tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56266546010941988482024-02-24T12:49:54.246+02:00Kefitzat Haderech'imagine how fast we'd run if we knew where we are going.'
Notes on serving in the Israeli army (2009-2011) and past and future journeys to China, Ethiopia and around the Middle East.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.comBlogger296125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-3136531812903036712011-10-25T23:59:00.000+02:002012-04-30T05:38:25.554+03:00Closing the Circle, Wedding Remix<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With joy and tears this story has come full circle, closing as it began with weddings that provide the most idyllic of departing memories.<br />
<br />
Two years ago my <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/07/wedding-bells.html">older brother got married</a>. Within a week of his wedding I was off<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/08/born-in-usa-now-im-making-aliyah-today_08.html"> to Israel on aliyah</a>, my feet and hands still tingling from dancing with my family and composing<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/08/purity-of-purpose.html"> a letter to explain why</a> I was heading so far from home to build a new life and join the military. My <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/08/july-7-2009-aliyah-on-eagles-wings.html">first day in Israel</a> felt like a second wedding, with dancing and speeches greeting me as I descended from the plane and formal paperwork awaiting my signature to confirm my new status as a citizen of the state of Israel.<br />
<br />
Two months later I met the fifteen lone soldiers that would <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-garin-tzabar-is-all-about-garin.html">become my <i>garin</i></a>, brothers and sisters in building the intimate community that would see us through the duration of our lives as soldiers. On arriving at our new kibbutz home, we were of course promptly invited to a<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/bittersweet-wedding-bliss-on-kibbutz.html"> local wedding</a>. That wedding was our communal baptism of sorts. Dancing and feasting together, joy and sweat tying the knots that would bind our <i>garin </i>with each other and with the kibbutz over the next two years. Had I known <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/all-in-family-on-kibbutz.html">my adopted kibbutz family</a> at the time, I would have understood that the way in which they opened their home (as the <i>yichud </i>room!) to the young bride and groom was an experience I would come to treasure for myself.<br />
<br />
And then <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-am-now-property-of-state-of-israel.html">I joined the army</a>, an<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/12/marriage-or-military-exclusive.html"> exclusive relationship whose demands</a> often seemed reminiscent of the less appealing sides of married life. While I was in the military there were many weddings I missed as I sweated out<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/01/food-amid-freezing-field-week.html"> lonely nights running</a> and <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/05/ending-phase-two-helicopters-tracers.html">gunning </a>in the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/04/misakem-maslul-lohem-at-last.html">southern deserts</a> and the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/01/mud-military.html">northern hills</a>. Yet even as I skipped weekends back on kibbutz, <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-seminar-zionism-intact-garin-gold.html">my <i>garin </i>grew ever closer</a>.<br />
<br />
Two <i>garin </i>members in particular became very close, to the point that when I<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/08/legacy-of-grenade.html"> finally made it to kibbutz</a> I became the last one to realize that two members of our <i>garin </i>were forming a relationship whose path would continue far beyond our service in the army.<br />
<br />
Two weeks ago my <i>garin<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_933214418"> </a></i><a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/10/released-from-game.html">concluded our lives as soldiers</a>. No longer a community of lone soldiers, each of us was left scrambling to make a new life in a country that seemed far too strange for the place we had been living in for two years. One by one we made plans to move off kibbutz, some to start college, others yeshiva and a few plucky fellas off to India. Two members of our <i>garin </i>had another idea however. Their love had deepened, and before the garin dispersed they wanted our help in celebrating the new life they had decided to build together.<br />
<br />
Tonight, under a <i>chuppah </i>bound by a cloudless sky across the valley from our kibbutz, my <i>garin's </i>two brightest stars became as one. My <i>garin </i>stood by and cried, smiles splashed across our faces as the young bride and beaming groom enlisted in an adventure far grander than any of us had imagined when we came on <i>aliyah</i>, moved to the kibbutz, formed a community and joined the army. The bride and groom represent all that is best about the last two years. Both came to Israel bound by an old-fashioned Zionism, a commitment to explore their growing religious faith while putting their lives on the line for the country. Neither spoke much Hebrew. Neither was an obvious candidate to excel in the army. Yet more than anyone else in our garin, the bride and groom excelled, each of them repeatedly earning acclaim from their peers and superiors. As their Hebrew improved their values never slackened. Not only did they persevere through more than their fair share of military frustrations but the secret weapons they relied upon to do so - laughter and an understated resolve- was always shared in generous supply when the rest of us were facing our own challenges.<br />
<br />
Tonight they are married. Beginning the next chapter in a story far more intriguing than anything you may have read through this open journal over the last two years.<br />
<br />
As they placed rings on their fingers and shattered the glass there was no reason to restrain the tears of joy I hope to always remember when I reflect on the last two trying years of my life.<br />
<br />
The story has come full circle.</div>Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-19916005958511245312011-10-11T23:19:00.005+02:002012-01-19T22:56:08.174+02:00Released from the GameOn my final day in uniform, I stole, blackmailed, counterfeited, broke & entered, and otherwise made a mockery of the moral highroad I sought to champion when joining the army. Are the past two years of amoral alienation at fault, or can I pin the blame on endless screenings of <a href="http://www.hbo.com/the-wire/index.html">The Wire</a> over my last month in green?<br /><br />I arrived at my brigade's home base near Netanya knowing that getting discharged would not be easy. Every time a soldier's status changes, no matter if the cause is six months of sick leave or six days of specialized training, he must complete exit paperwork known as <span style="font-style:italic;">tofes tiyulim</span>. On paper, that means getting a dozen or so military offices (like medical, armory, logistics) to sign off that you have returned all the gear you were assigned and are no longer their headache. In practice, gathering these signatures is a mega headache, as most of the offices cause problems that make the signature merry-go-round more like a roller coaster.<br /><br />Nevertheless, when I arrived at nine AM I naively hoped I would be home by lunchtime. Seven hours later I was palming off a stolen fleece to a corrupt warehouse fluky, having previously pillaged the property of <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-chafshash-day-that-will-live-in.html">the driver whose theft of my red beret</a> forced this last act of depraved larceny. <br /><br />The warehouse official refused to grant me my final <span style="font-style:italic;">tofes tiyulim</span> signature until I returned my red beret. Regardless of the fact that the army traditionally allows soldiers to keep this one keepsake (memorabilia aside, the army has no use for <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/07/doing-right-by-beret.html">used berets</a>), I was prepared to hand it over if it meant I could get discharged. Except I had no beret, having gone without since a cowardly driver stole mine when I left active service last month. The official had no sympathy, explaining that if I failed to give him a red beret my only option was to pay a fine for losing military gear. I was not prepared to get punished on my final day in uniform for a crime committed against me. So with less than an hour to go before the warehouse closed for the day, I began searching the entire base for a stray beret.<br /><br />Twenty minutes into my search, a soldier asked me what I was doing. I have a few spare berets, he casually said when I informed him of my quarry. As overjoyed as I was to reach the end of my hunt (army culture assumes soldiers are generous in such situations), I was even more stunned when the fellow proceeded to ask me for something in exchange for one of his berets. Um, what do you want? My watch? My sandals? A get out of the army early card? You were combat, the soldier told me with the oily ease of a used car salesman. There must be gear hanging around your unit's base you could snatch for me. I could not believe that this skinny desk soldier was really asking me to steal a spare mortar piece in exchange for a bit of red fabric. My desire to be discharged overcame my disbelief, and I raced through what I could salvage from my base to trade with this rascal. <br /><br />Weeks earlier, when I left my unit's base for what I believed would be the final time, I took a quick stroll through the company commander's living quarters. The man had caused me no end of unnecessary grief over the last few months, and so I was determined to leave some sort of calling card in his property. A fleece on his bed made an easy target. The absence of any onlookers made it easy to dirty the fleece beyond repair. It was not until later that my friends made me second guess my pitiful revenge, when they mocked my failure to simply nab the fleece for myself.<br /><br />It was not until I stood before the man with many berets that I thanked my lucky stars for the fleece remaining on my commander's bed. The soldier before me quickly agreed to trade a beret for the fleece. For a fleece with the insignia of the Recon Paratroopers, he gushed, I will even give you two berets! As I headed back to the commander's bedroom, the absurdity of the situation forced a detour to the warehouse official waiting for my red beret. My hope that he may agree to ignore my absent beret in light of the absurd bargain I had struck was turned on its head when he proposed an alternative solution: I instead give him my commander's fleece in exchange for him marking down that I had returned a beret, signing my form and releasing me from the army. Since I wanted his signature more than the other man's beret, I agreed to the bizarre proposal. Minutes later, <span style="font-style:italic;">tofes tiyulim </span>complete, my army ID card was sliced in half and I was declared a civilian.<br /><br />This last Faustian bargain was sadly par for my last day teeing off in uniform. Besides a beret, I was missing a jacket and goggles. It did not matter that I had never been issued the former and had previously returned the latter. If I wanted out, I needed to come up with both items. So I called a friend from my squad, now serving as the sergeant for a squad of trainees. His priceless advice was to root through his soldiers' gear and take what I needed. You are a great friend and a horrible commander, I told him as I followed his advice and soon found what I needed. I did not feel too bad, as every soldier knows in the army there are no thieves, everyone is just getting his stuff back. There also is a long established tradition in the IDF of paying debt forward, with new conscripts giving more veteran soldiers the gear they need in order to complete their release from the army. Of course this means that the army does not have as many jackets and goggles (and guns and...?) as it thinks it does (see the definition of <span style="font-style:italic;">chaf'shash</span> in the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/slang-army-hebrew-tash.html">tash dictionary</a>).<br /><br />In between hunting down signatures and missing gear, I was determined to leave the army having at least tried to reclaim <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-chafshash-day-that-will-live-in.html">the pins that were stolen</a> along with my beret. The drivers that had carried out the vile crime were not on base. But their stuff was. After breaking into their room through a window, I rifled through bags and bedsheets looking for what was mine. The bitterness I had stomached for the last few months, instigated by the way certain commanders had treated me and crowned by the theft of my pins and beret, came out as I fruitlessly looked for my stolen pins. I really do not know which driver nabbed my belongings. But I do know that as I threw one driver's bag on the roof of the building (I am truly curious how long it will stay there-months? years?) and pocketed another's military pin, I was tapping an inner rage I barely recognize.<br /> <br />It is probably for the best that the drivers were absent. When I arrived home, one of the drivers called and asked for his pin back. It was easy to play coy, neither admit nor deny having his pin, and explain that I was prepared to help him as he would help me. He blustered, he threatened and eventually I hung up. For the first time in many months, I was in control. But I did not feel good in rubbing the driver's crime in his face. I just felt dirty.<br /><br />Two years ago I enlisted with some vague sense that I could be an inspired moral force in the army of the Jewish state. As a college educated, liberally minded, deeply Zionist, believing Jew, I hoped my values would leave an impact on eighteen year old Israeli peers impressed at the sight of an older American volunteer in their ranks. Instead, as they say on <span style="font-style:italic;">The Wire</span>, the game is still the game. As if to cement the fact that the system gamed me, on my last day in uniform I employed every dirty trick in the book. <br /><br />The way things went down with the thieving drivers really drives all this home. It is not that I believe my response to the thieving drivers was unjustified. As an matter of self-respect, of standing up for what is right, of reminding wrongdoers that there is a price for their actions, I have no concern with how I acted. The price I claimed from them was hardly just. But it was just insofar as it reflects a humble attempt to right a wrong using the rules of the only game in town. <br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />As if yesterday's scheduling did not have enough layered irony, the release of Gilad Schalit the same day I am released from the army brings its own joyful coincidence. Today, let freedom ring!Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-85539576485868522732011-10-10T14:15:00.008+02:002012-01-05T15:52:47.908+02:00Changing Stations by the MountFireworks above, flaming letters below, stirring music and laser lights roll across the cliff-sides as forty odd glow-sticks snake their way down Israel's iconic desert fortress. <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1040">Masada</a>, linchpin of Jewish resistance in Zionist lore, is once again hosting a military commencement ceremony. In March <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/04/misakem-maslul-lohem-at-last.html">my training culminated</a> with a grand ascent of this desert plateau. Five months later, the young men <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/12/basic-training-with-nahal-brigade.html">I started my training with</a>, in the unit I once called my own, are rushing down the mountain to conclude two long years of rigorous training.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_FghwsALzvfjCgSZTGc_AqqZwHg759zHXxn5MzXPrhTCRh0Yu5IP208HGsnhIjLl4KpLy5MtyEIeMk1CHqpiHIZ_hXNk0QalcDu7fQnFy72LhSfnROloqITbT1tAn0RbT-I_-tnCHI8/s1600/masada+image.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_FghwsALzvfjCgSZTGc_AqqZwHg759zHXxn5MzXPrhTCRh0Yu5IP208HGsnhIjLl4KpLy5MtyEIeMk1CHqpiHIZ_hXNk0QalcDu7fQnFy72LhSfnROloqITbT1tAn0RbT-I_-tnCHI8/s400/masada+image.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694144119217345874" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Note: This image is not from the ceremony, as no photos taken at the ceremony can be shared in a public forum</span><br /><br />I am not by their side. Instead I watch from the side. This morning I was officially released from the army. While I will not process my paperwork until tomorrow morning, the irony is not lost on me: The same day that would have marked the conclusion of two years of training and the start of a lifetime as a <span style="font-style:italic;">lohem </span>in one of Israel's most lethal commando units instead marks my return to civilian life. Instead of saluting with my peers as we peer into the crowd for our proud loved ones and reflect on the past two years of training and the two years to come of military service, I am returning to familiar waters laced with electric uncertainty. Grad school, professional opportunities, where to make a home and build a life in a country that suddenly feels so very new...<br /><br />My words reflect the conflicting emotions surging within me as I watch the head of the air force salute my proud peers. I am proud as well, proud for the young guys standing at the foot of Masada, for the many kilometers they have crossed, the many kilos they have carried and the many instructors they have impressed to make it here together. I have my share of regrets, knowing I had the opportunity and have the capability to be standing on the stage below. Most of all I am excited, energized as I have not been in far too long at the prospects that await now that I have completed the army and returned to a life of freedom. Whereas once I treasured the word <span style="font-style:italic;">hitga'asti</span> 'I enlisted,' a term I associate with the young men standing before me this evening, my new favorite Hebrew word is <span style="font-style:italic;">hishtacharti </span>'I was discharged.'<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />Irony of ironies. As if it is not enough that I was scheduled to leave the army the same day that I would otherwise have finished two years of training, my path to today's ceremony included an unexpected daunting trek. Like the grueling <span style="font-style:italic;">misakem maslul</span> (a week long loop of intense training marches and firefights) my former peers concluded last week in the Golan Heights (count on a unit formed in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War to conclude two years of training the day before Yom Kippur overlooking that war's most dramatic battlefield), I sweated and risked life and limb in order to arrive at tonight's ceremony at the foot of Masada.<br /><br />My solo-march to Masada occurred when the local bus dropped me off on the wrong side of the desert fortress. In order to arrive at the right location, I had no choice but to circumnavigate Masada. Visiting hours had passed and so simply scampering up one side of the rugged plateau and descending the other was not possible. Instead I climbed up two-thirds distance and then followed the narrowest and steepest of goat paths around the mountain. When the path disappeared, I was left scampering across the cliff-face on hands and knees. When it returned, I raced to make up lost time. Fortune smiled on the whole madcap endeavor and I arrived at the site of the ceremony just in time, covered in perspiration yet delighted to see so many familiar faces and a delicious spread that no visitor enjoyed as much as me.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-1851288383821718662011-09-15T13:15:00.005+03:002011-09-20T00:19:09.780+03:00How to Fight the SystemSometimes you are clearly wronged. A right guaranteed by army rules is ignored by an ill-informed or ill-intentioned commander. Other times you just feel wronged. Like when a commander keeps you from attending a close friend’s wedding for no reason. While soldiers must come to terms with the reality of a rules-bound hierarchy riddled with self-aggrandizing superiors, there are wrongs worth opposing. <br /><br />There are also people in and outside the army who can help you right those wrongs. It is always better to not go over your officer’s head, or outside the army, if you do not have to (Why? Because nothing will piss your boss off more). Most of the time you will have to, of course, since a lowly soldier in a hierarchical system needs someone on his side when his beef is with his direct supervisors. <br /><br />The following is a list of all the relevant people a soldier can turn to resolve an army problem. In general it is worth following the order in which I have listed the suggestions, though there are times when playing politics is necessary and the normal rules go out the window. There are also times when no amount of <span style="font-style:italic;">protekzia</span>, or effort by your part to resist a wrong, will make much headway. An egocentric supervisor opposed to your request will resist the old boys network that call him on your behalf and will always unearth some arbitrary army regulation to negate the rules in your favor. So understand when you go into battle against the system that there are some battles you cannot win.<br /><br />Note, I have direct phone numbers (and emails) for all of the following, save your officers/adjuncts/parents. Provide your email in the comments section and I can share any requested contact information.<br /><br />1. Your platoon leader (the <span style="font-style:italic;">katzin</span>, lieutenant) <br /><br />Lieutenants are tasked with looking out for their troops, not just under fire but personal needs as well. Following chain-of-command, a soldier usually first raises his request with his squad leader (<span style="font-style:italic;">mak, mifaked klitah</span>) or platoon sergeant (<span style="font-style:italic;">samal</span>), either of whom will then pass your message onto the lieutenant. As long as you have a reasonable relationship with your lieutenant, he is always the first person to turn to for assistance with any problem. This is because every dispute will ultimately be decided by your superior. Every other person on this list, in fact, is merely there to intercede on your behalf with your superiors. If speaking with your lieutenant does not help, then you should continue up the food chain, requesting to speak with the company commander (<span style="font-style:italic;">mem’pei, mifaked plugah</span>) and, as necessary, the battalion commander (<span style="font-style:italic;">magad, mifaked g’dud</span>).<br /><br />2. <span style="font-style:italic;">Mashakeet tash</span> <br /><br />The female staff soldier (one per company) responsible for soldier’s personal affairs and basic rights is often the first person to speak to for any personal request or problem, including needs and rights of lone soldiers. A soldier may prefer to have the <span style="font-style:italic;">mashakeet tash</span> approach his lieutenant on his behalf. A good mashakeet tash<span style="font-style:italic;"></span> is unafraid to defend, and good at securing, soldiers’ rights with less than sympathetic officers. Unfortunately, most <span style="font-style:italic;">mashakeet tash</span> are far from professional, so often soldiers, especially lone soldiers with many extra personal needs and rights, are left to fend for themselves. Note that in basic training, there is usually an additional female staff soldier responsible only for the needs of foreign born soldiers known as a <span style="font-style:italic;">mashakeet aliyah</span>.<br /> <br />3. Family & Friends<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Protekzia </span>is essential to resolving most army disputes in your favor. Having concerned people call your officer on your behalf puts pressure on him to resolve the situation. These people can also advise you what to do, and give you the confidence to continue fighting for what is right.<br /><br />Working <span style="font-style:italic;">protekzia </span>means starting local, first speaking to those closest to you, and then building on their contacts to reach out to people you previously did not know. If you live on a kibbutz, your host family and others on the kibbutz will usually know a few senior military types that can intercede on your behalf. Your first port of call, accordingly, should be to your host parents (or parents, if you are not a lone soldier). Israeli army officers are expected to be in contact with their soldiers’ parents, and Israeli parents are well known for using this contact to their children’s advantage. As a kibbutz family hosting a foreign born volunteer, my host parents had unimpeachable Zionist credentials in their favor when they reached out on my behalf. The next ring of people to reach out to, such as your local Garin Tzabar facilitator or the professional Garin Tzabar staff, share similar credentials. These credentials are important insofar as they validate going beyond your officer’s back. Lone soldiers can always claim, in fairness, that they only turned for help to the very people charged with aiding lone soldiers such as themselves.<br /><br /><br />4. <span style="font-style:italic;">Moked Chayalim Bodedim</span> (Lone Soldier Office)<br /><br />The army opened an office in 2011 to look out for lone soldiers. The office has no executive powers but in my experience it can effectively channel concerns and information between you and your officers (often the <span style="font-style:italic;">katzin/a tash</span>, your <span style="font-style:italic;">mashakeet tash</span>’s superior).<br /><br />5. Tziki Aud & <a href="http://lonesoldiercenter.com/">The Lone Soldier Center in memory of Michael Levin</a><br /><br />Tziki Aud had been aiding lone soldiers for three decades when in 2010, together with former lone soldiers and the support of <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/mimi-michael-and-heroes-among-us.html">Michael Levin</a>’s family, he opened a center headquartered in Jerusalem, dedicated to assisting lone soldiers. With a wealth of experience, patience and authentic concern, Tziki is perhaps the best address for lone soldiers in need of assistance. The center has a wealth of other qualified volunteers worth turning to for advice and <span style="font-style:italic;">protekzia</span>.<br /><br />6. <a href="http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/20622/Good_for_Us/">Tzvika Levi</a><br /><br />Like Tziki, Tzvika (yes, it is easy to confuse their names!) is a deeply experienced advocate for lone soldiers. His name recognition amongst top army officers is unparalleled. In the Paratroops Brigade in particular, Tzvika can seemingly speak to any of your officer’s bosses’ bosses with ease and a voice carrying real authority. The mark against Tzvika is that he is always so busy that it is difficult to even reach him, let alone speak to him long enough so that he really understands the full extent of your problem. Nevertheless, he means well and can be a very effective advocate for your cause.<br /><br />7. <a href="http://nakhal.idf.il/page.asp?part=4">Netziv Kvilot Chayalim</a> (Army Complaints Office)<br /><br />If you are convinced that your superiors have ignored army rules in wronging you, then the official place to log a complaint—and possibly really screw over your officers if they are found culpable—is <span style="font-style:italic;">Netziv Kvilot Chayalim</span>, the army ombudsman. Within the military, saying you want to <span style="font-style:italic;">lichvol </span>(lit. to handcuff, though it means to file an official complaint) a superior is often taken as a threat, or merely the whine of a disgruntled soldier. The process carries serious ramifications. While the complaints office is not military court, its decisions are entered into an officers’ permanent record. Filing a complaint is a long and complicated process, requiring a soldier to fax a written record, the complaints office to investigate and agree to take up the case, and the retired general who runs the whole operation to publish his final report. The entire process can easily take two months.<br /><br />8. Letter writing & media<br /><br />If none of the regular army channels and lone soldier advocates can help you, then there are two further options. The first is sending letters to senior military figures (really senior, as in generals and division heads). Even if only one letter is read, the trickle-down effect can lead the officers who are causing you such grief to get a phone call from their boss telling them to mend their ways. <br /><br />The second option follows the same principle. But instead of reaching out directly to top army men, this time you contact media figures and ask their assistance in sharing, and possibly publishing your army issue, through their media networks. Nothing forces an officer to quit screwing with you faster than a story in the newspaper or radio detailing his crummy treatment of you. The chance of a journalist actually publishing your story is slim. Plus you have to keep in mind that soldiers are formally forbidden from speaking to the media (this is easily evaded by reminding the journalist that your “parents” were the ones to speak to the media). That said, the media can be a powerful weapon depending on the circumstances. I have experience with Yaakov Katz of the English language Jerusalem Post. The most well known and recommended media figure is without question <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmela_Menashe">Carmela Menashe</a>, a radio journalist nationally recognized for her advocacy on behalf of soldier’s rights.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-88453976915251660052011-09-14T11:43:00.018+03:002013-10-13T15:55:58.026+03:00Ten Tips for New Soldiers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-style: italic;">This entire blog has been designed in part as a guide for future <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/11/5-kinds-of-lone-soldiers.html">lone soldiers</a>. That said, here are ten tips I urge future volunteers in the Israeli army to keep in mind as they consider, and if they ultimately decide, to enlist.</span><br />
<br />
1. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The IDF is a big, insensitive, ideologically-barren, non-action packed institution</span><br />
<br />
The IDF is an institution, <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/01/where-is-zionism-in-army.html">not a Zionist summer camp</a>. Nor is it an action movie-- few combat soldiers in front-line infantry units will be in a firefight, or ever fire their gun outside of training, over the course of their service. Like any institution, it is a big, insensitive, bureaucratic machine that often abuses the individual, intentionally or otherwise. It is not a feel-good, ideologically infused place to realize your Zionist or Rambo fueled dreams. This is the single most important piece of advice I can share because so many lone soldiers grow deeply disillusioned over the course of their service from their treatment by, and impression of, the army. While it is reasonable to take a grueling experience to heart, part of the disappointment lone soldiers develop comes from the unusually high ideals and strong motivations that led them to enlist in the first place. The point here is not to get rid of your idealism at the door but simply to understand what it is you are preparing to become a part of.<br />
<br />
2. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Do not forget why you choose to serve </span><br />
<br />
Despite the fact that the IDF is essentially a military---rather than a Zionist-- institution, it is still valuable to draw strength from the values and dreams that led you to enlist. Hence, at least once a week you should reflect on the ideals—Zionism, violent videogames, a desire to be all you can be, etc.—that led you to choose to become a soldier. This is a valuable exercise despite, really because, the army itself can be so ideologically empty. It is important to reconnect to what inspires you, even if that dream does not quite jive with the reality. <br />
<br />
If dwelling on shattered dreams only leads to disillusionment, then spend time instead reflecting how your service is truly a unique experience. Like all soldiers, foreign volunteers—who, let us not forget, did not grow up in a country drenched in militarism where joining the army is only a matter of finishing high school— tend to forgot how abnormal it really is to fire an automatic weapon, drive around in open hummers and spend weeks at a time in high-security military bases. While such experiences are rarely fun in the conventional sense, they are “once in a lifetime” activities that, placed in the proper context, can remind a disillusioned volunteer that his service does mean something. In other words, do not become a soulless zombie just because you are stuck in a lifeless graveyard.<br />
<br />
3. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Loss of independence</span><br />
<br />
Joining the army means losing your independence, signing control over your life to a big nameless corporation whose representatives—your twenty year old commanders—often make pig-headed decisions directly against your best interests. Understand this going in and perhaps you will be more prepared to deal with all the frustrations that result from the lack of independence. See <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-irony-of-losing-independence-freedom.html">here </a>for more on this theme.<br />
<br />
4. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Overcoming disappointment</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/01/dealing-with-disapointment-garin.html">Dealing with disappointment</a>—not getting depressed over army frustrations—is essential to maintaining one’s equanimity in the army. Disappointments come early and often: not being able to attend a close friend’s wedding—or <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/04/funeral-of-humbled-dreams.html">funeral</a>; not getting selected for a desired course or unit; realizing that your service is not what you had hoped it would be, not what <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/benefit-of-small-audience.html">Yoni Netanyahu </a>described as “to be in the army is to be inside—doing, believing, knowing that, after all, my work does bring peace closer or, at least, save lives and pushes back the threat of war from our gates.”<br />
<br />
<br />
5. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Come to terms with where you serve</span><br />
<br />
Do not get too pent up with where you serve in the army. If you have a goal, go for it. But if you do not make it into the unit you dreamed of, move on.<br />
<br />
The main reason for this advice, besides the importance of overcoming disappointment, is that serving in the army is fundamentally a rite of passage for foreign volunteers. <span style="font-style: italic;">Where </span>you serve is far less relevant than <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>you serve. Army service is different for native Israelis. For ambitious locals, making it in the army—i.e. getting into an elite unit—is part of getting a leg up in Israel society, like attending an Ivy League in the States. While this may be relevant for lone soldiers that enlist straight out of high school, the majority of volunteers from abroad, especially those with a university degree in hand, will make their mark in Israeli society by virtue of their immigrant background.<br />
