I meant to write a long post about last weekend, but as usual laziness and being away from home defeated me. In short, the parents of Michael Levin (the only American killed in the war in Lebannon, three years ago this Thursday) took all of the lone soldiers in the Paratroopers to a sort of vacation-base for a couple days. There were some speeches (including Michael's parents and the commander of the Paratroopers) and a documentary on Michael, as well as various organizations and programs to give advice on after we get out (mostly a few colleges, some foundations, and a lot of police looking for new recruits).
The big hilight for me was that I got to talk to Avigdor Kahalani again. For those of you with very good memories, I explained about half a year ago how he is the head of the Friends of the IDF and came to visit us before we went into Gaza, and a few minutes talking to him made me feel better than anything else the army did. This time I was able to thank him and tell him what his visit meant to me. Of course he didn't remember me, but it still made me feel better.
In other news, I'm no longer a combat soldier. Just before going to the vacation-base I turned in my gun and all my equipment other than my dress uniforms. On Sunday I started the educational course I'd been dreaming of for months. I didn't expect to like it - I figured I'd be surrounded by lazy jobnikim [non-combat soldiers. More on them in a moment] complaining about the smallest things and just speaking Russian. I don't like it but the army tends to make people at least somewhat racist, especially against Russians.
Sunday was just signing into the course and I spent most of the time searching for other real soldiers. Like most combat soldiers, I consider jobnikim useless and not real soldiers. They are home all the time (especially the type that end up in my course, most of whom probably get out every day), spend their time in the army sitting in air-conditioned offices, and that's not enough for them. After the war in Gaza, they took our whole battalion to one of the vacation-bases for a week. The jobnikim got to relax the whole time doing nothing, while the combat soldiers (i.e. the people who were actually in the war and deserved the rest) still had to do guard duty!
As I expected, there were almost no combat soldiers signing in, and it seemed even fewer signing in for the course in Haifa. But as I said before I left, even if they make me wash dishes for 8 hours a day, it's worth it if I can go home every night (note: that's an example of a combat soldier mentality).
Monday the actual course started. And my first thoughts were pretty accurate. Aside from me and a girl from Argentina, everyone in my class was a native Russian speaker. And the closest to combat soldiers were one former infantry medic who was injured and put in with his battalion medical unit (sort of a half-jobnik position) and a guy from the "Homeland Front" (technically a combat unit, but almost as low as they get - their job is mostly to help out people in emergencies - setting up bomb shelters, evacuating collapsing buildings...). A little while later, one proper soldier did show up - he's from one of the best infantry reconnaisance units.
And as I predicted, the day started with the mishakit [I'm not sure how to translate that well, but she's the one in charge of us] apologizing that the air conditioner was having problems and suggesting that we take a break until it started working. It was a little warm, but not bad.
Once with did commence, we opened with some getting-to-know-each-other-games. We were each given a question to ask everyone else. Mine was "What was the last army punishment you got?" Most of the answers I got were 2-3 days having to stay on base. My first reaction was to remind them that I asked about a punishment, not a reward.
But things began looking up. We all opened up some and started joking around, and I realized that they were all pretty good and fun people. I wouldn't necessarily want to go to war with them, but that's not why we were there. Once I started paying attention to who they were instead of what tags or pins they were wearing, I had a great time.
I slept on the bus ride to Haifa this morning, and dreamt that I was back with my old platoon. As usual, no one was doing what they were supposed to and they were all screwing each other over. Every time I came back to the room, they had thrown my stuff outside, tried kicking me out... As I woke up I realized how glad I was to be anywhere but there.
We're mainly studying basic Judaism and Israeli history, much of which I know already (they tried convincing me several time that I don't need the course, but there's no way I'm turning down 11 weeks of going home every day). Today I decided to make things a little more interesting and perhaps to get something more out of my time, and asked the people sitting near me to teach me some Russian. This instantly made me everyone's friend, and for the rest of the day people were coming up to me with words to learn.
I don't expect much since it's very unstructured and only a couple months for an extremely complicated language, but it can't hurt and it would be good to know some Russian (about 1/7 of the country's population are immigrants from the former Soviet Union). And it helps me get to know the others there. A couple of them decided that if I'm going to learn how to talk like a Russian, I should also learn to drink like a Russian; so hopefully I'll be able to teach them a thing or two in there (my Ukranian commander tried that during advanced training - it quickly turned into him asking me for pointers).
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
In Answer To Tedward (from right now)
Tedward replied to my last post (about the elections) asking what I think America should do to bring peace over here. I hope he doesn't mind, but here's his comment and my response.
tEdwardo says:
February 10, 2009 at 12:25 pm (Edit)
Hey Wantman. I was interested to read your thoughts on the election, especially because of the way they are being covered here in the states.
The fact that there has been so much coverage of the elections here in the states got me to thinking about the United States’ role, and it really seems to me that the US has been as much an obstacle as it has been a facilitator of lasting stability in the region. Of course, the whole point has been to prevent the entire Arab world from attacking Israel – something no one wants on our hands.
So, it seems to me that the only good that America is doing is keeping the peace, and that our historic blank-check style support for Israel has been, at least in part, an encouragement of hard line military positions on both sides. I may be wrong about that, and if you disagree, I would like to hear why.
The most disheartening thing for me is that is seems that popular support in both Israel and Palestine is for more conflict, not less.
My question is, why is it a bad idea to change our policy to this:
- America hereby withdraws official support for either side
- America offers full defensive support (diplomatic and military) for any side that democratically adopts a position of unilateral peace*
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the political will, then we should just admit that the United States is not politically committed to peace in the region, but victory for Israel.
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the military werewithall to do this, that could be solved by engaging a coalition of other countries.
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the international political legitimacy to do this, then we can just stop pretending that we have the ability to bring peace to the region without first withdrawing the kind of support we have shown Israel for the past 30 year.
I am VERY POORLY INFORMED about all this, which is why I am asking.
*granted, whether “peace” means no invasion or no “self defense” (the definition of which Israel and Palestine both play fast and loose with) is a sticky point, but even if it were the latter, giving a powerful third party the right to decide the extent of legitimate self defense would be a huge step in the right direction.
Obviously, this is just my point of view from what I've seen and picked up. As you guys know, I don't like politics and and pretty ignorant about it.
To start with, the popular idea of this being a "centuries-old religious conflict" is completely wrong. It's about 90 years old and has almost nothing to do with religion. A better term would be "identity." In short, this is why the fighting between Israeli and Palestinians is, on the underlying level, the same as the fighting between Syria and Lebanon, and between Hamas and Fatah within Gaza.
Let's go back to World War I. At the time, this whole area was part of the Turkish Empire, which was fighting against Britain and France (also against Russia and America, but that's not important here). Both countries worked on a policy of promising whatever they had to in order to achieve their goals without worrying about future consequences.
Two of the more famous promises were the Balfour Declaration and the McMahon letters. The Balfour Declaration was from the Foreign Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild while the McMahon letters were between Sir Henry McMahon, the High Commissioner in Egypt, to Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, and both promising what is now Israel and Egypt to each group (Jews and Arabs).
The fact that the same land was being given was two different people at the same time didn't concern the British - they didn't really intend to give it away at all. A secret deal was made between Britain and France, known as the Sykes-Piccot Agreement, in which the two empires agreed to split up the Ottoman Empire between them. Britain would get modern-day Jordan, Israel, and southern Iraq, and France would get Lebanon, Syria, and northern Iraq.
Both countries were used to the colonialism game and as usual, set up local governments and power structures in a way that played local groups against each other and forced the European country to stay in control. The clearest example of this was in Syria: the area was populated by three main ethnic groups - Christians, Sunnis, and Alawis (another branch of Islam). The Alawis were by far the smallest, so the French put them in control. There was no way the Alawis could stay in power on their own, so they were forced to rely on French backing.
From the British/French point of view, this worked more or less for the next few decades. But then came the post-World War II breaking up of the European empires. I don't know France's history here as well, so I'll stick to Britain. They had no desire to lose all their colonies and territories, so they tried to get out of it any way they could. The main approach was to point to unrest (mostly caused by their intentional distribution of power) and say how it would all go to Hell if they left. In the end, they only reluctantly turned over the Palestine Mandate to the United Nations.
Now let's go back and look at this specifically with regard to what's now Israel. Towards the end of the 19th Century Jews started arriving in large numbers, whether to escape persecution or in the idealistic hope of creating a Jewish State. They began by buying land, often from absentee landlords, and building farming communities.
This large influx of people and work naturally led to many new jobs being created. Even more so because most of the new immigrants came from cities and knew nothing about the farming or the region as a whole. So many Arabs also began to come.
The Arab leadership's main goal, then as now, was to keep themselves in power. The most significant leader at the time was Mohammad Amin al-Huseini. He grew up in Jerusalem, fought in the First World War as an officer in the Turkish army before being captured by the British and joining their side. In 1920 he ran away to Transjordan (modern-day Jordan) in order to avoid arrest for inciting anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem. The next year all those arrested over the riots were pardoned and he returned to Jerusalem.
Husseini's half-brother, the mufti of Jerusalem, had just died and the British were looking for a replacement. Husseini was not particularly religious, but he saw this as the best way to get power. Elections were held between the four main candidates for the position, and Husseini came in last. The British felt bad because they had had appointed a member of the al-Husseini clan's rival to be mayor shortly before, and with some finageling they announced Husseini to be the new Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a lifetime position they had just created for him.
In 1922 Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council, which had control over their funds and Islamic courts, as well as the power to appoint teachers and religious leaders. The British tried to keep the council membership balanced between the al-Husseinis and their rivals, the Nashashibis, and the two clans spent more time fighting each other than trying to build and sustain a proper society.
In order to keep control of the masses, he did what he could to turn them against an easy enemy - the Jews. His main arguments were that they wanted to get rid of the Arabs and destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to build their own Temple, the same arguments that have been used regularly since.
