Funeral Reunion

An open grave is the very last place I ever wished to be with my fellow soldiers. Standing in a crowd of uniforms, struggling to hold back tears that dim the sight of a family crushed by unimaginable grief. A reminder that the intense pace of our training, the constant physical and mental gymnastics, is no protection against the spectre of death.

Today I stood by that open grave. Yet my visit was riddled with more ambiguities than any military funeral I could have imagined. A father of one of the guys from my former unit, rather than a young soldier, had died the day before. And so when I joined the young men from my former squad to console our grieving friend, I was meeting my mates of the past year for the first time since my abrupt exit from their ranks six weeks ago. Grief made room for joy as my former soldiers swarmed me with hugs and peppered me with questions on my current doings. New and old stories left many of us laughing. Until the ceremony began, our grieving friend arrived, and the grief in his eyes rebounded across our own consciousness.

The funeral was hardly the occasion to finally see my old comrades-in-arms. Then again, a busy training schedule means my former squad-mates will rarely have much time to connect with me. Many have already advised me that staying friends with guys from my former unit is not worth the trouble. Right now you miss each other, I am told, yet as army life picks up both you and them will soon lose track. Better, they say, to focus on the future and the new guys I will hopefully soon call comrades in arms.

I am not ready to accept such advice. Friendship for me has never been a matter of black and white, accept or deny, certainty. I have difficulty letting go, and doubt the wisdom of arbitrarily giving up on a relationship considering the brief and uncertainty of life. The guys I met during my first year in the army may never become the mythologized bunker buddies I call best friends decades from today. Whatever relationship we do maintain, however, will largely reflect my choices. And as long as I can, I will choose friendship.

Passport over Purgatory

I have a story to share that will forever serve as an antidote to bad bureaucratic experiences in Israel.

We start in Afula, that most unassuming of towns in the Jezreel Valley. On Tuesday morning I arrived at eight o'clock sharp at the local government office. In five minutes I had half a dozen passport photos, produced after the store kindly provided a spare t-shirt to wear in place of my military uniform (unbeknownst to me, military insignia cannot appear in passport photos). Ten minutes later I left the office building with a guarantee that a new Israeli passport (why? check out NbN) with my name on it would be ready in five hours, later that afternoon.

Yes, you heard that right: Same day passport service!

The government clerk, a snappy middle-aged lady named Dina, had first told me that a passport would take a few days. Yet when I explained that I am a lone soldier trying to fly overseas as soon as possible, she crisply replied that I could return in the afternoon and my passport would be ready.

The passport was waiting for me on my return. A quick check revealed that everything was spelled correctly. Except...

"I think there has been a mistake," I stammered to Dina. "Under nationality, it says Israeli. I'm-"

Israeli.

Really?! Yes. Israeli. Wow, when did that happen?!

My surprise was probably only a delayed reaction to having received such smart and efficient service. Especially when the rest of my life has become a front row seat to the worst of Israeli bureaucratic purgatory. On paper I while away the hours at Tel Hashomer awaiting reassignment. In practice? Welcome to the Rubber Room, Israeli army style.

What is the Rubber Room? According to past residents,
* It is a system designed by Kafka and carried out by Mussolini.
* Rubber Rooms are like a gulag, the DOE version of Guantanamo.
* They call it the Rubber Room because if you are not crazy to start with, it will drive you crazy if you are there long enough.

Rubber Rooms are a NYC invention, "reassignment centers" designed to house suspended teachers whom receive full salary to sit in empty rooms and do nothing. My own experience bears uncanny similarities, especially with the sentiment one NYC teacher and US Military vet used to describe the rooms: "They can send this old soldier back to Iraq. Anywhere else is better than the rubber room. I would much rather face Al-Qaeda bullets and bombs."

My own plan to escape the Israeli Army's version of the rubber room was protekzia. When my contacts failed to quickly pull me into a new unit, it was time for plan B: Grab a flight and spend the weeks overseas until the formal reassignment wheels get rolling in mid-November.