<br />
I was taught this lesson firsthand the day I <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/09/butgame-over.html">left my elite Air Force unit</a>. One of the other soldiers on his way out was taking the news very badly. When I tried to reassure him that we would get over this disappointment, he explained that the two of us were coming at the army with different expectations. He had been counting on leveraging his service in our elite unit into his professional future. With my university degree and assurance of what I want to do professionally, the army for me was a one-time experience, not a critical piece in climbing up the Israeli socioeconomic ladder.<br />
<br />
The second major reason not to get bummed out if you do not make it into your dream unit is that all combat units are far more similar than new soldiers realize. While some train more than others, the arrests and patrols (that is, the real work of combat soldiers) by a flashy unit like the Paratroopers reconnaissance battalion (<span style="font-style: italic;">Sayeret Tzanchanim</span>) is no different than the arrests and patrols by a more modest outfit like <span style="font-style: italic;">Palchatz </span>(the Home Front Command co-ed combat unit)—or for that matter, than the arrests by an elite unit like Shaldag. Shaldag does not spend every other weekend rescuing Jews in Ethiopia or taking out nuclear silos in Syria. Most of the time they train and twiddle their thumbs, gossiping with their friends in more active units on what it is like to actually get out into the field. Every combat unit, that is, has its own pluses and minuses but fundamentally they are equipped with the same tools and carry out the same work.<br />
<br />
If you are just starting the army, appreciating this tip is very difficult. By the end of your service, especially if you have been exposed to a variety of units, you will easily appreciate what I have just written.<br />
<br />
6. <span style="font-weight: bold;">You are a role model</span><br />
<br />
You are a role model. To everyone: friends, family and people you have never met overseas, Israeli civilians, and perhaps most prominently (and the main point I want to make here) to the soldiers that serve by your side. <br />
<br />
If you are upbeat, with a welcoming laugh, you will not only spread good vibes. As the lone foreigner who made sacrifices they cannot imagine to serve by their side, your positive attitude will leave a lasting impression. If you are religious, your attachment to your faith will inform your fellow soldiers’ opinions about Judaism and religious Jews. <span style="font-style: italic;">Everything </span>you do informs your peers about American Jews (or whatever your country of origin), a subject most nineteen year old Israelis know absolutely nothing about. <br />
<br />
Lone soldiers are asked every single day by their Israeli peers why they made aliyah, why they left their home country behind for the menial life of an Israeli soldier, why they choose to make Israel their home. It pays to have a meaningful answer to this question (like <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/08/purity-of-purpose.html">this</a>, but shorter!). Consider: Through your answer—and, more fundamentally, through how you conduct yourself everyday as a soldier—you are shaping their Zionism, their understanding of what it means to put community before the individual, what it means to make a decision as an adult to teenage kids who still live at home with their parents.<br />
<br />
7. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Excel and Give your all</span><br />
<br />
The high motivation that drove you to volunteer (and your presence as a role model) means you should excel wherever you serve. Top soldier awards— and more importantly your peers’ esteem—are yours to lose. Furthermore, you should give your all throughout training: every drill, every run, every exercise. Trust me. As painful or pointless as a given sprint or physical demand may be, doing it—and doing it well—is the experience you came looking for in the army. In the moment it sucks but as Abraham Lincoln said, this too shall pass (<span style="font-style: italic;">gam ze ya'avor</span>, in its well-known Hebrew rendering). One day you will look back and want to be able to say to yourself that you overcame the challenge <span style="font-style: italic;">kimo she’tzarich</span>, as one should, in the best way possible.<br />
<br />
8. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Do not let the army take advantage of you</span><br />
<br />
For all your determination to excel and be a role model and overcome disappointment and accept whatever unit you are in (i.e. most of the previous tips), you do not want to let the army take advantage of you more than is necessary. Volunteering to stay on base for the weekend is praiseworthy. But do it all the time and not only will your morale suffer, but your peers’ esteem will turn to pity at how much of a <span style="font-style: italic;">friar</span>, or sucker, you are. Considering the operating credo in the army is shirking responsibility and taking advantage of others, being mister selfless can get you in real trouble. More generally, the army—as discussed above—is a bureaucratic machine that tends to take advantage of the little guy. You have to know when to push back, when to fight for the rights and respect you are owed as a soldier. See <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-fight-system.html">here </a>for tips on protecting your rights and fighting the system.<br />
<br />
9.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Treasure your Garin</span><br />
<br />
No one enlists in the army through Garin Tzabar because their main goal is to become friends with a group of like-minded individuals on a kibbutz. We came to serve in the army, with our <span style="font-style: italic;">garin </span>and the kibbutz as benefits along the way. Nevertheless, your <span style="font-style: italic;">garin</span>—or the social circle you rely on if you are a lone soldier not in Garin Tzabar—are likely to have as much an influence on your life as your time in uniform. A supportive group of fellow lone soldiers is so helpful in dealing with army annoyances and anxieties (really? <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-seminar-zionism-intact-garin-gold.html">read and believe</a>). They are the people you turn to for advice and fun as a soldier and afterwards as a civilian. Far more than the soldiers you serve with, your <span style="font-style: italic;">garin </span>friends will maintain your sanity in the army and remain active pieces of your life following the army. When I reflect on my most treasured memories from the last two years, far more of them are with my <span style="font-style: italic;">garin </span>than I expected.<br />
<br />
10. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Treasure the Laughs</span><br />
<br />
With all the stress of life as a soldier, there are endless reasons to laugh. A touch of humor keeps even the toughest of challenges—when you are short of sleep, overcome with pain, hating everything and everyone around you—in perspective. Because even when our ideals are crushed, laughter can still save us. To see what I mean, see <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/05/breakfast-with-canada.html">here </a>or do what I do and laugh at all the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/slang-army-hebrew-tash.html">silly slang soldiers use.</a></div>
Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-51740178828739944192011-09-13T13:42:00.005+03:002012-03-22T17:42:00.092+02:00Common Concerns: Gadsar vs. GdudComing from overseas to volunteer in the Israeli army is a gutsy move, by definition laced with a minefield of unknowns. By sharing my own story, this blog is an attempt to help others best navigate that minefield. Sometimes common concerns get lost in my story, however, and so I am going to try and tackle some of these concerns. If you have any questions you would like to see me address, please post them in the comment sections and I will do my best to get to them in due time.<br /><br />The Question:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I am a guy getting ready to enlist in the infantry. Should I serve in the regular brigade (the </span>gdud) <span style="font-style:italic;">or try out for the special-forces reconnaissance battalion (the</span> gadsar)?<br /><br />Every motivated male IDF volunteer faces <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/time-to-answer-question.html">this question</a>. Lets start with some brief background for the uninitiated (to skip to my answer, jump down to the third paragraph).<br /><br />After getting assigned to one of the army's five infantry brigades (Givati, Golani, Kfir, Nachal, Paratroopers), new recruits have the chance in the first few weeks to try out for the brigade's special-forces battalion, colloquially known as the <span style="font-style:italic;">sayarot </span>and more properly termed the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar </span>(shorthand for <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud sayeret</span>, reconnaissance battalion). <br /><br />The try-out is three days of relentless sprints and crawls, more or less the same as <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/11/gibush-matkal-sweat-sand-tears.html">gibush matkal</a> (the tryout for the army's most elite units). Following the try-out, new recruits are assigned to one of the brigade's three regular battalions (the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>) or to one of the three companies (<span style="font-style:italic;">Palsar, Palchan</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Orev</span>) that make up the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span>. Unlike <span style="font-style:italic;">gibush matkal</span>, where the elite units take the guys they want (i.e. luck aside, the best guys get selected), standing out in the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar gibush</span> does not guarantee selection. The army wants to keep some of the best guys in the regular infantry (the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>) and so not all the best guys are chosen for <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span>. <br /><br />Is it better to serve in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Gadsar</span> than the <span style="font-style:italic;">Gdud</span>? Most gung-ho volunteers seem to think so, following the conventional wisdom that the more "elite" a unit is, the better. Based on my experience, <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> may be better than <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> in the following four ways:<br /><br />1) Pride<br />The pride you have in where you serve does wonders for the experience. And while every battalion has its own traditions (and t-shirts, and cheers, and sponsors...), the nature of being in a more selective and more respected unit means that <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> tend to have more pride than <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. <br /><br />2) Higher Quality Peers<br />The guys you serve with do more to determine your time in the military than anything save for combat experience. Because <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> selects its soldiers, and because <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> is viewed as the better place to serve, the guys there tend to be, on average, more responsible, intelligence and ambitious than their peers in the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. I write this with some reservation because while conventional wisdom insists it is true, my personal experience leaves me unconvinced.<br /><br />3) Training (navigation, krav maga, ...)<br />A <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> trains for seven months (basic and advanced training) and then are assigned to <span style="font-style:italic;">kav</span> (front-line duties). <span style="font-style:italic;">Gadsar</span> train for a year. The extra training time is filled with specialized courses (far less glamorous than they sound!), krav maga sessions and, primarily, field navigation. If you really want to be exposed ('train' is too strong a word for the slapdash regime soldiers receive) to IDF navigation and krav maga, then go for <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> over <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. Every <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> also takes the two week paratrooper course, so unless you are in the Paratroops Brigade (where everyone, <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> alike, do jump course), another key difference between <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> is getting to jump out of a plane.<br /><br />4) Active Service<br />Following training, combat soldiers do three things for the rest of their service: a) more training, b) war, c) patrols, arrests and guard duty along the border or occupied territories (duties collectively referred to as <span style="font-style:italic;">kav</span>). Nowadays there is little difference between what the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> do on <span style="font-style:italic;">kav</span> - depending on where they serve, the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> will do more arrests, have less (boring) sentry shifts, and more down time but the trend is towards both units pulling similar tasks. At times of war, like Lebanon in July 2006 or Gaza in January 2009, everyone is deployed and depending on the scope of the conflict, no unit will necessarily see more action than any other. That said, in a limited war, the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> are called up before the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. In a more expanded conflict (like Lebanon 1982), the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> would theoretically go first and provide the reconnaissance for which they are trained.<br /><br />So where should you serve? The answer comes down to time and personality. The less time you serve (i.e. less than the normal three years), the more you should prioritize the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. I have <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/finally-kav.html">written elsewhere</a> about where to serve if you want to maximize your taste of action (see that article for whether or not <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> actually requires one to serve the full three years, regardless of age). The more your prime motivation is to soak up Israeli culture and do your time, the more the answer is <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. The more you are a self-starter that does not let your surroundings psyche you out, all the more reason to go with the <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. If your idea of success is getting into the most well regarded college, if you are desperate for jump course, krav maga and land navigation and if you are willing to possibly sign for the full three years, then <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> is for you. <br /><br />In short, if you are going to serve the full three years, <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> is the better bet than <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>. If you are serving less time (a possibility even in the <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span>, despite the official rules saying otherwise), then the question becomes more about how you prioritize the four factors discussed above.<br /><br />In my case, I chose <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> over <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> because I wanted the extra training perks like navigation and krav maga. I was not concerned with the reputation of where I served, nor am I convinced that the quality of the guys differs greatly between <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span> and gdud. With little personal experience on <span style="font-style:italic;">kav</span> and none with war, my sense is that had I gone with <span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span> over <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span>, as a soldier serving just two years I would have had more front-line experience and leadership opportunities.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-55418157614168363642011-09-11T14:09:00.006+03:002012-01-05T17:02:04.113+02:009/11 & Chafshash: A Day that will Live in InfamyThe anniversary of 9-11 is a day for solemn reflection. This year however, the tenth anniversary of the devastating terror attacks was a day for incomparable joy. For me, at any rate. After two years in uniform, and two final months of <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/08/to-point-of-no-return.html">senseless annoyance</a>, today--September 11, 2011--I left the army. While my formal exit is not till <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-am-now-property-of-state-of-israel.html">October 12</a>, today I began the customarily vacation (known as <span style="font-style:italic;">chafshash, chofesh shichrur</span>) soldiers receive before leaving the army. And so at least in my world, modern America's day of infamy now has something of a silver lining.<br /><br />It is a strange day to be leaving the army. Besides the ironic overtone of 9/11, I am discharging as Israel's enemies are showing their teeth. The Palestinians are threatening a third intifada on the heels of trying to win independence next week at the UN. Iran's nuclear weapons program continues with no restraint in sight. And two longtime quasi-friends, Turkey and Egypt, are acting like mortal foes. Just yesterday, mobs in Cairo torched the Israel Embassy even as the post-Mubarak military leadership makes vain excuses and shamelessly imprisons American-Israeli Ilan Grapel. Just last week, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suspended ties with Israel and threatened to send Turkish warships on patrols off of Israel's coast. When Israel's least worrisome border lies in the north with Hezbollah, the strategic danger facing the country is pretty obvious.<br /><br />On the morning of 9/11, I was not thinking grand strategy. Joy and sorrow wrestled for my attention. The joy came from not only leaving the army but finally having the chance to put to use one of the Israeli combat soldier's most prized possessions: the <span style="font-style:italic;">teudat lohem</span> (combat soldier ID-card). Israeli soldiers normally have to be in uniform to take advantage of the free travel privilege accorded to members of the military. With a <span style="font-style:italic;">teudat lohem</span>, a soldier can dress anyway he wants as he travels freely aboard any bus and train in Israel. Combat soldiers receive the sought after card two-thirds of the way through their service (at the end of their second year, in other words). Since I am only serving two years, I was supposed to receive my <span style="font-style:italic;">teudat lohem</span> back in March. Per the carelessness and insensitivity that reigns in the Paratroop Reconnaissance Battalion (i.e., my unit, <span style="font-style:italic;">Sayeret Tzanchanim</span>), I did not receive my card until last week. One of the joys of <span style="font-style:italic;">chafshash </span>for a combat soldier is maximizing his travel privileges during his final weeks in the army. I am excited at the chance to take advantage and finally see some of the country I moved to and have defended for the last two years.<br /><br />While I had the joy of a <span style="font-style:italic;">teudat lohem</span> in my hand, the absence of military pins on my chest was cause for sorrow. Minutes before leaving my base, I discovered that one of the twenty year old drivers attached to my unit had stolen my pins when he went home on Thursday for the weekend. Military pins represent where a soldier serves and are the main keepsake he takes from the army. Two of the pins stolen from me are worn only by soldiers that completed fourteen months of rigorous combat training in the Paratrooper Reconnaissance Battalion. I received these two pins at the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/04/pomp-ceremony-and-lohem.html">ceremony last March</a> when I was finally made a <span style="font-style:italic;">lohem</span>, a combat soldier, in the Israeli army. <br /><br />The third pin that was stolen from me is the paratrooper wings (known as <span style="font-style:italic;">kanfatz</span>) that <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/06/i-jumped-out-of-plane-last-week.html">I received in May 2010 for completing five military parachute jumps</a>. My wings had belonged to our course instructor, who had personally given me his old-school wrought iron insignia as the best soldier in the course. While I was saddened at the robbery of the two <span style="font-style:italic;">lohem </span>pins, the loss of my parachute course instructor's wings left a special pain. Completing that course, and winning the plaudits of the instructor, had been one of my most cherished accomplishments as a soldier. Even as someone that tends not to idolize his possessions, losing those wings hurts. Especially because they were not lost but were stolen, taken by a fellow soldier as I am literally exiting the army forever.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />For several days following Sunday, September 11, I tried to recover the pins that were stolen from me. I tried to reach out personally to the drivers, sending them a message that I had no interest in them getting punished and just wanted my pins back. I got no response. I tried commanders, bugging the lieutenant of my former combat squad and the Rasar, the desk officer that had served as my final superior. None of them expressed any interest in helping me out. Robbery is so taken for granted in the army that they were not interested in holding the thief accountable. The only advice they had for me was to go to a military surplus store and buy imitation pins--something I have no interest or intention of doing.<br /><br />Losing my pins on the last day of my normal service to a petty thief hurts. If there is a message being sent, it seems to be that I must leave the army as I arrived, leaving aside any mental or physical impressions that came my way over the last two years.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-61367495125969008672011-08-31T22:37:00.015+03:002011-12-25T18:48:09.677+02:00Deconstructing Start-Up Nation<span style="font-weight:bold;">Disclaimer</span>: Like nearly everything on this site (aka, my public journal/blog), the following purports to tell the truth as I have experienced it. My account is not designed to make money, to present anyone/anything in the best or worst light, nor to do anything but share my experience and attitude about my military service. I am a Zionist and am committed to the wellbeing of the Jewish state. But this blog is not intended as an instrument of <span style="font-style:italic;">hasbara </span>(advocacy)--unlike the work which we will now discuss.<br /><br />I love <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span>, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhknfE-qJR0iVNNoLZ8Doa2U2LDq7JiFAdrdONlgY1EGtQUs7x-kFIs8eF2Ku3ocScDxuQVqP6RP6HaQIY_FJ1p9yVTaL3EfYzuNiFV9MzGAqlbKNCSxca-wnmiJZrT24Qe9YZOo8VNqiI/s1600/StartUpNation.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhknfE-qJR0iVNNoLZ8Doa2U2LDq7JiFAdrdONlgY1EGtQUs7x-kFIs8eF2Ku3ocScDxuQVqP6RP6HaQIY_FJ1p9yVTaL3EfYzuNiFV9MzGAqlbKNCSxca-wnmiJZrT24Qe9YZOo8VNqiI/s320/StartUpNation.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690032721101183522" /></a>the Malcolm Gladwell-esque bestseller that pitches Israel as a phenomenal economic success story. My passion for the book is summed up in the message a seasoned Israeli conveys to a young American Zionist in one of the early chapters: “Israel does not need more professional Zionists or politicians, Israel needs successful business people.” Inspired, the young American abandons a career as a professional advocate for Israel and becomes one of Israel's leading venture capitalists, a full time preacher for financial investment in the Jewish State. He is not selling out on his ideals--he is selling in, focusing his energy on the very front Israel must succeed in to remain relevant in the modern world. Too many young idealists come to Israel believing they will make a difference by joining the army or making peace with the Arabs. <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> is a reality check, a reminder that Israel can best help itself, its neighbors and the wider world by thriving as a center of commercial creativity.<br /><br />So much for the love. My issue with <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> is the book's own love for the IDF--and the glowing terms it uses to describe an institution that sounds nothing like the beast I have tangled with over the last two years. I have no problem with someone loving the Israeli army (some of my best friends suffer from this strange illness ;-). But when the object of their affection is more myth than fact, as a member of that falsely mythologized military I am compelled to tell it like it actually is.<br /><br />The Israeli Army in <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> is the incubator of all incubators, responsible for creating the gutsy, quick thinking, networked entrepreneurs at the forefront of Israel’s economic miracle. Dozens of IDF vets that have gone on to achieve startling success in the private sector are quoted crediting their military service for their current success. <br /><br />A careful reader may note that all of these veterans are graduates of only the most elite units, places where soldiers enjoy far more latitude to innovate than in the regular army. In fact, these elite units tend to serve as stand-ins for the whole army throughout <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span>. To the extent that conscription allows the IDF place the brightest kids in the best units and thereby produce a future business elite (capitalism by its very nature demands a business elite, the have and have-nots), I agree that the IDF plays a critical role in nurturing Israeli innovation. But the writers go further, arguing: <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Talpions (graduates of the hyper elite Talpiot unit) may represent the elite of the elite in the Israeli military but the underlying strategy behind the program’s development—to provide broad and deep training in order to produce innovative adaptive problems solving—is evident through much of the military and seems to be part of the Israeli ethos: to teach people how to be very good at a lot of things, rather than excellent at one thing.</span><br /><br />If only this was true. The reality is that combat training in the IDF is quite "broad." What is missing is the second part of the equation: the depth. My peers in some of the IDF's top combat units routinely complained that our scattershot training--a week of navigation, a day of shooting, maybe an hour of krav maga once a month--left us with few relevant skills. Success in combat depends on responding to a threat as a team. As the American journalist Sebastian Junger <a href="http://www.amazon.com/WAR-Sebastian-Junger/dp/0446556246">wrote </a>after spending a year with an American platoon in Afghanistan, "Stripped to its essence, combat is a series of quick decisions and rather precise actions carried out in concert with ten or twelve other men. In that sense, it is much more like football than say like a gang fight. The unit that choreographs their actions best usually wins." In the paratroops, my platoon devoted so little time to fine-tuning our "combat choreography" that when the rare exercise placed us in a simulated firefight, chaos reigned. Our training was to blame. Instead of learning to fight as a military unit, we spent weeks learning a little bit of nothing, dabbling in navigation and ruck-marches, training seemingly designed to build up our resolve rather than our combat wherewithal.<br /><br />Regardless of the effectiveness of IDF training (there is a lot of good, along with all the bad and ugly), <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> is chiefly concerned with presenting the Israeli army as a bastion of responsibility and initiative. According to the book, soldiers, especially officers, are entrusted with vast resources and life and death decisions that leave them well placed for success in the private sector. There is a lot of truth to the first part of that statement (the second part is pretty tough to argue one way or the other). Eighteen year old grunts sign off on expensive military hardware, meaning they assume vast financial responsibility (for loss or injury to the gear) even before they shoulder the mortal responsibility that may come with using the hardware. Likewise, twenty-one year old lieutenants often find themselves wielding real power, especially if they are combat officers and are tasked with leading their peers into battle.<br /><br />The flipside to these admirable lessons in responsibility is a culture that teaches soldiers to be decidedly irresponsible. Part of the problem is that the army is the very worst sort of welfare state. It feeds, clothes and orders its charges around, creating a corp with a baseline infantile responsibility threshold. Soldiers have no motivation to take responsibility when the army will either boss or provide all their <br />needs. <br /><br />This bottom-up (the 'bottom' expects someone 'up above' will take care of everything) side of the problem parallels the real rot in the system: the top-down tendency to force your subordinates to take responsibility for the work you should do. Everyone in the army knows that the military resembles a pyramid--the higher you are in the system, the more people beneath you. And if you have subordinates, then they are the people you pass on the chores that your boss passed on to you. The buck stops no where in this army. Everyone dumps on the people beneath them. Grunts end up covered in everyone's filth. Perhaps that is why the miasma of irresponsibility that plagues the Israeli army is often referred to by that most dispiriting of army slang terms, <span style="font-style:italic;">zrikat zayin</span>. In<a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/slang-army-hebrew-klalot-curses.html"> common usage</a>, the phrase means not giving a damn. When applied to the wider army culture, it captures the sense of disinterest in taking responsibility when you can just throw the obligation on to someone else.<br /><br />The ugly reality of this ethic exposes the myth that <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> builds of military leadership. While the army certainly provides peerless leadership opportunities for those that lead men in combat or control vast resources and complex systems, the brunt of officers operating in military bureaucracy easily fall victim to the push the buck philosophy. With national security at stake, failure is not an option. Unless, of course, someone else can be blamed. Israeli politics follows a similar credo, perhaps because the ex-generals and ex-commandos that govern the country learned how to operate in the army. <br /><br />Initiative, not responsibility, is the real concern of <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span>. To prove that the former is rife within the army, the authors explain what the slang terms <span style="font-style:italic;">rosh katan/gadol</span> are all about:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In the Israeli army, soldiers are divided into those who think with a</span> rosh gadol<span style="font-style:italic;">—literally a “big head”—and those who operate with a</span> rosh katan,<span style="font-style:italic;"> or “little head.”</span> Rosh katan <span style="font-style:italic;">behavior, which is shunned, means interpreting orders as narrowly as possible to avoid taking on responsibility or extra work.</span> Rosh gadol <span style="font-style:italic;">thinking means following orders but doing so in the best possible way, using judgment and investing whatever effort is necessary. It emphasizes improvisation over discipline, and challenging the chief over respect for hierarchy. Indeed, ‘challenge the chief” is an injunction issued to junior Israeli soldiers.</span><br /><br />Rubbish. For starters, 'challenge the chief' does not exist outside of elitist intel units, pilot squads and the prestate Palmach militia. In the rest of the army, including top commando squads, questioning your officer--sometimes even voicing a contrary opinion--is a surefire way to find yourself in the dogbox. Push your luck too far and the insecure chief who does not enjoy having his authority challenged will likely make the remainder of your service horrible. More to the point, the army does not reward <span style="font-style:italic;">rosh gadol</span> behavior. Often a soldier is praised for displaying a <span style="font-style:italic;">rosh katan</span>. The point is that initiative is largely secondary. What matters is knowing which insecure authority figure will judge your behavior in any given circumstance and acting accordingly (see <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/slang-army-hebrew-klalot-curses.html">slang dictionary </a>for more).<br /><br />The Israeli army that I know from mine and numerous close friends' lived experience is unfortunately not defined by young men and women taking responsibility and getting rewarded for their initiative. Yet the absence of that reality is not my main concern with <span style="font-style:italic;">Start Up Nation</span>'s portrayal of the IDF. My real gripe is the book's pollyannaish presumption that Israel has its compulsory military service to thank for producing a nation of mature university grads that <span style="font-weight:bold;">even </span>have international experience due to the global trek Israelis embark on after the army. An alternative narrative, absent from <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> but no stranger to anyone attuned to contemporary Israel, is of young Israelis that try to escape the dispiriting experience of serving in the IDF through several years of itinerant global travel, dominated by drugs, danger and lording over disadvantaged local peoples. This is a narrative that takes into account the many conscripts whose military experiences best resembles the metaphor painted by a former lone soldier: “quiet gentle guys [like] Hayim are like sweet fruit. Then the army comes along and mashes them into a pulp.” <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> wants you to believe that the Israeli army is the Ivy League of Outward Bounds, an experience with only positive externalities for the state. It is a grand claim, makes great PR, yet unfortunately is distinctly off-key.<br /><br />Perhaps my ear was so attuned to the writers' military misstep because one of the authors is closely tied to the most authentic portrayal I have ever read of what it is actually like to serve in the Israeli army. I have <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2009/09/benefit-of-small-audience.html">written </a>several times about the writing of Alex Singer, an American volunteer whose letters were published by his family after his death in battle in 1987.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZS12QldePO8Mz7aCeXG2suw6MZLftChdU6WymE7kP22OwG48wxEBWvbTNP1VUE_d3r590_FyockLxcP2y2-3JTiiUmDay8QDJOpu_Te0GBX8Rxuf8FdcMpJKRg5Fks3qqGAd0CAveTQ/s1600/AlexSinger.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 129px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZS12QldePO8Mz7aCeXG2suw6MZLftChdU6WymE7kP22OwG48wxEBWvbTNP1VUE_d3r590_FyockLxcP2y2-3JTiiUmDay8QDJOpu_Te0GBX8Rxuf8FdcMpJKRg5Fks3qqGAd0CAveTQ/s200/AlexSinger.