On Yom Kippur 1928, the Jews put up a screen to separate men and women worshipping at the Western Wall. The Arab authorities declared that this was the first step to rebuilding a Temple, and the British police entered with force and took away the screen. The same thing had happened in 1926 over collapsible chairs on Yom Kippur and led to Arab riots, which the British absolutely did not want. After much discussion and argument between the British and Arab leaders, it was agreed that the Jews could use ritual objects, but could not bring in chairs, screens, or other such objects.
Tensions grew between Jews and Arabs to the point of several deaths, and in August 1929 large-scale riots broke out, leaving over 250 dead. There were calls in England to have Husseini deported for inciting the riots and for causing anti-British unrest in general. The League of Nations investigated the situation and declared that the riots were not premeditated.
More riots broke out in 1936 against the British and Jews, this time with Husseini's complete backing and encouragement. He declared a general strike amongst Arab workers, but it turned out that this primarily hurt the poor Arabs themselves, as the Jews had started pressing themselves for self-reliance after previous riots. For help, Husseini turned to Mussolini and Hitler.
The riots continued until 1939 when the British announced a White Paper, severely restricting Jewish immigration over the next five years, after which all immigration would be subject to Arab approval, and further restricting Jews from buying land from Arabs. The British were worried that the Arabs would side with Hitler should war break out, whereas the Jews had no real alternative, and so they didn't see any need to cozy up to the Jews.
Nevertheless, Husseini rejected the White Paper, demanding that all Jewish immigration be stopped and an official scrapping of the idea of a Jewish national homeland (what had been promised in the Balfour Declaration). During World War II he stood strongly on the side of the Axis power and spent the war in Berlin. After the war, Husseini was arrested by the French and sentenced to three years imprisonment as a war criminal, but escaped to Egypt. The British in charge there refused to arrest him because they feared it would cause them problems with the Arabs in Egypt and Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to turn the Palestine Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. This was around the same time that all the neighboring Arab states were getting their independence, and each tried to flex puff out its own chest. With the new Jewish State, they found their perfect lynchpin. The Arab leaders took turns making threats and announcing what they would do once the Jews declared their independence (at which point it would be its own country and they could attack without having to come against the British). The only trouble was they were expected to follow through on their promises.
Sorry for the long foray there, but I don't feel the situation can be explained properly without looking at where it came from. It's not simply an Arab vs. Jew conflict, and the same themes run through again and again. The 1948 War of Independence was largely caused by Arab leaders' posturing to their own people, and then having to try and fulfill these promises.
The same thing has happened a number of times since. In the 60's, Egypt and Syria were each trying to become the leader of the Arab/Islamic world. Again, they turned to threatening Israel as a way to gain support, and it all led to the Six Day War in '67. In the early 70's, Anwar Sadat became the new Prime Minister of Egypt. He wanted to build up his country and end the conflict with Israel, but was having trouble with the Muslim Brotherhood (a forerunner of Al Quaeda). He frequently said afterwards that the only way he could make peace with Israel was to first go to war in order to get back some dignity after the Six Day War.
Today Egypt and Syria are less significant in the Arab world, but the same conflict is there. Today it's between Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Iran continues with the same old approach of threatening to destroy Israel, Saudi Arabia is looking more internationally. They feel that if they can be seen as the ones who make peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the international community will turn to them as the leader of the Muslim world. That's why they have been pushing so hard at coming up with peace plans and conferences over the past few years.
From the Palestinian point of view, things are a little more complicated. Their leaders are continuing in the Husseini approach of doing whatever necessary to be on top, even if that means taking it out on their own people. Yassir Arafat's organization, Fatah, was first formed to kill and scare "collaborators," and only then moved against Israel.
No matter how much aid and assistance was given for Palestinians, the regular people on the street lived in terrible conditions and constantly in fear, while the people on the top were living the good life (and often far from Gaza and the West Bank). The popular example is Suha Arafat, Yassir Arafat's wife, who lived in France on $200,000 a month for many years.
Returning to history briefly, in the late 80's was the First Intifada, a popular uprising by Palestinian youth. Arafat and the PLO were worried and did what they could to stop it, because they weren't in charge - they were in exile in Tunisia at the time. Instead, a new group had formed, opposed to the corruption in the PLO. They called themselves Hamas.
When the PLO began negotiating with Israel in the early 90's, Hamas vilified them as traitors to the Palestinian cause. Whenever the two groups had free time, they would fight each other, either verbally or physically. The big switches came in late 2004 and early 2005, when Arafat died and then Hamas won the elections. The West Bank and Gaza became effectively two separate entities, with the West Bank being controlled by the PLO and Gaza by Hamas (particularly after the Hamas-PLO war in Gaza a couple years ago). Even now, the first thing Hamas did after Israel left Gaza last month was to find and kill those they suspected of collaborating.
On the other hand, Hamas has entered into negotiations with Israel and has agreed on ceasefires (they were never properly followed, but that's no different than the PLO's negotiating techniques). And now there's Islamic Jihad and another new group who are declaring Hamas to be traitors for talking with Israel, and thereby implying their recognition of a Jewish State.
Finally, now an answer to your main question. In your question, you gave the main reason why the peace deals don't work when you asked whether it would be bad to either drop support for both sides or to fully support whichever side goes for peace first. Peace takes time. You can't jump from a situation like this into peace and elections within a few weeks, months, or maybe even years. But everyone is looking for the instant solution, whether it's the Oslo Accords, Madrid Conference, Taba, Roadmap For Peace, Saudi Initiative...
The Oslo Accords were an attempt at this, but everyone got too caught up in the idea of peace that they didn't want to see any problems. When Arafat would ignore his responsibilities, Israel was told to keep going with its side, because otherwise they would be "derailing the peace process." So a step-by-step approach turned into two unrelated sides having their responsiblities, which turned into just Israel having to fulfill its responsibilities (that last line is paraphrased from Yisrael Ne'eman, whom I'll get to later).
As for what is needed, I agree with Natan Sharansky. The first thing is to fix the conditions of the general Palestinian population. There's no reason they should be living in hovels without bathrooms while Hamas leaders have beachfront mansions and SUVs from money that's given as humanitarian aid (I don't think I'll forget being in the kitchen of a beautiful apartment in a nice neighborhood in Gaza and seeing bottles of cooking oil with the label "Gift of France"). Once a proper infrastructure is in place, then have elections. You won't get honest and fair people in power when gangs (which is basically what Hamas and the PLO are in many senses) kill anyone they disagree with.
If you get a chance, I'd check out Natan Sharansky's book, The Case For Democracy. He uses the example of the fall of the Soviet Union (where he was held as a political prisoner for 9 years) to show how to promote democracy. The book is touted as the explanation of the Bush Doctrine, but I completely disagree. Sharansky's main argument is that you can't support "good" tyrants and dictators in order to defeat "bad" tyrants and dictators (exactly how Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein were put in power). Bush may have paid lip-service to Sharansky's ideals, but in practice they were ignored.
What America can or should do is a very hard question. I think right now we're in a good spot - Bush didn't have the legitimacy in the Arab/Muslim and World eyes to achieve a long-lasting solution here. Obama is a new face and I expect will be better received. Specifically what to do, though, I don't know. A lot also depends on how today's elections (which ended two hours ago) turn out, and what the Israeli politicians decide to do over the next few days.
If you're interested in following what goes on here, a professor I had at Haifa University, Yisrael Ne'eman, writes a weekly/biweekly opinion piece called Mideast: On Target. He wrote one yesterday in which he argued that the best hope for peace is if Likud wins and forms a right-centrist coalition. You can see the article at http://me-ontarget.com/2009/120-february/628-likud-victory-likud-dilemmas
tEdwardo says:
February 10, 2009 at 12:25 pm (Edit)
Hey Wantman. I was interested to read your thoughts on the election, especially because of the way they are being covered here in the states.
The fact that there has been so much coverage of the elections here in the states got me to thinking about the United States’ role, and it really seems to me that the US has been as much an obstacle as it has been a facilitator of lasting stability in the region. Of course, the whole point has been to prevent the entire Arab world from attacking Israel – something no one wants on our hands.
So, it seems to me that the only good that America is doing is keeping the peace, and that our historic blank-check style support for Israel has been, at least in part, an encouragement of hard line military positions on both sides. I may be wrong about that, and if you disagree, I would like to hear why.
The most disheartening thing for me is that is seems that popular support in both Israel and Palestine is for more conflict, not less.
My question is, why is it a bad idea to change our policy to this:
- America hereby withdraws official support for either side
- America offers full defensive support (diplomatic and military) for any side that democratically adopts a position of unilateral peace*
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the political will, then we should just admit that the United States is not politically committed to peace in the region, but victory for Israel.
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the military werewithall to do this, that could be solved by engaging a coalition of other countries.
If the answer is that America doesn’t have the international political legitimacy to do this, then we can just stop pretending that we have the ability to bring peace to the region without first withdrawing the kind of support we have shown Israel for the past 30 year.
I am VERY POORLY INFORMED about all this, which is why I am asking.
*granted, whether “peace” means no invasion or no “self defense” (the definition of which Israel and Palestine both play fast and loose with) is a sticky point, but even if it were the latter, giving a powerful third party the right to decide the extent of legitimate self defense would be a huge step in the right direction.
Obviously, this is just my point of view from what I've seen and picked up. As you guys know, I don't like politics and and pretty ignorant about it.
To start with, the popular idea of this being a "centuries-old religious conflict" is completely wrong. It's about 90 years old and has almost nothing to do with religion. A better term would be "identity." In short, this is why the fighting between Israeli and Palestinians is, on the underlying level, the same as the fighting between Syria and Lebanon, and between Hamas and Fatah within Gaza.
Let's go back to World War I. At the time, this whole area was part of the Turkish Empire, which was fighting against Britain and France (also against Russia and America, but that's not important here). Both countries worked on a policy of promising whatever they had to in order to achieve their goals without worrying about future consequences.