Trying to persuade the army to grant me a free flight to America, a one-time perk provided to lone soldiers (soldiers whose parents live overseas) by the American charity Friends of the IDF, opened up an even more intimidating Pandora's box. Countless lines had to be waited in, doors knocked on, and excuses swallowed to make even the smallest headway. Part of my problem is I have become the loneliest of lone soldiers, stripped of any unit or command structure that will intercede and manage the bureaucracy on my behalf. Some days my life feels like a scene from The Matrix,
as Neo discovers that everyone save himself exists in pods connected to spiraling energy towers. Despite the apparent logic of using this dead time to fly overseas, hacking through the maze of military obfuscations is proving very trying.

BONUS

The most mind numbing experiences often are full of funny asides. My time in Tel Hashomer is no exception.

One day I trooped off to a nearby office complex, filled to bursting with nineteen year old army girls. I came hoping to find someone who could fast-forward my flight request. Instead I found a strange world whose every inhabitant seemed to be either plucking facial hairs or munching on chocolate. Some of the female jobniks were even doing both at the same time! I was greeted with unfailing politeness, as girl after girl looked away from her reflection long enough to direct me to yet another unhelpful office. Wisely, I soon fled, fearing that if I stayed any longer I too would join their ranks.

The Departed

One of the other guys dropped from my former unit has pretty impressive protekzia. On our first day in Tel Hashomer, my friend was speaking to his father when the IDF's number two (i.e. the deputy chief-of-staff) came on the phone and asked how he could be of service. When a senior general starts making phone calls on your behalf, we are no longer in the realm of protekzia. We are talking command and control. "Yes, sir. We will grant that young man an interview for our special unit. Right away, sir."

Sure enough, the next day my friend interviewed with Maglan, a special forces unit almost everyone in my situation would like to get into. Despite having one of the army's most senior generals on his side, my friend was not accepted. The truth is he never really had a chance. Maglan slipped a poison pill into the interview, asking him a question whose answer could only be no. His negative response was then used as an excuse as to why the unit would not take him.

My friend's experience is one of many anecdotes I have collected in my new position as a past member of an elite unit seeking reassignment. These stories give lie to the myth that someone in my position is assured of making it to a top-flight unit. The reality is that, for a number of reasons, finding a new home in the army is an unpredictable process with the choicer addresses nearly all out of reach.

For starters, there are no shortage of qualified guys. Forget about the sixty odd guys in my position that all have received some degree of special forces training. There are hundreds of others that have never spent a day in the army yet whose performance on tests and tryouts mark them as good material. The second-tier special forces units that my peers and I are seeking to join often prefer to start fresh with new soldiers rather than bring in "veterans" from another club. Just like in baseball, every team wants a good farm system.

Another reason top units are closing their doors is they simply have less room. A few years ago it use to be common in units like Duvdevan for numerous guys to drop out due to injury. Complains grew, however, and the result are stricter safety standards, less injuries and fewer guys dropping out. Duvdevan and other top units no longer have the empty spaces they once looked to fill with guys in my position. Nothing more than econ 101, supply and demand.

A former commander of Maglan introduced me to a third reason why making it to a unit like his is far from assured. "The truth," he sheepishly admitted, "is that Maglan has an unwritten rule not to take guys who once served in your unit. The reason is petty jealousy, a desire to be seen as just as good as the most elite units." No one in my former unit had ever mentioned any rivalry with Maglan, though both units are known to share similar agendas (then again, who at Princeton thinks Penn is their academic rival?). Nonetheless, I had heard enough from outside sources to put into context what the retired commander was telling me. Top army units compete for superiority in many ways since everyone wants to be assigned the key missions when danger strikes. The similar training of Maglan and my former unit only would increase this tension. It does not help that Maglan can argue that anyone who is not right for my former unit would not be the best fit for their similar approach.

