egypt where Karkal units patrol on foot in camoflauge, guarding against terror attack and infiltration. And he spoke to the soldiers doing the job, where they explained the dangers involved, as well as what it was like in a mixed unit.

In addition to being proud of her, I thought everyone would appreciate learning about the life she was going to be leading for the next two and a half years, once she finishes her training.

But a couple comments I received made me start thinking about the whole issue of raising children and sending them off to be in harm’s way. Maybe it’s not something to be proud of, and we’ve just been conditioned by the military nature of our surroundings that it’s a good thing we send our kids off to do.

But leave it to my wife to bring me back to this side of the Earth. We didn’t ask for enemies, and if nobody volunteered to do these dirty, dangerous jobs, then most likely, Israel would not be around. I think it’s probably difficult for an American or any Westerner to understand the daily threat facing us, and comprehend the importance of our sons and daughters having to be the front lines against that threat.

So, yes, I hate the idea of raising children to become soldiers and placing them in life-threatening situations. And yes, I’m totally filled with pride that my daughter chose her path in Karkal, and that she’s spending her army service defending her – and my – country.

A mole or a victim?

Is she a ‘mole’ as leading newspaper Yediot Ahronot called her in a headline splashed across its front page today, or a victim of Israel’s oppressive, outdated censorship laws? It’s just possible that Anat Kamm is both.

The case of the ex-soldier who allegedly stole 2,000 IDF documents – some of them extremely sensitive – and gave them to a reporter for Ha’aretz, has riveted the country, even though until today, Israelis could only read about from foreign news sources. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

As the case unfolds, none of the sides involved – Kamm, the army, the Shin Bet, Ha’aretz – are looking very attractive, but if what’s being reported is true, it’s Kamm who comes out smelling the worst.

Supplying TP to Egypt

You have to love the different sides of the people you know. I was getting my hair cut by my hairdresser, Dave Silverman, a fellow Anglo with a deep Boston accent. Dave, as many know, gets to work and other destinations on his Harley Davidson motorcycle, strolling into his salon, Dave’s, on Derech Beit Lechem with his black fringed leather jacket and chaps, and then cuts and trims hair with easy skill.

As we’re discussing our various Pesach expeditions, he tells me that he made it out for one day of the annual Harley Davidson Israel tiyul, which took them down south to the Ramon Craters and beyond. The beyond included a little-known road that took them to the border with Egypt, alongside the IDF army bases and the Egyptian army base on the other side of the fence. This is an area that is under much surveillance, as it is where Egyptian and Bedouin smugglers try to pass drugs, arms and sex workers from one side to the other. As a result, Dave told me, in order to use the road, you have to get permission from the IDF, and have a gun, in order to protect yourself if necessary. Not surprisingly, most of the bikers have guns, and their ‘leader’, helpfully, is a former army bigshot.

So while they were taking a break from the hot sun, and drinking some H2O, they were waving at the Egyptian soldiers in a friendly exchange. Suddenly, one of the Egyptian soldiers gestures at his backside. When the riders didn’t catch on, he took a strip of newspaper and pretended to swipe at himself with it. Finally understanding, they all took rolls of toilet paper from their bikes and threw them over the fence, as the Egyptian soldiers ran around, picking up the rolls.

Just another example of the deep and abiding peace between Israel and Egypt.

You’re in the army now

If you want the real low down on what it’s like to be in the IDF without ever having to sleep in a leaky tent, smell the body odor of fellow soldiers you’re stuck with for 24 hours inside a tank, or attempt to stand in rows of three, then just sit in the confines of your comfortable couch and laugh away with Joel Chasnoff’s hilarious new book The 188th Crybaby Brigade.

Subtitled ‘A skinny Jewish kid from Chicago fights Hezbollah,’ the memoir is full of the warts-and-all, embarrassing details of what happens when 18-year-old Israelis are thrown off the deep end of military service. But they’re told lovingly through the eyes and experiences of the then-24-year-old Chasnoff, who arrived in Israel from the US to volunteer in the IDF for a year.

Let’s just say some fish out of water comedy ensues, amid some astute observations about the Israeli psyche, the Zionist dream, and not-so-hidden flaws of Israeli society. But because Chasnoff tells it from the inside and with an obvious love and knowledge of his subject, it doesn’t come off as mean-spirited, but as gentle chiding.

Except when it’s sideplitting. Like when Chasnoff teaches his young comrades the words to the ’80s song “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and futilely attempting to explain the meaning of the song to the eager but unsophisticated soldiers.

But beware, if you’re one of those Zionists who see everything through rose-tinted glasses, this isn’t for you. However, like Chasnoff, if you can embrace the paradoxes that make up modern-day Israel – in which one of the most commonly used descriptive term is an Arab curse that involves the private parts of mothers, and where soldiers goose each other on an educational visit to Yad Vashem – then Crybaby will provide page after page of insightful, thigh-slapping adventures that contain a suprisingly deep and bittersweet undertone.

Chasnoff’s memoir brims not only with wry observations, but with poignancy and heart that only can surface from someone who has been in love with something from afar for so long, only to discover up close that it wasn’t what he expected.

It sounds like a lot of our aliya stories – some of us can cope with the realization that Israel is a work in progress, and others end up disillusioned and bitter.

Remember who the victim was

With all the backlash surrounding the use of the names of British immigrants to Israel for part of the hit squad that offed Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel last month, it got me to thinking a bit.

Sure, it’s undoubtedly a jolt to find out that your identity was absconded with, without permission, to perpetrate an act of murder. On the other hand, look at the victim.

Mabhouh helped found Hamas’s armed wing Izzadin Kassam in the 1980s and was perhaps most infamous for being behind the kidnapping and murder in the first intifada of IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa’adon. According to Liat Collins in The Jerusalem Post, Hamas held out against revealing the location of their bodies, neither of whose last minutes were spent in anything like a luxury hotel. Sasportas’s body was discovered after three months, while it took seven years to find the remains of Sa’adon and offer his family closure.

Mabhouh was also reportedly behind the weapons convoy that, foreign reports claim, was bombed by Israel in the Sudanese desert during Operation Cast Lead a year ago.

If any of the Israelis whose names were utilized in the operation were asked beforehand if they would contribute in the effort to remove Mahbouh from the world terror active list, how do you think they would have responded?

Probably they would have said yes. If any of them served – or are serving in the IDF – then they’ve likely taken part in some aspect of protecting Israel from threats. And they were probably proud of it.

I’d like to think that if my name had been stolen from me temporarily to rid the world of a terrorist aimed at Israel’s destruction, I might be a little dumbstruck at first, but soon after I would feel only pride that I had been able to contribute to the effort in some small way.

I’d only hope that Steven Spielberg would allow me to choose the actor to portray my doppleganger in the film adaption of the operation. I’m thinking maybe Johnny Depp in his Hunter Thompson haircut mode?

 

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