NEWS: SG Community Diary: From the Flames

CULTURE: SG Community Diary: From the Flames

What follows below is a first-hand account of life as part of the Israeli Defense Force. I don’t want to spend too much time introducing this piece because it is powerful enough to stand on its own. Whatever your views, your political opinions, your stance on the situation in the Middle East, please read on. It is the story of military life, yes, but it is also the story of Joual, an SG member. - Fatality

General Douglas MacArthur famously stated, his corncob pipe likely bobbing in the salty air of some god-forsaken Pacific beach, that it was the soldier, above all other people, who prays for peace, for he alone bears the wounds and scars of war. Soldiers are thrown haphazardly into the flames of war, are tasked to do the impossible and to achieve outcomes that are more than improbable. We bear witness to atrocities that can only have been spawned from the darkest recesses of the human heart. We watch our dearest friends get injured or die; we place ourselves within inches of oblivion and stand ready to appropriately respond to violence while simultaneously trying desperately to cling to our sanity and our very souls in the heat of battle.

I am a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, in the last year of his service. I am a fairly unique soldier, as well. I’m 24 years old, whereas your typical inductee is usually around 18. I’m a university graduate of neuroscience, having graduated from one of the worlds leading medical schools. I’m an immigrant from North America, a proud Zionist “by his legs” as describes someone who moved to live in Israel, and a person who truly and strongly loves and believes in his country. I am also a veteran of the pitched battles waged on campuses across North America, those unending conflicts between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups.

I am also a voice many do not hear; I am an active combat soldier, a sharpshooter in the elite Paratroopers Brigade. We are figures that are at once idolized, lionized, scrutinized and demonized throughout discussions and arguments across the globe. Everyone feels free to weigh in their chips regarding our actions, from politicos and high-flying activists to pimply-faced arm-chair generals with a cheap ass blog and a throbbing hard-on for Counterstrike and Medal of Honor. Sure, you hear about the checkpoints or the counter-terror operations , our brutality or our heroism, the lives we take or the lives we sacrifice. Every Op/Ed section, every news magazine, every campus is teeming with people who will give you The Truth About Israeli Soldiers, about What It Was Like Over There.

But it is rare that you hear “I am an IDF combat soldier, I AM there. This is my experience, this is my life (the beautiful Israeli film Beaufort is a good example, but described experiences from the end of the first Lebanon war).” You often hear, for instance, the story of the Palestinian detained at a checkpoint, but you don’t hear the first hand story of the soldier manning the post.

Hell, even I was reluctant to do this, taking a long time to decide to write this down. Forgetting for a moment operational security issues, recalling some things can be…well, quite emotional and disturbing. However, within a few months, and for the next little while after, my unit will be stationed outside Gaza with a possibility of war in the near future with Hezbollah. It’s a distinct possibility some of us will not come back, and it is most likely that politicians will grand-stand, activists will scream, televisions will blare and the world will be bombarded as events unfold . I decided, therefore, that someone should try to make our voices, those of the grunts, rise above this din and be heard, to make sure people realize that we too are human.

And if nobody was going to do it, then I would.

Now, my ass has been in a lot of interesting places, during some pretty interesting times. I was in Hebron when two special forces soldiers were killed, and I was rocked gently to sleep by the sounds of gunfire and explosions. I had a barbeque in Ramallah, after accidently halting a massive, area-wide reserve exercise. I played an intricate game of cat and mouse with a fat Syrian “shepherd” and his surveillance equipment on the Golan, and I posed for pictures with a nice group of Koreans who recognized my buddy from his time playing basketball there.

For my first post, though, I thought it would be most appropriate to recall my first ever duty: manning a checkpoint. I was fresh out of basic training and, like any chong (extreme rookie in Hebrew, lit. translation –Gerber-drooling baby) eager to do my duty and feel like a “real soldier.”

(Pausing in retrospect, I believe the army enjoys making this their soldier’s first tour, as nothing crushes the eager, idealistic young spirit of a good soldier more than the extreme physical discomfort and soul-crushing boredom of a checkpoint. The Israeli military's first duty is to protect the Jewish people; its second duty, naturally, is to make the life of its combat soldiers as uncomfortable, disenchanting and humiliating as it can, budget allowing. This makes sense, as a depressed soldier will eat less shitty canned meat, thereby saving money and allowing the military to spend more of its resources investigating why so few of today’s youth volunteer to become combat soldiers.)

I was driven from my base with my squad of seven to a remote Border Police compound outside of East Jerusalem. Being a new immigrant, I had no idea the antipathy that existed between the IDF, which is “army,” and the Border Police (Magav), who are not. As we arrived to the catcalls of “yallah, chayaaaaliiiim, (lets go sollllldiers),” my commander explained to us:

“Magav is not the IDF. They operate with their own rules and their own culture. They are police, not soldiers. They do things… differently.”