This whole reassignment rigmarole is really unfortunate. And, I daresay, avoidable. If I had my way, after dropping from a unit, soldiers would have one week at home and then one week of meetings and interviews. Two weeks would be the maximum break before the soldier would be back in training with a new squad. My alternative of ambiguous limbo, hardly seems preferable.

Avoid Dachash

I quit the army the other day.

That is, earlier this week the army quit on me.

Or at least that is how I felt when I handed in my military ID card and entered suspended service. Known as dachash (shorthand for d'chiyat sherut, suspended service), the status applies to soldiers whose pay and service time are suspended while on extended leave. Dachash means transportation is no longer free (soldiers with military ID cards ride buses and trains for free) and that the time you take off will be added on at the end of your service (i.e. you still serve your full three years, with the time on dachash not counting towards the time).

For a lone soldier like myself, dachash also means that all the perks we receive--like double salary, housing and grocery stipends, a one-time free flight overseas--disappear. In plain terms that meant I would have to pay out of pocket to remain on my kibbutz (since my kibbutz rent is normally covered by the army housing stipend), not to mention hemorrhage all kinds of money for daily living expenses. And so while entering dachash felt like the IDF had given up on me, far worse was realizing I had just signed up for financial purgatory.

The next day I re-enlisted in the IDF, tearing up my dachash form as I did so. Reenlisting has not made my status in the army any clearer. Because all the other guys waiting to be reassigned in mid-November are on dachash, my position is fairly unusual. I am not in any unit and have no commanders or support staff to speak of. The army, in fact, really has nothing to do with me for the next six weeks. And so with nothing else to do, I was tasked to a local cleanup crew.

Like all elite units in these relatively peaceful times, Tel Hashomer's cleaning squad rarely sees action. My first and only assignment was plenty memorable. Tasked with cleaning up a high-security zone nearby the entrance to Bakum, I was shocked to discover a row of jail cells locked within two rows of barbed wire fencing. The small stone rooms were dark, dismal and decaying dungeons. Peering through a two inch window carved into the heavy door, I asked the solitary jailer why these were here. "Tel Hashomer is an old base," he began by way of explanation. "You may know it was a base for the British in the thirties and forties. You probably do not know that even the Roman Legion once camped out here. Anyways, these cell were built by the (Ottoman) Turks. And then used by the Brits. And today, by us." How bizarre, I mused, that rooms once used to lock up Jewish debtors and freedom fighters now host young Jewish soldiers, recalcitrants imprisoned by a Jewish state.

My cleanup crew was disbanded the following day. And so for the foreseeable future, my army service consists of waiting around for hours in order to sign in and head home. Worse than any jobnik, the derogatory army slang for soldiers with desk jobs, I am essentially a kloomnik (kloom, hebrew for nothing), doing nothing at all. The lack of direction and physical drudgery is mentally taxing. The mental angst has even taken a physical manifestation, burdening me with a persistent migraine that nags me day and night. Ironically, for all the free time and long weekends, my current service often seems harder than anything I have yet faced in the army.

Today brought a rare ray of light. While waiting around Tel Hashomer per usual, I spotted this year's Garin Tzabar arriving for their induction. Speaking with them as they navigated their first day in the army, I was reminded of how far I have come since first visiting Tel Hashomer a year ago. And how, despite all the mountains I have climbed, I am back in line at the base where it all begin, waiting for a fresh start in the IDF.

Garin Hineni: A Year Later

Next week marks a year since I began the army. On 13 October 2009 all of Garin Tzabar, including the sixteen strong fellowship of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, marched out of Tel Hashomer as freshly minted property of the state of Israel. And so it was fitting that this weekend was a Garin Shabbat, the thrice a year event when every member of my garin is released from the army in order to allow us to share a rare shabbat together on kibbutz.