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690107350207264306" /></a> Alex’s published journal spares no punches in expressing the frustration and angst of the typical Israeli soldier. His words echo in the life my friends and I know as soldiers in the same force Alex served in two dozen years ago. His words are absent, though, in the IDF that his older brother portrays in <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span>. It is not my place to begrudge Saul Singer, Alex's older brother and one of the author's of <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span>, the opportunity to build on his brother's legacy in the manner he chooses. Nevertheless, the legacy Alex left with me, and with so many other conscripts, is the harsh reality of an often hopelessly frustrating military. Portraying that military otherwise, even for the best of reasons, leaves a kernel of disappointment within my general admiration for <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation.</span><br /><br />My criticism is less fair if we agree that <span style="font-style:italic;">Start-Up Nation</span> is not about the IDF as much as it is a book designed to advertise Israel's economic miracle, and by extension, Israeli society at large. If allowing the IDF to be portrayed as a shiny, one-trick pony advances Israel's image, then--in this case, at least--count me in as a believer.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />The other popular book I recently <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDhzPZeO-VZGyTRu6rHaDoRGvJlImlpZDHXr4cnr-Edsqy2V6dwUF0K7moefbebDQbyJMDpGTWl-HTI4LJed1PERfM_OJLvAXO8f5uG03bEULOHfqntZm_hk2xeWFBXz6xNFoyyvxUUw/s1600/DancewithDragons2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDhzPZeO-VZGyTRu6rHaDoRGvJlImlpZDHXr4cnr-Edsqy2V6dwUF0K7moefbebDQbyJMDpGTWl-HTI4LJed1PERfM_OJLvAXO8f5uG03bEULOHfqntZm_hk2xeWFBXz6xNFoyyvxUUw/s200/DancewithDragons2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690104710832895362" /></a> finished reading is <span style="font-style:italic;">Dance with Dragons</span>, the ponderous fifth tomb in the best sword-and-sorcerer series since Lord of the Rings. The originality and quality of the earlier novels in the series, the ponderous pace of publication and a popular HBO serialization wrapping up its first season have brought tremendous attention to this latest read. Attention it unfortunately does not deserve.<br /><br />Yes, the book is a bore. Anyone who has read the previous four books, each one nearly a thousand pages, will naturally hang on every word (over 400,000 words, they say). When you have followed characters through so many pages, slowly imagined a world that is gradually expanding from book to book (and now even onscreen), anything that continues the journey will be well received--especially because the author remains a fine wordsmith. What he has lost is a keen sense of drama, of suspense, and most damning of all, imagination. <br /><br />I started reading the series in the late nineties, shortly after the second novel was published, when I stumbled across the first book in the public library. The cover illustration of the dark haired protagonist on a dark charger in a snowswept forest caught my imagination. The first novel, of course quickly exceeded my best expectation, hooking me for a series that a decade later looks like it likely will never end. <br /><br />Tolkein invented a formula that the genre has never abandoned, alternatively its greatest strength and weakness: the imagination to create entire worlds, with vast histories and fables. The best books in the genre are merely Dungeons & Dragons games put to pen by a serviceable wordsmith with a slightly original plotline. They write a first standout novel, imaging a world that wins countless admirers whom are then taken along across numerous sequels, each more disappointing than its predecessor. There are many lessons in this, perhaps the most sublime is recognizing that in our passion for innovation we take refuge in the familiar rather than demand the constant imagining that truly excites us from the start.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-11091367437611379942011-08-24T13:36:00.003+03:002011-12-25T18:53:28.322+02:00Suicide in UniformLast Thursday a soldier was killed fighting terrorists on the Egyptian border. Last night a soldier was nearly killed by jumping off a three story building on my base. One a hero, the other a suicide. So it goes.<br /><br />The would be suicide climbed atop my three story barracks building late on Tuesday night. Onlookers thought at first he was trying to get a cheap view into the top-floor girls shower-room. It was not until the soldier began hollering and approaching the edge of the rooftop that he got everyone's attention. As a few soldiers tried to talk him back from the edge, the instant response team--normally charged with responding to border infiltrators--crept up behind the unstable soldier and pulled him to safety.<br /><br />I was minding my own business in bed when I first became aware of the attempted suicide. A senior officer barged into my room with a distracted soldier in tow. "Get dressed, and get outside," the officer told me bluntly. "Me and my friend here need some privacy for a few minutes." I slipped out the door wrapped in a sheet and quickly discovered that one of my roommates, the skinny guy now sequestered in the room with the officer, had just tried to jump to his death.<br /><br />My roommate, a noncombat soldier serving as a truck-driver, had a long simmering beef with his assignment in the army. Matters had come to a head and he was now desperate to be reassigned to an "open base," where soldiers return home after the close of the workday. His superiors had not expressed much interest in his request and so, stressed into a corner, he had ended up at the edge of a three story rooftop late on a Tuesday night.<br /><br />Suicide is rarely the decision of a stable mind. Yet what surprises me about my roommate's attempted suicide is not the deed itself but the fact that relatively few peers follow his lead. I am by NO MEANS calling or in any way wishing more soldiers would commit suicide. I am merely commenting on what anyone within the army knows to be true: the attitude among most soldiers is so negative, there is such a culture of bitterness and repressed anger, that a fair observer can only be surprised that the number of attempted suicides is not even higher.<br /><br />Suicide is already a problem within the Israeli Army. Exactly how much of a problem is difficult to say (cursory research reveals no public data on the number of attempted suicides, a more relevant figure than successful suicides), since data is scarce--no doubt in part because the army does its best to prevent the media from reporting on soldiers taking their own lives. Those articles that do make it to the mainstream media tend to be about particularly bizarre suicides, like <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3876960,00.html">two Druze soldiers that killed themselves in April 2010</a> within moments of the one hearing of the other's death. Or the soldier who killed himself as French President <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2187893/Israeli-soldier-commits-suicide-in-front-of-Nicolas-Sarkozy.html">Sarkozy left Israel in June 2008</a>. Nearly a decade ago, a surge in soldier suicides (35 soldiers killed themselves in 2005, far more than the number of soldiers killed in training or the line of fire) led to a spate of public scrutiny and new army measures designed to sensitize commanders to the risk of suicide.<br /><br />Understanding why Israeli soldiers commit suicide is really not so difficult. The reason is not, as some left-wing and anti-Israel critics like to claim, a response to human rights violations or having been turned into cold-blooded killers by an immoral occupation force. Instead the cause is rooted in the age and culture of a mandatory military. Soldiers are the same age as the demographic (19-25) that is most prone to suicide worldwide. While the Israeli army tries to avoid inducting youth with suicidal tendencies, universal conscription makes its simple for troubled teens to still find their way into uniform. <br /><br />Once in the army, the problem is not that the army makes people violent (if anything, the Israeli army teaches combat soldiers to express violence in a controlled fashion). The problem is that the army makes people frustrated and embittered. The nature of a restrictive, insensitive institution is that young people with problems get even more embittered. For every Israeli that glides through the army, two dozen of his peers reach the end of their service with so much buried resentment that a year long trip overseas becomes the necessary means of finding the inner peace to move on with their lives. <br /><br />The <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3916239,00.html">army likes to claim</a> that extensive investigation has shown that suicide is not directly connected to military service. These reports miss the whole point: Most soldiers consider suicide because they find themselves unable to effectively come to terms with non-"military issues" insides the confines of the military. Claiming that the military has no role in such suicides is as morally obtuse as it is functionally dangerous in designing an effective response.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-12956595408213658122011-08-19T13:33:00.005+03:002011-10-19T16:43:25.590+02:00A Fallen Orev in the Attack near EilatThe soldier who died yesterday was one of ours. For over an hour on the afternoon of Thursday August 18, heavily armed Palestinian terrorist squads attacked civilians and soldiers on the southern desert road leading to Eilat. Eight Israelis were killed, and more than thirty wounded. Moshe Naftali, 22 years old, was, like me, a sergeant in the Orev reconnaissance battalion. His Orev unit is part of the Golani Brigade. Mine is attached to the Paratroopers. Besides the color of our berets, the training and duties asked of us is mostly the same. Before his unit began patrolling the site of yesterday's attack, my unit was responsible for security in the area. Had yesterday's attack take placed six months ago, the soldier under fire could easily have been me.<br /><br />Before I joined the army, I tried my best to sympathize when Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed by terrorists. As a soldier charged with defending the state of Israel, my feelings today are very different. If civilians are killed, like the Fogel family in March, I am frustrated at my--and the army as a whole-- failure to not do more to prevent such attacks. When soldiers are killed, I am reminded of my commitment to make such a sacrifice even as I fight a frustration that comes at not finding myself closer to the action. Casualties also remind me that the relatively calm security situation in the last three years is deceptive. Violence in this region is never far removed from daily events. As a combat soldier (in name, if not in present reality!), yesterday's attack is a bloody reminder that several months of calm in no way reduces the risk of the work we do.<br /><br />As the rumors ripped around my base yesterday afternoon, it was difficult to grasp what was really happening down in the southern desert. First we heard a bus had been blown up. Once that report was updated to a bus taking fire from marauding terrorists, everyone on base spoke of heavily armed terrorist squads at loose in Israel's southern desert territory. Then came reports of rocket fire. Was Eilat the target? Were the rockets originating from the Egyptian controlled Sinai desert or the Palestinian Gaza Strip? And what were we, what was the army, doing in all this mess to get the situation under control?<br /><br />By nightfall, authoritative news finally reached my base and I learned of the series of attacks on traffic along the main highway to Eilat, as well as the military response. The Israeli army had actually been prepared for an incursion in the area by Palestinian terrorists for several weeks. So while the exact timing of the raid surprised security forces, soldiers were in place to prevent a greater tragedy. Handcuffs found on the bodies of the terrorists suggest that a key goal of the attack was to kidnap soldiers, ala the (kidnapping of Gilad Shalit near the Gaza Strip, plus the) Hezbollah attacks on the northern border that prompted the war in Lebanon in July 2006.<br /><br />Had soldiers been kidnapped, or had the army not succeeded in preventing more civilian casualties, there is a good chance that yesterday's violence could have spiraled into a larger conflict akin to the war in Lebanon or the fighting in Gaza in January 2009. Thankfully, that bullet seems to have been dodged. If not for a laundry list of laudable reasons (prevent further bloodshed and misery), then at the very least for one selfish one: Nothing would make the menial duties I am presently engaged in until the end of my service further demoralizing than if a conflict erupted and instead of participating in what should be the cumulative test of my service, I am left behind on base cutting weeds and collecting garbage.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-15019832883263084812011-08-16T23:06:00.006+03:002011-10-14T01:24:10.956+02:00To the Point of No ReturnNo Nativ for me.<br /><br />I was shocked when the army informed me less than a day before I was to commence Course Nativ (a seven week military seminar on basic Judaism) that my spot had been rescinded. I was one signature and ten minutes away from ending <a href="http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=5626654601094198848">the fiasco</a> that had dogged my last two months in the Paratroops Brigade. Instead I was ordered back to base, slapped with a draconian punishment, and returned to my previous duties cutting weeds and collecting trash for the remainder of my military service.<br /><br />How the hell did this happen?<br /><br />When I <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/08/very-best-day-of-year-civilian-avatar.html">last left off</a>, it was Tuesday, August 9, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, and I was watching my base recede into the distance for the last time. After two weeks of menial <span style="font-style:italic;">avodei rasar</span> (serving as the base’s garbage collector and weed whacker), I was finally putting the mess that remained of my career in the Paratroops Brigade behind me. Having failed to receive the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>clearance I am entitled to, I had cut my losses and set off to file the paperwork that released me from the Paratroops and assigned me to Course Nativ for the remainder of my service. The manpower office had given me clear instructions that I leave our forward operating base on Tuesday to collect my gear at home and report Wednesday to our permanent base to give in my gear and transfer out of the brigade. Thursday morning I had to be at the Jerusalem offices of Course Nativ to ensure I did not lose my spot in the seven week education program.<br /><br />I followed these instructions to the letter. My mistake is that neither I nor the manpower office informed the desk officer that had titular authority over me for the last two weeks that I was transferring out. I had not informed him partly out of a mistaken conviction that the manpower office would do so. But also because until Wednesday morning, I was still holding onto a slim hope that my request for a <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>would be approved and instead of starting Course Nativ, I would be getting out of the army on the thirty day break every lone soldier is entitled to. I had not wanted to overwhelm the desk officer that was serving as my superior for less than twelve days with these various stratagems. Instead I erred and left him in the cold, a mistake that would prove fatal to my desire to get away from this mess once and for all.<br /><br />My mistake was all the more egregious because my superior since August 2 was the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar</span>, a career army desk-officer charged with overseeing brigade-wide discipline issues. In other words, my mistake happened on the watch of the very man obsessed with procedure by the nature of his position. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar </span>interpreted my absence as having gone AWOL. When he contacted me on Wednesday, he refused to accept my explanation that I was merely following orders and processing transfer paperwork. Instead he ordered me to return to the forward operating base to be punished for going AWOL. Having already reached the door of the base where I was to complete my exit paperwork, I made a shot at seeing if they would sign me out and let me skip past this latest confusion. No dice. By this time it was too late to make it to the forward base that the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar </span>had ordered me to. Wednesday ended with my communicating to him that I would sleep in nearby Jerusalem and arrive on base the following morning after attempting to speak to the Nativ officers and reserve a space in their course.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar </span>took my stopover at the Nativ offices Wednesday morning as further sign of insubordination. For my part, I was glad I went since the Nativ officers promised to save me a spot if by Sunday morning I had resolved the AWOL charge. The Nativ registration center was a riot of foreign language, with Russian easily the most common language among the new immigrant soldiers. Besides reserving a spot for Sunday, my highlight of stopping by was running into the Russian soldier that had served as my <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/06/i-jumped-out-of-plane-last-week.html">parachute course instructor</a>—and given me his own parachute insignia that is easily my most treasured keepsake from my military service.<br /><br />With Nativ taken care of, there was only one thing keeping me from returning to base to face the wrath of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar</span>: the wedding of one of my closest friend tonight in Jerusalem. Returning to base would mean not attending a wedding I had looked forward to for months. While I knew the risks of not returning until Friday morning, I was not certain that missing such a close friend’s <span style="font-style:italic;">simcha </span>was worth the hell I could expect awaited me on my return. <br /><br />While debating what to do, I took several steps against my commanders for the ugly events of the last few months (not including this latest fiasco). The Lone Soldier Center helped me draft and fax a Hebrew letter to the army complaints office, known as the <span style="font-style:italic;">Netziv Kvilot Chayalim</span>, that outlined how my company commander disregarded army rules in mistreating me. Others helped shared my story with several media figures, including Carmela Menashe, the most prominent advocate for soldier’s rights in Israel. Another sympathetic stranger put me in touch with a former commander of the Paratroop Brigade. After hearing the entire story of the last few months, this senior officer, who still carries great weight in the brigade, agreed that my superiors’ actions had crossed the line on several occasion. He advised me to return to base immediately, promising he would do what he could to ensure my commanders did not screw me over once again because of this latest mess. With a heavy heart, I heeded his words and passed up on my friend’s wedding to return to base.<br /><br />A series of small miracles ensured I caught the very last bus back to base. Buoyed by this spurt of good fortune, I arrived on base to meet the battalion commander (<span style="font-style:italic;">Magad</span>) as ordered to by the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar</span>. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Magad </span>I met had only recently begun his command. As if to make up for his brief tenure and boyish looks, he had already acquired a reputation as a real terror. Our meeting made good on that reputation. Instead of the discussion I had been promised over the phone by the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar </span>and the former brigade commander, the <span style="font-style:italic;">Magad </span>ambushed me with a formal hearing to determine my guilt and punishment for the last two days events. Shock turned to rage as he found me guilty of going AWOL, accused me of making a mockery of his command, and remanded me to base for the next twenty-eight days under the command of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rasar </span>(i.e. the garbage and weed detail). Before leaving his office, I collected myself to tell him, politely yet with barely concealed disgust, that it was him and his officers that were making a mockery of my service and that I had nothing but disdain for this shanghaied judgment.<br /><br />My disgust turned to seething anger as I left his office. By my nature I am calm and collected. While the last few months have frustrated me to no end, I have maintained a sense of humor and reflective distance at even the worst of times. But this final joke of a sentence, stripping me of the course that was to finally get me out of this mess because of a mild error in miscommunication?! After everything else, my patience was done with. For two months I have played the game, hoping that logic, <span style="font-style:italic;">protekzia </span>and the basic justice of my cause would see me through. All that was over. This was no longer about what was right and fair. And it is all too obvious that my well-meaning friends can not be of any real help. If I want something to happen, it is in my hands. The way I saw it, the shmucks in charge had now falsely punished me for going AWOL. So what should I do? Go AWOL on them for real.<br /><br />As I stewed on base over the weekend, well-meaning friends thought to dissuade me from running away. Everyone warned me what I knew all too well: that if I just upped and left, I was jeopardizing my future in this country. Not a future career or reputation—but the opportunity to simply remain in Israel and avoid extended jail-time. Running away from the army now, with just nine weeks left, meant I would never be formally discharged and forever branded a runaway, liable to be arrested if I return to the country in the next two decades. <br /><br />One friend urged me to remember that my faith in the country will return far easier than the country’s faith (so to speak) in me. If one of you has to take the hit in the broken faith you have in the other, let it be you, she insisted. Do not do something that will place the country against you. Better to do something that will place you against the country.<br /><br />More than anyone else, I understand that I came to Israel to live here, not to serve in the army. Enlisting was about affirming my citizenship. To allow my service to harm my deep-seated Zionism seems completely irrational. Of course, the irrationality is part of the reason I was so determined to stand up for myself and leave. <br /><br />My resolve to do something drastic finally slipped when a close friend urged me to see the next month as my being unjustly imprisoned in order to ensure the future success of my life in Israel. While he urged me not to let several douche-bag commanders ruin anything beyond the next few weeks, I decided not to do anything too crazy to avoid upsetting the faith in Israel of those who love me—friends, family, siblings, mother and most of all, my father. Sometimes running off <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Into-Wild-Jon-Krakauer/dp/0385486804">into the wild</a> to escape the hypocrisy and idiocy of institutional life is right for every reason save for that which is most important: the faith and love others have for you.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-20507675934015637682011-08-05T14:35:00.002+03:002011-09-23T06:37:55.972+03:00Very Best Day of the Year: Civilian AvatarAugust second was the very best day of the year. Having been robbed of my military ambition—prevented from deploying with my fellow combat soldiers—I was ordered to report to my new task as a garbage collector and weed cutter (<span style="font-style:italic;">avodei rasar</span>) on the first Tuesday of August. En route to exile, however, the discouraged soldier had a chance to temporarily live the life of his civilian avatar. The biggest surprise I had in switching from soldier to civilian for a day is that it left me bouncing with positive Zionist energy. My disillusioned army self was recharged thanks to the new vistas I saw waiting for me in my future life as a civilian. A chance, even for a few hours, to engage in the sort of creative and dynamic activities that have been persona non grata in my military service had such a welcoming effect that I arrived at my sorry excuse for a final military assignment bursting with goodwill and misplaced yet appreciated enthusiasm.<br /><br />This most satisfying of days began at night. Hours before I had fled the army to a friend’s apartment, looking forward to one night of freedom before reporting to my mindless new assignment on the morrow. As the final minutes of August first slipped off into the night sky, my sister and I connected on the phone for the first time in over a month. She had just returned from an extended overseas vacation, and was on the verge of starting medical school. Her anxiety and excitement at turning over a new leaf in her life was contagious. I rode the vibes from our phone conversation into an impromptu four way brainstorm session, convened at my request to discuss plans for a project we intend to spring on two close friends in the near future. When my fellow brainstormers called it a night, I kept going. The creative juices we had unleashed would not let me sleep, and so I hacked away at the ideas we had developed all through the night.<br /><br />Morning’s glory brought more good news. When my friend finally awoke, he lent me a mad-cool blue shirt and sent me off toward Israel’s take on capitol hill. My business was not at the Knesset but nearby, inside the sparkling headquarters of the Joint Distribution Committee (known colloquially as the Joint, as the JDC). The Joint had asked for a meeting to discuss a project they are developing on which I have unique experience. It was refreshing to have a long and intelligent conversation for perhaps the first time in two years where my creativity and knowledge were called upon and respected. <br /><br />Too soon I was heading back to the army. But the day’s delights were not over. En route to the central bus station, I overheard two female soldiers debating when to get off. After providing them with directions, it was natural to fall into conversation with one of them, especially when it turned out that all of us needed to take the same long bus ride south. It was even more natural to sit next to the girl I was speaking with, not only because she was strikingly attractive but also because she displayed an intelligence and humor well beyond her years. Most of our conversation turned on what it means to be an observant Jew. She insisted she was completely secular, having never observed Shabbat nor a single Jewish holiday. But when I explained that my Jewish faith is fueled in large part by an attachment to community, she agreed that she shares this faith as well. She in fact turned out to be a passionate advocate for Jewish customs and tradition, values that she eventually agreed suggest that she is not as divorced from Judaism as she had previously supposed. If there was one thing lacking in the previous night’s brainstorming and the morning’s discussion at the Joint, it was a really cute girl to converse with. Granted that favor at last, I boarded the final bus that would take me to my new assignment in an incredibly good mood.<br /><br />All the creative juices, intelligence conversations, and cute girls over the last twenty-four hours had turned a day that could have marked the nadir of my military service into a day I hope to not soon forget. I was feeling so good that I even convinced myself that the next few weeks of demoralizing work were akin to the volunteer labor of selfless Zionists like Rahm Emanuel, who travel from halfway across the world to do manual labor in programs such as Sar-El. Except unlike those suckers who pay out of pocket to clean moldy gear and paint fences, I would be doing similar work for a wage. Two weeks of blue and white service, was how my recharged Zionist self insisted on looking at the task that lay before me.<br /><br />I knew I only had two weeks with a shovel and mop in hand because I had already received a go-ahead to attend the next seven week education course on basic Judaism that is offered to all soldiers born overseas. Known as Course Nativ, the only course I could take before discharging from the army in October was the one that began on Thursday August 11. What that meant was that I had until Wednesday the tenth to receive approval from my new superiors for the same <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>vacation I had unfairly been denied by my former superiors. Since the previous company commander had not granted me my requested <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>on the spurious grounds that he lacked enough combat soldiers to let me leave, now there seemed no reason why my new company commander could possibly not approve the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet</span>. If I could not seal the deal on the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>by the tenth, then I realized it was worth it to simply get the hell away from the whole battalion, abandon any hope for the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>I by right deserve, and decamp to Course Nativ for the remainder of my service.<br /><br />The new company commander never raised any problems with my <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>request. The problem is that he never raised anything at all in failing to meet with me (whether willfully or through plain negligence, I cannot say for sure—army rules order him to meet with me within a single week regardless) for the two weeks I was under his command. The writing was on the wall: it was well past time to put as much distance between me and the battalion as possible. So on Tuesday August 9, the morning of the Jewish fast of Tisha b’Av, I left base to complete the army paperwork that would transfer me to Course Nativ. As the military base faded off into the distance, I was sure I was seeing a forward operating base for the last time as a soldier (outside of reserves one day, of course). The Ninth of Av, a day of mourning marking the destruction of the Jewish Temples and dispersion of the people into exile, seemed to be providing a fitting coda of sorts to my military odyssey.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />I had one final reason to celebrate on August 2. Three of the guys that had departed with me from our Air Force squad were starting lieutenants’ school. I felt only happiness for them, especially since two of them were again serving side by side in the same squad, training now to assume command and lead the future young soldiers of the IDF. Mixed up in that happiness, however, was the irony that on the very same day that my peers were commencing the ten-month long lieutenants course, I was starting my own new assignment as a garbage collector and weed cutter. How it came to pass that I ended up here, and they made it there, is a question that lingers as I grit my teeth and look towards finishing the last few meaningless weeks of my military service.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-47983720107700569022011-07-30T21:23:00.003+03:002011-08-02T04:01:43.962+03:00Politics by Other Means<span style="font-style:italic;">Give me liberty, or give me death!</span><br /><br />My terms are less dramatic than those framed by Patrick Henry in his famous speech on the eve of the American Revolution. Give me <span style="font-style:italic;">kav </span>or grant me <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>, is how my battle-cry with my superiors has evolved since our <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-battle.html">initial firefight</a> over the <span style="font-style:italic;">sarsap </span>position. My central request has remained to serve with my peers as a combat soldier on our current deployment. Failing that, and acknowledging that transferring to another combat unit has never been a viable option (no unit would take a soldier with only two months left purely due to the paperwork hassle), my quest has been for maximum <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>, slang for comfort, in other words finding the least numbing way to spend my remaining weeks in the military. My pursuit of either of those two terms has taken a variety of dramatic turns over the last month even as my position has remained decidingly static in the interim. <br /><br />When I left off last time, my company commander (<span style="font-style:italic;">mem’pei</span>) had scathingly informed me that I would be formally punished for resisting the lowly logistics position (<span style="font-style:italic;">sarsap</span>) I had been assigned. My attempts to find advocates for my cause had seemingly come up empty and I headed to a week-long break (I was attending a lone soldier post-army career workshop) from my unit with little reason to be optimistic about what awaited me on my return.<br /><br />My first week back set the stage for how I would pass the time over the remainder of the next month. With my entire unit deployed in the territories, I was assigned to be one of three soldiers that are needed to stay back and watch over the home base. With no real gear to watch over and everything locked up that has not been carted off to the deployment, there was little to do besides catch up on movies, reading, running and trading bitter jokes with one of the other soldiers marooned with me on our home base, a lone solder from Belgium with his own reasons for being on base.<br /><br />There was a purpose to my staying on base this first week. At some point, promised my lieutenant, you will meet with the battalion commander (known as the <span style="font-style:italic;">magad</span>, a senior officer that is my company commander’s immediate superior). The <span style="font-style:italic;">magad </span>has a reputation as a nice guy and so when we met on Friday morning he let me say my piece. The problem was that the issue at play had now moved from my desire to remain a combat soldier rather than a <span style="font-style:italic;">sarsap </span>(which had fueled the disagreement until now) to the <span style="font-style:italic;">magad</span>’s insistence that I sign a third year. This new direction did not come as a surprise, since I was all too aware that the lone soldier advocate I had initially turned to for assistance, Zvika Levy, had for better or worse seized on this lone detail of my army story and communicated it to the senior officers he spoke to on my behalf. <br /><br />I gave the <span style="font-style:italic;">magad </span>a similar explanation to what I had told his manpower official during a previous encounter: When I came to the Paratroops eight month ago, I clearly expressed to the relevant officer that I wished to serve in a unit that did not require me to serve more than my remaining one year of service. I was nevertheless placed in the special forces, where soldiers are formally required to serve a full three years (quite rightly, as far as I am concerned), but without anyone asking me to sign extra time until now, two months before I am scheduled to discharge and begin the rest of my life. With all due respect sir, I concluded, at this point in time I find it difficult to be pressured into signing on an extra year, especially when I am by no means the only lone soldier to serve less than three years in this (and many other) special forces unit(s).