You’re in the army now

March 28, 2010 - 3:31 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, War 

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.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Lebanon 1982

February 23, 2009 - 1:14 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, War 

They’re not happy memories. However, it seems appropriate, on the eve of Waltz With Bashir’s possible Oscar win, to glean the National Photo Collection for photos of the 1982 Lebanon War that capture something of the movie’s essence.

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Sidon – IDF soldier on patrol near Ferris wheel. Photo: Shmuel Rahmany

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Zaharani area – burning fuel depot. Photo: Beni Tel-Or

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Tyre – Ancient Roman ruins with modern buildings in background. Photo: Yaacov Saar

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Sidon – Returning to the marketplace. Photo: Yaacov Saar

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Central Lebanon – Two Israeli soldiers take a forbidden dip in a stream. Photo: Yossi Roth

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Tel Aviv Fairgrounds – Israeli citizens visit a display of a captured PLO arsenal. Photo: Avraham Zaslavski

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Tel Aviv – Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon presents objectives at a press conference. Photo: Yaacov Saar

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Sidon – Movie poster: “The Land That Time Forgot“. Photo: Yoel Kantor

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The IDF – a pensioner’s army…

January 7, 2009 - 10:51 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Life, Politics, War 

Moshe Peled may be 65-years-old, but that didn’t stop him volunteering for the Israel Defense Force when a call went out a few days ago for reserves. Nor did it bother his 75-year-old partner, Ishai Zimmerman.

Together the two men are driving huge tank transporters across the country, delivering tanks and heavy trucks to wherever the IDF needs them most. Yesterday they were under fire next to Gaza, the rest of the time, Yoni – Peled’s son – isn’t entirely sure.

Israeli tanks massed on the border of Lebanon in the 2006 war.

Israeli tanks massed on the border of Lebanon in the 2006 war.


“They’re like 19-year-olds,” Yoni told me this morning. “They are full of adrenaline.”

Just yesterday Peled called up his seven-year-old grandson, Itamar, and told him: “I’m driving the biggest truck you could ever imagine.” (Tapping into every little boy’s fantasy.) “It’s huge and I’m going to war.”

Israel’s army is known as a people’s army, and for good reason. Once they’ve carried out their three years of service, all the men do reserve duty at least once a year, up to the age of 40, or 43 if you are an officer – and often beyond. In times of trouble, many Israeli men will go out of their way to serve, even flying back from their jobs abroad.

On Monday, Channel 10 reported that when the IDF called up reserves this time around, they had a 115 percent response. In some cases they actually had to send people back home.

Peled, who served as a Member of Knesset for far-right party Tsomet during the 1990s, was the colonel of a tank division. When he left the army, he carried on doing reserve duty. When he reached retirement age a few years ago, he asked the army if he could continue doing miloweem – not as a colonel, however, but as a driver of tank transporters. He told them he wanted to be close to his soldiers.

Since then, every year for a month and a half, Peled and Zimmerman, from neighboring communities in the north of Israel, are called up for duty. Two years ago they served in the Second Lebanon War.

Peled is now getting worried that in a few years the IDF might not let Zimmerman carry on driving these huge tank transporters. So much so in fact that when the IDF Chief of Staff gave a speech to his platoon a couple of months ago, he got up and asked him when he was planning to retire, and whether he’d consider joining him in his tank transporter when he did.

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