And different they are. Your average infantryman in Israel is a fit fighting machine, who is trained to run and march for kilometers on all-kinds of terrain with nearly a hundred pounds of crap loaded into an overstuffed backpack. As such we resemble, in physique, distance runners. Your Magavnik, on the other hand, is a guarding machine, who is trained to deal with hundreds of people trying to crowd and shove their way across borders. As such they resemble, in physique, ambulating fire-hydrants.

My Magav “partner” was Yuri, a Russian immigrant and wannabe dental technician. He hated the Magav, hated his commander and, most of all, hated his job. He had wanted to be in Golani, an infantry brigade, since he was a kid, but with low intelligence scores he had been sent to be a border cop after his induction interview. For two years he had manned his post, in the same areas, in the same shifts, taking the same crap from the same people. It was little wonder that the highlight of his day was when he could knock off and download dirty Russian pornography for a bit.

It may surprise many here to know that the famous Israeli checkpoints are, being more akin to ramshackle border crossings than Nazi detention centers, the most boring places on earth. Israeli Arabs, Jews (yes, Jews) and Palestinians come, present either their IDs or travel permits, are searched for weapons and drugs, checked against a report of wanted terrorists in the area, and set on their way. Its simple, if you have papers you can pass. If not, then you can not. God help you if you try and forge them.

If you’re a Palestinian and you want to go to Israel, you apply to your local government officer, who contacts the Israelis on your behalf. If you have a reason, say visiting a relative, or have a job, usually you’ll get in. If you have a criminal record, don’t have a good reason or are affiliated with known terrorists, then you probably won’t. People believe it’s some kind of racist policy that guides Israel, and that getting a permit can take a very long time. It’s the opposite, in fact; too many permits have been issued allowing Palestinians to work in Israel, often to the very people we’re trying to keep out, causing the stereotypical long lines and headache of the checkpoint.

It is also a belief that checkpoints are hellholes. This statement is most definately true. But they are also hellacious for the soldiers manning them, as I can personally attest. My typical “shift” was 12 hours long, in the sun, on my feet, wearing 15 pound front/back ceramic armour, a Kevlar flak jacket, combat webbing loaded with full magazines, a helmet and my rifle. In 100+ degree heat.

At any given day, I had to deal with hundreds of similarly hot and tired people who were irritated that they had to stand in line for hours. Now, most people were just trying to get across, and I sympathize. Many people were quite polite about it, handing me their IDs and we tried to get them moving along quickly.

Some people, mainly the dim-witted testosterone-fuelled adolescents egged –on by their “buddies” (who, it must be said, were themselves well past the checkpoint and quite safe) would hurl abuse and insults, holding up the line and knowing full well that technically it was illegal for us to give them the righteous ass-kicking they so justly deserved (although in one clear case, one such genius who had pushed his way past an old man to get into the line and took great delight and valuable time in tormenting Yuri by calling him many different insults relating to a camel’s vagina, forgot that he had a switchblade in his pocket, leading to an interesting “interview” with a large Magavnik that left him a little shaken when it was over).

There are those who try and ingratiate themselves, much like a used car salesman (same smile in fact, must be a cross cultural adaptation), to you and bypass the others by cutting ahead. They would not like you to confuse them with “those animals” because they, having made money, are inherently better and cannot be treated like the poor. They may even try to bribe you, which is even more offensive. The best solution is to keep sending them to the back of the line to wait it out while those poor “dogs” go first.

And then there are the terrorists, or wannabe terrorists. In my time, I saw knives stuffed in dolls, guns stuffed into the skinned carcasses of dead goats (laid bloody in the backseat of a Renault – guess who had to dig through that, yeah that’s right: me), ammunition or explosives in medical supply boxes, and a Red Cross ambulance whose “patient” was a wanted terrorist who sprinted away like a champion the second it stopped. It’s because of these people we had to check every damn car, package and person on some days. It’s because of them that passing through a checkpoint can take many hours of waiting in the sun, and it’s because of them that we occasionally close off checkpoints, not allowing people to pass at all, inconveniencing everyone.

The worst and most vivid arrest Yuri and I made occurred after a usual call up to a fence area. Some local kids were chucking rocks at construction workers and maintenance men (the very same cute lil’ tykes that make such good pictures on the front of the New York Times) and had injured two in the process, putting one in the hospital with a lost eye. We were sent to make sure that didn’t happen again and faced a long boring day of standing around. I asked Yuri what the deal with the holes in the fence were, he told me that essentially every week they keep finding new small holes in the fence and that he assumed that the kids were trying to rip it down. Makes sense, I thought.

For about five hours nothing much happened, so six hours in we went on break to go get some iced drinks at the checkpoint down the street. When we came back, a bunch of young kids were ripping and tearing at the fence. We chased them, but the distance combined with our heavy gear allowed them to outrun us. Contrary to popular belief, soldiers DON’T have shoot-to-kill authorization.

Seeing where they had gone and angered by the burst blisters on his feet, Yuri decided we would follow them into their village and arrest them. I nodded but pointed out the fundamental flaws in his logic. For one, the two of us charging into an Arab village, conducting an unapproved counter terror operation, and bursting into some unknown house without significant backup or prior intelligence didn’t seem like the West Point thing to do. I suggested, instead that we go back, take cover and see if they return later. Grudgingly, Yuri accepted, and we hid in some bushes.

