On Being the Father of a Soldier

Achikam, our youngest, finished his mandatory military service today, and is already firmly focused on the next chapters of life. He was inducted at the end of July 2007; coincidentally (well, actually not at all) that was the day I launched this blog, with two items about the event. If the goal of this blog was to accompany his service to the country with a support service of my own, I am now free to desist, even if I may not do so quite yet. More importantly, I am also free to breathe out and move on.

We first arrived in Israel a few weeks after the Six Day War. Obviously, I didn't know anyone who had been killed, though over time I came to know various people who had lost a son, or a fiance, or a father. Two years later some of the teenagers above me mourned a young man who had been a few years above them, and was one of the last IDF troops to be killed in the War of Attrition that no-one even remembers anymore. Maybe he'll be the last soldier to fall, they told us; in retrospect he was the first whom I "knew" and whose death happened in real time. Lots of young men were killed in the 1973 war, while I was still in high-school. I knew one personally, and three others belonged to families I knew. In the aftermath of that war it occurred to me that soon I myself would be in the IDF. Like everyone I regraded this as a duty, an honor, a challenge, a rite of passing, and an enormous adventure. There were fleeting moments of apprehension - fear would be far too strong a word - but they were fleeting. When the big day finally arrived it was more than anything a gigantic lark. Only a generation later, when our first-born Meir was inducted in 2002, did I ever pause to wonder what my parents might have felt at the time.

It was an adventure, of course, and a transformative, life-changing experience. And no, it had nothing to do with the Palestinians. In those days the IDF and the Palestinians had almost nothing to do with each other, and in my entire three year tour of duty I never interacted with a single Palestinian. I was a tank commander, and spent most of my service in the Sinai Desert, facing the Egyptians. A number of friends I made along the way were killed in training accidents, but I suppose college students sometime lose a friend to traffic accidents.

Then there was the war of 1982, which I joined on its second day as a reservist, three weeks after my wedding. A couple weeks later, when I first came home on a short leave, we spent a chunk of our precious time visiting the homes of Shlomo and Ram who had been killed; I can't remember why we didn't visit Avi's widow that time. Shlomo's father had fled Nazi Germany as a kid. Ram's maternal grandfather had been killed in Jerusalem's Old City in 1948, as had his paternal uncle. Avi's father hadn't escaped the Nazis, though he had survived them. By this age I no was no longer convinced of immortality, as youth mostly is, but nor was I really aware, truly aware, of the price of living at war.

My father died a few years later, when Meir was a toddler. I was a graduate student studying Nazism and the Shoah, and remember telling one of my professors that I now felt one couldn't truly study that history until one had experienced parenthood and bereavement. The professor, sole survivor of a clan of 40, and also a bereaved father, was very troubled by the thought, but I still think I was at least partially right.

And so it came to be that it was only when my own sons began joining the army that I recognized the fear, even though at the time (2002) more Israeli civilians were dying near their homes than IDF troops in their units.Or maybe I didn't fully recognize it, as the very first post of this blog indicates: it's the story of a brief encounter I had as Achikam went in, with the mother of another young man who was also going in:

So I expressed my wishes for the woman's son: "That he be successful". She looked at me curiously, and retorted: "Let him come back in peace. Who cares about success!?"

I hope her son came out fine. Achikam did, thank God. He has grown, in many ways, but that's his story to tell. He went to war, and came back; while he was away we went to Nitai's funeral for him. I would love to know that our children won't have to learn, as I have, that being the father can be harder than being the soldier, but I don't think that will be granted. So what's left is to hope that they all come back in peace.

At Nitai's Grave

Achikam (my youngest son, for those of you who don't know), spent most of the past week with a busload of young American college students visiting Israel on a Birthright tour. A standard part of these tours is that IDF troops join the Birthright groups. We haven't had much time to talk, and early tomorrow morning he's returning to his unit, but he briefly mentioned that American Jews and Israeli ones seem to express their Judaism in very different ways.

The last station of their 5-day joint tour was dedicated to Yad Vashem and Mount Herzl: Holocaust and Zionism, which not coincidentally are on the same hill, on the Western edge of Jerusalem: The Holocaust being the ultimate proof the Jews cannot rely on existing as a powerless minority among the nations, and Zionism being the movement to ensure they've got political power in their own nation.

The third part of the hill is the military cemetery: the price of having the political power. At the end of the day, before the IDF guys parted from the American Birthright group, Achikam took them all to visit Nitai Stern, his childhood friend who was killed last year fighting in Gaza.

Veteran readers may remember that Achikam was not able to be at Nitai's funeral, since he he was also fighting in Gaza at the time, so we went. This was what I wrote that day. More than a year after his death, he has now been introduced to 40 young Jews from New Jersey and Florida.