If the military can be divided between training and active service, this past year was very much about training. Everyone in my garin underwent some form of basic training in the past year. Most of the girls entered active service in the spring. The guys in the regular infantry trained through July before joining their front-line units. Although their training ended a few months ago, the infantry guys received the pins that mark them as lochamim (fighters) this past week. For those of us whose goal in joining the IDF was to serve as a locham, a trained combat soldier, those pins signify mission accomplished.

No locham pin adorns my own dress uniform. The silver bird that I would have received in a ceremony atop Masada next September will never grace my chest. Instead my service has ground to a halt, stuck in limbo as I await reassignment. While my training has exceeded that of a soldier in the regular infantry, I am not considered a locham until I rejoin a combat unit and meet their own requirements for locham status. In other words, for all that I have done, I have yet to accomplish my baseline goal of becoming a locham in the IDF.

I could not mask something like envy while listening to my peers on kibbutz describe their frontline service. They spent the summer chasing down cross-border drug smugglers and preparing for junior command positions while I trained relentlessly. They continue to defend our country while I now do nothing at all. Of course I realize that much of their active service is pure drudgery, hours spent guarding inane installations and cleaning dishes. Yet even the most numbing of frontline jobs possess a spirit of authentic soldiery that is absent in ceaseless training. Nothing we did in training, no matter how cutting edge, ever escaped the feeling of summer camp. The lack of any real danger, the constant attention and direction from above...whatever the reason, no one wants to be the ultimate trainee. The goal is to be the real deal, to complete the education phase and get where the action is.

My unsettling resentment only disappeared when I shared my grief with one of the guys in my garin. Ron, a medic in the Golani Brigade, insisted I was misreading the garin experience. Sharing our stories with each other is not about wishing we are in each others' shoes. It is about allowing us to have multiple army experiences, to live vicariously through our peers while riding our personal ups and downs.

Commando or Commander?

Nothing looks too different on the outside. The jawline is more defined, shoulders somewhat thicker. But inside, within the ticking tourniquet of the mind, my outlook on military service has undergone a world of change since first lacing on combat boots last December.

Solid Snake, GI Joe. Name your action hero and I once had visions of taking his place. Ideological motivation aside, military service was also an adventure, one where I wanted to be the big-time action hero. Combat, not a foreign policy based intel job, was what I wanted from my service.

Or so I thought when I first enlisted. The star-gazing is long since past. Today my desire is to contribute, to do my time and make a difference rather than star in a Leon Uris novel. I still seek a unique and challenging assignment. Yet the need to be remembered as a John Paul Jones no longer defines me.

I am uncertain how this shift in perspective will influence the remainder of my service. In one sense my action hero attitude had a key impact, driving me towards the elite ranks of the IDF. As I restart my service, I wonder whether that early chase of elite status was a mistake. After all, in many ways my experience and skills as a leader was the contribution I half-expected to make to the army. Commander, not commando, was the ideal I imbibed from the writings of Alex Singer and Yoni Netanyahu.

Commandos and commanders are really not so far apart. For soldiers from overseas, both positions require signing extra time (that is, serving more than two years). Most soldiers in top units are leadership material by virtue of the maturity and motivation that both positions require. Yet in the most elite units, few commandos will serve as officers. Top units simply cannot afford to see too many of their valuable fighters leave and become officers elsewhere. Commando squads like Sayeret Golani are another story. Because these special units are part of the regular infantry (Sayeret Golani is, for instance, part of the Golani Brigade), many of their soldiers are tapped to serve as officers for the regular infantry.

While waiting in line at the Tel Hashomer base, I began speaking to another soldier. A foreign born Garin Tzabarnik like myself, he confided that he was aiming for a top unit. "If I don't make it, I would go to infantry. And there I would most likely sign the extra time and become an officer." Underlying his words was the unsaid motto of lone soldiers, that the motivation that drives us to volunteer for the army also translates to serving at the highest level. I have no problem with the message. My concern is that in all the excitement of testing into elite units, I may have lost track of the element of leadership I hoped to contribute during my service.