<br /><br />The meeting with the <span style="font-style:italic;">magad </span>ended with him informing me that I had until Sunday to agree to sign an extra year. After he left, his manpower chief, who had been sitting in over the course of the meeting, approached me with a glint of undisguised menace in his eyes. That was the good cop routine, he paraphrased in referring to his superior’s words. Now I am going to tell you what will really happen. On Sunday you will meet me and either (a) agree to sign a third year, (b) disagree and I will sign it for you, (c) if I am unable to do so (which of course, he is, making his threat meaningless and frankly, hilarious!), I will instead make the remainder of your service a misery.<br /><br />There was no reason to wait the weekend for me to tell these guys what they apparently had not yet absorbed: I had zero intention of signing on an extra day let alone another year. To clarify, my decision has nothing to do with a “hate the army” attitude or any such nonsense. It merely reflects the fact that I am ready to move on with my life and do not see my present circumstance as obligating me to serve more time as, for instance, they did when I initially agreed to serve a total of four years when I first enlisted. <br /><br />The manpower chief was absent to receive my cataclysmic decision on Sunday. He also failed to make himself available over the remainder of the week. So after consulting with Tziki Aud, another noted advocate for lone soldiers, I regretfully set aside my central goal of continuing as a combat soldier and began the struggle for maximum <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>. I had two weapons in my <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>arsenal: (a) a <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet</span>, the thirty day vacation from the army all lone soldiers are entitled to once a year that I have never used; (b) Course Nativ, a seven week long course on basic Judaism all new immigrant soldiers have the right to attend. Had I remained as a combat soldier, I had intended to pass on both rights in order to maximize my active duty service. Now that my goal was maximum <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>, the two tools seemed to offer me a smooth ride until mid-September when I would start <span style="font-style:italic;">chafshash</span>, the vacation soldiers receive before their discharge from the army.<br /><br />A lone soldier’s superiors are obligated to grant him a <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet</span>. But they get to decide when to grant him the month vacation. Since I am effectively out of the army come mid-September, my superiors seemingly had to grant me the break immediately. Guided by Tziki Aud, I also tried to persuade my superiors that doing so was the best option for all of us, since at this point I was not doing anything anyways and resolving my service without bitterness seemed in the best interest of everyone. My company commander refused to play ball. When he could not reject the request out right, he approved it for the final month of my service, effectively taking it away since I am already on break during that time from <span style="font-style:italic;">chafshash</span>. According to military rule, he could only do this if he could cite an overarching military need to not grant the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>sooner. So he did, claiming that manpower shortages prevented him from granting me the break before the end of September.<br /><br />Before I realized the lengths my company commander had gone to deny my <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet</span>, I came to the conclusion that I needed someone to intercede on my behalf and speak with him about my vacation request. He was not answering my calls, and considering our past discussions, I had little reason to believe he would even listen to my reasonable request for an explanation. So my kibbutz father called on my behalf and, instead of getting a straight answer as to why the <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>was being held up, was informed that I would be granted a second meeting with the new <span style="font-style:italic;">magad </span>that in the last week had replaced the genial man I had spoken with two weeks previously.<br /><br />Two weeks passed and no meeting with the new <span style="font-style:italic;">magad </span>was scheduled. I was not surprised: if I could not figure out why a meeting was necessary, why would a brand new battalion commander, with a hundred pressing responsibilities, see the need to meet with me? In the meantime, however, my lieutenant was replaced, a routine re-ordering of the ranks that always takes place to a special forces platoon at this point in its history. The new platoon leader told me he saw no reason why I should not return as a combat soldier. Suddenly it seemed that a simple solution to this whole unnecessary drama had arrived. My new lieutenant said he would speak to the company commander and keep me abreast of developments.<br /><br />Another week passed with me still minding the store, so to speak, on base. In the last month I have watched more movies than I have seen in the past decade, not to mention returned to running every night like I did before joining the army. Since asking my kibbutz father to intercede on my behalf, I had taken a break from working the phones on my behalf, waiting patiently instead to meet with the new <span style="font-style:italic;">magad</span>. Just as I was thinking time was nigh to become active again, my new lieutenant called and informed me that the company commander had ordered me transferred out of the unit immediately. <br /><br />While I was shocked, the news also served as a call to action. For two days I returned to the phones, speaking with Tziki Aud, kibbutz friends and a new military office for lone soldiers (the office, to my surprise, were helpful within their limited abilities to help). Until I got to the bottom of why my company commander had effectively denied my <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>request, it seemed unreasonable to transfer out of his unit and, as he clearly wished, allow him to slip away. The endless phone hours eventually revealed what I mentioned above, that he had claimed a manpower shortage in effectively denying my request. The excuse would have been bogus enough during the past weeks while I was whiling away the weeks providing no source of manpower. But now that he was ordering me out of his unit, the idea that our unit faces a manpower shortage so severe that I cannot be allowed out is impossible to keep up without acknowledging a craven act of dishonesty for what it is. When I called the company commander himself, he denied his own words and then simply said he did not care since I had to fulfill his order to leave his unit (and remove him from this whole stitch) or be charged with refusing an order and get sent to military jail.<br /><br />I briefly considered refusing to transfer out of the company until my superior came clean about why he had lied and refused to grant me my <span style="font-style:italic;">meyuhedet </span>request. Once I got that silly idea out of my system, I completed the necessary paperwork and said goodbye to the unit. There was no dramatic Dreyfus moment when I turned in my gun for the last time. This disagreement is far from over. And while I am not sure where events will move from here, I still have a few options left to keep things interesting.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-12090973606614376202011-07-23T22:20:00.003+03:002011-10-14T01:12:58.123+02:00Education, Sexual Harassment, & Religious RadicalismSayeret Matkal spent the weekend on my kibbutz. The Israeli army’s premier special-forces unit did not just come for cheap hotdogs and steaming summer afternoons (a meat factory and the heat are what the kibbutz is most famous for). Two dozen support staff from the unit visited the kibbutz in order to deepen their understanding of religious Judaism. They came to see a religious community in action. And they left having successfully crossed the gulf of ignorance and misinformation that keeps religious and secular communities in this country so far apart. The kibbutz served as the bridge across that gulf, providing an example of how religion can be shared with secular soldiers in a way that deepens their sensitivity and self-knowledge rather than cheapens Jewish tradition and worsens intercommunal strife.<br /><br />Unfortunately, secular soldiers are rarely exposed to Judaism so sensibly. In a final report issued to the chief of staff a month ago, the outgoing chief of military personnel reviewed the most pressing issues faced by the army. Underlining the entire report is a clear message that the military must get a grip on religious radicalization, otherwise the cherished image of the IDF as the “people’s army” will be no more.<br /><br />The rising tide of religious radicalism in the military is largely expressed through discrimination against women. Using trumped up claims of sexual modesty, religious officers and members of the military rabbinate (a division of the army charged with ensuring food is kosher and religious rituals can be observed within the force) have pushed to keep women out of many military assignments. <br /><br />The personnel chief’s report, together with another report by the chief of staff’s advisor on women’s affairs, is filled with examples of gender discrimination. In one case the top graduate of a course, a female soldier, requested posting in a particular battalion (a privilege accorded to the top graduate) only to be rejected because the religious officer commanding the battalion did not want women as staff officers. The number of female shooting instructors has been cut back following complaints by religious combat soldiers that they do not feel comfortable receiving instruction from women. In the Intelligence Corps, religious cadets demand that female instructors teach from behind tables. Religious soldiers from <span style="font-style:italic;">hesder yeshivot</span>—institutions that combine religious studies with military service—protest the presence of female staff soldiers (responsible for tasks like education and social-services) in their units. In one infantry brigade, a religious commander requested that no mixed entertainment troupes be sent to the base. Military ceremonies have come under particular criticism. Voices within the military rabbinate have called for forbidding women from singing (such as at a recent Yitzhak Rabin memorial event) and even placing floral wreaths during military funerals. In an example of an issue not concerning women, religious soldiers have complained that military tours of Jerusalem reference Islam and Christianity. “A Jewish army does not have to talk about other religions,” a religious soldier insisted in speaking out against the tours.<br /><br />The irony of all this sexual discrimination is that the army once had a serious problem with sexual harassment. Today’s women are again threatened, but now due to modesty gone wild rather than sex. The shift reflects the growing presence of religious soldiers in combat units and command positions (previously discussed <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/09/loving-god-in-green.html">here</a>). Twenty years ago less than five percent of officers were religious; today the figure is nearly thirty percent. The increasing dependence on the national-religious community, especially in light of the decreased motivation to serve in more secular sectors, obliges the army to take greater heed of religious soldier’s demands.<br /><br />In a recent series of Haaretz articles, sociologist Yagil Levy, who has studied the IDF closely, argued that a “critical mass” of religiously observant soldiers in field units and at command levels has strengthened demands for shaping the army’s culture in the spirit of “thy camp shall be holy,” alongside unofficial arrangements in some units. Levy claims that senior officers are paralyzed when dealing with religiously volatile issues, and that the General Staff has resigned itself to the military rabbinate’s expanded role vis-a-vis the religious education of secular soldiers. The next stage is under way, he says: a rise in manifestations of “gray” refusal and politically motivated rebelliousness by soldiers, with the army afraid to confront them.<br /><br />Others think the army has become a battlefield for “external” players, to its detriment. As a friend remarked, “Like everything else in this country, the internal battle gets waged through the army. Religious harassment against women is no different.” Haaretz quoted a religious officer providing a more subtle analysis. “What the secular public doesn’t understand is that religious Zionism is not monolithic but a collection of sects and tribes,” explained the officer. “Some of them are using modesty in the IDF as a pawn against other rabbis. Some of the problems are imaginary; rabbis inflate them for their needs and the army takes fright. When you ask religious soldiers in the field, you find there are other things that bother them, and women’s modesty is not necessarily at the top of the list.”<br /><br />In light of these tensions, the visit to my kibbutz by the noncombat arm of Sayeret Matkal is all the more remarkable. Not only for the sensitive way in which the largely secular troops engaged religion. But because seeing that sensitivity applied to educating soldiers is all too rare. Outside of elite units like Matkal, soldiers are rarely exposed to any degree of sensitizing educational programming. As far as I am concerned, a key problem in the army is the education corps. The problem is not so much bullying by the religious radicals as a plain and simple failure by the corps to do much educating. <br /><br />Even with limited resources, the education corps could do so much more. Funding is not necessary because the training soldiers undergo—the land upon which they march, the hills where their forerunners sacrificed so much—has all the necessary tools to create historically informed, ideologically astute troops. The key ingredient is a motivated platoon leader, a lieutenant made to understand by the education corps how critical it is that he intertwine lessons about the country’s land and people into his soldiers’ training. My lieutenant in the air force was an outstanding example in this regard. He truly believed in the need to make Zionism and the country’s history a living and breathing part of our training. A week did not pass without a lesson about the significance of where we trained in the history of the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Every platoon leader could follow his example if the army, through the education corps, took to heart the responsibility of creating a “people’s army.”Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-82633208277922539282011-07-22T16:21:00.006+03:002011-08-10T09:32:24.795+03:00Man in the Right Arena?Foreign volunteers come to the Israeli army with the idea that serving as a soldier will put them front and center in the news coming out of the Holy Land. “No longer will I simply read what is going on from afar,” thinks the starry eyed future lone soldier, “but I will became an actor, Teddy Roosevelt’s man in the arena, ‘whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.’” While there is no shortage of dust, sweat and blood in the army, few soldiers play a central role in the decisive politics of the Middle East. Most, for that matter, have no idea about regional politics. Not because they have no interest. Soldiers simply have few opportunities to follow the news. This is especially true if you are a new immigrant with weak Hebrew skills unable to breeze through a local newspaper with ease.
<br />
<br />So when my fellow soldiers began muttering about politicians passing extremist legislation and people sleeping on the streets in protest (separate stories, as it turns out!), I decided the time was long past to catch up on the local news. What I read shocked me: a successful consumer uprising against the price of cottage cheese, a more dramatic if less successful tent city protest against high housing prices, a doctors strike that has continued for over four months and two inflammatory bills in the Knesset, one that was approved to make boycotting Israel illegal and a second that seeks to create governmental committees charged with investigating human rights organizations.
<br />
<br />Good lord, what is happening in this country?
<br />
<br />The medical system has essentially come to a standstill, as doctors fight for higher wages. The government, rather than come to some reasonable solution, has instead asked the population to avoid any medical necessities for the significant future!
<br />
<br />Israelis are pointing to Israel’s Arab neighbors as compelling examples of citizen protest. The cottage cheese consumers followed suit, and forced producers to lower prices through a Facebook campaign that attracted over a hundred thousand supporters. As if to take the example of Tahrir Square one step further, away from the safe confines of social media and into the streets, thousands of folks across the country have pitched tent cities in urban centers to protest high housing costs. Most of these folks are young adults from the middle class, a mainstream protest that one academic noted “is revolutionary in a big way, the fact that middle-class students began to struggle, that they feel that there is no future within reach for them - we are talking about the mainstream of society - this has never happened in Israel.”
<br />
<br />The democratic process is in the hands of professional politicians like Danny Danon, the sponsor of both extremist bills, who described the legislation as “a lesson in democracy” designed to punish “political organizations that are outside the consensus.” So much for what I was taught in elementary school, that democracy is designed to protect the rights of the minority, the same minority that deviates from the consensus.
<br />
<br />It is small comfort to read the words of Danon’s party elders, longtime Likud leaders like Reuven Rivlin and Benny Begin (son of the former Likud leader and PM Menahem Begin) that have mournfully castigated their own party’s legislation as “threatening to catapult us into an era in which gagging people becomes accepted legal practice (Rivlin)” and “[casting a large banner over the Knesset] bearing the words: ‘Here, it is dark’ (Begin).” Such leaders echo back to a forgotten generation of Israeli politicians that, for all their mistakes, were (or at least, gave off the impression as) men and women of real substance and human empathy.
<br />
<br />It is an even smaller comfort to consider that all these news-stories would be swept under the rug were a nasty security threat to rear its head. Israel cannot allow men like Ahmanijedad, Nasrallah and the trigger happy leaders of Hamas to distract the country from serious cracks in the social order. For all the propaganda Arab leaders have thrown against Israel, it is not hatred of the Jewish state that is driving the Arab masses into the streets. It is fractured social systems, states that fail to protect the weakest members (including those outside the consensus!) of the population.
<br />
<br />A soldier whiling away time in the army while reading of such compelling national crises cannot help but wonder whether he is waging the right fight. Perhaps this soldier, and other young Zionists burning to make a real difference in this country, can remember what Teddy Roosevelt was speaking about when he called on his audience of young adults to become men in the arena, stained by dust, sweat and blood. The year was 1910 and the audience was a hall of young Frenchmen who within a decade would die as soldiers in the trenches of World War One. But Roosevelt was not calling on them to enlist. The title of his great speech was <a href="http://www.leadershipnow.com/tr-citizenship.html">Citizenship in a Republic</a>.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-73764593149901583392011-07-09T10:25:00.002+03:002011-10-12T10:29:08.441+02:00Doing Right by the Beret<span style="font-style:italic;">I hate wearing a wet sock on my head…It makes my skin break out...It does not have a visor, does not shield the sun, does not absorb sweat well...</span><br /><br />Listening to soldiers complain about the beret makes it easy to understand why a headpiece that has been associated with soldiery for over a century is so deeply unpopular with the modern military man.<br /><br />And to appreciate why the army is abandoning the beret.<br /><br />Yes, despite adding a dashing suggestion of French élan to the otherwise benighted military costume, the army has decided to replace the beret with the pedestrian patrol cap. No longer will the beret nestle atop a shoulder or sardonically fall across a soldier’s brow. <br /><br />No longer, that is, in the US army. Because <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8573991/US-Army-to-abandon-the-beret.html">the attention grabbing announcement </a>doing away with the beret was made by the American military. Israel, which embraced the beret in the 1950s to counter the ragtag attitude of its infant armed forces, has no plans to abandon the most iconic symbol of the modern Maccabee. <br /><br />In the Israeli army, the beret (kumta) is a mandatory item in a soldier’s dress uniform. Tucked neatly atop the shoulder, it is only worn during formal ceremonies. In the infantry, where the everyday uniform is a less formal green set of fatigues, a beret or field cap must be on the shoulder or head whenever soldiers are on base. Elite units play by a different set of rules, so when I arrived in the paratroops from my former air force unit I was unused to wearing my beret unless I was heading home for the weekend. <br /><br />I also gave less thought to my beret because soldiers in the air force posses the force’s distinctive coal colored beret from day one. Infantry soldiers do not receive their berets so easily. For most of their training, infantry troops wear the dull green beret they receive when they first join the army (this beret is hence known as a <span style="font-style:italic;">kumtat bakum</span>, after the name of the induction base: <span style="font-style:italic;">Bakum</span>). The colored berets unique to each brigade (brown to Golani, purple to Givati, neon green to Nachal, maroon to Paratroops, camouflage to Kfir) are obtained after a long and grueling march (known as the <span style="font-style:italic;">masa kumta</span>, beret march) that typically represents the culmination of training. The march ends with a festive yet formal ceremony, the <span style="font-style:italic;">tekes kumta</span> (beret ceremony), where commanders hand out the coveted colored berets, with a favorite soldier typically receiving the commander’s own beret as a special honor.<br /><br />Regardless of how the Israeli soldier earns his beret, the rules of what to do with it are very clear. Some prefer to spray their new berets with deodorant and then set them on fire, other rely on the old school shaving knife, but the objective is the same: to rid the beret of its fuzzy exterior and reduce it to a dry leather-like carcass. Berets that have not undergone this treatment, not been <span style="font-style:italic;">shiftzured </span>in army lingo, are mockingly referred to as <span style="font-style:italic;">chatulot </span>(cats) for their fluffy fur. A beret in this condition screams of a rookie soldier, a <span style="font-style:italic;">tzair </span>(youngster) deserving of scathing mockery. <br /><br />The rush to look like a veteran soldier is such that berets are torched and nearly cut to pieces. The worst part is, as every soldier who has used his beret as an emergency pillow on a bus will attest, is that a defluffed beret makes a horrible sleeping companion, and frankly resembles a dried doormat more than anything else. Save for a few cursory passes with a sharp blade, I kept my berets nice and fuzzy and never had a reason for regret.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-12397507748640640712011-07-02T21:13:00.005+03:002011-08-02T04:37:18.538+03:00Workshop Preview of Coming AttractionsA week devoted to discussing life after the army could not have come at a better time. After the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-battle.html">turmoil of the past week</a>, I eagerly awaited getting away from my unit and joining a gaggle of friends from my kibbutz at one of the army’s career workshops (<span style="font-style:italic;">sadna shichrur</span>) for lone soldiers. The regularly scheduled week-long workshop in Ramat Gan is provided to lone soldiers in the final months of their service. Each day is crammed with presentations and classroom discussions on what a young adult needs to know in order to get his life on track after the army. While I felt the amount of time budgeted for discussions could have been better put to use providing us with a more detailed timeline of relevant financial and bureaucratic necessities, the workshop was full of positives. At the end of the week my resume was translated into Hebrew, my professional prospects were receiving the assistance of a first-rate career counseling firm whose services are provided gratis for the next year, and my network of lone soldiers had been immeasurably widened thanks to the many new faces I befriended.<br /><br />The real benefit of the week, however, came through the break the workshop provided from the unfriendly winds stirring in my regular unit. It was a break in more ways than one. Not only were my garin friends with me in uniform for the first time in our collective service but the end of each day’s session at four PM meant there was loads of free time to mess around in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. We went to the beach, ate out every night, and I even managed to sneak in a festive liquor-friendly wedding when an Israeli friend from grad school got married on Wednesday night. The morning sessions and evening chilling widened my horizons far past the narrow concerns that have dominated my attention over my army service. <br /><br />One of the great ironies, and unfulfilled expectations, of my service is that I enlisted with the stated goal that the army would provide me with the space wherein I would be reminded and inspired of my dearest values and most cherished goals. Personal space, internal and material, is of course a rarity in an army that reduces even the grandest of thinkers to narrow minded tacticians. Peering out the window this week at the sunny skies that await after the army left me with the small comfort that perhaps my two years in the wilderness will spur even greater creativity and excitement upon my discharge.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-84646065863640589232011-06-26T04:09:00.019+03:002014-01-08T15:42:36.740+02:00Slang Army Hebrew: Klalot (Curses)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Updated (8/7/2011): <span style="font-style: italic;">Ashkenazi, Chalavi, Dati liDaati, Datlash, Kooseet, Ma nisgar itcha, Pa'ur, Shavuz, Shikdei marak, Shwarma, Smar'toot, Tzair.</span><br />
<br />
In Arab society, insulting someone’s female family members, mother or sisters, is considered a grave insult. Even friends would never do so when messing around with each other. Israeli society, especially the army, is far more forgiving: ‘your momma’ jokes and gabs about each others sisters supply much of the slang and humor.<br />
<br />
Curses compromise a disturbing slice of soldier speaks. It took me well over a year in the army to realize this. My poor Hebrew in the early goings of my service only partially explain my lack of understanding. Two other factors played a role. First, cursing was largely absent in my former unit. Part of the reason is that as one of the more elite (and elitist) units in the IDF, my former unit draws a more upper-class, mature crowd who are less inclined to run their mouth at every opportunity. Soldiers avoid excessive cussing not only because of privileged backgrounds but also out of fear of making a bad impression that could lead their peers and officers to send them packing during the frequent peer evaluation-elimination sessions (<span style="font-style: italic;">sociometry</span>). So my cluelessness was not because my former mates were a crew of English peers; fear and mature restraint simply made my early environment a place where cursing was seen yet not heard.<br />
<br />
Hebrew is the second reason why it took me so long to recognize the scale of cursing in the army. In English I find cursing distasteful – I myself almost never curse and when people do, the Midwesterner in me has to consciously constrain himself from asking them to watch their language. I find cursing needlessly vulgar and poserish. But in Hebrew, curse words lack the same sting. If anything, I find them humorous and curious. So while I do not use many of the following terms, I do find reason to smile and admire the buzz of vulgar slang my peers throw back and forth with impunity.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">WARNING</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Do not read further if cursing, in any language, offends you.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">ARMY SLANG DICTIONARY: The <span style="font-style: italic;">Klalot </span>(Curses)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ahabal </span>Doofus, dumbass.<br />
<br />
Comes from Arabic, as do most of the curses in Hebrew slang.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Despite the risk in giving him a gun, I wouldn’t trade the </span>ahabal <span style="font-style: italic;">in my platoon for anything. His screw-ups are just too funny.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">li’Aber</span> To cheat, to lie.<br />
<br />
The source of <span style="font-style: italic;">li’Aber </span>is the word <span style="font-style: italic;">oober </span>(embryo) as if those one is cheating/lying to are children, as if they are, in the English colloquial, ‘born yesterday.’<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Do not try to</span> li’Aber <span style="font-style: italic;">during tonight’s navigation. Because what, you think I was born yesterday? I’ll know and you will suffer for cheating.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Aiza basa</span> ‘What a shame;’ Damn, that sucks.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Basa </span>seems to be Arabic for shame. Prefaced by the simple Hebrew term <span style="font-style: italic;">aiza </span>(which, that), the expression takes on an angrier meaning: ‘that sucks,’ i.e. damn it! Similar terms (see defs.) include <span style="font-style: italic;">Inal deenak, keebineemat</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">koos emek</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You promised me time off, get someone else to do it.</span> Aiza basa! (courtesy of 'You Don’t Mess With the Zohan')<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Arse </span>(pl. <span style="font-weight: bold;">arsim</span>) Low-class Israeli male punk.<br />
<br />
Defining the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>properly requires a separate article (or simply watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5khl8XFy3A&playnext=1&list=PL3FB43AF073DCE7A8">this bizarre video</a>). The reason is not simply because the stereotypes surrounding the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>are so extensive and colorful. The main reason is that the typical <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is, in broad brushstrokes, a large slice of lower class Sephardi youth, and so all the pejoratives assigned to the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>come with the historical tension with which Ashkenazi dominated Israeli society has viewed and treated the Sephardi minority (see <a href="http://www.roadjunky.com/cultureguide/1412/racism-and-immigration-in-israel">here </a>for a quick perspective). The typical <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is also a fair description of the average young male Arab (the likeness between Sephardim and Arabs, of course, is part of the racist tension both communities face. As a Moroccan Jew in the previous link says, “When I look in the mirror I see an Arab. I’ve been taught to hate my own self image all my life.”), providing a further sense of the broader sociopolitical tension behind the use of the class slur <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>.<br />
<br />
That said, most teenage army soldiers use the term with no broader message other than to describe the sort of low-life greasers they either look down on or confidently embrace as their own biography. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>they speak of is defined by his fashion, ethnicity and behavior. Gender is also important: <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim </span>are male. While female <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>—<span style="font-style: italic;">arsiot</span>—do exist, they tend to be weirdly manly and unappealing even to most <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>. The female equivalent of the male <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is the female <span style="font-style: italic;">frecha </span>(see def.). As for etymology, <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is unsurprisingly an Arabic word, where it has a range of meanings, including pimp, bastard, hero and cuckold.<br />
<br />
Fashion-wise, the clothes of the typical <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>are tight and loud: the pants close to the hips, the tops covered in fancy (and fake) labels, often replaced instead by a plain wife-beater. Like American gangstas, jewelry is on prominent display: gold chains and a flashy <span style="font-style: italic;">magen david</span> (star of David) or <span style="font-style: italic;">chai </span>(life) are the ice of choice. Up top, the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>will have his hair styled, gelled, slicked, partially dyed platinum or otherwise spiked into some form befitting the derogatory <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>nickname: <span style="font-style: italic;">kipud</span>, hedgehog. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is rarely seen without proper shoes, an oddity in a country full of barefoot hipsters and sandal slapping settler types.<br />
<br />
Most <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim </span>are Sephardi Jews of Moroccan, Persian or Yemenite descent (though Ashkenazi <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim </span>exist as well). This Middle East heritage explains much of <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>culture, especially language and location. Hebrew slang, heavily informed by Arabic, is the common tongue of the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>. A friendly <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>, drawing off the rich legacy of Middle Eastern hospitality, is quick to call complete strangers endearing slang terms like <span style="font-style: italic;">kapara </span>(see def.) and <span style="font-style: italic;">motek </span>(sweetie). Because most <span style="font-style: italic;">moshavim </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">kibbutzim </span>were established by the state’s Ashkenazi founders well before most Sephardi immigrants arrived in the 1950s, these communities are largely free of <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is essentially an urban blight, most prevalent in towns such as Bat-Yam, Netanya, Petach Tikva, Ashdod, Lod, Beer Sheva and various neighborhoods in South Tel Aviv, Lower Haifa and parts of Jerusalem. In all these locales, the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>can typically be found late on weekend nights spoiling for a fight, ready to respond to any perceived injustice violently. Like his lower class peers across America, the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>on the brink of provoking needless violence will ask his friends to “hold him back” before he “makes prison mistakes.”<br />