Fanatics, Left and Right

Well, that was certainly fun, wasn't it.

I've been giving rather a lot of attention to the Israelis at the far left fringe who, intentionally or merely irresponsibly, aid and abet Israel's enemies in their campaign to bring it to its knees through lawfare, diplomacy, boycotts and other methods of delegitimization. This morning I thought I'd engage in a spot of even-handed balancing, so I criticized the fanatics of our political right. Had I given it much thought I'd have said I was (temporarily) siding with my lefty readers, of whom there are a number, including two who identify themselves.

It didn't work out that way. I was offline all day, but when I got back I found some 25 comments dissecting what I'd said from all directions.

First, my thanks to all the participants for the civil discussion. Blog discussions often don't remain civilized very long, and I'm honored that the ones on this blog mostly do.

The fact that our resident representatives of the hard left took umbrage at a post that was mostly critical of the far right is instructive. It rather reinforces my observation that the extremes are not only similar, they even feed off one another - which of course is not a new observation nor original, there are many historical examples. Fanatics will be fanatics; what makes them far from the mainstream is common to them all. So for those of you who questioned my use of the term "loonies", I was applying it as it usually is meant: folks who have severed themselves from the diverse perspectives to which a very large majority of their society adheres. When you've got a free and democratic society, with the diversity of opinion that such societies have, and then you've got small splinter groups of odd folks way off at the edge, I don't see the harm in calling them loonies.

Alex and Didi engaged in a spot of sleight of hand. They claimed I had said that the extremes of left and right have in common their eagerness or willingness to be violent; then they got all worked up about this accusation, though I hadn't actually said it.

So first, to be clear: yes, there are elements in Israel's looniest left who engage in violence against Israeli security forces. Not in murder, nor in terror as in random attacks of civilians, but low-level violence against officials of the state going about their legal and reasonable actions? Yes. Some of it has been reported in the media, some of it I take from the stories of my son Achikam who has been at the brunt of it as a soldier doing his job near Bil'in last year.

The reason Alex and Didi tried that rhetoric trick is that while political life-endangering violence in Israel has always been extremely rare, there has been a bit of it from right on left, and almost none from left on right. This gives the left a feeling of moral superiority. Yet the whole phenomenon is so limited and rare, that this is more sanctimony than plausible political reasoning. I can think of two political assassinations in 60 years, and a handful of attempts that may or may not have been intentionally unsuccessful. Tarnishing an entire camp with that thin a brush isn't reasonable, and exonerating the other camp for being the victim is feeble reasoning.

Anyway, it's a red herring, as Gavin calmly explained. Our loony left and frenzied right don't engage in the exact same activities: that's obvious. The right attacks innocent Palestinians, while the left undermines Israel's legitimacy as a democracy; the fanatics to the right are thugs, while their counterparts to the left are well-heeled academics, legal types and journalists; the ones to the right look outlandish in almost any setting while the ones on the left could easily melt into the background at a posh European conference - but that's the point, not an exoneration.

One of the most peculiar things about our loony left is how extraordinarily thin their skin is. They dish out barrels of filth, much of it either dishonest, downright false or at best tendentious, and they do so ever more often in foreign languages for the gleeful consumption of our enemies; yet whenever anyone calls them out for doing so, they shriek to the high heavens that democracy is being tortured to extinction. Jest yesterday we had yet another example.

Amir Benayoun is an orthodox singer who uses Arab forms of music. It was my intention to slow down the shirim ivri'im thread now, but sooner or later I'll obviously need to discuss the Sephardi music and its great contribution to Israeli music. I presented Benyoun briefly the other day.

This week Benayoun recorded a sing called Ani Achicha, I am Your Brother. The Hebrew lyrics are already up at shiron.net, here; there's no English translation up, nor am I convinced there will be. Im Tirzu posted the recording on You Tube.

What the song is about depends, apparently, on the beholder. The lyrics themselves express anguish. They are sung from the perspective of a young reservist, calling on his lefty brother to desist from hating him since they're brothers. I defend you, you spit on me; the enemy doesn't manage to kill me but you're trying to; as I charge forward my back is to you, but you're sharpening your knife; I'm your brother you're the enemy; I love you hate.

It's not a nice song. Nor is it fair, since there are soldiers of both political camps in the same combat units, and both camps have their share of shirkers. The most potent line in my opinion is Ata mosser oti le-Zar, you're turning me over to foreigners - except that the term mosser has centuries of baggage to it, and is a devastating accusation. (Jews who have betrayed their brothers to persecution are, alas, not as rare as we'd like).

Having read the lyrics over and over, and watched the video repeatedly, it seems to me a song of anguish, not hatred. In no scenario is it a threat to democracy.