Two of the more famous promises were the Balfour Declaration and the McMahon letters. The Balfour Declaration was from the Foreign Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild while the McMahon letters were between Sir Henry McMahon, the High Commissioner in Egypt, to Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, and both promising what is now Israel and Egypt to each group (Jews and Arabs).
The fact that the same land was being given was two different people at the same time didn't concern the British - they didn't really intend to give it away at all. A secret deal was made between Britain and France, known as the Sykes-Piccot Agreement, in which the two empires agreed to split up the Ottoman Empire between them. Britain would get modern-day Jordan, Israel, and southern Iraq, and France would get Lebanon, Syria, and northern Iraq.
Both countries were used to the colonialism game and as usual, set up local governments and power structures in a way that played local groups against each other and forced the European country to stay in control. The clearest example of this was in Syria: the area was populated by three main ethnic groups - Christians, Sunnis, and Alawis (another branch of Islam). The Alawis were by far the smallest, so the French put them in control. There was no way the Alawis could stay in power on their own, so they were forced to rely on French backing.
From the British/French point of view, this worked more or less for the next few decades. But then came the post-World War II breaking up of the European empires. I don't know France's history here as well, so I'll stick to Britain. They had no desire to lose all their colonies and territories, so they tried to get out of it any way they could. The main approach was to point to unrest (mostly caused by their intentional distribution of power) and say how it would all go to Hell if they left. In the end, they only reluctantly turned over the Palestine Mandate to the United Nations.
Now let's go back and look at this specifically with regard to what's now Israel. Towards the end of the 19th Century Jews started arriving in large numbers, whether to escape persecution or in the idealistic hope of creating a Jewish State. They began by buying land, often from absentee landlords, and building farming communities.
This large influx of people and work naturally led to many new jobs being created. Even more so because most of the new immigrants came from cities and knew nothing about the farming or the region as a whole. So many Arabs also began to come.
The Arab leadership's main goal, then as now, was to keep themselves in power. The most significant leader at the time was Mohammad Amin al-Huseini. He grew up in Jerusalem, fought in the First World War as an officer in the Turkish army before being captured by the British and joining their side. In 1920 he ran away to Transjordan (modern-day Jordan) in order to avoid arrest for inciting anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem. The next year all those arrested over the riots were pardoned and he returned to Jerusalem.
Husseini's half-brother, the mufti of Jerusalem, had just died and the British were looking for a replacement. Husseini was not particularly religious, but he saw this as the best way to get power. Elections were held between the four main candidates for the position, and Husseini came in last. The British felt bad because they had had appointed a member of the al-Husseini clan's rival to be mayor shortly before, and with some finageling they announced Husseini to be the new Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a lifetime position they had just created for him.
In 1922 Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council, which had control over their funds and Islamic courts, as well as the power to appoint teachers and religious leaders. The British tried to keep the council membership balanced between the al-Husseinis and their rivals, the Nashashibis, and the two clans spent more time fighting each other than trying to build and sustain a proper society.
In order to keep control of the masses, he did what he could to turn them against an easy enemy - the Jews. His main arguments were that they wanted to get rid of the Arabs and destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to build their own Temple, the same arguments that have been used regularly since.
On Yom Kippur 1928, the Jews put up a screen to separate men and women worshipping at the Western Wall. The Arab authorities declared that this was the first step to rebuilding a Temple, and the British police entered with force and took away the screen. The same thing had happened in 1926 over collapsible chairs on Yom Kippur and led to Arab riots, which the British absolutely did not want. After much discussion and argument between the British and Arab leaders, it was agreed that the Jews could use ritual objects, but could not bring in chairs, screens, or other such objects.
Tensions grew between Jews and Arabs to the point of several deaths, and in August 1929 large-scale riots broke out, leaving over 250 dead. There were calls in England to have Husseini deported for inciting the riots and for causing anti-British unrest in general. The League of Nations investigated the situation and declared that the riots were not premeditated.
More riots broke out in 1936 against the British and Jews, this time with Husseini's complete backing and encouragement. He declared a general strike amongst Arab workers, but it turned out that this primarily hurt the poor Arabs themselves, as the Jews had started pressing themselves for self-reliance after previous riots. For help, Husseini turned to Mussolini and Hitler.
The riots continued until 1939 when the British announced a White Paper, severely restricting Jewish immigration over the next five years, after which all immigration would be subject to Arab approval, and further restricting Jews from buying land from Arabs. The British were worried that the Arabs would side with Hitler should war break out, whereas the Jews had no real alternative, and so they didn't see any need to cozy up to the Jews.
Nevertheless, Husseini rejected the White Paper, demanding that all Jewish immigration be stopped and an official scrapping of the idea of a Jewish national homeland (what had been promised in the Balfour Declaration). During World War II he stood strongly on the side of the Axis power and spent the war in Berlin. After the war, Husseini was arrested by the French and sentenced to three years imprisonment as a war criminal, but escaped to Egypt. The British in charge there refused to arrest him because they feared it would cause them problems with the Arabs in Egypt and Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to turn the Palestine Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. This was around the same time that all the neighboring Arab states were getting their independence, and each tried to flex puff out its own chest. With the new Jewish State, they found their perfect lynchpin. The Arab leaders took turns making threats and announcing what they would do once the Jews declared their independence (at which point it would be its own country and they could attack without having to come against the British). The only trouble was they were expected to follow through on their promises.
Sorry for the long foray there, but I don't feel the situation can be explained properly without looking at where it came from. It's not simply an Arab vs. Jew conflict, and the same themes run through again and again. The 1948 War of Independence was largely caused by Arab leaders' posturing to their own people, and then having to try and fulfill these promises.
The same thing has happened a number of times since. In the 60's, Egypt and Syria were each trying to become the leader of the Arab/Islamic world. Again, they turned to threatening Israel as a way to gain support, and it all led to the Six Day War in '67. In the early 70's, Anwar Sadat became the new Prime Minister of Egypt. He wanted to build up his country and end the conflict with Israel, but was having trouble with the Muslim Brotherhood (a forerunner of Al Quaeda). He frequently said afterwards that the only way he could make peace with Israel was to first go to war in order to get back some dignity after the Six Day War.
Today Egypt and Syria are less significant in the Arab world, but the same conflict is there. Today it's between Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Iran continues with the same old approach of threatening to destroy Israel, Saudi Arabia is looking more internationally. They feel that if they can be seen as the ones who make peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the international community will turn to them as the leader of the Muslim world. That's why they have been pushing so hard at coming up with peace plans and conferences over the past few years.
From the Palestinian point of view, things are a little more complicated. Their leaders are continuing in the Husseini approach of doing whatever necessary to be on top, even if that means taking it out on their own people. Yassir Arafat's organization, Fatah, was first formed to kill and scare "collaborators," and only then moved against Israel.
No matter how much aid and assistance was given for Palestinians, the regular people on the street lived in terrible conditions and constantly in fear, while the people on the top were living the good life (and often far from Gaza and the West Bank). The popular example is Suha Arafat, Yassir Arafat's wife, who lived in France on $200,000 a month for many years.
Returning to history briefly, in the late 80's was the First Intifada, a popular uprising by Palestinian youth. Arafat and the PLO were worried and did what they could to stop it, because they weren't in charge - they were in exile in Tunisia at the time. Instead, a new group had formed, opposed to the corruption in the PLO. They called themselves Hamas.
When the PLO began negotiating with Israel in the early 90's, Hamas vilified them as traitors to the Palestinian cause. Whenever the two groups had free time, they would fight each other, either verbally or physically. The big switches came in late 2004 and early 2005, when Arafat died and then Hamas won the elections. The West Bank and Gaza became effectively two separate entities, with the West Bank being controlled by the PLO and Gaza by Hamas (particularly after the Hamas-PLO war in Gaza a couple years ago). Even now, the first thing Hamas did after Israel left Gaza last month was to find and kill those they suspected of collaborating.
On the other hand, Hamas has entered into negotiations with Israel and has agreed on ceasefires (they were never properly followed, but that's no different than the PLO's negotiating techniques). And now there's Islamic Jihad and another new group who are declaring Hamas to be traitors for talking with Israel, and thereby implying their recognition of a Jewish State.
Finally, now an answer to your main question. In your question, you gave the main reason why the peace deals don't work when you asked whether it would be bad to either drop support for both sides or to fully support whichever side goes for peace first. Peace takes time. You can't jump from a situation like this into peace and elections within a few weeks, months, or maybe even years. But everyone is looking for the instant solution, whether it's the Oslo Accords, Madrid Conference, Taba, Roadmap For Peace, Saudi Initiative...
The Oslo Accords were an attempt at this, but everyone got too caught up in the idea of peace that they didn't want to see any problems. When Arafat would ignore his responsibilities, Israel was told to keep going with its side, because otherwise they would be "derailing the peace process." So a step-by-step approach turned into two unrelated sides having their responsiblities, which turned into just Israel having to fulfill its responsibilities (that last line is paraphrased from Yisrael Ne'eman, whom I'll get to later).
As for what is needed, I agree with Natan Sharansky. The first thing is to fix the conditions of the general Palestinian population. There's no reason they should be living in hovels without bathrooms while Hamas leaders have beachfront mansions and SUVs from money that's given as humanitarian aid (I don't think I'll forget being in the kitchen of a beautiful apartment in a nice neighborhood in Gaza and seeing bottles of cooking oil with the label "Gift of France"). Once a proper infrastructure is in place, then have elections. You won't get honest and fair people in power when gangs (which is basically what Hamas and the PLO are in many senses) kill anyone they disagree with.
If you get a chance, I'd check out Natan Sharansky's book, The Case For Democracy. He uses the example of the fall of the Soviet Union (where he was held as a political prisoner for 9 years) to show how to promote democracy. The book is touted as the explanation of the Bush Doctrine, but I completely disagree. Sharansky's main argument is that you can't support "good" tyrants and dictators in order to defeat "bad" tyrants and dictators (exactly how Bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein were put in power). Bush may have paid lip-service to Sharansky's ideals, but in practice they were ignored.
