The army is a picnic
Filed under: A New Reality, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, War
There’s nothing like a picnic outside an army base to rekindle any lost sparks of Zionism.
I’d have to say that the scene last week outside the Ketziot base was an example of something that’s uniquely Israeli – I can’t imagine it happening in any other country.
Our daughter’s in the early stages of six-months of basic training at the base, which is deep in the Negev, south of Beersheba, only a handful of kilometers from the Egyptian border.
Given the chance of spending a restful Shabbat at home or driving two and a half hours each way to spend a couple hours with her during ‘free time’ on her Shabbat on the base, we chose the only possible option.
So loading up the back of the car with a cooler filled with lunchtime delicacies, we headed south. Once you get past Beersheba, there’s not much else – it gets more and more desolate and desert-ed.
Even though I had spent three different reserve duties at Ketziot, where there is also a prison housing Palestinian detainees, I wondered a few times if we were on the right road. But sure enough, the turnoff for Ketziot eventually showed up, amid ‘camel crossing’ signs and the ocassional lone tree.
We drove down the narrow road and turned into the parking lot, only to find… a party! The lot was filled with dozens of cars, and the a neatly designed picnic area – complete with wooden, covered benches and tables, and a large swath of artificial grass – was packed with families and their soldier children.
Some families seem have brought their entire kitchen with them – with portable coffee makers the item of choice for many. Parents were moving around from group to group, handing out cookies, and soldiers were waving their friends/comrades over to introduce them to their parents.
It was like visiting day at college, except the students all had rifles slung over the shoulders and had great tans. After the allotted time, the families started packing up for the long ride home, and our children walked back through the gates of the base to get some rest in their tents until Shabbat went out – but not before handing their parents plastic bags full of laundry.
Hopefully, the visit had recharged them sufficiently to start the week of shooting, drilling and soldiering in good spirits. Only six more days, and they can sleep in their own beds for a couple nights.
The IDF – a pensioner’s army…
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.
“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.
Far and Away
It’s not hard to feel somewhat detached from the reality of what is going on in the south. For several years now the citizens of Sderot have been forced to run to their bomb shelters numerous times a day in the wake of Hamas missile volleys while us who live further north just go about our normal lives. I’ve had to force myself to really think about what life must be like down there. It’s certainly intolerable and I support the government’s military action (though I wish it came earlier) though what’s happening down there seems like it is happening in another world. I felt the same way during the first days of last Lebanon war. Though as the days went on things changed very quickly. The tipping point was first receiving a hysterical call from a friend who was just a hundred meters away from the ketyusha missile that killed 13 soldiers in Kfar Giladi. The second was receiving a chilling text message from one of my best friends in the reserves right now that read Anachnu Olim L’Gvul – We are heading to the border. Out of some stroke of luck I wasn’t called up in the last war and I hope my luck doesn’t change though I would
It’s been announced that the IDF is calling up of almost 7000 reservists. The only person I know who has been called up thus far is a friend of a friend but nearly everyone I know is anxiously waiting for their phones to ring. We are praying they don’t, but if they do, we are ready.
Photo from flickr user paul-simpson.org under a creative commons license.
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