A year has passed since that conversation. Again I find myself back at Tel Hashomer, standing in lines and awaiting assignment. My expectations for where I will serve are not quite the same naive heroics that excited the young soldier I once was. Whatever it is that has replaced those illusion, however, I cannot say for sure.

Back to the Beginning: Ready, Set, Protekzia

Day one of my rebooted army career brought me back to Tel Hashomer, the central induction base outside of Tel Aviv. Nine months ago I left the base with the guys with whom I hoped to spend the next four years of my life. Today I am back with eight of those guys, all of us looking to latch onto a new army unit after losing our spots in my old unit.

After waiting around for six hours, an officer gathered us together and explained our options. We can interview for two special units that would love to have us. We can request immediate reassignment to one of the regular infantry brigades (Golani, Givati, Nachal, Paratroopers, Kfir). Or we can wait till November when a dozen special units run interviews for the sixty some guys that have dropped recently from elite units.

The other guys quickly gave me the real lay of the land. Neither of the two special units that want us, they insisted, are good options for soldiers seeking real combat roles. Going straight to a regular infantry brigade means sacrificing any chance at ending up in a top unit. And the November option is swollen with desperate young guns all of whom have fancy former units (pilots, matkal, shaldag, shayetet 13, Unit 669) on their resume. Sixty guys fighting for maybe a dozen open spots. So much for the options, hey?

So, I asked my far wiser peers, where does that leave us? What can I do to make it to a good unit?

Protekzia, they uniformly answered. The Vitamin P of Israeli society. Russian for protection, Israeli speak for working your way around bureacracy through well placed contacts. Protekzia is essentially the local version of guanxi in China or the wasta of the Arab world. In my case it translates to having well placed friends in the IDF help me land an interview for a top unit. Considering everyone else in my situation have their older brothers and fathers tapping old army buddies, I can only hope that my few contacts on and off my kibbutz will be enough to open the necessary doors.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Yom HaKippur, my favorite day on the Jewish calendar, starts in a few hours. The year that was, the year that will be, this past week...

Like you, I have so much to keep me company over the next twenty plus hours of sheltered prayer. Too much of that remains buried within me, stories and ideas that have failed to arrive in this space.

In the days ahead, look for a blizzard of updates. Because it was quite the summer. And with what I discovered this week, the journey is now starting once again. Stay tuned.

Thank You. With special thanks to Robert Frost,
The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

But...Game Over

We came to the land to which you sent us, and indeed, it flows with milk and honey, and this here fruit. But (Efes) – the people of the land are mighty, their cities are greatly fortified and we even saw the children of giants... We cannot challenge such a mighty people.
Numbers 13:28-31

Buts have served as heralds of calamity throughout history. Everyone is familiar with the routine: words of praise are suddenly upended into the meanest censure by that single adversative: the but (except, however, only, and yet are all poor cousins by comparison). History's earliest case of a harmful but may come from the biblical story of the ten scouts sent by Moses to reconnoiter the land of Israel. Ramban, the thirteenth century Jewish sage also known as Nachmanides, writes that the use of the single word efes in the scout's report is the actual sin that doomed a generation of Israelites to wander and perish in the desert for forty years. Efes means but. Though the literal meaning of efes—nothing—is also crucial to understanding the damaging consequence of using this word. When all the praise in the world is followed with a but... the preceding words are worth nothing. If you are like me, preliminary words of praise are warning enough that a big ugly but is on the horizon.

And so when a senior officer in my unit began praising me a few minutes into my va'ada, I understood my days as a commando in Israel's most lethal ground force were over. Nine months in and like too many others, I was binned. Kicked out on Tzom Gedaliah of all days, the Jewish fast that commemorates the assassination of a Jewish leader by his own people.

Kicked out?! Why me? And why now?