What America can or should do is a very hard question. I think right now we're in a good spot - Bush didn't have the legitimacy in the Arab/Muslim and World eyes to achieve a long-lasting solution here. Obama is a new face and I expect will be better received. Specifically what to do, though, I don't know. A lot also depends on how today's elections (which ended two hours ago) turn out, and what the Israeli politicians decide to do over the next few days.
If you're interested in following what goes on here, a professor I had at Haifa University, Yisrael Ne'eman, writes a weekly/biweekly opinion piece called Mideast: On Target. He wrote one yesterday in which he argued that the best hope for peace is if Likud wins and forms a right-centrist coalition. You can see the article at http://me-ontarget.com/2009/120-february/628-likud-victory-likud-dilemmas
Elections (from 2/10/09)
Today I voted for the first time. I haven’t been able to vote in an American election because every time one has come up, I’ve been out of the country. Both presidential elections I tried to get absentee ballots, but it never worked out (in 2004 it arrived too late, this time I just never got it at all).
The elections for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and Prime Minister. The system is completely different here - it’s a proportional representation of the whole country, rather than winner-takes-all from various areas. So if a party gets 10% of the national vote, that means they get 10% of the 120 seats in the Knesset (that’s 12 seats, for those of you playing the home game). Whichever party gets the most seats is invited to create a government, either by themselves if they have over 50% of the seats (I don’t think this has ever happened) or by creating a coalition with other parties.
A while before the elections, each party gives it’s list of candidates. Depending on how many seats the party gets, the first X people on the list get to be in the Knesset. And if the party gets the most votes, their #1 candidate will become Prime Minister. The other important aspect here is that you don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister (they tried that twice and it didn’t really work), but just for a party.
On the other hand, this leads to much more of a multi-party system. I’ve heard that Israel has more political parties than any other country - this year there are 33 running. Because of the way the system works, people that would start interest groups or lobbies in America tend to create political parties in Israel in the hopes of having a say in the government. This can lead to some unexpected difficulties - in the last election the Pensioners’ Party received more votes than they were prepared for, had to grab MKs (Member of Knesset, like MPs in Britain or Senators in America) wherever they could find them, and ended up being a strong voice in the government from a one-issue party.
I personally like the Israeli system better. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been an absentee ballot voter (or not) from Connecticut, but I’ve never felt like my vote was important. Whether I agree with them or not, Connecticut will vote Democrat, and all its electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate. And even if most of the country votes for a certain candidate, they can lose the election because their voters were from the wrong state (ask Andrew Jackson, Samuel J Tilden, Grover Cleveland, or Al Gore).
So back to Israel. There are three main parties - Kadima (currently in power), Labor, and Likud. I won’t go into left/right, because it has a different meaning here than everywhere else - there have been right-wing communist parties, and so on. Left/right in Israel means how they stand with regard to just security and dealing with Arabs. In short, the Left believes in discussions and Land For Peace, while the Right believes in taking a harder line.
Kadima has been in power since its creation in 2005. It was originally created by Ariel Sharon basically as his party (this is the third party he’s at least partially created, after ShlomTzion and the Likud in the ’70’s). It’s unofficial philosophy was “We trust Sharon,” and his candidate list was mostly people who would go along with whatever he said. On one hand, Sharon was probably the only person left in Israel who could do this successfully (Ben Gurion took the same approach for a long time when the State was first created, Begin did it for even longer, although most of the time as opposition), but on the other hand he didn’t plan for getting a stroke and being unconscious for nearly all of his term.
Because of how he set up the party, there were very few strong people to take over after him. The deputy who took over as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, didn’t have the will or the trust of the people to continue with Sharon’s plans, and things basically went to hell. I think he’s doing better now, especially after the last war, but for a while his approval rating was arouind 3%. In any case, he was caught up in too much corruption (there seems to be only one major politician who isn’t corrupt - Benny Begin, Menachem’s son) and is not allowed to run.
Labor and Likud are older parties, both effectively the two main parties from the State’s creation, just after absorbing smaller parties. Both their leaders, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, are former Prime Ministers (which leads to Kadima’s main ad, “A different Prime Minister”). Neither of them had great terms as Prime Minister, although Barak’s was cut short when he announced early elections and Sharon came into power. This doesn’t necessarily disqualify them from doing well in the future - Yitzhak Rabin followed a similar path and ended up having a very significant run until he was assassinated. Kadima’s main candidate is pretty much the only effective person they have - Tzipi Livni, the current Foreign Minister.
The other significant party right now is “Israel, Our Home,” the Russian racist (against Arabs) party with its leader, Avigdor Lieberman. They aren’t going to get a majority, but there’s a fear that they will be significant enough (currently polling at 14 seats according to Jerusalem Post) that they will be included in a coalition. Which has led to the Meretz (very left party) ad - “Vote Meretz, less Bibi [Netanyahu]-Liberman.”
In my opinion, Israel needs a strong Prime Minister whom the country can trust (note: I see a difference between “trust” and “agree with.” For example, I feel most people can trust George Bush - they feel they know what he will do, although they may disagree strongly - while they couldn’t trust John Kerry - I have friends that worked on his campaign but couldn’t tell me what he stood for), like David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, or Ariel Sharon. Barak could fit this description, but his last time as Prime Minister seemed to be characterized by the usual “Do this or else… Please do this or else… Fine, don’t do anything, we’ll keep doing our side of the agreement.”
I talked to my kibbutz family the other day, and they told me to vote for either Jewish Home or Labor. The Jewish Home Party seems to be a moderate break off from another large party - they support “education, the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and to strengthen greater Israel while fighting the sociological gaps. Wants the Oslo accords repealed… Will strive to increase Israel’s Jewishness by influencing non-religious citizens through deeds, education and by serving as examples of what religious Judaism has to offer” (from Jerusalem Post). As for Labor, they said they don’t want Barak to be Prime Minister, but they hope he gets enough significance to be in the government because he makes a good Defense Minister (his current job) and they have the best overall candidate list.
My main trouble is finding out about where each party stands. My Hebrew’s still not good enough for Hebrew newspapers, and there’s only one (perhaps two) major English paper, The Jerusalem Post (Ha’aretz also has an English version). With something like elections, I want information from more than one source and in any case, The Jerusalem Post has a lot of problems. The other night, though, I found a copy of their paper from this past Friday in which they gave a summary of each party’s platform (exactly what I had been searching for).
Going through this, there was another party that stuck out to me - Green Movement/Meimad (an acronym for “Jewish State, Democratic State”). I went through their website, and from what I can understand, they stand for the environment (which needs a lot of help here) as well as supporting the Jewishness of Israel without coercing anyone (letting people be what they want, whether Jewish/Muslim/not religious, while supporting Jewishness in Jewish areas - it’s hard to explain). Their explanation in JPost is “The green Movement/Meimad calls for reduction of air pollution by 50% over the nex four years, public conservation policies to reduce energy consumption by 25%, more funding for public transportation, empowering teachers, fighting social gaps, and promoting Jewish identity through education instead of coercive legislation.”
In the end I went with Green Movement-Meimad. There’s already enough people around here worrying about security and the financial situation.
Just a quick addition: I’m entertained by some of the very small parties (probably too small to pass the 2% threshold for into the Knesset), such as Tzomet (”giving soldiers a year of university for free, drafting haredim [very religious] and separating religion from state”), Or (that’s their name - “secularist party that supports a universal draft, bu only after the education system has been universalized to give hardfeim and Israeli Arabs a Zionist Education that would make them fit inwith the army)”, Holocaust Survivors Party (”support[s] legalizing Marijuana… also wants more benefits for survivors”), Men’s Rights Party (”fights for divorced dads”), Power For The Handicapped Party, Power of Money party (”struggles against the banks”)…
The elections for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and Prime Minister. The system is completely different here - it’s a proportional representation of the whole country, rather than winner-takes-all from various areas. So if a party gets 10% of the national vote, that means they get 10% of the 120 seats in the Knesset (that’s 12 seats, for those of you playing the home game). Whichever party gets the most seats is invited to create a government, either by themselves if they have over 50% of the seats (I don’t think this has ever happened) or by creating a coalition with other parties.
A while before the elections, each party gives it’s list of candidates. Depending on how many seats the party gets, the first X people on the list get to be in the Knesset. And if the party gets the most votes, their #1 candidate will become Prime Minister. The other important aspect here is that you don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister (they tried that twice and it didn’t really work), but just for a party.
On the other hand, this leads to much more of a multi-party system. I’ve heard that Israel has more political parties than any other country - this year there are 33 running. Because of the way the system works, people that would start interest groups or lobbies in America tend to create political parties in Israel in the hopes of having a say in the government. This can lead to some unexpected difficulties - in the last election the Pensioners’ Party received more votes than they were prepared for, had to grab MKs (Member of Knesset, like MPs in Britain or Senators in America) wherever they could find them, and ended up being a strong voice in the government from a one-issue party.
I personally like the Israeli system better. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been an absentee ballot voter (or not) from Connecticut, but I’ve never felt like my vote was important. Whether I agree with them or not, Connecticut will vote Democrat, and all its electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate. And even if most of the country votes for a certain candidate, they can lose the election because their voters were from the wrong state (ask Andrew Jackson, Samuel J Tilden, Grover Cleveland, or Al Gore).
So back to Israel. There are three main parties - Kadima (currently in power), Labor, and Likud. I won’t go into left/right, because it has a different meaning here than everywhere else - there have been right-wing communist parties, and so on. Left/right in Israel means how they stand with regard to just security and dealing with Arabs. In short, the Left believes in discussions and Land For Peace, while the Right believes in taking a harder line.
Kadima has been in power since its creation in 2005. It was originally created by Ariel Sharon basically as his party (this is the third party he’s at least partially created, after ShlomTzion and the Likud in the ’70’s). It’s unofficial philosophy was “We trust Sharon,” and his candidate list was mostly people who would go along with whatever he said. On one hand, Sharon was probably the only person left in Israel who could do this successfully (Ben Gurion took the same approach for a long time when the State was first created, Begin did it for even longer, although most of the time as opposition), but on the other hand he didn’t plan for getting a stroke and being unconscious for nearly all of his term.