Unless you read Haaretz. They put their story about it on the front page of the Hebrew paper edition (alas, not on their English-language website). The item uses all the tricks of the trade, telling of "enormous anger" but without any quantification and citing two excitable sources as if they're vox populi in classic Guardian agitprop style. Since these are quotations you can't quite attribute them to Haaretz itself, which is merely reporting. Of course, no quotations of supporters are forthcoming.

The final paragraph offers the observation of one Igor (no last name): "Benayoun stole his lyrics from the songs of Hoerst Wesel".

I don't think there were songs (plural) of Hoerst Wesel, only one - but that one was the Nazi battle song. So Haaretz has cast Amir Benayoun as a Nazi. Because he doesn't like the NIF.

Real Responsibility

Achikam just called, depressed. He's at the hospital, where the doctors just amputated the hand of one of his soldiers.

It's not games these young men play at. It's dead serious.

The Most Typically Israeli Picture

The other day I linked to the short-list of pictures competing at Y-net for the slot of "Most typically Israeli picture, 2009", a competition between snapshots sent in by regular Israelis, and chosen by the regular folks at Y-net. Here's the picture that was chosen:Should we talk about it a bit?

First, this was a popular choice, vox populi - not the choice of a small group of self anointed pompous cultural experts or celebrities or what have you.

Second, if you don't know what it's about, it's hardly self explanatory - which is probably the reason it was chosen. The voters in this competition were looking for a typically Israeli picture, and they chose one they felt to be specifically Israeli, unique to us. Fundamentally unfathomable to outsiders, actually, as Roni Shaked commented in his column, which was not translated. (Y-net isn't Haaretz - all the more regrettable).

Where's the picture from? It was taken by 21-year-old Yonnie Kot, a recently demobilized tank commander. He snapped the shot from his position in the turret of his tank, in one of two scenarios. Either he'd just parked the tank after a run of maneuvers, as his unit reached a resting point, or they were preparing to continue and the van appeared. I've been in that picture hundreds of times, as have most of us; Achikam, home for Independence Day, glanced at it and said "Classic! And I've been in that field!"

What's it a picture of? Of a gazlan, of course. What's a gazlan? Well, the etymology is pretty clear. GazLAN is the Hebrew word for a thief who steals in bright daylight. GAZlan is the fellow, mostly uneducated and with imperfect syntax, who does a roaring business selling hot dogs and ice cream to military units on maneuvers. Each maneuvering area has one or two of them, and they always know in advance exactly which unit will be where when and how to get there. The commanders of the unit may have spent the entire night navigating the desert so as to assault a specific dusty hill at dawn, peering at their maps (or GPS screens). Once they've shot their payloads and churned up the dust, they lead their unit over the crest of the hill to regroup before moving on... and there's the gazlan fellow, with no specially-fangled military maps and satellite navigating equipment, waiting with his over-priced merchandise to fleece the troops. And boy, are the troops glad to see him.

Yossie Beilin once told in an interview of a life-changing insight he had many years ago while on the field of battle with casualties not yet evacuated, standing in line at the window of the gazlan. Even accepting it really happened that way, he was presenting his all-Israeli credentials while suggesting his hardly-all-Israeli perspectives.

If Yossie Beilin so, certainly all the rest of us less enlightened proles.

Yet this isn't the full story. Roni Shaked notes that thousands of snapshots were sent in, so it must have been a far larger number who did the choosing. They could have chosen all sorts of pictures to celebrate their communal identity - heroic ones, aesthetic ones, national ones, even simply more interesting ones. The aggregate voice that chose this particular picture was saying something. That this is a situation we all recognize, and recognize as being uniquely us. That the army is an essential part of our communal and personal lives, but the civilian gazlan is a central part of it. That the military planners pore over their preparations, but the uneducated gazlan will always see through them. That we'd never pay gazlan-prices for a hotdog at home, but in the army we'll gladly fork out the money rather than survive off the fare supplied for free by the system.

On a profound level, the gazlan is an expression of cynical humor in a crazy situation that isn't humorous; his elevation to national icon reflects the combination of grim determination and irreverence about it, all rolled together. He's precisely not Brecht's Mutter Courage, trudging after the marauding armies, making a living off the destruction they wreak while losing everything to its maws. The gazlan as a metaphor isn't separate from the troops, a parasite off them: he's the better side of them, the reminder that soon they'll be on his side of the equation, the civilians making the best of a wacky situation - but then again, they won't, because soon enough they'll be back in uniform as reservists, paying outrageous prices for his wares.

PS. I've noticed my exhortations to know Hebrew if you want to understand Israel have become regular fare on this blog. It's not a mandatory requirement, of course, but if I can convince you, here's a rather painless venue - no travel required, so you're even saving the planet!