<br />
Despite (or because of) his violent temperament, the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>rarely serves as a combat soldier (the one exception is the Golani Brigade, known for a high percentage of <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>—and for a high number of combat accidents). Instead he is usually a cook, quartermaster or driver. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>makes up for this lack of manliness outside the army by carrying a switchblade and broadcasting loud and annoying Arabic style Israeli pop (known as <span style="font-style: italic;">mizrahi</span>, or eastern) music on his cellphone. Trance music is another fave, though there is no surer way of ruining an outdoor trance nature party than a party of <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim </span>showing up uninvited.<br />
<br />
The violent attitude of the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is also expressed in his political, religious and sport preferences. Right wing parties, either the Likud or the Shas Sephardi Religious Party, claim his vote. God claims his faith, though the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>’s spiritual leanings are typically limited to occasionally doffing a cheap kippa and referencing Sephardi luminaries like Ovadiah Yosef while casually disregarding the finer details of religious life. His devotion to a favorite soccer team is more genuine. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>team of choice is Beitar Jerusalem, providing the yellow and black with a rabid fan base well known for starting fights and mocking opposing players.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">After such a long explanation, you have only yourself to blame if you fail to avoid</span> arsim <span style="font-style: italic;">in Israel.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ashkenazi </span>‘Jews of German, and more broadly European descent;’ Cracker, aka skinny white guys.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Ashkenazi </span>refers more to appearance and state of mind than ethnicity. While the <span style="font-style: italic;">ashkenazi </span>tends to be an extremely pale, awkward person whose family tree is mired in central and eastern Europe, the true <span style="font-style: italic;">ashkenazi </span>suffers from a lack of emotions, humor, spontaneity, and appreciation for Arabic style Israeli pop (<span style="font-style: italic;">mizrahi</span>) music and spicy food. A similar, though rarely heard, slang expression is <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">yogurt</span></span>, which has been described as “a fair skinned, well-off Ashkenazi geek with a tendency towards vegetarianism.” In other words, yours truly!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Look at that </span>ashkenazi,<span style="font-style: italic;"> awkwardly trying to dance to the pulsating </span>mizrahi <span style="font-style: italic;">music and make eyes with all the cute Sephardi girls. Loser!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">At/a chai beseret</span> ‘You (f/m) live in a movie;’ To describe someone as ridiculous, absurd or ignorant.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Ata chai beseret</span> can also be used affectionately, to suggest someone is out of touch minus the malice. Most of the time, however, the expression carries enough contempt to qualify as a dis.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You think girls dig the red beret? You wish,</span> ata chai beseret.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Autist </span>‘Autistic;’ Moron.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You see how he pointed the gun at himself while trying to unjam it? What an</span> autist!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Bach’yan</span> ‘One who cries;’ Complainer, whiner. <br />
<br />
The suffix an is added to many adjectives to describe someone who personifies that adjective. <span style="font-style: italic;">Bo’che</span> means ‘cry,’ and so with the ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">an</span>’ at the end its becomes ‘someone who cries/whines.’ There are many examples of this ‘an’ ending on this list, like <span style="font-style: italic;">chapshan, chartitan, kapshan</span>, etc.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">He is simply a </span>bach’yan, <span style="font-style: italic;">I cannot ask him to do anything without him whining.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Beezayone </span>Disgrace.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">She is such a </span>beezayone. <span style="font-style: italic;">Her day off and she did not move out of her bed once.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ben-zona</span> Son of a whore.<br />
<br />
Is used as a common insult (the Israeli equivalent of ‘son of a bitch’) or to express how awesome something is.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You </span>ben-zona, <span style="font-style: italic;">we missed the movie because of you. And I heard the film is really </span>ben-zona!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">ya’Boozdinak</span> Holy crap, good lord.<br />
<br />
“A dirtier version of Golly Gee” is how an Israeli friend defined the term. Really! Has Arabic roots, though I have no idea what they are.<br />
<br />
Ya’Boozdinak, <span style="font-style: italic;">we are in a desert and it is raining! I cannot believe this.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Bunker </span>Miser, miserliness. <br />
<br />
Bunkers are such a universal military position that the English term is adopted wholesale by nearly every army in the world. Army Hebrew adds an extra slang use to the word, drawing off the association from the strong defensive redoubt to describe the most extreme of misers. <span style="font-style: italic;">Bunker </span>has the same meaning as <span style="font-style: italic;">kamtzan </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">garzen</span> (see defs.), only it carries a stronger sense of stinginess than those synonyms.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t waste time asking him for anything. He is such a </span>bunker, <span style="font-style: italic;">an army of sappers could not convince him to share his stuff with you.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chalavi </span>‘Milky;’ Cowardly, weak, unmanly.<br />
<br />
Cow muscle (yep, that what your steak is) is manly, cow milk is not. Or at least that is what this common pejorative suggests. A less common takeoff is the expression ‘<span style="font-weight: bold;">milky way</span>,’ the English term crossing over into Israeli slang to express (a) taking the path of least resistance, (b) displaying such cowardice/weakness that it is as if you have entered your own galaxy of unmanliness.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Being unable to remove the hand guards</span> (makpitzim) <span style="font-style: italic;">on your M16 is a sure sign you are </span>chalavi.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapper </span>Someone who does the minimum or fulfills a task in the poorest way possible.<br />
<br />
Sounds Yiddish, right? Beats me what the source of the term really is.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">A poor lieutenant will have a platoon full of</span> chapperim (plural).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapshan </span>A lazy soldier.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Chayal PaSHut</span>, ‘simple soldier,’ is the most accepted source for this term. miCHAPesh taSH<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>, ‘search out <span style="font-style: italic;">tash</span>,’ is another possible source. Either way, a derogatory—and considering the culture of this army, a very common— expression.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Honestly, who in our battalion is not a </span>chapshan <span style="font-style: italic;">at heart?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Charman </span>Horny person.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Serving in the infantry would make anyone a </span>charman. <span style="font-style: italic;">Blame all the crawling and lonely sentry posts.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Charta biPita</span> ‘Shit in a pita;’ BS.<br />
<br />
Yes, the image is horrible. But Israelis love their pita so much that macabre expressions of this kind make it into the slang lexicon.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Our training is all</span> charta biPita. <span style="font-style: italic;">We run around like headless chickens and don’t learn any real military skills.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chartitan </span>Bullshitter.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Charta </span>+<span style="font-style: italic;">an </span>= someone full of shit, i.e. a bullshitter.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What a </span>chartitan! <span style="font-style: italic;">This base is nothing like what he said.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chatichat charah/zayin</span> Piece of shit/penis.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You </span>chatichat charah, <span style="font-style: italic;">one more word out of you and I’ll tear your cheeks off.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chatzuf </span>Rude. <br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">chatzuf </span>has no respect and is full of—care to guess? <span style="font-style: italic;">Chutzpa</span>, of course. <span style="font-style: italic;">Chatzuf </span>serves as both an adjective and a noun (like most words on this list), while the similar term <span style="font-style: italic;">chutzpan </span>has the same meaning yet is only a noun. See also <span style="font-style: italic;">pa’ur</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The first soldier punished in basic is always a</span> shockist (see def.). <span style="font-style: italic;">The second? A</span> chatzuf.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Cheekmook </span>Slob, messy. <br />
<br />
Describes a soldier’s appearance and/or the condition of his gear. A related pejorative is Cheekimooki, someone so cheekmook they resemble a monkey more than a man.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I don’t even need to inspect your gear. One glance at your unkempt dress is enough to see how </span>cheekmook<span style="font-style: italic;"> you are. Your nothing but a</span> cheekimooki!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chi’noon</span> Nerd.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The Paratroops has many a</span> chi’noon, <span style="font-style: italic;">that’s what happens when you put so many nerdy Ashkenazim together in one brigade.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chofer </span>Annoying person. <br />
<br />
The slang term comes from the word <span style="font-style: italic;">l’chafer</span>, to dig, since an annoying person just keeps digging, getting under your skin, with his annoyance. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Leave me alone, you </span>chofer. <span style="font-style: italic;">Go annoy someone else already!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Cholei (cholat) nefesh</span> ‘Sick soul;’ Messed up.<br />
<br />
Tends to be used mostly by girls, hence the feminine <span style="font-style: italic;">cholat nefesh</span> is more common. In short, a girly cussword.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Honestly, you are </span>cholat nefesh<span style="font-style: italic;">, stop saying nice things about me when I know you don’t really love me.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Chooshee’ling</span> Especially, completely.<br />
<br />
This Arabic root word is usually applied to negative circumstance. <span style="font-style: italic;">Foo-sheeling </span>is the same word pronounced by folksy Midwesterners trying to fake it in the Middle East.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">It is cold</span> chooshee’ling <span style="font-style: italic;">outside</span>. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Cocksineel </span>Faggot. <br />
<br />
In French ('coccinelle') this word means ladybug and is also a derisive term for guys in drag. The popularity of French slang in Israel in the 1950s accounts for the army's embrace of the word (As explained by Daniel L!).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Of course our commander hates me. He is a</span> cocksineel.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dafook </span>Idiot, idiotic.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Dafook </span>is one of several words that all describe, more or less, a moron. The list includes: <span style="font-style: italic;">ahabal, autist, dafook, dibeel, gazur, mitoomtam, saroot</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">tembel</span>. Each word has its own nuance, though distinguishing between these words is difficult. Someone <span style="font-style: italic;">dafook </span>does things that just scream of idiocy. A <span style="font-style: italic;">dafook </span>is assertively idiotic rather than passively so like the more benign <span style="font-style: italic;">tembel</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You are so</span> dafook, <span style="font-style: italic;">you were supposed to organize the platoon’s rations, not eat all of them!</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Dapar, Daparit</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Derug Psihotechni Rishoni</span>, ‘Initial psychometric ranking;’ Stupid.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Dapar </span>is one of the parameters used to classify new recruits, drawn from a pre-draft psychometric test. The <span style="font-style: italic;">dapar </span>forms much of a soldier’s <span style="font-style: italic;">kaba</span>, the numbered grade that largely decides where a soldier can serve (a high <span style="font-style: italic;">kaba </span>is necessary for officer school and most elite units). Because receiving a low <span style="font-style: italic;">dapar </span>suggests low intelligence, the term is slang for stupid (noun & adj). <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You are really not funny at all, just plain</span> dapar.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dati liDaati</span> ‘Religious per his mindset;’ Religious when he wants to be.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Datlash</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">dati lishe’avar</span> ‘Religious in the past;’ Someone who once was religious.<br />
<br />
Many nonreligious soldiers in the army love to mess with religious soldiers by questioning the latter’s religiosity. Such comments play off the fact that some religious soldiers do indeed lose their faith or falter in their observance during the army. Realities and snide remarks have created a need for slang like <span style="font-style: italic;">datlash </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">dati lidaati</span> to comment on the phenomena of faltering faith. Of the two expressions, <span style="font-style: italic;">dati lidaati</span> is harsher, designed not to describe an overly intellectual type whose picks and choose based on his own rational calculus but an indiscriminate sort who brushes aside observance when it is inconvenient or not to his benefit.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">On the descent into apostasy,</span> dati lidaati <span style="font-style: italic;">may come before </span>datlash <span style="font-style: italic;">but it is the far more hypocritical phase.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dibeel </span>Imbecile. <br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">dibeel </span>is just plain stupid.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Can you believe he fell asleep while the instructor was staring at him? A complete </span>dibeel.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Dromi </span>‘Southerner;’ Residents of southern Israel with <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>like tendencies.<br />
<br />
Anyone from Beersheva to Eilat, most often found in small development towns like Arad and Dimona. Dromi are <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>like punks, saved from complete <span style="font-style: italic;">arsedom </span>only by their relative backwoodness from the urban sleaze that defines the true <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">On my first night in Israel on birthright, a bunch of</span> dromi <span style="font-style: italic;">punks stole my wallet. Now that I joined the army, these are the guys I serve with.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Fadicha </span>Embarrassing mistake.<br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">fadicha </span>is more than a faux pas. It is a slip-up that verges on the pathetic yet promises definite laughs when recounted later in the safety of friends. A similar Arabic term is <span style="font-style: italic;">fashla </span>(see def.).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Sometimes I wonder whether joining the army is the</span> fadicha <span style="font-style: italic;">or the</span> fashla<span style="font-style: italic;"> of my life?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Faltzani </span>Phony.<br />
<br />
Describes one who puts on airs, intellectually/culturally. Derived from the verb <span style="font-style: italic;">lihafleetz</span>, to fart.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">My friend warned me I would come across as</span> faltzani <span style="font-style: italic;">if I told other soldiers about my travels in the Middle East before the army.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Fashla </span>Disastrous mistake.<br />
<br />
While a <span style="font-style: italic;">fadicha </span>is embarrassing and even humorous, a <span style="font-style: italic;">fashla </span>tends to be a more serious slip-up. Israelis, always keen to embrace the extreme, tend to throw <span style="font-style: italic;">fashla </span>around for trivial catastrophes, to the extent that the word even has a verb form, <span style="font-style: italic;">leFashel</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Throwing a practice grenade at a friend would have been a real</span> fashla <span style="font-style: italic;">had someone gotten hurt. As it is, it will probably go down as my biggest </span>fadicha <span style="font-style: italic;">in the army.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Frecha </span>(pl. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Frechot</span>) Tart. <br />
<br />
A ditzy girl with too much make-up, too short a skirt, and designer nails that would make Edward Scissorhand jealous. Often accompanied by an <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>, so familiarizing oneself with the definition of the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>is enough to avoid <span style="font-style: italic;">frechot </span>as well.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I thought Israel was a land of Bar Rafaelis and hot soldier girls. So where do all these </span>frechot <span style="font-style: italic;">fit in</span>?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Friar </span>Sucker, dupe. <br />
<br />
Sort of the opposite of the <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>, though both are negative expressions. The <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>takes advantage of people. The friar gets taken advantage of. Two role-models no one wants pinned on their shoulder.<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Our officer is such a</span> friar, <span style="font-style: italic;">letting the other squads get here first and sign on all the good gear.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Fuk </span>(pl. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fukeem</span>) A screw-up for which soldiers are punished.<br />
<br />
Translating <span style="font-style: italic;">fuk </span>as ‘screw-up’ explains how the origin of this term is the English swearword fuck. Despite deriving from the most vulgar of English cusswords, <span style="font-style: italic;">fuk </span>has zero sexual association. Officers and soldiers alike use the word all the time to refer to, for instance, a <span style="font-style: italic;">fuk b’rashmatz</span> (screwing up the inventory list) or a <span style="font-style: italic;">fuk b’ameenut </span>(‘breaking trust,’ dishonesty, among the most serious infractions in the army).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Anyone who does that many </span>fukeem <span style="font-style: italic;">is bound to be kicked out.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ganoov </span>‘Stolen;’ Out of your mind. <br />
<br />
Describes someone acting crazy, as if his mind is stolen.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What, are you</span> ganoov? <span style="font-style: italic;">Heading off to sentry duty in slippers and not regulation combat boots?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Garzen </span>‘Axe;’ Miser.<br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">garzen </span>does not release his goods for anything. He is a bigger miser than the <span style="font-style: italic;">kamtzan</span>, less than the <span style="font-style: italic;">bunker</span>.<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I may be a </span>kamtzan <span style="font-style: italic;">but I am not the </span>garzen <span style="font-style: italic;">you are. To prove it, I’ll give you something—here, you can have my dirty laundry.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Gazur </span>Messed up (in the head).<br />
<br />
The source of this word—<span style="font-style: italic;">liGzor</span>, to cut—suggests that a crucial nerve in the brain is damaged, causing someone to be messed up. A screw loose, in other words. <span style="font-style: italic;">Saroot </span>(see def.) also suggests someone is brain damaged, except as a result he acts super intense rather than mentally challenged.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">He is such a</span> gazur <span style="font-style: italic;">I have doubts whether he should be issued a weapon.</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Goel nefesh</span> ‘Disgusting soul;’ Disgusting.<br />
<br />
Like <span style="font-style: italic;">cholat nefesh</span>, only nasty rather than messed up.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Anyone who thinks eating cereal with water is disgusting does not know the meaning of</span> goel nefesh.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Inal deenak, inal Sherlock</span> Damn. <br />
<br />
Like <span style="font-style: italic;">choosheeling </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">aiza basa</span>, these twin Arabic expressions are used in the face of a bad situation. <span style="font-style: italic;">Inal Sherlock</span> has another kink, suggesting that the situation is so bizarre or miserable that it requires the powers of a Sherlock Holmes to solve. Similar terms include <span style="font-style: italic;">aiza basa, keebineemat, koos emek</span>.<br />
<br />
Inal deenak, <span style="font-style: italic;">I have no idea what to do from here onward in this navigation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeefa </span>Nasty trash, slimy dirt.<br />
<br />
Arabic in origin, describes trash or anything dirty and disgusting.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Clean all this</span> jeefa <span style="font-style: italic;">up from the bathroom and our work here is done.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Jobnik </span>Non-combat soldier. <br />
<br />
From the English word ‘job,’ with the Russian suffix ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">nik</span>’ (like <span style="font-style: italic;">kibbutznik</span>): someone with a military job, i.e. a desk job, rather than the real work performed by an infantry grunt. Although there are elite non-combat assignments in military intelligence, combat soldiers widely consider all desk soldiers pansies and fit for mockery. <span style="font-style: italic;">Jobnik </span>hence usually carries a pejorative meaning, though the expression can and is also used purely descriptively.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">In the infantry, they teach us to love the suck. And to despise the </span>jobnik.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kader </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Klitah Derekh Reglaiim</span>, ‘Absorption through the legs;’ Any pointless, unpleasant army activity.<br />
<br />
This expression wrapped up in an acronym suggests that running is the route to edification, an apt philosophy for a term that denotes senseless military activity. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader </span>has expanded past its roots in the physical to encompass everything soldiers deem senseless or unpleasant. So reporting to the army on Saturday night after a weekend leave? <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader</span>. Using inferior equipment? <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader</span>. Waking up early to exercise? <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader</span>. Faulty logistics? <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader</span>. Some say the source of the term is <span style="font-style: italic;">kadoor</span>, ball, from a typical <span style="font-style: italic;">kader </span>in basic training: sprinting back and forth between two random points like a bouncing ball. Bullshit. But no more bullshit than <span style="font-style: italic;">kader </span>itself. <span style="font-style: italic;">Kader </span>is so pervasive that like its yin-yang twin, <span style="font-style: italic;">tash</span>, the entire army experience can be divided between <span style="font-style: italic;">tash </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">kader</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">We wake up to </span>kader, <span style="font-style: italic;">go to sleep to</span> kader. <span style="font-style: italic;">Good Lord, who knew I was drafting to the Israel Kader Force.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kamtzan </span><span style="font-style: italic;">l’Kamsetz</span> ‘to hoard;’ Miser, cheap.<br />
<br />
Carries the same basic meaning as <span style="font-style: italic;">bunker </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">garzen</span>, except with a lighter sting and a greater use.<br />
<br />
Israeli guy: <span style="font-style: italic;">You are such a </span>kamtzan, <span style="font-style: italic;">what are you, Persian?</span><br />
Me: <span style="font-style: italic;">Um, Persian?</span><br />
Israeli Guy: <span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah, Persian, because Persians are so cheap. Only Americans are worse.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">liKastaich </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Kisui tachat</span>; Cover your ass.<br />
<br />
When a soldier tries to disguise subpar work or when an officer tries to pass the buck onto his subordinates, they are performing a time honored army custom: <span style="font-style: italic;">liKastaich</span>, covering one’s ass.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You can</span> liKastaich <span style="font-style: italic;">in training but when the shit hits the fan in the field, it ain’t gonna help.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Keebineemat </span>Damn.<br />
<br />
This Russian curse sounds better when said with a whiny, Russian accent. Similar terms include <span style="font-style: italic;">aiza basa, inal deenak, koos emek</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Our driver drank too much vodka last night and now isn’t coming to pick us up? </span>Keebineemat!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kelev, ya Kelev</span> Dog.<br />
<br />
Israeli soldiers have nothing against dogs. The intent with this common insult is much the same as calling someone a <span style="font-style: italic;">ben-zona</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">maniac </span>(see defs.).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Elyakim</span>, ya kelev, <span style="font-style: italic;">go guard the entrance already.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kriat tachat</span> ‘Ripped ass;’ Suffering.<br />
<br />
Any <span style="font-style: italic;">kader </span>(see def.) that makes one feel like they are getting their ass ripped wide open can be described as <span style="font-style: italic;">kriat tachat</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">All our training is</span> kriat tachat.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Kooseet </span>Babe, hot girl.<br />
<br />
Despite the vulgar etymology—<span style="font-style: italic;">kooseet </span>is Arabic for cunt—the term is widely used, by girls as well as guys. Or as another dictionary suggests, “You won’t actually get hit for using this as a compliment but some find it a little vulgar to flatter a girl by mentioning her intimate anatomy.” A less common term with the same meaning is the Latin word for cousin, <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">koozeena</span></span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Arguing over whose girlfriend is a real</span> kooseet <span style="font-style: italic;">is a classic way to pass the time on a long hike.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Koos emek</span> ‘Your mother’s cunt (Arabic);’ G-d damn it, motherfucker.<br />
<br />
Easily the most common swear word in the army. Has a harder edge than <span style="font-style: italic;">aiza basa, inal deenak, and keebineemat</span>, three similar terms. <span style="font-style: italic;">Arse </span>(see def.) is sometimes added to the end of the curse, <span style="font-weight: bold;">koos emek arse</span>, to say one of several disputed expressions: (1) damn it, you <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>; (2) your mother’s an <span style="font-style: italic;">arse</span>; (3) an <span style="font-style: italic;">arse </span>owns your mother’s cunt. A related curse is <span style="font-weight: bold;">koos ima shel(cha/o)</span>, ‘your/his mother’s cunt,’ ‘motherfucker,’ in actual use.<br />
<br />
Koos ima shelcha, <span style="font-style: italic;">I hate you. Don’t ever talk to me again.</span><br />
Koos emek. <span style="font-style: italic;">There goes my last friend in the platoon.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Laf-laf</span> Goofball.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">That </span>laf-laf <span style="font-style: italic;">kills me with his antics.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ma’afan</span> Below par.<br />
<br />
Piss poor work is described as <span style="font-style: italic;">ma’afan</span>, a term with Arabic roots that is rarely applied to people.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Your </span>shiftzurim (see def.) <span style="font-style: italic;">are </span>ma’afan. <span style="font-style: italic;">You are going to have to tear off the tape and start over from scratch.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Matzav shtayim</span> ‘Second position,’ Pushup position.<br />
<br />
Why is pushup position described as numeral deuce? Because the first position is standing at attention, the second position is dropping down on your hands and toes, ready to pump ‘em out at command. And third position is with chin touching the ground, bent down almost to the ground. Since no one can reasonably remain in position three very long, and because placing a soldier in second position makes him ready to bust out pushups at a moments notice, <span style="font-style: italic;">matzav shtayim</span> is the classic military punishment position. While not a verbal expression as such, <span style="font-style: italic;">matzav shtayim</span> qualifies for this list as the physical embodiment of cursing someone out.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Considering what the real army is like, if you want to prepare it makes more sense to work on staying in</span> matzav shtayim <span style="font-style: italic;">than doing endless pushups.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Malsheen </span>Snitch.<br />
<br />
A tattle-tale, the goody-goody that rats on the boys. Especially if the boys are <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>, since <span style="font-style: italic;">malsheen </span>is an expression especially popular among <span style="font-style: italic;">arsim</span>. Also serves as a nickname for lieutenants, since any soldier who becomes a commissioned officer has pursued the path of the <span style="font-style: italic;">malsheen</span>. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Part of building a strong team bond, in my unit at least, means a zero tolerance policy for the</span> malsheen.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ma’niac</span> Fucker. <br />
<br />
Despite the similarity of this very common curse to the English word ‘maniac,’ the source lies in Arabic, where the term is equivalent to the English F word. In army slang, <span style="font-style: italic;">ma’niac</span> describes someone who is, as an Israeli friend explained “kinda bad, but not super bad.” In other words, a douchebag but not a total jerkowitz.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Did you see that dude just threw an egg at me from his window? Bat Yam, what a town full of</span> ma’niacs.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ma nisgar itcha</span> ‘What is closed with you?;’ What is wrong with you?<br />
<br />
If someone is acting messed up, stupid or simply annoying, <span style="font-style: italic;">ma nisgar itcha</span> is a tried and true way of putting him in his place.<br />
<br />
Ma nisgar itcha?<span style="font-style: italic;"> How many times must I tell you to shut up and listen to the instructions?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mastool </span>Stoned, stoner.<br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">mastool </span>is not really someone who takes drug but someone so out of sorts, acting so weird, that he seems like he must be bopped up on something.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">How this</span> mastool <span style="font-style: italic;">was allowed to enlist into the infantry, I will never understand. He is simply bonkers.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mefager </span>Retard.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Mefager </span>actually means medically retarded, one of those cusses that is not ashamed to take a word with real meaning and throw it around for maximal damage.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You </span>mefager, <span style="font-style: italic;">if I have to show you one more time how to tie your laces, I’ll tie them around your neck!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mitoomtam </span>Moron.<br />
<br />