Because of how he set up the party, there were very few strong people to take over after him. The deputy who took over as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, didn’t have the will or the trust of the people to continue with Sharon’s plans, and things basically went to hell. I think he’s doing better now, especially after the last war, but for a while his approval rating was arouind 3%. In any case, he was caught up in too much corruption (there seems to be only one major politician who isn’t corrupt - Benny Begin, Menachem’s son) and is not allowed to run.
Labor and Likud are older parties, both effectively the two main parties from the State’s creation, just after absorbing smaller parties. Both their leaders, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, are former Prime Ministers (which leads to Kadima’s main ad, “A different Prime Minister”). Neither of them had great terms as Prime Minister, although Barak’s was cut short when he announced early elections and Sharon came into power. This doesn’t necessarily disqualify them from doing well in the future - Yitzhak Rabin followed a similar path and ended up having a very significant run until he was assassinated. Kadima’s main candidate is pretty much the only effective person they have - Tzipi Livni, the current Foreign Minister.
The other significant party right now is “Israel, Our Home,” the Russian racist (against Arabs) party with its leader, Avigdor Lieberman. They aren’t going to get a majority, but there’s a fear that they will be significant enough (currently polling at 14 seats according to Jerusalem Post) that they will be included in a coalition. Which has led to the Meretz (very left party) ad - “Vote Meretz, less Bibi [Netanyahu]-Liberman.”
In my opinion, Israel needs a strong Prime Minister whom the country can trust (note: I see a difference between “trust” and “agree with.” For example, I feel most people can trust George Bush - they feel they know what he will do, although they may disagree strongly - while they couldn’t trust John Kerry - I have friends that worked on his campaign but couldn’t tell me what he stood for), like David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, or Ariel Sharon. Barak could fit this description, but his last time as Prime Minister seemed to be characterized by the usual “Do this or else… Please do this or else… Fine, don’t do anything, we’ll keep doing our side of the agreement.”
I talked to my kibbutz family the other day, and they told me to vote for either Jewish Home or Labor. The Jewish Home Party seems to be a moderate break off from another large party - they support “education, the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and to strengthen greater Israel while fighting the sociological gaps. Wants the Oslo accords repealed… Will strive to increase Israel’s Jewishness by influencing non-religious citizens through deeds, education and by serving as examples of what religious Judaism has to offer” (from Jerusalem Post). As for Labor, they said they don’t want Barak to be Prime Minister, but they hope he gets enough significance to be in the government because he makes a good Defense Minister (his current job) and they have the best overall candidate list.
My main trouble is finding out about where each party stands. My Hebrew’s still not good enough for Hebrew newspapers, and there’s only one (perhaps two) major English paper, The Jerusalem Post (Ha’aretz also has an English version). With something like elections, I want information from more than one source and in any case, The Jerusalem Post has a lot of problems. The other night, though, I found a copy of their paper from this past Friday in which they gave a summary of each party’s platform (exactly what I had been searching for).
Going through this, there was another party that stuck out to me - Green Movement/Meimad (an acronym for “Jewish State, Democratic State”). I went through their website, and from what I can understand, they stand for the environment (which needs a lot of help here) as well as supporting the Jewishness of Israel without coercing anyone (letting people be what they want, whether Jewish/Muslim/not religious, while supporting Jewishness in Jewish areas - it’s hard to explain). Their explanation in JPost is “The green Movement/Meimad calls for reduction of air pollution by 50% over the nex four years, public conservation policies to reduce energy consumption by 25%, more funding for public transportation, empowering teachers, fighting social gaps, and promoting Jewish identity through education instead of coercive legislation.”
In the end I went with Green Movement-Meimad. There’s already enough people around here worrying about security and the financial situation.
Just a quick addition: I’m entertained by some of the very small parties (probably too small to pass the 2% threshold for into the Knesset), such as Tzomet (”giving soldiers a year of university for free, drafting haredim [very religious] and separating religion from state”), Or (that’s their name - “secularist party that supports a universal draft, bu only after the education system has been universalized to give hardfeim and Israeli Arabs a Zionist Education that would make them fit inwith the army)”, Holocaust Survivors Party (”support[s] legalizing Marijuana… also wants more benefits for survivors”), Men’s Rights Party (”fights for divorced dads”), Power For The Handicapped Party, Power of Money party (”struggles against the banks”)…
Thoughts On The War (From 1/29/09)
Many people have asked me what the war in Gaza was like, so here seems a good way to answer a number of you together and in proper detail.
For a long time now, I’d been wondering what it feels like when a war starts. To be at Pearl Harbor or the German-Belgian border in 1914… Not that I wanted there to be a war, I was just curious what it’s like the moment peace (of whatever sort) switches to war. I was guarding Gaza for something like 7 months, and there were many times when it seemed something was going to start, but it always either calmed down or turned out to be nothing.
We finished our new unit’s training at the end of December, and were supposed to get a long weekend (meaning 2 days) off, especially as we had closed the previous one (during training you get a lot more chances to go home), before heading up north for training and exercises with the entire brigade. Instead, they told us we were heading back to our base outside of Gaza because they were afraid something would happen.
We got back to Kissufim Thursday afternoon, unpacked and arranged all of our equipment and got settled in for what we expected to be a couple days of sitting around doing very little before heading up north. To our surprise, the next day my officer came up to a few of us and told us we’d be spending the night in the field, trying to catch a sniper who’d been shooting at our patrols. We got excited for it because we saw it as our last chance to do something in Gaza, plus I’d be going with some good friends from another platoon whom I know work well and I can trust.
Surprise again, that evening we were told that Israel was giving Hamas a 24-hour “test” to see if they’d go for a new cease-fire. Meaning for us that we had absolutely no permission to fire guns, even if there was a terrorist standing on the fence with two Kalatchnikovs and an explosive belt. No opening fire whatsoever. So we went back to expecting a day or two of very little to do and then leaving the area.
Saturday morning I was hanging out with Jared and Rami, two Americans with me, when the base shook and we heard a number of very loud explosions. I was convinced the kibbutz we were attached to had been hit, and we all ran to grab our equipment and find out what to do.
Over the course of the afternoon, we learned that it was our air force that attacked Gaza after they fired a rocket at us, and that something was on. They told us we’d be entering in the next day or two, and to take just what we’d need for the next week - everything else would catch up with us.
We headed to a large base somewhere in the area and began preparing equipment, learning our assignments, and so on. It seemed like every morning they’d give us a new plan for how we’d go in the next day, then every night we’d be told it was put off another day and there’s another new plan. We used the time well, though. We fixed up all the equipment, did some important last-minute training, and even got to see friends we hadn’t seen in a long time (all the infantry who were going in were at the base together).
Plus, we were drowned in donations. They constantly distributed candy, gloves, phone chargers/batteries, and all sorts of random things. People came to visit, including the President of Bed, Bath, and Beyond - turns out he’s also in charge of the American side of the Friends Of The IDF organization, and Avigdor Kahalani (A very famous soldier - it’s could be argued that if it wasn’t for his incredible work during the Yom Kippur War, the State of Israel wouldn’t exist today). They came specifically looking for American soldiers, so I talked to them for a bit, they filmed me and some of my friends, and were very nice. To be honest, talking to Kahalani relaxed me more than anything else - I realized that almost no matter what happens, it can’t be worse than what he went through, and he made it out (of course, I tried to think about him rather than all the other guys who had been with him)
Finally Friday night, the commander of the Paratroopers gave a speech to all of us. For the whole week, we’d been discussing and questioning if we’d go in at all or they’d just cancel it in the end. Once the commander got up, I was convinced it was going to happen. The IDF is required to follow Jewish law anytime there isn’t a valid reason to break it, and one of the rules is that you can’t use microphones or speakers on Shabbat. So if the Paratrooper’s rabbi was watching the commander speaking into a microphone on Friday night, it had to be something big.
Saturday afternoon we all got onto buses to head to yet another base just at the edge of Gaza. We did some last-minute organizing of bags, had another speech by the batallion commander, and started walking.
As we were going in, we were preceeded by the helicopters. We quickly got used to the loud blast, buzz, then a flash off in the distance as they fired their rockets. Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sun Is Burning” kept going through my head:
Now the sun has come to earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
After several hours of walking with my incredibly uncomfortable bag, we finally made it to our hill. We began digging our holes and setting up equipment. I don’t know how to say my unit’s job in English, but basically we watch through binoculars to find the enemy as well as aiming mortars/helicopters… So in general, we are a bit away from the action.
At some point while we were setting up, my officer came over to me and said, “Matt, we got a report that they’re sending a suicide bomber at us. It’s your job to find and kill him.” I got myself ready and started looking around, terrified and trying not to think that everyone with us’s lives depended on me finding someone trying to sneak up to us in the middle of the night. After a while they decided no one was coming, so I went back to digging holes.
That night was by far the scariest time of my life. Lying down and trying to sleep, while realizing that no matter how hard I worked and training, the only thing keeping me alive was the random chance that their mortars would miss my hole.
Over the first few days, though, you learn to get over it. There’s nothing you can do, and in any case, they didn’t hit anywhere near us. We just went about our day, taking turns looking through the binoculars and trying to sleep when we could. The real problem turned out to be the cold. Our boots are designed so they let in cold and keep our heat. That works well in the summer, but when it’s January and you can’t feel your toes 10 hours each day, it’s another story. We did everything we could to keep them warm - one person put an empty sandbag over each boot then stuck them into his backpack, I first put my feet into my bag and then put some extra clothes over them… nothing really helped, though.