Some time later, the kids returned. However, they were followed by an adult male. He took position, ironically in the abandoned police lookout, and busied himself ordering the kids about. We arrested him and brought him back to the checkpoint where he was checked out for priors. Out popped a few: weapons possession, weapons smuggling, attempting to cross a border without a permit, etc., etc., etc. Apparently he had these kids tearing holes in fences, not for the political photo-ops that certain Western activists just eat up with a spoon, but to allow the kids to crawl through and smuggle weapons. The fact that they could easily be arrested or even killed running a checkpoint with weaponry didn’t seem to bother him, and I hope he’s rotting in a cell somewhere getting anally violated by a big man named Ahmed…which doesn’t really bother me.

In the end, my happiest time manning the checkpoint was when it was over. It was likely one of the most difficult jobs I have done so far in the army, definitely trial by fire, and I often use it to summon inner strength when faced with a difficult mission. What I would want people to take away from this post would probably be that there are two sides to the infamous checkpoints, that its not just random humiliation and brutality on the part of Israeli soldiers and that, while these things do exist (as do less-publicized instances of great compassion and mercy), they usually arise due to conflict between two hot, exhausted and tired peoples that just want an ice cold drink and to go home.

SG Community Diary is a newswire feature intended to highlight some of the wonderful, interesting, and amazing stories of this website’s models and members.

Please contact Fatality or Anarchie with any other potential stories!

This was a really good read. Thank you for sharing.

It is amazing what we can learn if we stop listening to the talking heads of news and politics and start listening to the people who are actually there.

Thanks for posting this, I'm always fascinated by military, and getting the actual stories of what it's really like.

Keep your head down over there, be well.

I'm so glad to see this go live.
Thank you for sharing this with us.

Thanks! somehow the stories and characters always seem to get lost among all the foreign policy, politics, and activism.

Good read.

A very interesting and informative read.

Definitely nice to see a brother-in-arms get a chance to tell their story from the ground. I'm in the US military, but most of us have nothing but fellowship & respect for our foreign brothers and sisters who serve their countries as we do ours.

We may not always be on the same side, but there is always respect. In a perfect world, anyway.

It would be interesting if we could get such perspectives from other members involved in similar situations.

So this is why you haven't been posting. Joual, I've missed you!

Thanks for the awesome feedback, I didn't really know how this would play or if people would even bother reading it to tell the truth.

I was just banging around the field with a couple of my buddies one day and we were doing what we usually do, bitch about the army. It was a good bitching session, and it was pretty much a unanimous complaint that we soldiers really never get a chance to speak our minds to the international community. Sure, occasionally you get some great articles in Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post involving some soldier from some great battle in Israel's history 40 years ago, but generally our opinions amount to a quote or two in some article about a larger issue.

One of the problems is that your average grunt who is in the shit is something like 18 years old and fresh out of high school. When it comes down to his furlough, he'd rather spend the 2 or 3 days off with his family and girlfriend. There's also a whole bunch of socioeconomic issues, but the point is as a soldier who is both university educated and fluent in multiple languages, I thought I could maybe get our 2 shekels across to a broader audience for a change.

And everyone should give a warm kudos to Fatality for slogging through my crap and posting it here. And who knows, we're getting sent to some pretty... interesting... areas in the near future, maybe I'll be able to submit a couple more articles as things heat up.

I'd love to see this posted on Al-Jazeera's front page.

Sometimes I feel like Mad Magazine would be more true to life for what goes on with us.

really, really interesting article. my girlfriend, schmelectra, is working on her applied linguistics degree and took a class that looked at the languages of the middle east and how they shape the cultures and conflicts of the region, so we've been discussing the palestinian/israeli relationship quite a bit lately. it's interesting to see a side of the issue that is rarely discussed or acknowledged.

thank you for this.

I really have to say I appreciate and applaud what you are doing. My roommate just recently left for Jordan, on a school trip, and is still there, spending some time in Israel. I enjoyed the way you wrote, and how you relate what you do, and how you feel. Stay safe, keep up the good work.

Tell us more about the dirty Russian porn.

No. Just kidding.

Be safe.

great post! so true ive heard all the stories from the soldiers at my Yeshiva,

A great read. I've done two deployments in Iraq, and I've done my share of checkpoint guard. Just wanted to say that you're a great voice for the grunts, and stay safe.

Thank you for writing this and posting it where I have a chance to read it without wondering if its bullshit or propaganda or both.

My God, this was interesting. In fact, I had to read it three times. Thank you so so soooo much for taking the time to write this. I really hope that this will be able to get published on a public level, as I feel a vast majority of Americans (ok, ok, specifically the folks in blue) NEED to read this. There are sooo many misconceptions of what the Israeli military actually does and must endure, thanks to the uber-lib media here, and I really feel like you laid out a very detailed, comprehensive and sincere account of a "day in the life". Thank you, again, and please please stay safe. You will be in my thoughts and prayers!