Some context: Like elite military units around the world, Israel's top special forces maintain a thriving tradition of winnowing out troops over the course of training. A few soldiers do not finish training due to injury. Yet most are shown the door for other reasons, a fateful procedure that takes place every four months. A sociometry test, allowing higher ups to gauge each soldier's status among his peers, is quickly followed by ordering several soldiers to report for va'adot (meetings). If a soldier is lucky, the higher-ups have not predetermined his fate and the va'ada is actually an opportunity for the soldier to make the case why he deserves another chance. Most va'adot are simply a charade, with a few presumptory questions and then a hasty sentence of begone with ye.

None of that explains why I have been binned. How my storybook journey as a member of one of the most respected IDF units is now abruptly finito. As Bernard Lewis would ask, what went wrong?

In my all too brief va'ada, after a senior officer I had never met finished telling me how wonderful I am, the same officer said my time was up because my commander does not think I will manage with the demanding pace that awaits in the rest of the training. In other words, my commander does not believe in me.

It has been common knowledge in my squad for months that my commander does not have the highest opinion of me. I first noticed that I had slipped from his good grace during tironut yechida, the two months of intensive fieldwork that bridged basic and advanced training. At first the signs were somewhat subtle, such as his never tasking me with any of the choice assignments during field exercises. Gradually his negative attitude towards me became apparent from infrequent one-on-one discussions. From speaking to the other guys in my squad, I realized that their discussions with our commander were not exclusively ten minutes of the boss highlighting their faults. When I was selected for the first round of va'adot in May, it was apparent that of the officers in the room, the only one whose vote I could not count on was that of my own commander.

After surviving that first va'ada, my commander made clear to me that in his eyes I very much remained in the doghouse. As an inveterate optimist, I resolved to change his perception by working even harder. It was not long before the guys in my squad noticed and positive comments began coming my way. From my peers, that is. As far as my commander was concerned, my star turns in krav maga, stretcher marches and parachute course were immaterial. His opinion of me only worsened, headlined by my grenade and navigation blunders.

In my va'ada the senior officer told me the grenade and navigation were not the reasons I was getting tossed. The smoking gun was a far more egregious failure, a charge so absurd I was unable to understand nor explain. I had failed Course Lotar, our three week course in counter-terrorism. When my commander had first informed me of the result, I was shocked. And confused. The guys in my squad felt just the same. Having performed as well if not better than my peers, none of us could understand why I alone had been singled out with failing the course. Several guys in my squad suggested that our commander had played a not so subtle role in producing the damning result.

I never was my squad’s Buzz Lightyear. Poor Hebrew and a hesitant attitude during basic training stamped me with a permanent identity of the “guy to help out” even as my language and confidence increased. And yet what sticks with me is my failure to bond with my commander. A young man (only a year younger than me) whose Zionism and desire to always be the best I deeply admire. Was it the cultural gap? Dumb luck that he overlooked my strengths? Miscues that are far more egregious than they appeared?

I will never really know. All I do know is that it is all gone. After flying through the clouds for a year my wings have been clipped. Curiosity forever curtailed. My disappointment runs deep, especially because having been on the inside I now know myth from reality. I know those who make it are not rare supermen but simply dedicated young soldiers. Like me (except for the young bit, I suppose!).

I never shed a tear. Yet I know the Fast of Gedaliah will never pass without me reflecting on what was and will forever never be.

BONUS
Ramban's comment on the term Efes immediately came to my mind when the senior officer prefaced news of my exit with effusive praise. To my surprise, another message lies buried in the full account of the Biblical scouts. I will leave you to puzzle out what the mysterious fallen ones (Nefilim) have to say about my future.


The Land through which we have passed as scouts is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people that we saw in it were huge! There we saw the fallen ones, the sons of giants from the fallen ones; we were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes.


BONUS 2
I almost titled this post "I dislike Big Buts and I Cannot Lie." And then I decided no. Because hey, this ain't a joke. Its my life.