We only had one big event in our first spot. We were sitting around one afternoon, when we saw something come out of the sky towards my commander’s hole and dirt burst all around (he was behind a bank of dirt, so we couldn’t see exactly what happened). Levi yelled, “They hit Vlad!” and we all held our breath as our officer ran to see what happened. Vlad was standing in his hole in shock, with a tank shell literally a meter away from him. We still have no idea how it didn’t explode. People shot guns at us a few times, but we were safe in our holes and they never made it close to us.
After a few days in our spot, we got news that we were finally leaving for a new location. Happy to finally go somewhere new, we hiked over, climbed up a steep hill, and realized whoever sent us forgot to mention there were already people there. Again, we were lucky they didn’t shoot us, but we got things settled out quickly. It was another Paratrooper unit, so we saw ran into some friends who had been doing basically the same thing we had, and we began again setting everything up.
The next day the other unit left and we were in the same situation we had been in previously, just with a new view. We had several more days of frozen feet, until we were told on Friday night (everything in the war seemed to happen on Shabbat) that we’d be going into the city.
We’d been told that it was harder for everyone who was inside the city, that they were warmer but almost never slept, constantly moved from house to house… After some moving around and walking ourselves, we got to our first house. This was a mansion, just with absolutely no furnishings - no beds, chairs, rugs, windows… We spent the night with an exhausting guarding schedule as tanks and one of our companies attacked some buildings a few meters away from us. We weren’t too happy with the tanks after they tried to kill Vlad, and they weren’t helping things by nearly destroying our eardrums with their non-stop blasting.
Shortly before dawn we headed back to the first house we had briefly stopped in, and then to a new house of our own. All of the buildings we saw and entered had been cleaned out well before by advance units, so there was never any danger of people being inside, traps, or any of that.
We basically spent the rest of the week changing houses once a day or so, and as usual, looking through binoculars. But unlike what we had been told, we slept quite well. At least, as well as you can with a bulletproof vest and combat vest on, not to mention being in the same uniform you’d been wearing for four weeks straight.
Once again, we had our one bit of excitement when just before leaving a house, someone turned on a flashlight to make sure they didn’t forget anything. Immediately there were two cracks and a couple of bullet holes appeared a few centimeters from my officer’s head. Thankfully we already had everything ready, so we quickly finished up and got out.
Finally, early Sunday morning we were in yet another house, getting instructions on where to guard and all, when our officer ran upstairs to us and told us to forget all of that, there’s a ceasefire and we’d be leaving in 20 minutes. Things took a bit longer to work out, but we were excited. We could finally leave and hopefully go home sometime in the near future. No more hurting ribs from the vests or having to get up every few hours to guard.
The walk back would normally have been incredibly difficult, but we were too excited and exhausted to care that much. We had a six kilometer hike along the coast (very much along the coast - I got water in my boot a couple times). I wasn’t too sure on the plan, and kept thinking about one of our briefings back at the last base, when they told us how the beaches were all mined, but we made it out alright.
We entered the nearby base as dawn broke and felt we could finally breath. My company commander gave me his phone so I could call my parents - I hadn’t talked to them since Kissufim. We took off our equipment finally and had something to eat. After several hours we went back to the big base to be ready in case the ceasefire didn’t hold. Finally, on Monday evening after something like 38 straight days in the army, they let me go home, and tomorrow morning I have to be at this base up north.
I’m still somewhat unsure how I feel about the whole thing. On one hand, it was planned and carried out incredibly well - we expected lots of tough fighting, many people killed… but between the air force and the Paratrooper Commander’s brilliant entrance plan, nearly everyone ran away. We saw maybe 5-10 “bad guys” the whole time, and I never once fired my gun, neither of which I’m terribly sad about.
I have no idea how things were outside of Israel, but from what I’ve heard, the whole country really came together during the last few weeks. They understood it was necessary and this time, unlike in Lebanon, we were ready and knew what we were doing. Everywhere I go, I see banners and billboards encouraging the soldiers and wishing us luck and love. I find it slightly odd - those of us who were actually in the war and (I assume) were the intended targets of these had no way to see or even know about them. But still a very nice gesture.
From my friends, I am amazed by the care and concern. I turned on my computer and was flooded by messages from friends making sure I’m alright, people constantly left messages on my phone the whole time I was inside (which I never saw since they were deleted as being too old before I even got out). Darby in particular - like most of my friends, I talk to her very infrequently since I started the army, but she was so worried between what she saw on the news and that I hadn’t updated Facebook in weeks, sent a letter to Wheaton asking if they’d heard anything and even somehow found my parents and kept up conversation with them. To all of you, thank you so much. It all means a huge amount to me.
As for my personal reaction, I hated it. I didn’t like the idea of war beforehand, and like it even less now that I’ve seen some. I couldn’t get over how much effort, time, and money are put into nothing more than destruction. You see families’ homes with giant holes in the walls, doors broken in…
Don’t get me wrong, though. As I said, this was necessary to do. I don’t consider the war to truly have started in January, but rather years ago when they started shooting rockets into Israeli cities and towns. As they say, there is only one reason to go to war - when they attack you first and you have to defend yourself.
As a final point, I’d also like to register my disgust with what I saw on the other side. I’d always heard how everyone in Gaza lives in poverty, they have nothing, it’s terribly overcrowded… We stayed in the houses of people from Hamas, and of you would be happy to switch homes with them. Mansions and villas larger than any house I’ve seen to in America, beautiful apartments, great views of the sea and expansive private lawns, expensive SUVs, imported furniture, fancy computers… while the regular people, those not in Hamas or some other terrorist group live in shacks without even a bathroom. And the Hamas guys don’t care at all. Even during the war, they forced children and families to stay with some of the higher-ups in order that they could shoot at us without us shooting back.
One final thing that confused me - I didn’t see a single paved road. I have no idea why. Even next to the mansions, every road was dirt. If someone can explain, please do.
For a long time now, I’d been wondering what it feels like when a war starts. To be at Pearl Harbor or the German-Belgian border in 1914… Not that I wanted there to be a war, I was just curious what it’s like the moment peace (of whatever sort) switches to war. I was guarding Gaza for something like 7 months, and there were many times when it seemed something was going to start, but it always either calmed down or turned out to be nothing.
We finished our new unit’s training at the end of December, and were supposed to get a long weekend (meaning 2 days) off, especially as we had closed the previous one (during training you get a lot more chances to go home), before heading up north for training and exercises with the entire brigade. Instead, they told us we were heading back to our base outside of Gaza because they were afraid something would happen.
We got back to Kissufim Thursday afternoon, unpacked and arranged all of our equipment and got settled in for what we expected to be a couple days of sitting around doing very little before heading up north. To our surprise, the next day my officer came up to a few of us and told us we’d be spending the night in the field, trying to catch a sniper who’d been shooting at our patrols. We got excited for it because we saw it as our last chance to do something in Gaza, plus I’d be going with some good friends from another platoon whom I know work well and I can trust.
Surprise again, that evening we were told that Israel was giving Hamas a 24-hour “test” to see if they’d go for a new cease-fire. Meaning for us that we had absolutely no permission to fire guns, even if there was a terrorist standing on the fence with two Kalatchnikovs and an explosive belt. No opening fire whatsoever. So we went back to expecting a day or two of very little to do and then leaving the area.
Saturday morning I was hanging out with Jared and Rami, two Americans with me, when the base shook and we heard a number of very loud explosions. I was convinced the kibbutz we were attached to had been hit, and we all ran to grab our equipment and find out what to do.
Over the course of the afternoon, we learned that it was our air force that attacked Gaza after they fired a rocket at us, and that something was on. They told us we’d be entering in the next day or two, and to take just what we’d need for the next week - everything else would catch up with us.
We headed to a large base somewhere in the area and began preparing equipment, learning our assignments, and so on. It seemed like every morning they’d give us a new plan for how we’d go in the next day, then every night we’d be told it was put off another day and there’s another new plan. We used the time well, though. We fixed up all the equipment, did some important last-minute training, and even got to see friends we hadn’t seen in a long time (all the infantry who were going in were at the base together).
Plus, we were drowned in donations. They constantly distributed candy, gloves, phone chargers/batteries, and all sorts of random things. People came to visit, including the President of Bed, Bath, and Beyond - turns out he’s also in charge of the American side of the Friends Of The IDF organization, and Avigdor Kahalani (A very famous soldier - it’s could be argued that if it wasn’t for his incredible work during the Yom Kippur War, the State of Israel wouldn’t exist today). They came specifically looking for American soldiers, so I talked to them for a bit, they filmed me and some of my friends, and were very nice. To be honest, talking to Kahalani relaxed me more than anything else - I realized that almost no matter what happens, it can’t be worse than what he went through, and he made it out (of course, I tried to think about him rather than all the other guys who had been with him)
Finally Friday night, the commander of the Paratroopers gave a speech to all of us. For the whole week, we’d been discussing and questioning if we’d go in at all or they’d just cancel it in the end. Once the commander got up, I was convinced it was going to happen. The IDF is required to follow Jewish law anytime there isn’t a valid reason to break it, and one of the rules is that you can’t use microphones or speakers on Shabbat. So if the Paratrooper’s rabbi was watching the commander speaking into a microphone on Friday night, it had to be something big.
Saturday afternoon we all got onto buses to head to yet another base just at the edge of Gaza. We did some last-minute organizing of bags, had another speech by the batallion commander, and started walking.
As we were going in, we were preceeded by the helicopters. We quickly got used to the loud blast, buzz, then a flash off in the distance as they fired their rockets. Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sun Is Burning” kept going through my head:
Now the sun has come to earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
After several hours of walking with my incredibly uncomfortable bag, we finally made it to our hill. We began digging our holes and setting up equipment. I don’t know how to say my unit’s job in English, but basically we watch through binoculars to find the enemy as well as aiming mortars/helicopters… So in general, we are a bit away from the action.
At some point while we were setting up, my officer came over to me and said, “Matt, we got a report that they’re sending a suicide bomber at us. It’s your job to find and kill him.” I got myself ready and started looking around, terrified and trying not to think that everyone with us’s lives depended on me finding someone trying to sneak up to us in the middle of the night. After a while they decided no one was coming, so I went back to digging holes.