No common sense. Plain stupid. Even stupider than a <span style="font-style: italic;">dafook </span>(see def.). Synonyms: <span style="font-style: italic;">dafook, dibeel, gazur, saroot </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">tembel</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What a </span>mitoomtam! <span style="font-style: italic;">He fell asleep on sentry duty despite knowing a group of senior officers were scheduled to come by his post. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mizdayen </span>Fuck<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Mizdayen </span>is rarely used as a curse itself but serves as the root of some of the most common swear words, including: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ani mizayen otcha</span>, fuck you, literally ‘I’ll fuck you,’ probably the most common curse in the army; <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lech teezdayen</span>, go fuck yourself, fuck off; <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mizayen et haMoach</span>, fuck with my mind; <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mizdyneem</span>, fuckers. The root of <span style="font-style: italic;">miZdaYeN</span>, of course, is <span style="font-style: italic;">zayin</span>, penis. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You just like to </span>mizayen et haMoach <span style="font-style: italic;">with your orders. Well, you can</span> lech teezdayen. <span style="font-style: italic;">No way I am doing what you</span> Mizdyneem <span style="font-style: italic;">want. What? I have to!?</span> Ani mizayen otcha.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mizken </span>Pity, pitiful person.<br />
<br />
This word is not slang but it qualifies as a curse because in addition to its sympathetic regular meaning, it also functions as a putdown, meaning something like ‘cry-baby.’<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Did you see the size of his backpack? What a</span> mizken!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Mizrachi </span>‘Easterner, aka Jews from Arab countries;’ Excessively ethic and clannish Jews from Arab countries.<br />
<br />
Like <span style="font-style: italic;">ashkenazi </span>(see def.), <span style="font-style: italic;">mizrahi </span>rendered into slang is less about ethnicity and more about appearance and behavior. So while the formal term denotes Jews from the Arab world (Mizrahi and Sephardi have the same meaning, except in Israel—unlike the rest of the Jewish world—the former is the more common of the two) <span style="font-style: italic;">mizrahi </span>as slang describes anyone with dark complexion who favors whining Arab style pop music sung by someone named Peretz, nurtures a fiery inferiority complex, and is unnecessarily clannish with other such types. In short, anyone who exhibits exaggerated stereotypical ethnic Mizrahi behavior gets tagged as <span style="font-style: italic;">mizrahi</span>. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Avi Peretz, Kobi Peretz, Wilfred Peretz…enough already! Stop being so</span> mizrahi <span style="font-style: italic;">and put normal music on.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Moor’al</span> ‘Poisoned;’ A soldier who loves the army with overwhelming and at times annoying zeal.<br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">moor’al</span> soldier is poisoned with love for the army, as if the passion comes from something in his blood.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">It is normal to be</span> moor’al <span style="font-style: italic;">when you enlist, strange to be so motivated a year or so later.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Nochel </span>Crook, schemer.<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />He talks like a gentleman with the ladies but we all know he is a</span> nochel, <span style="font-style: italic;">all he wants is sex.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Oketz, akatz</span> (v) ‘Sting;’ Someone who avoids grueling army activity. <br />
<br />
Like the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sting</span>, an <span style="font-style: italic;">oketz </span>scams like no other to get out of grueling military activity. While generally used to say ‘you good for nothing lazybones,’ <span style="font-style: italic;">oketz </span>is also used in the descriptive sense. Not to be confused with the IDF canine unit named <span style="font-style: italic;">Oketz</span>, despite the fact that both the men and dogs there succeed in avoiding the tougher military duties. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Daniel Solomon </span>akatz <span style="font-style: italic;">his entire service. He is the biggest</span> oketz <span style="font-style: italic;">I know.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Partzoof tachat</span> ‘Butt-face;’ Unhappy looking.<br />
<br />
Like pornography, a <span style="font-style: italic;">partzoof tachat</span> is one of those things you know when you see it.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t be such a</span> partzoof tachat. <span style="font-style: italic;">You’ll get to go on a mission next week.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Pa’ur</span> 'Wide-open;' Cheeky rookie soldier.<br />
<br />
A <span style="font-style: italic;">pa'ur</span> is not simply rude like the <span style="font-style: italic;">chatzuf </span>(see def)but displays a lack of respect all the more unconscionable because a <span style="font-style: italic;">pa'ur</span> is, by suggestion, a no-nothing <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair </span>(see def.)who should be seen and not heard. <span style="font-style: italic;">Pa'ur</span> can also have a less pejorative meaning, referring only to the general naivete of rookie soldiers.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The way he talks back to our commander, I knew he was a classic</span> pa’ur <span style="font-style: italic;">the day he joined the platoon.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Rakuv </span>‘Rotten;’ Lazy.<br />
<br />
Calling someone <span style="font-style: italic;">rakuv </span>means there are lazy to the point of rotting, decomposed and beyond the world of activity forever.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Most soldiers are </span>rakuv, <span style="font-style: italic;">good for nothing, every day of the week save Monday and Tuesday.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Reetook </span>'Confinement;' A punishment that involves losing home leave (i.e. staying in the army) for up to thirty-five days straight.<br />
<br />
Though not a verbal curse, <span style="font-style: italic;">rituk </span>is the most common army punishment after losing a single weekend home leave. One wonders what effect closing twenty-eight or thirty-five days straight in the army is supposed to have on a punished soldier’s morale.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Because soldiers in the Israeli army go home several times a month, getting punished with a</span> rituk <span style="font-style: italic;">really sucks.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Rosh katan</span> ‘Small head;’ A person or action that shows no initiative and does only what is absolutely necessary.<br />
<br />
The opposite of the <span style="font-style: italic;">rosh katan</span> is the <span style="font-weight: bold;">rosh gadol</span>, the ‘big head,’ who takes initiative and goes above and beyond the call of duty to fulfill the spirit, and not just the letter, of the law. While acting like a <span style="font-style: italic;">rosh gadol</span> sounds praiseworthy, in the army soldiers can be criticized for following either approach (and likewise, both <span style="font-style: italic;">rosh katan</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">rosh gadol</span> can be terms of praise). Taking initiative, displaying independence, is not always the path to win acclaim in a rules-bound institution run by twenty year old commanders insecure about their own authority and decision making.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The army has taught me that success is not so much about being a </span>rosh katan <span style="font-style: italic;">or </span>rosh gadol <span style="font-style: italic;">but about reading a given situation and bearing in mind the temperate of my superiors.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">liSanjer</span>, (n) <span style="font-weight: bold;">sanjeran </span>To screw someone over, getting screwed over.<br />
<br />
As much as the army talks up unit cohesion, the true social ethic of the army is screwing over others. A <span style="font-style: italic;">sanjeran </span>is someone who keeps getting stuck with tasks nobody wants to do. He may think he is selflessly volunteering but everyone else knows better.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">My peers</span> lisanjer <span style="font-style: italic;">me all the time, every night I wind up with the worst hour of guard duty.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Saroot </span>Cracked, too intense.<br />
<br />
Like <span style="font-style: italic;">gazur</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">saroot </span>suggests one is mentally unbalanced. But here the mental problem issues forth with irrational levels of intensity.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">My squad leader is so</span> saroot, <span style="font-style: italic;">ask him to comb the hill for further enemy and he gets down on all fours and searches every speck of sand.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Satlan </span>Stoner, Hippie.<br />
<br />
Unlike a <span style="font-style: italic;">mastool </span>(see def.), the ‘stoner’ acting all crazy and keyed up on drugs, a <span style="font-style: italic;">satlan </span>describes the grungy, lazy, indifferent stoner, the apathetic hippy.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I would take a platoon of</span> mastool <span style="font-style: italic;">soldiers over the </span>satlan <span style="font-style: italic;">I serve with. Sure, they’d be nuts, but at least they would give a damn about something.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shachor </span>‘Black;’ Culture of breaking the rules.<br />
<br />
To be <span style="font-style: italic;">shachor </span>is to be black as sin, since going black in the army means to not follow the rules. <span style="font-style: italic;">Shachor</span> is the opposite of <span style="font-style: italic;">tzahov</span> (yellow). And just as a yellow soldier carries a whiff of a despised teacher's pet, to be <span style="font-style: italic;">shachor</span> often qualifies as cool in army circles. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Shachor met</span> (black as death) is a similar expression, describing someone or something that is utterly <span style="font-style: italic;">shachor</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">met</span>, 'death,' is often used in Hebrew as an adverbial expression for 'really,' like: 'I am <span style="font-style: italic;">met </span>to do that, I really want to do that).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">It is not a coincidence that the symbol of my unit is a big ol’ black bird. Cuz’ we are</span> shachor met, <span style="font-style: italic;">and proud of it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shachtzan </span>Show-off.<br />
<br />
The word <span style="font-style: italic;">chizon</span>, ‘appearance,’ seems to be the source for a term that describes someone full of himself. A <span style="font-style: italic;">sachtzan </span>thinks and acts like he is the best at everything.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">It sucks having an officer who is a</span> shachtzan. <span style="font-style: italic;">Trust me, I speak from experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shamen </span>Fatty.<br />
<br />
Like other words on this list (<span style="font-style: italic;">ashkenazi, mizrahi</span>), a <span style="font-style: italic;">shamen </span>is used to describe behavior more than body size or ethnic identity. Sure, someone called <span style="font-style: italic;">shamen </span>usually is overweight. But the real use of the slang term captures how someone acts like a fatty, constantly preoccupied by his appetite and overly excited by food.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">He is so</span> shamen. <span style="font-style: italic;">The only thing he remembers from the </span>gibush (see def.) <span style="font-style: italic;">is the meals.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sharmoota </span>Slut.<br />
<br />
Arabic. Otherwise, the term speaks for itself.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">In English they would call her the village bicycle. Here we just call her </span>sharmoota.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shavuz, shvizoot</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Shavur zayin</span>, ‘Broken penis;’ Army depression.<br />
<br />
Impotent may be the simplest definition. Despair, depression and disinterest are the three Ds that sum up the <span style="font-style: italic;">shavuz </span>soldier feels. Yet to truly understand the term <span style="font-style: italic;">shavuz</span>, you must enter the mind of the disappointed soldier. Like elderly men before Viagra, <span style="font-style: italic;">shavuz </span>soldiers cannot rally any excitement to perform their tasks. Their will is broken.<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Shvizoot yom alef </span>(Sunday <span style="font-style: italic;">shvizoot</span>) is a common slang expression that serves as the army equivalent of the Monday blues, that disappointed feeling coming back to work for the start of what is sure to be another draining week. The term is a play on the expression <span style="font-style: italic;">tarbut yom alef</span> (cultural Sunday) that designates a Sunday set aside for educational tours.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Can you imagine the</span> shivzoot? <span style="font-style: italic;">The day he returns from sick leave they made him work in the kitchen for three months straight! No wonder he is so</span> shavuz.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">She'elat kitbeg</span> ‘Kitbag question;’ A stupid and superfluous question that results in the questioner becoming newly obligated in a matter he was previously exempt.<br />
<br />
The apocryphal origin of this expression lies in basic training with the large canvas bag soldiers are issued to house their equipment. A group of soldiers are ordered to run somewhere. An especially dim soldier raises his hand and asks, “With my kitbag?” “Since you asked,” replies the commander, “yes, you have to run with your kitbag.”<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Our training would have been far easier were it not for the</span> she’elat kitbeg <span style="font-style: italic;">asked every day. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shikdei marak</span>, ‘Soup nuts (croutons);’ A squad of by-the-book (<span style="font-style: italic;">tzahov</span>) soldiers.<br />
<br />
A squad of by-the-book troopers, so <span style="font-style: italic;">tzahov </span>(see def.) that they stand perfectly at attention, their beds are perfectly made and everything about their appearance is uniform and perfect. These overly eager soldiers are like the bright yellow croutons that float in perfect rows in soup.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">In basic training, my elite unit stood out from the regular grunts like a bunch of </span>shikdei marak <span style="font-style: italic;">in black lentil soup.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shockist</span> Someone in shock.<br />
<br />
Those Army Hebrew slang terms with English roots are particularly captivating. <span style="font-style: italic;">Shockist </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">shock </span>are the most common examples, with dazed and confused American volunteer soldiers ironically being the most common targets for the derisive term. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What, are you in </span>shock? <span style="font-style: italic;">You never know what is going on, just a total</span> shockist.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Shwarma </span>‘Sliced lamb cooked on a revolving spit;’ Red and chafed skin on the sides of the waist and back.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Shwarma </span>are the result of sweating on a long army marches as a heavy vest or backpack rubs against the skin. While strategically layering medical tape over key areas can head off part of the problem, there is no true remedy for painful <span style="font-style: italic;">shwarma</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">As traumatizing as the night long march was, what really ticks me off is the painful </span>shwarma <span style="font-style: italic;">I still have up and down my sides and back.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Smar’toot</span> ‘Mop;’ A total zero, weak and messy.<br />
<br />
Like a measly, old mop, someone described as <span style="font-style: italic;">smar’toot</span> is a mess who would be better served assigned to cleanup duty than the military activity he is supposedly working on. See <span style="font-style: italic;">cheekmook</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">He carries himself like such a</span> smar’toot, <span style="font-style: italic;">I cannot stand marching next to him.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sociomat </span>Egoist.<br />
<br />
One of the worst, and common, names to call a soldier is a <span style="font-style: italic;">sociomat</span>. Someone who thinks only of himself and does not care about others is the ultimate enemy of unit cohesion, the most celebrated and desired principle in the military. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sociomat </span>also describes a miser, much like <span style="font-style: italic;">bunker, garzen and kamtzan</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">We did not even need to call a vote to kick him out of our unit. The fact that he is a </span>sociomat <span style="font-style: italic;">is obvious to everyone.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Soteh </span>Pervert.<br />
<br />
An infantry platoon of nineteen year olds is a surprisingly forgiving place. All the grime and grueling tasks, not to mention the familial vibe that comes from living on top of each other, means soldiers are ready to excuse most behavior. So getting tagged as <span style="font-style: italic;">soteh </span>is a rare, and especially humiliating, occurrence. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The cafeteria never serves warm apple pie. I’d like to think it is not because they think my unit is a bunch of </span>soteem (plural).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tembel </span>Fool.<br />
<br />
This lighthearted slang term for a fool is most famous as the name for the agricultural hat that is something of an Israeli national symbol, the <span style="font-style: italic;">kova tembel</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">tembel </span>hat.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What a </span>tembel, <span style="font-style: italic;">he was told to go to the kitchen</span> (mitbach)<span style="font-style: italic;"> and he showed up with his gun at the firing range</span> (mitvach).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tihiye baree</span> ‘Be healthy;’ Take care.<br />
<br />
The expression is used in the literal sense to someone who is ill or otherwise impaired. Yet usually <span style="font-style: italic;">tihiye baree </span>is said in a derisive tone, to comment on another’s foolish intentions. As in, “take care with that, you moron.”<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">I thought my commander had my best intentions in mind when he wished me </span>tihiye baree <span style="font-style: italic;">as I left base on sick leave. But then when I saw him giving me the finger, I figured out what he was really getting after.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tzahov </span>‘Yellow;’ Rule-abiding.<br />
<br />
While in English yellow suggests cowardice, in Hebrew army slang the color describes a goody two-shoes, a by-the-book trooper who never dips into the gray while scrupulously following every letter of the law. Since most soldiers enjoy nothing better than flouting military doctrine, a yellow soldier is often a social pariah, albeit one granted a certain grudging admiration for his virtuous orthodoxy. The opposite of <span style="font-style: italic;">tzahov </span>is <span style="font-style: italic;">shachor </span>('black,' see def.), as American rapper Wiz Khalifa seemed to know when he rhymed ‘Yeah ah ha, you know what it is, Black and yellow, black and yellow, Black and yellow, black and yellow.’ <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">What the heck is wrong with that kid? Why he got to go and be so</span> tzahov <span style="font-style: italic;">with the rules all the time?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tzair </span>‘Youngster;’ Rookie. <br />
<br />
Like many terms on this list, <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair </span>has a descriptive/proper meaning—a soldier in his first two years of service (a <span style="font-style: italic;">vatik</span>, see ref., is a veteran soldier) — and a normative/slang meaning: a mocking way to call someone a rookie. Since inexperience in the army tends to translate into greater discipline and selflessness, displaying such behavior is a surefire way for the overweening rookies to be tagged as <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair</span>. Dropping a well timed <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair </span>is one of the joys of Army Hebrew— the context is universal, the shame on the receiving end only expunged by shared joy in the application of the term. <br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Tzair </span>is used in the less common slang <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">shi’tze</span></span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">shtoke tzair</span>, shut up youngster), an expression used to shut up uppity new soldiers. <br />
A similar term that has fallen out of general use is <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">chong</span></span>, a complete <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair </span>whose etymology is said to be 'green' in some Semitic language or the nickname for little kids in India that push wheelbarrows around. A more common play on <span style="font-style: italic;">chong </span>is the term <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">chongiot</span></span>, an expression for the colored shoulder straps soldiers wear at the start of a course (including basic training) that, unintentionally, screams out that they are <span style="font-style: italic;">tzair</span>!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">He voluntarily gave up his weekend leave? </span>Tzair!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Tzfoni </span>‘Northerner;’ Snotty, rich white guy.<br />
<br />
The proper use of <span style="font-style: italic;">tzfoni </span>describes a soldier who resides in northern Israel and hence gets out extra early on weekend leave. The slang use has another meaning entirely, derisively describing the snobby, rich residents of northern Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s wealthier neighborhoods.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Look at the running shorts on that</span> tzfoni, <span style="font-style: italic;">what does he think this is, his parents private country club in northern Tel Aviv?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Yatzur </span>‘Creature;’ Creep, weirdo.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">The army is said to make men out of boys. Its effect on the</span> yatzur <span style="font-style: italic;">the next tent over is less productive.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Zayin/tachat sheli</span> ‘My penis/ass;’ No way in hell.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">Zayin, tachat</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">chara</span>— penis, ass and feces—are the basis of many Hebrew profanities. Adding the simple self possessive <span style="font-style: italic;">sheli </span>makes a term that expresses frustration and unwillingness to cooperate. Often the term is prefaced with <span style="font-style: italic;">al ha</span>, ‘on,’ as in: <span style="font-style: italic;">al haTachat sheli</span>, ‘on my ass,’ to sharpen the meaning: ‘I have zero interest in that.’ <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kol hazayin</span>, ‘all the penis,’ has a related though distinct meaning. Instead of rejecting out of hand, this response says: ‘it sucks but I’ll do it.’ <br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You want me to do what!?</span> Al hazayin sheli, <span style="font-style: italic;">I won’t do that miserable work. I have to? </span>Kol hazayin!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Zambura otcha</span> I will fuck you up.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">You ate my Bamba while I was out? </span>Zambura otcha, <span style="font-style: italic;">you bamba eating coward. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Zrikat zayin</span> ‘Throwing penis;’ Not giving a damn.<br />
<br />
When a superior says his soldiers are displaying <span style="font-style: italic;">zrikat zayin</span>, it usually means he is pretty pissed and they are about to suffer.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">By the end of our six month deployment, soldiers were </span>zrikat zayin <span style="font-style: italic;">about everything.</span></div>
Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-34039059433791566722011-06-24T09:25:00.007+03:002012-11-22T09:31:48.389+02:00The Final Battle?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-style: italic;">You are zero. Your eighteen months of training are worth nothing. And all the effort and commitment you displayed over your service mean squat.</span>
<br />
<br />
My lieutenant did not actually say these exact words to me this Monday. He used other words, framed in obscure military jargon and polite circumlocution, to share the same devastating message: That having finally arrived at the start of the active service I have trained for over eighteen arduous months, I would not be serving with my peers as a combat soldier. For reasons that defy goodwill and common decency, my officer has relegated me to serve the remaining three months of my military service as an assistant logistics boss (<span style="font-style: italic;">sarsap</span>) for new recruits. An assignment that spells the end of my stillborn dream of serving as a combat soldier in the IDF.
<br />
<br />
I had trouble believing what my lieutenant was telling me. Like everyone else, I knew several soldiers from my unit would soon be assigned to jobs—medics, logistics, training instructors— that would take them away from our forthcoming deployment. Rookie platoons like my own are always forced to fill these slots, losing a few soldiers that return to the platoon after completing their six to eight month long external assignments. Because I only have three months left in the army, and because my platoon has its share of indifferent types that would like nothing better than a cushy external assignment, I was sure I would have nothing to do with this bit of sorry military redistricting.
<br />
<br />
My platoon leader clearly felt differently. He explained that the assignment was based on his conclusion that he cannot rely on me (that is, I make him look bad), pointing to the <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/bus-and-kitchen-blowups.html">bus and kitchen incidents</a> from the last two days as proof of my instability. When I pointed out that my name had been fully cleared in both incidents, and that if anything they said more about poor judgment by senior officers than by yours truly, he inanely replied that I have been negatively involved in a hundred other similar incidents. My attempt to point out that a hundred similar incidents of nothing still add up to nothing failed to make an impression. As did my reminders that my effort and results through every facet of our training have been amongst the very best in the entire company. As did my request that he bear in mind how far I have come and sacrificed <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/06/finally-kav.html">to serve as a combat soldier in this army</a>. Does the fact that every other soldier in my platoon could be assigned this logistics job and later return with our unit to a future combat deployment mean nothing? Or the fact that quite a few of them would be happy to bounce out to a cushy logistics posting for a few months? The bottom line, my commander stoically responded to everything I said, is that I do not want you with me.
<br />
<br />
What he did not say, and what I later came to understand from conversation with other officers, is that the decision to ship me off to the island of logistics purgatory was shaped by the fact that I have only three months of service remaining. External postings like this logistics job are known for softening up soldiers, leaving them with little motivation for the far more grueling duties of a combat soldier on their return. As a result, combat units like my own dislike releasing their soldiers to such postings. Sending me, especially if my platoon leader does not care for me, is thus perfect since I will soon discharge and in any case would not have returned from this posting for future combat deployment.<br />
<br />
Having butted heads with my commander to no avail, I turned to friends and family on my kibbutz and considered my options. The simplest and most distasteful route would be to bend my head and accept the lowly logistics assignment. Every alternative would necessitate a grand display of stubbornness and help from friends within and without the military system. The best outcome would see the assignment canceled and deploying as a combat soldier with my squad. A second best route would be transferring to another unit that will allow me to serve as a combat soldier. A final option means recognizing that my dream of serving in combat is finished and instead trying to bring my service to an early end (<span style="font-style: italic;">kitzur sherut</span>), an unsavory though preferable conclusion to three months of dreary aimlessness. While considering which of these battles was worth waging, I reminded myself what to me was already obvious: by no means would I accede and while away the rest of my service as a silly deputy logistics boss.<br />
<br />
My resolve was tested over the remainder of the week through a series of ugly and even dramatic encounters with various senior officers. Following my initial chat with my lieutenant, logic suggested turning to his superior, my company commander (<span style="font-style: italic;">mem’pei</span>). Logical? Perhaps. Yet not helpful since this senior officer is well known in our unit for having the split personality of a Jekyll and Hyde. When I approached him for a meeting several hours after having first spoken with my commander, the <span style="font-style: italic;">mem’pei</span> turned on me with an almost visceral snarl and yelled that he had no interest in speaking with me. My vain attempts to convince him otherwise merely enraged him further and I was forced to back off from the almost foaming excuse of a man entrusted with leading some eighty men into battle.
<br />
<br />
After slipping a call the next morning over to <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/03/battle-of-parents.html">Zvika Levy</a>, a well known advocate for lone soldiers, I joined the rest of my unit for the day’s hike through Wadi Kelt and around Gush Etzion. The natural springs and secluded monastery of Wadi Kelt steadied my nerve while the tour around Gush Etzion left me with the uneasy feeling that instead of concluding my service defending the same stretch of turf I once called home as an overseas yeshiva student, I may be saying farewell to my squad and this territory with today’s frivolous sightseeing.
<br />
<br />
Wednesday evening brought the most theatrical encounter of this dragged out drama. The entire battalion was waiting to enter an assembly hall and begin a ceremony to commemorate the First Lebanese War when the battalion officer responsible for manpower issues (<span style="font-style: italic;">shalishut</span>) approached me. In plain sight of everyone, mere feet away from the entire senior officer corp of the battalion, the manpower boss blasted me with the following outburst.
<br />
<br />
“I hear (from Zvika Levy, as I later discovered) that you have this tremendous desire to serve as a combat soldier. Well, come to my office on Sunday morning and I will reassign you to the Home Front Command (a co-ed force that is at once the newest and least respected combat unit in the army).”
<br />
<br />
“Excuse me? I trained for the last eighteen months, and was recognized this past March, as a trained combat soldier in the Recon Paratroopers. With all due respect, here is where I deserve to serve as a combat soldier.”
<br />
<br />
“Oh yeah? Well, if you want to serve here you need to add a extra year to your service time. All combat soldiers in this unit serve a full three years, and you are signed to just two.”
<br />
<br />
At that point I tried to provide the manpower chief with <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2010/11/quoth-raven-nevermore.html">a brief summary</a> of how, when I came to the Paratroops in December 2010, I made very clear to the relevant manpower officer that I had zero interest in signing a third year and hence was ready to pass on the special forces recon battalion. And how nevertheless I was shuffled into the special forces, trained for six months, and acknowledged at a pretty ceremony in March as a certified special forces combat soldier. The idea that with three months left in my service I will be pressed into serving another year that many older lone soldiers never are asked to serve is preposterous, especially when the only reason for this pressure is the senior officers' desire to shuffle me off to a silly job that has been dropped in my lap <i>because </i>I am discharging in three months! “Special forces soldiers may in fact have to serve the full three years,” I concluded to the manpower chief, “But to drop the requirement on me now, in this circumstance, after blithely ignoring the rule while I gave my all over a year and a half of training...I mean, really?!”<br />
<br />
The manpower boss was ready to explode by the end of my remarks. Before he could, however, the overall commander of the Recon Paratroop Battalion, whom had been observing this whole tragicomedy from a foot away (along with every other soldier in the battalion), gestured the manpower fellow over and instructed him to tell me I would instead meet with the battalion commander. A good sign, I hoped, since having failed to even hold a conversation the other day with my company commander, the battalion commander was the next step up the military pyramid.
<br />
<br />
My company commander must have read my mind for at that very moment he came over to speak with me. The man who drew me to the side for a brief chat had transformed back into Dr. Jekyll from the monstrous Hyde I encountered two days before (thanks, it seems, to a chat from Zvika Levy!). Choosing his words carefully, he insisted he genuinely cares for me and understands the challenges of lone soldiers. He then prattled off a lot of nonsense about how the logistics assignment they are sending me to is a great honor that I am especially suited for. Before I had a chance to pop the sugary confection he was spinning, the memorial service began and our chat came to a sudden halt.