That night was by far the scariest time of my life. Lying down and trying to sleep, while realizing that no matter how hard I worked and training, the only thing keeping me alive was the random chance that their mortars would miss my hole.
Over the first few days, though, you learn to get over it. There’s nothing you can do, and in any case, they didn’t hit anywhere near us. We just went about our day, taking turns looking through the binoculars and trying to sleep when we could. The real problem turned out to be the cold. Our boots are designed so they let in cold and keep our heat. That works well in the summer, but when it’s January and you can’t feel your toes 10 hours each day, it’s another story. We did everything we could to keep them warm - one person put an empty sandbag over each boot then stuck them into his backpack, I first put my feet into my bag and then put some extra clothes over them… nothing really helped, though.
We only had one big event in our first spot. We were sitting around one afternoon, when we saw something come out of the sky towards my commander’s hole and dirt burst all around (he was behind a bank of dirt, so we couldn’t see exactly what happened). Levi yelled, “They hit Vlad!” and we all held our breath as our officer ran to see what happened. Vlad was standing in his hole in shock, with a tank shell literally a meter away from him. We still have no idea how it didn’t explode. People shot guns at us a few times, but we were safe in our holes and they never made it close to us.
After a few days in our spot, we got news that we were finally leaving for a new location. Happy to finally go somewhere new, we hiked over, climbed up a steep hill, and realized whoever sent us forgot to mention there were already people there. Again, we were lucky they didn’t shoot us, but we got things settled out quickly. It was another Paratrooper unit, so we saw ran into some friends who had been doing basically the same thing we had, and we began again setting everything up.
The next day the other unit left and we were in the same situation we had been in previously, just with a new view. We had several more days of frozen feet, until we were told on Friday night (everything in the war seemed to happen on Shabbat) that we’d be going into the city.
We’d been told that it was harder for everyone who was inside the city, that they were warmer but almost never slept, constantly moved from house to house… After some moving around and walking ourselves, we got to our first house. This was a mansion, just with absolutely no furnishings - no beds, chairs, rugs, windows… We spent the night with an exhausting guarding schedule as tanks and one of our companies attacked some buildings a few meters away from us. We weren’t too happy with the tanks after they tried to kill Vlad, and they weren’t helping things by nearly destroying our eardrums with their non-stop blasting.
Shortly before dawn we headed back to the first house we had briefly stopped in, and then to a new house of our own. All of the buildings we saw and entered had been cleaned out well before by advance units, so there was never any danger of people being inside, traps, or any of that.
We basically spent the rest of the week changing houses once a day or so, and as usual, looking through binoculars. But unlike what we had been told, we slept quite well. At least, as well as you can with a bulletproof vest and combat vest on, not to mention being in the same uniform you’d been wearing for four weeks straight.
Once again, we had our one bit of excitement when just before leaving a house, someone turned on a flashlight to make sure they didn’t forget anything. Immediately there were two cracks and a couple of bullet holes appeared a few centimeters from my officer’s head. Thankfully we already had everything ready, so we quickly finished up and got out.
Finally, early Sunday morning we were in yet another house, getting instructions on where to guard and all, when our officer ran upstairs to us and told us to forget all of that, there’s a ceasefire and we’d be leaving in 20 minutes. Things took a bit longer to work out, but we were excited. We could finally leave and hopefully go home sometime in the near future. No more hurting ribs from the vests or having to get up every few hours to guard.
The walk back would normally have been incredibly difficult, but we were too excited and exhausted to care that much. We had a six kilometer hike along the coast (very much along the coast - I got water in my boot a couple times). I wasn’t too sure on the plan, and kept thinking about one of our briefings back at the last base, when they told us how the beaches were all mined, but we made it out alright.
We entered the nearby base as dawn broke and felt we could finally breath. My company commander gave me his phone so I could call my parents - I hadn’t talked to them since Kissufim. We took off our equipment finally and had something to eat. After several hours we went back to the big base to be ready in case the ceasefire didn’t hold. Finally, on Monday evening after something like 38 straight days in the army, they let me go home, and tomorrow morning I have to be at this base up north.
I’m still somewhat unsure how I feel about the whole thing. On one hand, it was planned and carried out incredibly well - we expected lots of tough fighting, many people killed… but between the air force and the Paratrooper Commander’s brilliant entrance plan, nearly everyone ran away. We saw maybe 5-10 “bad guys” the whole time, and I never once fired my gun, neither of which I’m terribly sad about.
I have no idea how things were outside of Israel, but from what I’ve heard, the whole country really came together during the last few weeks. They understood it was necessary and this time, unlike in Lebanon, we were ready and knew what we were doing. Everywhere I go, I see banners and billboards encouraging the soldiers and wishing us luck and love. I find it slightly odd - those of us who were actually in the war and (I assume) were the intended targets of these had no way to see or even know about them. But still a very nice gesture.
From my friends, I am amazed by the care and concern. I turned on my computer and was flooded by messages from friends making sure I’m alright, people constantly left messages on my phone the whole time I was inside (which I never saw since they were deleted as being too old before I even got out). Darby in particular - like most of my friends, I talk to her very infrequently since I started the army, but she was so worried between what she saw on the news and that I hadn’t updated Facebook in weeks, sent a letter to Wheaton asking if they’d heard anything and even somehow found my parents and kept up conversation with them. To all of you, thank you so much. It all means a huge amount to me.
As for my personal reaction, I hated it. I didn’t like the idea of war beforehand, and like it even less now that I’ve seen some. I couldn’t get over how much effort, time, and money are put into nothing more than destruction. You see families’ homes with giant holes in the walls, doors broken in…
Don’t get me wrong, though. As I said, this was necessary to do. I don’t consider the war to truly have started in January, but rather years ago when they started shooting rockets into Israeli cities and towns. As they say, there is only one reason to go to war - when they attack you first and you have to defend yourself.
As a final point, I’d also like to register my disgust with what I saw on the other side. I’d always heard how everyone in Gaza lives in poverty, they have nothing, it’s terribly overcrowded… We stayed in the houses of people from Hamas, and of you would be happy to switch homes with them. Mansions and villas larger than any house I’ve seen to in America, beautiful apartments, great views of the sea and expansive private lawns, expensive SUVs, imported furniture, fancy computers… while the regular people, those not in Hamas or some other terrorist group live in shacks without even a bathroom. And the Hamas guys don’t care at all. Even during the war, they forced children and families to stay with some of the higher-ups in order that they could shoot at us without us shooting back.
One final thing that confused me - I didn’t see a single paved road. I have no idea why. Even next to the mansions, every road was dirt. If someone can explain, please do.
Remember Me?
Sorry I haven't updated here in so long. I just didn't feel like I had that much to say, and never had the energy to write anything. However, a there is news and I have written about it in a couple of other blogs, so I'll cut and paste to here.
Enjoy
Enjoy
Saturday, February 2, 2008
How Has It Been Almost A Month Again?
As usual, no real update. But I do have some pictures to distract you all.
Our room - as I said, it's like a hostel. Although this was our room as it started; we now have another two pairs of beds and at least three more closets (one bed and all the closets in the middle of the room). It's still very nice accomodations, there's just no room to walk.
Various soldiers in my unit
After our first week in the field (שבוע שדעות - Shavuah Seda'ut, which I don't know the meaning in English). I'm in the foreground of all three.
After the Tekes Hashba'ah [Swearing-in Ceremony]
And finally:
Me after a week of Krav Maga [very intense martial art developed by the IDF] and exercises
Our room - as I said, it's like a hostel. Although this was our room as it started; we now have another two pairs of beds and at least three more closets (one bed and all the closets in the middle of the room). It's still very nice accomodations, there's just no room to walk.
Various soldiers in my unit
After our first week in the field (שבוע שדעות - Shavuah Seda'ut, which I don't know the meaning in English). I'm in the foreground of all three.
After the Tekes Hashba'ah [Swearing-in Ceremony]
And finally:
Me after a week of Krav Maga [very intense martial art developed by the IDF] and exercises
Saturday, January 5, 2008
I'm Still Alive
Hi again everyone. It's about time I updated this. Unfortunately, it's been so long (rather, it feels like it's been so long) and we've done so much, I can't promise that my memory is perfectly accurate on the minutiae and timings.
Where did I leave off? Right, in the middle of Michve Alon. Well, I don't have the energy for a full and proper update, so I'll just write about one of the more interesting and busy events of the last two months: the gibush [try-out] for Tzanchanim [the Paratroopers]. The timing isn't too far from where I left off - it was at the beginning of my second week. As usual, I hope to give a fuller update sometime in the future.
------------------------------------
Sunday morning several of us had to show up at the central army base near Tel Aviv for the gibush, while everyone else got a day off. Not wanting to show up late and exhausted, I spent Saturday night at Zagny's (a friend from my first kibbutz) place in Tel Aviv. It was good seeing her and her boyfriend, David, again, although they were so busy with schoolwork and I only arrived around 10 or 10:30, so there wasn't much time for socializing.
The next morning I made it to Tel HaShomer (the base) just around 9:30, but it being Israel, we still had a while to wait for everything to start. I was definitely too confident going in - I had heard that 4 out of every 5 people trying out get in, and from Michve Alon, I had no doubts that I was in the top 80%. I'm not sure exactly how many of us there were in total, but they said it was something over 150.
We started very simply. Everyone was taken into the main area for the gibush, which mainly consisted of a large asphalt patch and a field full of 8-person tents. We were separated into groups and tents, then put all our stuff down and set up cots.
Once that was finished, we were taken to lunch. As is typical for Tel HaShomer, it was quite good and we had enough time to eat all we wanted (For that matter, meal times have rarely been a cause for hunger so far). After eating we went back to more setting up and processing, mainly doctor's tests and filling out forms.
Finally just before evening, we started that actual gibush. Normally it opens with a Bar Or, the IDF's physical fitness test of pushups, situps, and a 2km run. But for some reason they decided to reduce it to just a one kilometer run. The challenge was that we had to run on a dirt path, and it had poured during the afternoon.
Unfortunately, I was used to running on roads and proper surfaces, so I paced myself poorly. Just as I felt like I was about to collapse, I passed the guy yelling, "200 more meters." I finished in 4:04 - I think I was around the middle, but I was too out of breath to be sure.
After a few minutes to rest and recover, we moved to the next event. This one was definitely my strong point: we had to empty our canteens and quickly as possible. Finally a chance to put my college education to use! At most there were one or two people who finished before me in each of the three canteens.
I'm sure they paid attention to how well everyone did, but they only wrote down that each person finished. I'm not too sure on why they had us drink, but it seems to be a common army practice, and each time they repeat how it's not a good way to be hydrated.
Once everyone finished going to the bathroom, we returning to the cafeteria for dinner. Again it was a good meal, but I didn't plan ahead and had several cups of water to drink. As I should have known, as soon as dinner ended we were back to the canteens. The first (fourth of the day) I was fine with, but I had to stop several times during the last one. Even after I got it all down, I had to run over to the side as it all came back up. On the other hand, I've heard they look for people who throw up after the water - it shows they're trying harder or something.
That was all for the first day. We headed off to the tents for the best sleep I'd had in weeks (I don't know what it is about the Tel HaShomer cots, but I seem to sleep better on them than anywhere else) and were given a simple wake up around 4:30 the next morning. By simple, I mean it was just someone coming by to wake us up and tell us we had seven minutes or so to dress and be outside - we were expecting someone to come screaming through in the middle of the night to throw us outside and have us run and work with no warning.
The second morning started with a while of getting everyone together and prepared, then another enjoyable breakfast, and finally off to the hard day of the gibush. We filled up 20kg sandbags, got out the stretcher and jerrycans, and headed out to the field. The next several hours consisted of lining everyone in our group (30 or so of us) up, and having us run back and forth over and over. We would get a few seconds in between each so they could write down the numbers either of the first or last five. Then we loaded the stretcher with several sandbags and the game became the first four to finish would pick up the stretcher and everyone (including the four) would do another lap). Then it was the last four who get the stretcher.
With the straight running, I generally came in third or fourth each time, but for some reason once the stretcher was opened, I was always one or two people behind it. I figured they pay attention to everything, not just those whose numbers are written, so I just took off my hat when I ran - I figured that I'm recognizable enough, this way they'd see that I'm trying hard and doing well, just not the top four.
After two or three hours of this, we moved on from the physical exercises. We were told to use whatever we could find around the field to make a model of the state of Israel, then they'd ask each of us in turn to put a stone on various cities. The gibush was primarily for foreigners, so there were a lot of wrong answers and it seemed like a great exercise in general to me.
Next we moved over to an area with three metal stands and another one further off with tired stacks on it. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the game where you try to move rings of different sizes from one peg to another, moving one at a time, and without having a larger ring on top of a smaller one. For those of you who aren't familiar, that's how it works. I think this was my other strong event - I was familiar with how the game works, so I basically took over, running back and forth and telling everyone what to do.
These mental and cooperative challenged finished, we went back to another couple hours of running back and forth, and just about finished by early afternoon. All that remained was the most significant part, the interviews. The interview was mainly us talking a bit about ourselves and why we wanted to be in Tzanchanim. The only part I was concerned about was when they asked me to stop speaking Hebrew, because they couldn't understand me. But they were friendly and spoke English very well.
Once we had finished everything, we had a small lunch, mainly bread, chocolate milk, and pudding, got everyone together, and returned to Michve Alon. We made it back before all the regular people, who had been at a nearby kibbutz doing some sort of educational day.
-----------------------------------
Not to leave you all in suspense, I'll quickly skip ahead to the results. My assumption was way off, and only 28 of the 150+ of us who finished were accepted into Tzanchanim. Numerically speaking, that makes this probably the toughest gibush in all the army. I was surprised at a number of the choices - there were a bunch of people who did very well but didn't get in, and a few that I never would have expected to make it who did.
As for me, I was one of the successful ones, so the past month and a half that you haven't heard from me, I've been in Paratrooper basic training.
Where did I leave off? Right, in the middle of Michve Alon. Well, I don't have the energy for a full and proper update, so I'll just write about one of the more interesting and busy events of the last two months: the gibush [try-out] for Tzanchanim [the Paratroopers]. The timing isn't too far from where I left off - it was at the beginning of my second week. As usual, I hope to give a fuller update sometime in the future.
------------------------------------
Sunday morning several of us had to show up at the central army base near Tel Aviv for the gibush, while everyone else got a day off. Not wanting to show up late and exhausted, I spent Saturday night at Zagny's (a friend from my first kibbutz) place in Tel Aviv. It was good seeing her and her boyfriend, David, again, although they were so busy with schoolwork and I only arrived around 10 or 10:30, so there wasn't much time for socializing.
The next morning I made it to Tel HaShomer (the base) just around 9:30, but it being Israel, we still had a while to wait for everything to start. I was definitely too confident going in - I had heard that 4 out of every 5 people trying out get in, and from Michve Alon, I had no doubts that I was in the top 80%. I'm not sure exactly how many of us there were in total, but they said it was something over 150.
We started very simply. Everyone was taken into the main area for the gibush, which mainly consisted of a large asphalt patch and a field full of 8-person tents. We were separated into groups and tents, then put all our stuff down and set up cots.
Once that was finished, we were taken to lunch. As is typical for Tel HaShomer, it was quite good and we had enough time to eat all we wanted (For that matter, meal times have rarely been a cause for hunger so far). After eating we went back to more setting up and processing, mainly doctor's tests and filling out forms.
Finally just before evening, we started that actual gibush. Normally it opens with a Bar Or, the IDF's physical fitness test of pushups, situps, and a 2km run. But for some reason they decided to reduce it to just a one kilometer run. The challenge was that we had to run on a dirt path, and it had poured during the afternoon.
Unfortunately, I was used to running on roads and proper surfaces, so I paced myself poorly. Just as I felt like I was about to collapse, I passed the guy yelling, "200 more meters." I finished in 4:04 - I think I was around the middle, but I was too out of breath to be sure.
After a few minutes to rest and recover, we moved to the next event. This one was definitely my strong point: we had to empty our canteens and quickly as possible. Finally a chance to put my college education to use! At most there were one or two people who finished before me in each of the three canteens.
I'm sure they paid attention to how well everyone did, but they only wrote down that each person finished. I'm not too sure on why they had us drink, but it seems to be a common army practice, and each time they repeat how it's not a good way to be hydrated.
Once everyone finished going to the bathroom, we returning to the cafeteria for dinner. Again it was a good meal, but I didn't plan ahead and had several cups of water to drink. As I should have known, as soon as dinner ended we were back to the canteens. The first (fourth of the day) I was fine with, but I had to stop several times during the last one. Even after I got it all down, I had to run over to the side as it all came back up. On the other hand, I've heard they look for people who throw up after the water - it shows they're trying harder or something.
That was all for the first day. We headed off to the tents for the best sleep I'd had in weeks (I don't know what it is about the Tel HaShomer cots, but I seem to sleep better on them than anywhere else) and were given a simple wake up around 4:30 the next morning. By simple, I mean it was just someone coming by to wake us up and tell us we had seven minutes or so to dress and be outside - we were expecting someone to come screaming through in the middle of the night to throw us outside and have us run and work with no warning.
The second morning started with a while of getting everyone together and prepared, then another enjoyable breakfast, and finally off to the hard day of the gibush. We filled up 20kg sandbags, got out the stretcher and jerrycans, and headed out to the field. The next several hours consisted of lining everyone in our group (30 or so of us) up, and having us run back and forth over and over. We would get a few seconds in between each so they could write down the numbers either of the first or last five. Then we loaded the stretcher with several sandbags and the game became the first four to finish would pick up the stretcher and everyone (including the four) would do another lap). Then it was the last four who get the stretcher.
With the straight running, I generally came in third or fourth each time, but for some reason once the stretcher was opened, I was always one or two people behind it. I figured they pay attention to everything, not just those whose numbers are written, so I just took off my hat when I ran - I figured that I'm recognizable enough, this way they'd see that I'm trying hard and doing well, just not the top four.
After two or three hours of this, we moved on from the physical exercises. We were told to use whatever we could find around the field to make a model of the state of Israel, then they'd ask each of us in turn to put a stone on various cities. The gibush was primarily for foreigners, so there were a lot of wrong answers and it seemed like a great exercise in general to me.
Next we moved over to an area with three metal stands and another one further off with tired stacks on it. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the game where you try to move rings of different sizes from one peg to another, moving one at a time, and without having a larger ring on top of a smaller one. For those of you who aren't familiar, that's how it works. I think this was my other strong event - I was familiar with how the game works, so I basically took over, running back and forth and telling everyone what to do.
These mental and cooperative challenged finished, we went back to another couple hours of running back and forth, and just about finished by early afternoon. All that remained was the most significant part, the interviews. The interview was mainly us talking a bit about ourselves and why we wanted to be in Tzanchanim. The only part I was concerned about was when they asked me to stop speaking Hebrew, because they couldn't understand me. But they were friendly and spoke English very well.
Once we had finished everything, we had a small lunch, mainly bread, chocolate milk, and pudding, got everyone together, and returned to Michve Alon. We made it back before all the regular people, who had been at a nearby kibbutz doing some sort of educational day.
-----------------------------------
Not to leave you all in suspense, I'll quickly skip ahead to the results. My assumption was way off, and only 28 of the 150+ of us who finished were accepted into Tzanchanim. Numerically speaking, that makes this probably the toughest gibush in all the army. I was surprised at a number of the choices - there were a bunch of people who did very well but didn't get in, and a few that I never would have expected to make it who did.
As for me, I was one of the successful ones, so the past month and a half that you haven't heard from me, I've been in Paratrooper basic training.
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