<br />
<br />
The next day was the company "pool day," a bizarre coda to a week that was designed to be fun and games and instead become a live-action horror show. It was clear to me that whatever else happened by the pool, I needed to let my superiors know in no uncertain terms where I stood on this whole story. As the pool day was drawing to a close, I finally saw my chance and approached the bipolar company commander. Looking him straight in the eye, I politely informed him that I had no intention of accepting relegation to the deputy logistics job. Hyde seized control and, with barely concealed fury, the little man hissed that my refusal to follow orders had brought me a hearing (a <span style="font-style: italic;">mishpat</span>, whose punishment tends to be losing home leave for a month straight and serving as a glorified garbageman during that time) the day we returned to base. He did not have to add that the judge, jury and executioner at the hearing would be the company commander himself.<br />
<br />
With the hearing scheduled for my return to base (I am away next week on a mandatory week-long post-army career-advice workshop for lone soldiers, an opportunity the company commander tried to prevent me from attending), I remain wrestling with the question of what to do. Do I stick to principle and suffer the consequences? Or bend my neck, "for the meek shall inherit the earth" and slide away to three months of counting toilet rolls and bed sets.<br />
<br />
Update: While I would still appreciate feedback to the question, I would be remiss if I did not include the answer whose roots are firmly anchored in my heart and mind. That answer is very simple: Live by what you believe in. I would not be in the army in the first place if I had not acted on that credo. <i>Imagine how fast we'd run if we knew where we are going</i>. No, the future is not very clear, but that does not mean I am ready to abandon the faith that took me this far. A faith that leaves me ready to face whatever the coming months may bring.<br />
<br />
BONUS
<br />
<br />
My back and forth with my officers has brought another lone soldier’s story to my attention. Mike, signed for two years in the army as a participant in Garin Tzabar, was sent to medics course seventeen months into his service. He left with an understanding with his officers that he would add on some time to the two years he was serving to make it worthwhile for him to attend the three month long medics course. The understanding is that he would sign on four more months. Unbeknownst to Mike, while he was at the course his officer signed him up to another year in the army. To do so, the officer signed his own name where Mike's name is required. Many arguments later, as of this writing Mike is suing his lieutenant in civilian court. Hear hear!</div>
Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-82198720917939813902011-06-23T21:00:00.004+03:002012-03-23T17:06:06.070+02:00Bus and Kitchen Blowups<span style="font-style:italic;">Foreshadow: To present an indication or a suggestion of beforehand.</span><br /><br />In retrospect, the two obnoxious incidents that came my way at the start of this week should have been fair warning for the real misery that lay in wait. Blind to these hints, the only lesson I took from the week’s bumpy start was the sorry state of leadership in the Israeli army.<br /><br />The first incident took place on a bus. The bus in question was parked outside the Joe Alon Museum of Bedouin Culture, the first stop on a week devoted to unwinding (nightly barbeques and dance parties) and educating (nature hikes and history tours) my unit about the territory we will be responsible for patrolling starting next week. I was sweating my shirt off on the unconditioned bus, having volunteered to watch our bags while my peers entered the museum. Suddenly I heard an infernal hollering. I stepped outside to discover the deputy commander of the Recon Paratroops yelling that he wanted to speak with whoever was guarding the bus, namely, me. <br /><br />“Why were you sleeping on the job?” the senior officer snarled.<br /><br /> “Sleeping?!” I managed to mutter through puzzled lips. “I was wide awake the entire time…”<br /><br />“Now you lie to my face? Your next weekend leave is cancelled (closing Shabbat, in army parlance), and you are lucky I do not keep you on base twenty-eight days straight (a <span style="font-style:italic;">rituk</span>) as further punishment.”<br /><br />Fast-forward twenty plus hours to the following afternoon. Again, I was minding house while my peers gallivanted around in the hills. I had volunteered this time for kitchen duty, attaching myself to the crusty and irritable Mizrahi fellow in charge of our meals. This supervisor is widely known for exaggerating his displeasure with the soldiers assigned to work for him. So I thought nothing of his occasional outbursts as the day dragged on. Until the rest of my unit arrived for dinner, that is, and informed me our company commander had remanded me to kitchen duty for the rest of the week as punishment for sloughing off today.<br /><br />Neither punishment stuck. In the first case, I pointed out to my unsympathetic platoon leader (<span style="font-style:italic;">mafkatz</span>) that the senior officer had seen the driver, not me, sleeping on the bus. When another soldier came forward to verify my story, the lieutenant spoke with the deputy chief and the affair was brushed under the table. The kitchen duty fiasco fell apart even quicker when the kitchen boss spoke to my company commander on my account and clarified I had been an exemplary worker. <br /><br />Despite slipping past both incidents unscathed, I was left with a bitter taste of my officers' leadership approach. For starters, angry yelling is the de rigueur form of communication. As someone who values keeping cool in heated situations, the average officer’s hollering strikes me as a lack of self-control rather than confident authority. Worse than the yelling is that authority types in this army tend to fall on their subordinates immediately. The average officer never grants his soldier the benefit of the doubt or, shudders, stop to consider whether his soldier’s version of events may be contrary to the impression the superior has gathered from secondary sources. For some men granted authority in the army, this crapping on those beneath them seems to act as a churlish boost to self-esteem. For others, blaming the simple soldier comes as merely the easiest way of resolving a problem. My superior is blaming me for something one of my soldiers is said to have done? Fine, let me just lash out at the soldier and the problem is solved. Passing the buck downward, in short, seems to be the menial leadership ethos embraced by far too many authority figures in the Israeli army.<br /><br />If I turn the lens inward, and ask myself how I stumbled into two ugly incidents on what is supposed to be a week of vacation, four answers suggest themselves. (1) Stop volunteering for crap jobs. (2) Bad luck, which is about as unsatisfactory an answer as there can be. (3) Uncouth commanders. (4) My own attitude, which after a year and a half in the army can more or less be summed up as not taking crap from anybody. I say more or less since I exclude taking the normal crap any soldier must expect when serving as a simple grunt in this man’s army.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-79038032199180122892011-06-23T18:20:00.014+03:002011-07-31T12:55:00.597+03:00Slang Army Hebrew: Tash<span style="font-weight:bold;">Updated </span>(7/31/11): <span style="font-style:italic;">Ad mati, Aftare, Chaver Bamba, Cheerboon Bayit Rishon, liHeetafetz, Katlani, Miklachat Tachat, liNaker, Patur, Sh'pitz, Teroof, Yom Sidureem (previous updates: li’Asrel, Choter, Doogri, Kapara, Tash, Totach, Wassach).</span><br /><br />Many foreign volunteers like myself enlist in the Israeli army determined to learn Hebrew. The army, so they say, is the best <span style="font-style:italic;">ulpan </span>(Hebrew language school). As I have <a href="http://sonicinbeijing.blogspot.com/2011/02/kangaroo-in-doorway.html">mentioned before</a>, the reality is something else entirely. That something else is a Hebrew unlike the sentence structures and vocabulary used by the rest of the population. Soldiers speak a Hebrew vernacular that has only a casual respect for formal grammar and whose vocabulary can be divided into one of three categories: <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>(chilling), <span style="font-style:italic;">klalot </span>(cursing) or <span style="font-style:italic;">mivsa’ee</span> (military acronyms).<br /><br />During my early months in the army, a need to understand my peers had me scribbling down their slang phrases in a palm-sized notebook. That first notebook has been succeeded by dozens of others, with my fascination for language and culture providing the necessary motivation to build what has become a veritable dictionary of Hebrew army slang. Language is one of the surest ways to understanding a culture, a truth this dictionary will hopefully illuminate.I have divided my sea of terms into the three categories mentioned above. Keep reading for the list of <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>terms. The <span style="font-style:italic;">klalot </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">mivsa’ee</span> selections will follow shortly.<br /><br />ARMY SLANG DICTIONARY<br /> <br />TASH<br /><br />Nearly all the following words have to do with lazing around or snacking, the two activities soldiers busy themselves with whenever possible. Get ready for the world of chilling.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A’chat haDevarim</span> ‘one of the things;’ One of the best, especially. <br /><br />Used as a general formula to single out something as special. A noun or adjective can also replace the term <span style="font-style:italic;">devarim </span>‘thing’ in the phrase to give a more specific reference to the expression. As in, <span style="font-style:italic;">achat haSeforim</span> ‘an especially good book’ or <span style="font-style:italic;">achat haMagilim</span> ‘something really disgusting.’ <span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Beautiful restaurant. It really is</span> a’chat haDevarim.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Thanks. Have you tried the pita?</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Wow, this pita is </span>achat haTa’amim (‘one of the tastes;’ a really tasty dish).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Achi </span>‘my brother;’ Dude, buddy.<br /><br />Generic name for everyone in the army, friend and stranger. <span style="font-style:italic;">Ach Sheli</span>, ‘my brother’ with the suffix separate, is also used. <span style="font-style:italic;">Gever</span>, mister, is the main alternative to refer to someone by anything but their name.<br />Achi, <span style="font-style:italic;">have we met before?</span><br />Achi, <span style="font-style:italic;">it has been great serving by your side for three years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ach’la</span> Wonderful.<br /><br />An Arabic word, as common in day-to-day Israel as in the military. In Hindi, a similar word means earth or balanced, providing a nice undertow to our grasp of wonder.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">If everyone is ready then,</span> ach’la! <span style="font-style:italic;">Lets lock and load.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ad mati</span> ‘Until when;’ Forbidden slogan that encapsulates the soldier’s desire to be done with the army. <br /><br />The slogan of the <span style="font-style:italic;">shavuz </span>(see def.) soldier, or simply any soldier fed up with whatever he is assigned to do. The army equivalent, essentially, of the quaint expression “<a href="http://www.fmhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifylife.com/">fmylife</a>.” Whether <span style="font-style:italic;">ad mati </span>is uttered in jest or misery, soldiers get in trouble if overheard muttering the forbidden phrase. Officers don't like the "screw this" mentality the words convey, no doubt because they at times share the shame frustration as the troops. The ban likely adds to the enduring popularity of <span style="font-style:italic;">ad mati</span>, ensuring that no day or bathroom stall escapes a cry or spray-painted scrawl of <span style="font-style:italic;">ad mati.</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Ad mati </span>is joined in the list of forbidden phrases by at least two other terms: <span style="font-style:italic;">kama ode </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">aifo kulam</span>.<span style="font-style:italic;"> Kama ode</span>, "how much more?," shares the same virulent message of <span style="font-style:italic;">ad mati</span>. <span style="font-style:italic;">Aifo Kulam</span>, "Where is everyone?," is more subversive when asked of an officer, since the unstated answer is Thailand, namely the exotic land the rest of the officer's draft class has escaped to while he/she remains mired in the military.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My soul is utterly confounded, and You, my G-d,</span> ad mati? (Psalms 6:4)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Aftare </span>‘After;’ Vacation from the army for one day.<br /><br />Short for ‘after duty’ or ‘after hours,’ since the typical <span style="font-style:italic;">aftare </span>starts in the afternoon after the day’s work, as if it were, is over and grants the vacationing soldier a break until the following morning. Many <span style="font-style:italic;">jobnikim </span>(see def.) that suffer the difficulty of not sleeping at home (most <span style="font-style:italic;">jobnikim </span>serve on bases that they commute to from home) have the right to an <span style="font-style:italic;">aftare </span>as often as once a week. The term dates from the British Mandate period, as do most slang expressions with English roots. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">If you are a lone soldier and a</span> jobnik <span style="font-style:italic;">on a closed base, it is important to schedule your </span>aftare <span style="font-style:italic;">and your monthly</span> yom sidureem <span style="font-style:italic;">strategically for maximum vacation time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Aize gever</span> ‘this is a man;’ What a man.<br /><br />Compliment. Especially to a guy who does something courageous or manly.<br />Aize gever! <span style="font-style:italic;">I wish I could eat two cans of</span> loof (canned meat) <span style="font-style:italic;">at one sitting.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Al haKefek</span> Excellent. <br /><br />An Arabic term used only by officers, never regular soldiers. My first, less than admired, platoon leader used this term incessantly, so if I add that the phrase expresses a sense of smug arrogance you will have to forgive me.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">If I hear that bunghole say</span> Al haKefek <span style="font-style:italic;">one more time I will punch his lights out. Contrary to his words, all is not necessarily so kef.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">li’Asrel</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Aseer she’rah lo</span>, ‘unsatisfied prisoner;’ To pretend to work.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">You could wash the floors with</span> rabak (see def). <span style="font-style:italic;">Or you can do what everyone else does and just </span>li’asrel <span style="font-style:italic;">the job.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Beese </span>A portion of someone else's food.<br /><br />The terms <span style="font-style:italic;">bisele </span>(Yiddish) and piece (English) seem to be the source of this word. Often slang Hebrew words that start with a ‘b’ sound derive from terms that start with a ‘p’ sound. This comes from the Arabic tendency to replace a ‘p’ with a ‘b’ since Arabic lacks the ‘p’ sound.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">C’mon, give me a</span> beese <span style="font-style:italic;">of that Kit-Kat Bar </span>(strange but true: No in the chocolate-wafer crazy Israeli army has ever heard of eaten a Kit-Kat Bar).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Be’tist, Bettim</span> On-base medical exemption from physical training.<br /><br />The term derives from the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, BET, based on an unclear classification whereby Alef means healthy, Bet means medically impaired and Gimel means medical home leave. Every soldier wants <span style="font-style:italic;">gimelim </span>because it means time at home. A <span style="font-style:italic;">be’tist</span>, a soldier with <span style="font-style:italic;">Bettim</span>, can suffer from anything: upset stomach, leg brace, even cowardice if he plays his cards right.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Did the doctor give you </span>gimelim <span style="font-style:italic;">for your sore thumb?<br />Nope, just</span> bettim. <span style="font-style:italic;">It sucks, but hey, now I am a</span> be’tist!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chaf’shash</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">chufshat shichrur</span>, ‘vacation dismissal;’ Vacation time preceding the end of military service.<br /><br />Combat soldiers go on vacation a month before the end of their military service. <span style="font-style:italic;">Jobnikim</span>, non-combat soldiers, have a break calculated from the number of their remaining vacation days, for a maximum of twenty-one days off before their dismissal. The reason in either case, especially pressing for combat soldiers, is that the army lacks sufficient gear. In order for new draftees to receive the necessary equipment, soldiers on the way out must recycle theirs onward. By turning in their gear as they start <span style="font-style:italic;">chaf’shash</span> in October, for example, the draft class of November 2008 provides the army with enough time to recycle and prepare sufficient gear for the new draft class of November 2011.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Who isn’t counting down every day until his </span>chaf’shash?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chamshoosh </span><span style="font-style:italic;">chameeshee sheeshee</span>, ‘five/six’ or ‘Thursday/Friday;’ Weekend home leave that starts on Thursday.<br /><br />Weekend leave normally starts on Friday morning, known also as a <span style="font-style:italic;">shoosh </span>(from <span style="font-style:italic;">sheeshee</span>, Friday). <span style="font-style:italic;">Jobnikim</span>, non-combat soldiers, always leave on Thursday. Some even are so spoiled to enjoy a <span style="font-style:italic;">ravoosh </span>(from <span style="font-style:italic;">rivee’ee</span>, four or Wednesday), starting leave on Wednesday. See also <span style="font-style:italic;">chamshoosh amral, chamshoosh cornflakes, ravush, shoosh kidush</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What a spoiled</span> jobnik, <span style="font-style:italic;">leaving the army for the weekend on another</span> chamshoosh.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chamshoosh amral</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">chameeshee sheeshee + emtza’ee ri’ee’at layla</span>, ‘five/six’ or ‘Thursday/Friday’ + ‘night vision gear;’ Leaving the army for weekend home leave late on Thursday evening.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Amral </span>refers to any night-vision device used in the IDF. Attaching it to the slang term <span style="font-style:italic;">chamshoosh </span>suggests that a soldier gets home on Thursday once darkness has fallen. A <span style="font-style:italic;">chamshoosh amral</span> is the short end of a good deal. On the one hand, it means a soldier starts his weekend home leave early, before the regular Friday morning exit. Yet it is a Thursday exit in name only, as by the time the soldier gets home the day is over. That said, waking up in your bed at home on Friday morning is exhilarating to the Israeli soldier who otherwise would be woken up in the predawn hours to clean up before leaving base.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">It might only be a </span>chamshoosh amral, <span style="font-style:italic;">but I am still happy I got out of the army on Thursday.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chamshoosh cornflakes</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">chameeshee sheeshee</span> + cornflakes, ‘five/six’ or ‘Thursday/Friday;’ Leaving the army for weekend home leave early on Thursday morning.<br /><br />Making it home on Thursday morning in time to eat cornflakes, breakfast, is the best of the best. The standard every soldier wishes for when leaving the army a day earlier. Leaving base before seven AM qualifies as a <span style="font-style:italic;">chamshoosh cornflakes</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I got out so early on a</span> chamshoosh cornflake <span style="font-style:italic;">the stores were still closed and I had to eat my cereal at home without milk. Still, awesome!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chaval al haZman</span> ‘pity about the time;’ Waste of time, amazing. <br /><br />Can be used in either the literal, negative, sense or as a positive expression with the opposite meaning: what an excellent use of time! See <a href="http://www.balashon.com/2006/07/chaval.html">this blog</a> devoted to the Hebrew language for a fascinating discussion of the expression.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">That movie?</span> Chaval al hazman!<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">So if it sucks, what is worth seeing?<br />Sucks? No, I meant the movie is awesome!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chaver bamba</span> ‘A Bamba friend;’ A fair-weather friend.<br /><br />The expression comes from the otherwise obnoxious cur that suddenly becomes your best friend when you produce a snack food like the eponymous Bamba.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">If you come to the army with too many extras, expect to attract a lot of</span> chaver bamba <span style="font-style:italic;">types early and often.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cheerboon Bayit Rishon</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Churban Bayit Rishon</span> + <span style="font-style:italic;">Cheerboon </span>‘Destruction of the First Temple + Defecate;’ The first crap at home after spending twenty-one days straight in the army.<br /><br />Going to the bathroom in the army, especially when the bathroom is a simple squat somewhere in the wild, lacks many of the pleasant associations of partaking of the same activity at home. Indoor army bathrooms are typically rank cesspools whose only positive is providing a hideaway to use the phone when such an activity is otherwise forbidden. Taking a crap in the great outdoors is a challenge of balance, flexibility and leg strength, not to mention comfort with squatting with your pants down in aural if not visible distance of your squad (best to avoid mentioning how the experience is affected in the absence of toilet paper). In either case, the poor quality of army food means the experience is all the more regrettable. This is especially true after a week or more in the field when the exclusive diet of combat rations leads to high-fiber dumps that produce ginormous fudge dragons. All this boils down to a moment of unadulterated relief when a soldier arrives home and immediately drops a doozy in the fine comforts of the home facilities.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Churban Bayit Rishon</span>, the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, is a traumatic date in Jewish history, commemorated with sorrow by observant Jews on the summertime fast day of the Ninth of Av. Switching the similar words <span style="font-style:italic;">churban </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">cheerboon </span>creates a term that expresses how profound a soldier’s first crap is at home after weeks in the army. The term also suggests that the poor army food consumed over the preceding week lead the first crap at home to create a traumatizing stench in the bathroom and possibly screw up the plumbing to boot.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My </span>cheerboon bayit rishon <span style="font-style:italic;">this weekend was legend. I did not know whether to flush or name the craposaurus that was left in the bowl when my work was done.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Choopar </span>Unexpected treat.<br /><br />The source of this term is a mystery.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Who would ever have believed our home leave would start a day early? What a great </span>choopar!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chooki’lookeem</span> Snack/junk food. <br /><br />Cookies, Bamba and wafers are all typical <span style="font-style:italic;">chooki’lookeem</span>, one of the most common terms in the infantry. Other military branches use other slang terms, such as <span style="font-style:italic;">digoomeem </span>in the artillery (<span style="font-style:italic;">totchanim</span>) or even <span style="font-style:italic;">neesh noosh</span> (see def.). The source is unclear, though ‘chocolate’ (<span style="font-style:italic;">shokolad </span>in Hebrew) seems to have inspired at least the first half of the term. The noun, like most slang terms on this list, can also be made into a verb, <span style="font-style:italic;">l’chak’lake</span> ‘to snack (on junk food).’<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The meals on base may be awful, but hey, that is what</span> chooki’lookeem <span style="font-style:italic;">are for.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Choter, Chatran</span>, To/one who chase(s) after <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span> (see def.).<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Choter </span>(verb) and <span style="font-style:italic;">chatran </span>(proper noun) come from the word <span style="font-style:italic;">chatirah</span>, to row (a boat), as if one is rowing, i.e. chasing, after <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Some units have a culture of excellence. Our unit has a culture of</span> chatranut. <span style="font-style:italic;">Everyone tries to</span> choter <span style="font-style:italic;">all the time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Doogri </span>Honestly, straight talk.<br /><br />Someone who speaks <span style="font-style:italic;">doogri </span>“tells it like it is.” Hebrew borrowed the word from Arabic, which in turn adopted the term from the Turkish <span style="font-style:italic;">dogru</span>, which means ‘straight, true.’<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Can you believe his BS? </span>Doogri, <span style="font-style:italic;">sometimes I just want to record his </span>hanfatza (see def.) <span style="font-style:italic;">and play it back to him.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Gazlan</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">ligzol</span>, ‘to rip-off;’ Ice-cream van.<br /><br />No matter where military exercises are located, a <span style="font-style:italic;">gazlan </span>can always be counted upon to come rolling up with that familiar suburban tune, ready and willing to sell ice-cream and soft-drinks to desperate soldiers for exorbitant prices. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Tra na na na la la…You hear that? I cannot believe the</span> gazlan <span style="font-style:italic;">managed to find us here in the middle of nowhere.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">LiHanfeetz </span>( n. <span style="font-weight:bold;">hanfatza</span>) To bullshit. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lihamtzeem</span>, ‘to imagine,’ seems to be something of a source for a word with no true origin. Sort of like pornography, you know <span style="font-style:italic;">hanfatza </span>when you hear it: pure BS, the sort of talk that goes on and on with little relevance to reality. See also, <span style="font-style:italic;">stall bet.</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I can’t take a single word our commander says seriously. All he does is</span> lihanfeetz <span style="font-style:italic;">everything</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">liHeetafetz</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Ayafoot Tzavait</span> ‘Army tiredness;’ To doze.<br /><br />A soldier who drowses off, especially when taking a nap is forbidden, such as during sentry duty or a lecture. Commanders are always warning soldiers lo <span style="font-style:italic;">liheetafetz </span>‘do not doze off.’<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Do not worry if you</span> liheetafetz <span style="font-style:italic;">during sentry duty, you will be punished by staying on base for the weekend (closing Shabbat) so you will have lots of time to catch up on sleep!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">liHeetarake </span><span style="font-style:italic;">litroke </span>‘to slam (the door);’ To throw oneself into sleep.<br /><br />This word tends to set up a good <span style="font-style:italic;">took</span> (see def.), suggesting a soldier is so exhausted that he is prepared to throw himself into sleep like one slams a door, with utter abandon and singleness of purpose.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">We finished cleaning our guns. Long past time</span> liheetarake.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Kapara, Kapara Alecha</span> ‘atonement, atonement for you;’ Dearest, as in a heavily sugared term for a friend. <br /><br />As in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement set aside on the Jewish calendar for fasting and forgiveness, this term literally has something to do with penitence. The day before the fast, a curious ritual known as <span style="font-style:italic;">Kapara </span>(or plural, <span style="font-style:italic;">Kaparot</span>) has Jews swing a chicken over their heads while declaring: ‘This is my exchange, my substitute, my atonement…this chicken will go to its death while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and peace.’ The chicken is then slaughtered and donated to the poor. While modern Israelis aren’t thinking of squawking chickens when they refer to their dear ones as <span style="font-style:italic;">kapara</span>, our dearest friends do share something with the sacrificial bird who takes us at our worst and with whom we form a deep, if albeit brief, spiritual bond.<br />While <span style="font-style:italic;">kapara </span>implies strong affection, it is often used with total strangers or to defray or mask annoyance with others. Similar words include: <span style="font-style:italic;">eina’im sheli</span> (lit., ‘my eyes’), <span style="font-style:italic;">mohmee </span>(honey), <span style="font-style:italic;">motek </span>(sweetie), <span style="font-style:italic;">neshama </span>(lit., ‘soul’).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Kapara Alecha</span> can also express ‘you cannot be serious’ or ‘calm down,’ in a jovial, even thankful, sense.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lets go</span> kapara (in Hebrew, <span style="font-style:italic;">yalla kapara</span>!)! <span style="font-style:italic;">We’re going to be late.</span><br />Kapara Alecha! <span style="font-style:italic;">I’m not even dressed yet. Give me a few more minutes.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Katlani </span>‘Deadly;’ Intense, awesome.<br /><br />Like <span style="font-style:italic;">teroof</span> (see def.), similar to the way a California surfing dude would describe a great wave as ‘killer.’ See <span style="font-style:italic;">teroof, rabak</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">It was just</span> katlani <span style="font-style:italic;">how quickly he pulverized his opponent in Krav Maga.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Loof </span>canned meat. Kosher spam. <br /><br />The basic ingredient in <span style="font-style:italic;">manot krav</span>, field rations, was a pink blob of canned meat named <span style="font-style:italic;">loof</span>. A chosen few love it. For the rest of us, <span style="font-style:italic;">loof </span>is a culinary catastrophe. The army has heeded the majority and over the last few years, <span style="font-style:italic;">loof </span>has been phased out of use (replaced by tuna!).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Eating </span>loof <span style="font-style:italic;">with pleasure is like kissing Jabba the Hut. Most of us simply lack the intestinal fortitude for such torture.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Miklachat Tachat</span> ‘Butt Shower,’ Airing out your rear with the wind.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">miklachat tachat</span> is a reaction to the sweat covered backside that results from climbing a steep mountainside in heavy gear. Upon reaching the summit, soldiers drop their packs, unleash their belts, and let the cool mountain air cool things out down yonder.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I fantasize about warm baths during tough army marches so the occasional </span>miklachat tachat <span style="font-style:italic;">is a promising sign of seeing my dreams realized.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">liNaker </span>‘To woodpecker;’ To head-bob while dozing.<br /><br />The tired soldier in a boring lecture has a tendency to imitate the woodpecker (<span style="font-style:italic;">Nakar </span>in Hebrew; the verb <span style="font-style:italic;">liNaker </span>formally means ‘to poke’), drowsy neck muscles allowing the soldier’s head to slowly fall downward some ninety degrees before briefly regaining consciousness and snapping straight back up. The cycle repeats itself, to the great amusement of head-bobbing fans in attendance. This activity happens when a soldier is in a state of <span style="font-style:italic;">heetafutz </span>(see def.).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Moshe gets the best neck workouts during boring lectures. To see how quickly he starts to</span> linaker <span style="font-style:italic;">is truly a wonder to behold.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">liNash naish</span> To snack (on junk food).<br /><br />When <span style="font-style:italic;">chookilookeem </span>(junk food, sweets, etc. see def.) emerge, the <span style="font-style:italic;">nashing </span>is not far behind. <span style="font-style:italic;">liNash naish</span> seems to have a Yiddish root, since ‘to <span style="font-style:italic;">nash</span>’ is also a favorite slang of Jews in exile the world over. This verb even comes with its own less heralded noun: <span style="font-style:italic;">neesh noosh</span>, a synonym for <span style="font-style:italic;">chookilookeem</span>, junk food in the common tongue.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">As tired as I am, I always have energy</span> liNash naish. <span style="font-style:italic;">Bring on the</span> chookilookeem!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Patur </span>‘Exemption;’ A medical excuse from participating in normal military activity.<br /><br />Soldiers seek a <span style="font-style:italic;">patur </span>from the army doctor for anything, including shaving, kitchen duty and all forms of physical activity.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I cannot guard the base at night because I have a</span> patur <span style="font-style:italic;">from the dark.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ravush </span><span style="font-style:italic;">rivee’ee</span>, ‘four or Wednesday;’ Weekend home leave that starts on Wednesday,<span style="font-style:italic;"> Yom Rivee’ee.</span><br /><br />The few, the happy few, that band of brothers and sisters that go home on Wednesday are spoiled rotten <span style="font-style:italic;">jobnikim </span>(non-combat soldiers.)<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Enlisting to the infantry means forever banishing the word </span>ravush <span style="font-style:italic;">from your vocabulary.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sachbak </span>Friend.<br /><br />Not the most common of Arabic terms embraced as Hebrew slang, yet still dropped with abandon here and there.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A </span>sachbak <span style="font-style:italic;">in need is a </span>sachbak <span style="font-style:italic;">indeed</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sha’pash</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">siddurim, inyunim, po v’sham </span>‘organizing things here and there;’ The free hour before bedtime in the Nachal Brigade.<br /><br />During basic training, soldiers receive an hour of free time before lights out. This is the time for using cellphones, throwing back junk food (<span style="font-style:italic;">chookilookeem</span>) and getting ready for bed. Considering one also needs to shower and prepare ones personal gear for the morning, the hour tends to fly by way too fast. Outside of Nachal, this free hour is called <span style="font-style:italic;">sha’tash</span> (see below). No one is quite sure why the men of the neon green beret use a separate term.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Nothing says amazing like that moment every evening when our sergeant announces the start of</span> sha’pash.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sha’tash</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">sha’a trom sheina</span>, ‘hour before sleeping;’ The free hour before bedtime.<br /><br />What everyone in the army except Nachal (see <span style="font-style:italic;">sha’pash</span>) use to describe the free hour soldiers receive before bedtime during basic training to do whatever they want. Many are under the false impression that <span style="font-style:italic;">sha'tash</span> is an acronym for <span style="font-style:italic;">sha'a tash</span> (hour of <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>). They are wrong.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My boyfriend in Nachal never calls me. He claims he does not get</span> sha’tash <span style="font-style:italic;">time to use his cellphone every night like the rest of the army. What a doosh.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sh’natz</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">shaina tza’arayim</span> ‘afternoon sleep;’ Nap in the afternoon. <br /><br />The goal of any <span style="font-style:italic;">chapshan </span>(see def.) or Laotian. The consummate soldier realizes that lunch break is designed as much for the <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span> as for eating. And afternoon bus rides? Thank you Lord. Like the best slang terms on this list,<span style="font-style:italic;"> sh’natz</span> is at once both a verb and noun. I <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span>, you <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span>, we all <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span> a <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span> together!<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Life is just too short to not pull off a</span> sh’natz <span style="font-style:italic;">when you feel like it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sh’nab</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">shaina boker</span> ‘morning sleep;’ Nap in the morning. <br /><br />Any schlub can pull off a quick <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’natz</span> (see def). The real vet is he who makes time for a refreshing <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’nab</span> before noon. Considering most days in the military begin at dawn, there is enough time and easily enough motivation to slip in a quick <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’nab</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A</span> sh’nab <span style="font-style:italic;">is my way of offering morning grace to the god of </span>took (see def.).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Shlook </span>A portion of someone else’s drink.<br /><br />The liquid equivalent of a <span style="font-style:italic;">beese </span>(see def). <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">You open a bottle of Nestea, you’d best be ready to hand it over for many a </span>shlook.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Shoosh kidush</span> Arriving home from the army late on Friday evening.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Shoosh </span>(from <span style="font-style:italic;">sheeshee</span>, ‘six,’ ala the sixth day: Friday) is slang for weekend home leave that starts on Friday, that is a regular weekend leave for combat soldiers. <span style="font-style:italic;">Kidush </span>is the benediction over wine at the start of the Friday night Shabbat meal. Hence a <span style="font-style:italic;">shoosh kidush</span> suggests that a soldier gets out of the army so late on Friday afternoon that by the time he arrives home the Shabbat evening meal is about to start. In short, the worst type of weekend leave!<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I would rather close Shabbat on base then get out on a </span>shoosh kidush.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sh’pitz</span> ‘Tip;’ A soldier that excels in a given task.<br /><br />Like the tip of the spear, the <span style="font-style:italic;">sh’pitz </span>is front and center in his accomplishments.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Did you see how fast he ran the</span> bochen maslul <span style="font-style:italic;">(obstacle course). What a</span> sh’pitz!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Stall bet</span> To verbally mess with someone.<br /><br />Although as used in the army <span style="font-style:italic;">stall bet</span> suggests verbally working someone over, taking them for a ride, the slang term can also be self reference to suggest one is chilling out. See also, <span style="font-style:italic;">l’hanfeetz</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Are you </span>stall bet <span style="font-style:italic;">with me? Or did you really hook up with </span>Scarlett Johansson <span style="font-style:italic;">this weekend?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tash </span><span style="font-style:italic;">t’nai sherut</span> ‘service rights’ All the good things in the army.<br /><br />There are rules in the army ensuring that soldiers receive a certain number of meals and hours of sleep per day, weekend home leaves after a certain maximum length of time in the army (thirty-five days), and all the special assistance the army may provide to lone soldiers or soldiers from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. These rules are the formal source of the term <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>. Every unit even has a (female) soldier, called the <span style="font-style:italic;">ma’shakeet tash</span>, whose job it is to ensure and assist soldiers in getting their various <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>privileges.<br />In practice, <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>has a far wider meaning, encompassing all the good things in the army. Easy training? <span style="font-style:italic;">Tash</span>. Good food? <span style="font-style:italic;">Tash</span>. Serving as a <span style="font-style:italic;">jobnik </span>(noncombat soldier)? <span style="font-style:italic;">Tash</span>. New equipment? <span style="font-style:italic;">Tash</span>. Midday naps? Super <span style="font-style:italic;">tash</span>! <span style="font-style:italic;">Tash </span>is so pervasive that the army can arguably be divided into one of two experiences: <span style="font-style:italic;">tash </span>or kader (see def).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Tash sh'tayim</span>, 'tash two,' describes getting off from the army two days a week or more regularly than regular soldiers. Soldiers who receive <span style="font-style:italic;">tash sh'tayim</span> have home issues-low income, parents ill or in jail- that compel them to return home to work or help the family.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They say in the infantry you have to love the suck. That’s fine, I just wish the </span>tash <span style="font-style:italic;">didn’t suck as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Teroof </span>Intense, crazy, awesome.<br /><br />Like <span style="font-style:italic;">katlani</span>, similar to the way a California surfing dude would describe a great wave as ‘out of control awesome.’ See <span style="font-style:italic;">katlani, rabak</span>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">How was my shower?</span> Teroof!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Took </span>‘off;’ (pronounced tuke, like duke). Nap. <br /><br />The source of this word is unclear. It seems to be a rare Hebrew word for ‘off,’ because the US-issued Hebrew lettered radios used by the IDF are inscribed with the terms <span style="font-style:italic;">ga </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">took</span>, on and off. More importantly, the simple translation does not capture the splendor that this term evokes in the midst of a tiring week in the army. For me the term evokes the simple bliss of Tolkein’s shire (Perrigen Took of <span style="font-style:italic;">Lords of the Rings</span> providing the link), hobbits lazing around with grubby feet, drinking, resting, drunk on life’s simple pleasures. <span style="font-style:italic;">Took mitkadem</span> means what it translates to, a tongue in cheek statement of fact: advanced stage of sleep.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Took </span>is my favorite slang Hebrew term, hands down.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I would cross miles for you, my love, my soul, my daily</span> took.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Totach </span>‘Cannon;’ Impressive, standout guy.<br /><br />Aside from the Freudian implication of referencing the alpha male by the most phallus-like of weapons, there is not much to say about <span style="font-style:italic;">totach</span>. Like <span style="font-style:italic;">aizeh gever</span>, the <span style="font-style:italic;">totach </span>demands and receives respect for his imposing abilities.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What a </span>totach! <span style="font-style:italic;">I did not think it was possible to finish the obstacle course in under seven minutes!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Wassach </span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Wallah sachtein</span> (Arabic), 'yeah (<span style="font-style:italic;">walla</span>) impressive/congrats (<span style="font-style:italic;">sachtein</span>); Anything displayed or performed in order to look cool or impressive.<br /><br />Pimp my ride is the motto of the <span style="font-style:italic;">wassakist</span>, the soldier who goes all out in making his gear, especially his gun, look as pimped out and spiffy as possible. This tends to involve adding as many extras (forward hand grip, flashlight, laser sight, fancy scopes, etc) to the standard rifle as possible. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">He is so full of himself. Look at all the extras he attaches to his rifle. Pure </span>wassach.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Yalla </span>Lets go.<br /><br />Arabic term used indiscriminately in Hebrew, as a greeting, goodbye and for applause. <span style="font-style:italic;">Ya’alla</span>, a similar Arabic term, can have a similar meaning or be used to say “I cannot believe this!”<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Everyone, get up!</span> Yalla <span style="font-style:italic;">Orev </span>(Orev is the nickname of my unit)!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Yom sidureem</span> ‘Organizing day;’ A day off from the army to take care of pressing civilian needs that lone soldiers are entitled to once a month.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Yom sidureem</span> is designed to provide lone soldiers (see def.) a chance to take care of concerns like bank accounts and phone plans they otherwise would not have time for on the regular weekend leave. Most lone soldiers, however, are not too proud to use a <span style="font-style:italic;">yom sidureem</span> for more leisurely pursuits, requesting a day to square away their rent checks but actually spending the day chilling on the beach with chums. Although lone soldiers have a right to one day off each month, whether they receive the day depends on the goodwill of their officer, and the gumption of the lone soldier and his <span style="font-style:italic;">masheekat tash</span> (see def).<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A strategically scheduled</span> yom sidureem <span style="font-style:italic;">is such a breath of fresh air.</span>Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-8009379160478427422011-06-18T21:20:00.004+03:002011-06-27T04:41:24.992+03:00Finally, Kav!Every combat soldier has a twisted desire to see action, imbalanced by his fear of suffering injury or seeing a friend go down. Lone soldiers tend to share this desire one step further; part of the journey from overseas spectator to frontline participant is a longing to get a hands-on sense of the Arab-Israeli conflict. <br /><br />Some of my <span style="font-style:italic;">garin </span>friends have satisfied this need. Two of them serve in the Givati Brigade, and have seen action against smugglers by the Gaza border and all sorts of activity in the West Bank. One was called to separate rioting groups of Jewish settlers and Arab villagers in Samaria; rubber bullets and tear gas helped keep both sides away from each other and the soldiers in between. The other has countless stories of detaining and interrogating Palestinians on patrols, roadblocks and ambushes. Another <span style="font-style:italic;">garin </span>friend in the Golani Brigade was front and center on the northern border during the Al Nakba clashes on May 15. A close friend who moved to Israel from America shortly after me has seen more action than probably anyone in my <span style="font-style:italic;">garin</span>. Working as a journalist, she has covered demonstrations across East Jerusalem and as far away as Tahrir Square in Cairo.<br /><br />And then there is me, with nineteen months of training to be some sort of special forces fighter and not an hour of real work to speak of.<br /><br />Until now. This week marked the end of the Paratroop Brigades months-long refresher training. The final night march of the week was brutal, easily the toughest physical/mental challenge I have had in the army besides <span style="font-style:italic;">misakem maslul</span>. I nearly blacked out repeatedly when waves of dehydration-like syndromes enveloped me during the last three hours of the march. With the week complete, I have forever finished the tough training exercises that are the most rigorous parts of military service. Starting in two weeks my unit will be heading to the West Bank for <span style="font-style:italic;">kav </span>(literally, ‘line’), the army term for the territory combat units are responsible for on active duty. There I will finally have a chance to appreciate what all my training has been for, to finally gain a sense of the real challenges faced by a combat soldier.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />What should future lone soldiers do if they really want to get a taste of the action?<br /><br />1) If serving less than three years because of your age, serve in the regular infantry (<span style="font-style:italic;">gdud</span>) rather than a special forces unit (gadsar or any of the elite units like Maglan, Duvdevan, etc). If your service time is already three years, then by all means, invest the added energy and try and get into an elite force.<br /><br />The reasoning is quite simple, backed up by the experience of many lone soldiers. First, elite unit have longer training sessions. While this means soldiers get exposed to skills like navigating and Krav Maga that the regular grunts do not touch, it also means more of one’s service will be spent in training rather than active service. Second, many special forces units, especially the most elite forces, are not exposed to the day in and day out engagements in the West Bank and along the borders. Elite units are saved in reserve for infrequent special missions. Sure, they are extra glamorous and challenging. But especially if one is serving less than the full three years, the amount of actual action you will see on a half dozen special operations missions pales in comparison to the work the grunts face every day. Yes, the majority of a regular grunt’s work is harmless foot patrols and boring sentry postings. And the food and gear cannot compare to the more elite units. But it is the regular infantry, not the elite units, who hold down the frontlines.<br /><br />Note, special forces units require all members to serve for three years, even if less time is required of a lone soldier to serve in the army given the advanced age at which he enlisted. Though elite units have been tightening up on this requirement over the last couple of years, there are still dozens of lone soldiers in <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar </span>units and elsewhere who for one reason or another serve less than the three years. I am a perfect example. While the Recon Paratroops require soldiers to sign three years like every <span style="font-style:italic;">gadsar</span>, I have never been asked to add time on to the two years I volunteered to serve when I first enlisted in 2009. Why? Disorganization and ignorance by the logistic folk in my unit.<br /><br />2) Pass on <span style="font-style:italic;">course makim</span> (the NCO course) and stay a regular grunt.<br /><br />This suggestion shares a similar argument to its predecessor. Serving as a staff sergeant (<span style="font-style:italic;">mak </span>or <span style="font-style:italic;">samal</span>) requires one to take a three month course. This course, besides having a less than sterling reputation, removes one from active duty for the duration of the course. Becoming a staff sergeant can also lead to assignment away from the frontline since graduates of <span style="font-style:italic;">course makim</span> are needed to fill a range of noncombat positions, from training new recruits to a few less exciting, logistic-type jobs. <br /><br />Serving as a <span style="font-style:italic;">mak </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">samal </span>means added responsibility and greater leadership. Both of these are very worthwhile, especially for the type of person (myself included) who finds greater meaning serving as a mentor and leader. But the advice I am giving here is not about having the best military service. It is simply about how to maximize one’s exposure to frontline duty.<br /><br />3) Become a sniper or a similar specialized dealer in death.<br /><br />Becoming a sniper requires one to leave the frontlines for several weeks in order to attend sniper school. The “sacrifice” in time on the frontlines is worth it because as a sniper, you are a highly valuable combat soldier, far more likely to see action than a regular grunt (sacrifice is in quotations because despite the intent of this advice, to maximize frontline duty, it is worth remembering that time away from endless hours of sentry duty and bad food is not really a sacrifice). A similar argument goes for other specialized weapons, from the basic Negev light machine gun to the heavier equipment.<br /><br />4) Serve for the maximum three years, volunteering for extra time if your advanced age means you only have to serve sixteen or twenty-four months. This last bit of advice is very much tongue in cheek since outside of pilots and certain commando units, no soldier in his right mind would or should ever volunteer extra time once he is already signed up for less time as a combat soldier. This is not meant to sound cynical. Merely realistic.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-63330236161817477202011-06-18T20:24:00.003+03:002014-01-28T10:14:04.595+02:00My Man in Cairo: Grapel & Global Justice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-style: italic;"> You choose a side the day you join the army.</span><br />
<br />
Ilan Grapel’s arrest in Egypt really angers me. While the Egyptians were accusing Ilan, an American Jew, of fomenting unrest in Egypt as an agent of Israel’s Mossad, the actual case rests on his biography: Jewish, Israeli, Arabic speaker, and— courtesy of a few indiscriminate Facebook photos—former Israeli soldier. Good thing they did not cite Ilan’s university as further reason to arrest him, I joked to a friend, since a shared alma mater is one more similarity Ilan and I have in common.<br />
<br />
While Ilan and I never crossed paths in university (he graduated the year before I arrived), we have walked in each others’ footsteps in the Arab world. Like Israel’s supposed man in Cairo, I know what it is like to be a Jewish American with ties to the Jewish State and a passport filled with Arab visa stamps. Those stamps do not come without risk. But the inherent danger, or some naïve wanderlust, is not what drives the Grapels of the world to spend time in Arab countries (disclaimer: I am not actually claiming to know exactly what drove Grapel himself to be in Cairo, I am only referring to your average savvy young Jew that spends time in Arab countries, such as me, despite the inherent risk). Our motivation comes from the otherness of Israel’s neighbors, a desire to transcend entrenched biases and understand Arab society in a way that cannot be grasped from a FOX News telecast or a Bernard Lewis critique of the Arab psyche. We seek to make the foreign more familiar. And we do so without apology, convinced that what we do rather than who we are should determine our fate.<br />
<br />
Accusing Ilan of being an Israeli spy because he is Jewish, has served in the Israeli army and has the gall to spend his summer break from law school assisting African refugees in Cairo is a reminder that the world has little patience for cross-cultural idealists. While his arrest is disheartening, my anger is fueled by the fear that a close friend of mine could meet a similar end. Like Ilan, my friend is working in the Arab world over the summer despite his Jewish faith and past Israeli military service. A mutual friend bemoaned our Lawrence of Arabia’s stubborn naivety. He does not understand that a person cannot play both sides.<br />
<br />
Sides?! When did we choose sides?<br />
<br />
You choose sides the day you are born, the mutual friend explained, the day you make aliyah, the day you join the army.<br />
<br />
Lawrence, my friend the former Israeli soldier now working somewhere in Arabia, wrote to me a few days later, explaining his motivations as follows,<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">If I get kidnapped tomorrow, I hope that the following thoughts are what endure of my legacy. …I've come to realize in the past few years since the army that our beliefs and values do not matter for anything unless we live them out through our own choices. At the risk of sounding trite, my most central personal value at this point in my life is to aspire to a future without borders between people and nations, in which each person is equally free to seek opportunities throughout the world as anyone else. It galls me that there are places that I am not "allowed" to go, or not "supposed" to go, places where I know that I can make an impact but am prevented from going because of arbitrary administrative reasons. I don't care if this is idealistic - it is what I want for myself and I refuse to live in any other kind of world.<br /><br />As you say, being smart and well-intentioned is not a defense against [getting in trouble]. But I fully believe that, as long as you are genuine, more good than harm will befall you in the end. I may be kidnapped, I may even be killed - but eventually it will be learned and taught that I was not who they accused me of being, and my captors or killers will be brought to justice and my legacy redeemed. I really believe this, because the alternative to believing this is a state of constant agonizing choices that you have to face, each of the following form: “Is the marginal increase in impact that I can make worth the marginal increase in risk?” In economics this is called being rational but in life it is a recipe for misery - we should all seek to make the greatest impact we can make, let the risks fall where they may.</span><br />
<br />
(Warning: stop reading now to avoid the philosophical moralizing that follows)<br />
<br />
My friend’s conviction is refreshing. Yet as much as I admire his determination to live by certain ideals, it is those ideals themselves, “a future without borders between people and nations, in which each person is equally free to seek opportunities throughout the world as anyone else,” that, like Ilan’s arrest, challenge me to reconsider my own loyalties. <br />
<br />
Both Ilan’s arrest and my friend’s defiant words touch on the concept of cosmopolitanism, the ideology that man owes his primary allegiance to the global, rather than local, community. Or in other words, that individuals rather than states and other group entities are the fundamental units of moral concerns--that every individual is entitled to my equal concern and respect. A “citizen of the world” is how history’s first self-consciously cosmopolitan described himself, a Greek philosopher by name of Diogenes the Cynic who (echoing Socrates) rejected the fierce city-state allegiances of his time in favor of the universal community of man. Ancient Greek philosophers who follow the cosmopolitan tradition describe man’s moral responsibilities as a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle is the self, followed progressively by circles that represent family, relatives, friends, local group, and countrymen until a final, outermost circle that represents all of humanity. Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary moralist, Jewish convert and the first thinker whose work I seriously engaged as a freshman in university, explains that the task of world citizens is to “draw the circles somehow towards the center, making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.” The basic idea of cosmopolitanism, in short, is that all people, not just family members or fellow citizens, belong to a single community based on our common humanity.<br />
<br />
Ascribing to a cosmopolitan outlook has real consequence. While not every cosmopolitan will come down in favor of a single world government, someone who prioritizes the global over the local community (alternatively, someone who seeks to make the global local) would insist that there is zero moral ground for curtailing cultural freedoms (language, religion and customs) in the name of nation, church or party. With the world growing more interconnected thanks to modern travel and communication, man is no longer blissfully ignorant of the suffering of others. Television and the internet abolish distance, prompting a moral consciousness that allows cosmopolitans to insist that political and economic barriers that prejudice one local community over another are morally bankrupt. Or in other words, being an American, a football fan or a religious Jew does not grant me and mine any moral superiority, nor the right to privilege folks like myself over those outside my particular nation, custom and creed.<br />
<br />
There are any number of knee-jerk reasons to reject cosmopolitanism (most of which are variations of a social-Darwinist rejection of moral altruism). A more compelling criticism however, lies in demonstrating that cosmopolitanism in fact undermines morality. That is, the ideology that says mankind belongs to a single community acts against the ethic that calls for man to put others interests’ before his own (i.e. altruism, though I use the term morality and altruism interchangeably). Such a counter-intuitive assertion follows from understanding that the two building blocks of morality, a sense of mission and familiarity, do not jive with cosmopolitanism. Ergo, cosmopolitanism does not promote altruism.<br />
<br />
Evolutionary biologists have long argued that morality evolved naturally among advanced species. Doing good for others, they argue, is hardwired: we do good because it feels good. Unfortunately for the Darwin crowd, they cannot explain what makes altruism different from others pleasures which man controls when doing so is in his best interest. Unlike food, for instance, which man limits his enjoyment of to stay healthy, people do good for others even when they may themselves suffer. So there must be other reasons, rationale reasons, why we are moral.<br />
<br />
Fortunately for the non-Ayn Rand crowd, there are. The first is familiarity. I am my brother’s keeper because he is my brother. Because I know and love him, I will do things for him I would do for no one else. Or as Michael Walzer argues, ethical standards arise from shared customs that can only be nurtured within discrete cultures and societies. The second reason is a sense of mission. In order to make the world a better place, I am prepared to give charity, help old ladies across the street and generally help others at my expense. A larger goal, a purpose, prompts me to feel the pain of others as keenly as my own. <br />
<br />
Familiarity presents the starker challenge to the world citizen mantra. Even with all the advances in modern technology, it is impossible to become as familiar with strangers as you are with your family and friends. And even if you could take a pill that made you feel as close to everyone in the world as you do to your immediate family, the emotional necessity of exclusivity that powers familiarity to serve as a reason to be moral would be lost. (Marriage, as it happens, builds on this same need for exclusivity in an intimate relationship. Judaism teaches that marriage is in fact man’s attempt to realize the otherwise near impossible biblical mandate of loving your neighbor as yourself.) Thus in the cosmopolitan utopia, morality is undermined by the absence of intimacy. If everyone is my brother, then the power of brotherhood no longer has meaning, and I no longer am willing to place my brother’s interest before my own.<br />
<br />
The second pillar of moral behavior, a sense of mission, also causes problems for the cosmopolitan agenda. Mission-minded folks can only effect real change by teaming up. The teams they form, be they nations, religions or fan-clubs, become the means through which the greater good (a future more democratic, godly or obsessed with football) is accomplished. Team members, and only team members, are the moral agents of change. And accomplishing the mission is of such importance that fellow agents must be prioritized over others. A mission-driven moralist, in other words, views himself as having a greater responsibility to his fellow moralists than to others. Humankind may be one, but my group demands greater allegiance due to our unique work for the greater good.<br />
<br />
The extent to which this sense of mission flies in the face of cosmopolitanism is evident from a classic dilemma in military ethics. In the course of a dangerous mission, a soldier has the chance to save one of two lives: the life of a civilian unconnected to the mission or a soldier whose relevance to the mission is such that losing him could jeopardize achieving the military objective. Intuition may suggest saving the life of the civilian, since protecting civilians is the very raison d'être of the soldier. Yet military opinion rules in favor of the soldier, based on the cardinal military tenet known in the Israeli army as <span style="font-style: italic;">dveikut l’misimah</span> (commitment to the mission). <span style="font-style: italic;">Dveikut l’misimah</span> directs a soldier to prioritize accomplishing his mission above anything else. In other words, the end justifies the means. Non-essential lives can be sacrificed to allow valuable in-group members the opportunity to succeed.<br />
<br />
While forming exclusive groups of holier than thou brethren is at odds with cosmopolitanism, the world citizen crowd can easily respond by saying they heartily agree with the power of a cause to form strong in-group loyalty. The solution is simply to expand the group, and make all of mankind united in pursuit of a single mission. What better way to achieve the cosmopolitan dream of one global community than to inspire all men with a single goal? <br />
<br />
If this tactic sounds familiar, it is because it is. Every cosmopolitan movement, from missionizing Christianity to modern day global capitalism, has sung this same song. The danger of such a tune, however, can be seen in history's first attempt at realizing the cosmopolitan dream. One of the most well known Biblical stories tells of a time, at the beginning of history, when “the whole earth was of one language and one purpose” (Genesis 11:1). Only a great project could sustain such unity, and so mankind began building a city, crowned by a great tower. God was displeased, however, and brought an end to man’s attempt at unity by confusing the universal language and doing exactly what the people feared most: scattering man into separate tribes across the face of the earth. The saga of the Tower of Babel, in essence, damns cosmopolitan and crowns localism as the path of the righteous.<br />
<br />
In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Dignity of Difference</span>, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks draws a very different conclusion. “The Tower of Babel speaks to our era like no other biblical narrative,” Sacks writes. “God splits up humanity into a multiplicity of cultures and a diversity of languages.” Human development requires diversity, and to protect that freedom, an inability to communicate is the paradoxical counterweight to man’s desire to achieve security through unity. The point of the narrative is not to defame cross-cultural communication. As Sacks explains, God's message to Abraham in the following chapter is: "Be different, so as to teach humanity the dignity of difference."<br />
<br />
The cosmopolitan ideal would be a danger to morality and human development. But the underlying message of that ideal, the reminder that we all share a common morality that makes others no different than me, should force us to strive for a more cosmopolitan world even as we treasure local differences. Morality asks us to engulf the yin even as we further the yang. To revel in our local music while recognizing the beauty of the global harmony that comes from so many disparate tunes.<br />
<br />
I would close by expressing hope that American pressure on Egypt’s unstable interim government will suffice for Ilan to be back with his parents before this text is splashed across the internet (Update, as of October 12 2011, the situation is sadly only <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/egypt-steps-up-charges-against-suspected-israel-spy-1.389393">looking worse</a>). Instead I will close with a relevant passage from Israeli author Amos Oz, a selection from <span style="font-style: italic;">In the Land of Israel</span> (pgs. 130-131) that I often reflect on when moral doubts about my service cloud my mind.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">This is the place to make my first shocking confession—others will follow. I think that the nation-state is a tool, an instrument, that is necessary for a return to Zion, but I am not enamored of this instrument. The idea of the nation-state is, in my eyes, goyim naches—a gentiles’ delight. I would be more than happy to live in a world composed of dozens of civilizations, each developing in accordance with its own internal rhythm, all cross-pollinating one another, without any one emerging as a nation-state: no flags, no emblems, no passport, no anthem. No nothing. Only spiritual civilizations tied somehow to their lands, without the tools of statehood and without the instruments of war.<br /><br />But the Jewish people have already staged a long running one-man show of that sort. The international audience sometimes applauded, sometimes threw stones, and occasionally slaughtered the actor. No one joined us; no one copied the model the Jews were forced to sustain for two thousand years, the model of a civilization without the ‘tools of statehood.’ The drama ended with the murder of Europe’s Jews by Hitler. And so I am forced to take it upon myself to play the ‘game of nations,’ with all the tools of statehood, even though it causes me to feel like an old man in a kindergarten. To play the game with an emblem, and a flag and a passport and an army, and even war, provided that such a war is an absolute existential necessity. I accept those rules of the game because existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger, but I accept them only up to this point. To take pride in these tools of statehood? To worship these toys? To crow about them? To convert the state from a means to an end, to an object of ritual and worship? Not I. If we must maintain these tools, including the instruments of death, it must be with wisdom—and with caution.</span></div>
Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-5099073344633365372011-06-17T11:21:00.005+03:002012-03-23T01:43:45.131+02:00The Hardest Part of the Army<span style="font-style:italic;">The misery of crawling into a sleeping-bag which is wet and sodden in total blackness on top of a mountain with the rain pissing down is misery without parallel.</span><br />Simon Murray, French veteran of Algeria<br /><br />The hardest part of the army is standing up. <br /><br />Or so I told a group of Americans tourists who came by our base for quite a revealing tour (who knew the Recon Paratroopers would put on such a show for a synagogue group on tour?!). I was assigned to accompany the group as they were shown a few propaganda videos, a collection of weapons we in fact never use (Uzis, handguns, etc.), trucks from the 1950s, and our graffiti-covered, foul-smelling barracks. As the tour wound down, time was set aside for a quick Q and A. Which is when one of the touring grammas politely asked what is the very hardest part of serving in the army. After deciding not to burden her with the social and emotional loneliness shared by most lone soldiers, I did a quick mental survey of the last three months of arduous training and told her the truth: The hardest part of the army is standing up.<br /><br />You have been walking for miles through the night, heavy pack itching against the cold sweat between your shoulder blades, lower back and shoulders crying out for escape from the Sisyphean load. Your gun sling is carving a red whelp on the back of your neck, knees creaking onward as you ascend hills, cross through waist high thorns, and repeatedly fail to keep your balance on the unstable rock face at your feet. <br /><br />So when the procession suddenly grounds to a halt, your body and mind as one collapse backwards, falling onto your pack for a precious few minutes of break. With the break in physical activity, the wind starts freezing the sweat, the stink and sopping mess of your shirt once again overwhelms your senses, and a damned thorn in your back makes every second of this break a fiendish torture. Nevertheless, you sit there basking in every dreadful moment, appreciating that for the first time all night your neck is not bent down by the weight on your back so you can finally look up and see the ochre moon and the sprinkled stars. <br /><br />And then comes the order to stand. To reshoulder heavy packs and reform two lines. The march continues! <br /><br />Everything holy beseeches you not to stand. Why be the first? No one else is making any effort to move. And why is the break over already? I was sleeping, finally resting from the grueling drudgery of this exercise. It is freezing foo shilling, there is no way I will move from my nest of semi-warmth here on the ground. And my legs have just slipped into the land of pins and needles. Give me a few more minutes to regain some control before getting up. Worst yet, I exchanged my sopping, freezing army shirt for a warm and dry thermal shirt during the break. Just the thought of slipping that sodden wreck back on my skin is terrifying. And have you tried shouldering my pack? Good Lord, Atlas himself could not keep such a heavy weight on his shoulders as long as I have.<br /><br />So it goes. Throughout the night, every break commences with the awful need to gather one's wits and courage and stand up. Tactical necessity or incompetence often leads to frequent breaks. The march proceeds in stutter-step fashion. Sometimes nearly two hours pass without a break. Often you stand up, reshoulder your pack and move forward ten feet only to discover the march has stalled once again. Your body, of course, instantly collapses. Only to be told seconds later to get back up and continue marching.<br /><br />The fighting, marching, fatigue and hunger are not always easy. But nothing compares to the elemental challenge of arising to recommence the march. As quaint as it may sound, simply standing up is the hardest of the hard in this man’s army.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />I was checking out of a supermarket the other day when it happened. A disabled lady, middle aged and clearly not very wealthy, stopped me just as I was about to pay for my groceries. Soldier, she said in English, please let me. Without another word she slipped money into my hand and gestured that I was to pay for my groceries with her savings. I pray for you soldiers every night, she added as I tried to tell her generosity was unnecessary. Please allow me to help you in whatever small way I can.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5626654601094198848.post-85116104850864391322011-06-17T09:22:00.004+03:002011-06-27T04:30:07.458+03:00Training, & Marching, On and On<span style="font-style:italic;">The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only second. Poverty, privation and want are the school of the good soldier. </span><br />Napoleon<br /><br />I had no idea until this year that the Palestinians had a day set aside on their national calendar to commemorate the Six Day War known as Al Naksa, the setback. Considering that before 1967 the West Bank and Gaza were under the control of two Arab states that did everything in their power to shackle Palestinian national aspirations, the necessity of mourning Israel’s occupation of those territories seems a little unnecessary. <br /><br />Be that as it may, the entire army was on edge as Al Naksa Day approached on Sunday June 5. Three weeks before, on May 15, Palestinian demonstrators in Syria and Lebanon had marked Al Nakba Day (‘the catastrophe,’ the day Palestinians commemorate the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel on May 15 1948) by attempting to cross the border into Israel. Violence at the border and elsewhere in Israel had resulted in the death of fifteen Palestinians and one Israeli. Palestinian leaders promised even greater demonstrations on Al Naksa, so the army responded by canceling home leaves and moving troops, including my unit, towards the Syrian border as the weekend approached.<br /><br />The resulting protests were similar to those on May 15. Palestinians in Syria, bused to the border by a government eager to distract opinion from the regime’s brutal repression of its own people, threatened to cross into Israel. Thoroughly prepared, the army warned the demonstrators not to cross the international border. When the warnings failed to do the trick, snipers from my unit were given the green light to fire at the legs of anyone seeking to illegally cross the border. As the snipers fired, other troops from my unit were on hand to ensure the mass of demonstrators did not surge over the fence into Israeli territory. The snipers, all close friends of mine, two of whom are the most innocent-looking, dimple-cheeked nineteen year olds I have ever met, are reported to have injured somewhere between twelve and twenty demonstrators. <br /><br />While some of the squads in my unit were defending our northern border, my own squad was left fending off a storm of mosquitoes on a deserted base in the Golan Heights. Despite not seeing any action ourselves, Al Naksa Day still marked a rare distraction from the last two months of repetitive yet grueling training. This training comes on top of the formal training my unit completed in April. The day after wrapping up that fourteen months training odyssey, my squad joined the months-long refresher training (known as <span style="font-style:italic;">imun</span>) the entire Paratroops Brigade has been engaged in since early March. <br /><br />While I am eager to start the real life of a special forces combat soldier, this extra training might have been manageable had it introduced new skills or sharpened techniques briefly introduced in the past. Instead it has been one long mindless and taxing bore. My squad was unlucky enough to join this rotational training round after the more relevant and exciting training weeks (urban combat, etc.) had been completed. All that was left, and all we have done over the last two months since we thought our training was finished, is week after week of simulated war games. What that means in practice is trekking night and day under a heavy pack, rarely firing a shot, dragging ourselves and our heavy gear from one imaginary ambush to another. <br /><br />These field weeks have been almost as difficult as the incredibly grueling <span style="font-style:italic;">misakmim </span>at the end of formal training in late March. In some ways these last few weeks are even harder. In March we had mentally prepared ourselves for several weeks of incredible physical challenge that would soon conclude the last fourteen months of training. Our current exercises just grind on and on, serving no real purpose as far as grunts on the ground are concerned. Guys joke that the only takeaway from these weeks is convincing everyone that war is hell and we should all vote for the most left-wing parties in the next election. Others have noted that it is a shame Hamas and Hezbollah do not conduct similar punishing exercises. No doubt their own rank and file would grow similarly disillusioned about starting a ruckus with Israel if they had a taste from such exercises of the hellishness of large scale violence.<br /><br />Our war games are, of course, designed for our senior officers’ benefit. One hopes that they at least are learning something from moving grunts like me up and down hillsides like so many lowly pawns. The true status of an infantry soldier, a lowly pawn, is my own takeaway from the last few weeks of drudgery. The only solace pawns like me can have is knowing that thanks to the Israeli system where every officer was once a lowly grunt (Israel has no equivalent to West Pointers or ROTC grads that commence their military careers as officers), the higher-ups have some understanding what they are doing when they shuffle us across the board.<br /><br />BONUS<br /><br />The endless marching over the last few weeks has allowed for one unexpected fun activity: Chinese language teaching! One of my peers first expressed interest in learning basic conversational Chinese. When I began teaching him a few vocabulary words for every mile we marched, others took an interest and a small cadre of language learners has emerged. Our attempt at Chinese gibberish while we march allows me to taste, if only in my imagination, what Mao and his Long Marchers experienced on their epic journey across China in 1935.Shuminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06632707102232755800noreply@blogger.com0