On Bringing Back Gilad Shalit

My wife, that's Achikam's mother, has published an eloquent op-ed in Haaretz about the obligation of our government not to allow any soldiers to languish in the captivity of Hamas monsters. Haaretz didn't translate it into English, but perhaps we can fix that later on.

Update: David Boxenhorn was extraordinarily helpful, and posted a translation in the comments section. Thank you, David!

Someone else also prepared a translation, which my wife then worked on a bit, and I'm posting it here.

Reality is More Complicated than Logic

I said I'd stop reading and reporting on Juan Cole, since by now his methodology is clear, he's becoming boring, and my observations of him even more so. I expect to stick to my commitment, at least for a while, but one of you in the comments sent me to his post last week where he complains about the Guardian allowing an Israeli to speak. So I had a peak. Actually, it wasn't Cole, it was an anonymous "guest blogger"; and it was neat to see that Georgina Henry herself, executive editor of CiF, felt she had to defend herself. Broad sections of the (saner part of the) blogosphere regularly castigate the Guardian without Ms. Henry responding; it makes one wonder what particular chord Cole struck.

Cole's unnamed guest uses a standard but false trope: If Uri Dromi thinks he can get away with explaining the behavior of the IDF, he's wrong, indeed, he must be lying, since his allegations don't make sense:

My reaction to the content is that the piece attempts to blame the victims-- which is a well known sophist technique. As for the misleading explanations of what seems to be the use of legitimate weapons in inappropriate ways and contexts, my reaction can be summarised as "what absolute bollocks!”

The pictures of airburst phosphorous being used to set areas on fire are conclusive evidence of misuse.

Smokescreens use ground burst. If I had ever wanted a smoke point to cover a flanking movement then I wanted the smoke as a dense cloud on the ground at a height that exceeded the height of my people. Armoured Fighting Vehicle also have small smoke dischargers on the turrets and hulls designed to put a cloud of smoke in front of the vehicle to give time to reverse out of danger or to debus and engage the enemy.

Cole also often uses this technique: if the Bad Guys make a factual claim, we'll refute it not with counter-facts, which we don't have, but by ridiculing it with logic. It's a fun technique, because it dosen't require real acquaintance with the facts; it casts the original reporter as a fool and a liar for concocting such an obviously false tale; and since it does, after all, have a ring of logic to it, it can be refuted only by someone who really has the facts and can explain why the reality trumped the logic, or rather, why the logic of the reality was stronger than the logic of the arm-chair critic. The people with these facts rarely read Cole's blog, obviously, since they're on the field of battle and have better things to do with their time, while Cole's audience, most of whom have never been and cannot imagine, can join him in feeling smug and righteous.

So I waited a few days, and then asked the soldier when he came home over the weekend. I didn't show him Cole's screed, rather I asked him about this whole "white phosphorus and flechette" business. He started with the flechette topic. As he and I both know, flechettes are useless against hard targets such as tanks, APCs, or buildings; they are however quite effective against people - and remember, wars are waged by and against people; they are about killing, which is why they're such unpleasant things, even when they're necessary. Given the specifics of flechette shells, he told, they were used quite sparingly, and only in very specific cases: when Hamas fighters had been identified in specific places which were otherwise empty of civilians as far as could be known. Given their rather precisely knowable range of damage, this isn't so hard to do. The scenario of

The only mass of humans I could see were the women children and old men taking shelter in schools and hospitals and UN premises.

never happened. Nor would it have made any sense: even if one wished to kill civilians in a school, flechettes wouldn't work, not if the school had walls. Criticizing Israel for things it never did is, how to put this gently, potentially antisemitic.

The white phosphorus claim was used more often since it's a more dramatic weapon, I suppose. Achikam was very clear on how it was used: as a smokescreen, never on residential neighborhoods (in his section. He can't say what happened elsewhere). Very often, when his unit moved from place to place during daylight, they did so behind an artillery-laid smokescreen of white phosphorus; when I asked about the height above the ground, he was momentarily puzzled by the question: often there were many-storied buildings beyond the area, and in order to be hidden from spotters you need a smokescreen high enough to cover them, he explained. Obvious, isn't it, the moment you glance up from your laptop screen and think about the terrain of reality.

Achikam's Out

Achikam called late last night. They were fresh out of Gaza and got their mobile phones back. He called his girlfriend first, which is the way it should be, then us. It wasn't the time nor the place to have a real conversation. He confirmed what had been obvious from snippets of information in the media, that they'd been in the thick of it.

Over the past few weeks I have done my best to tell it as I see it, irrespective of Achikam's being in the middle of it all. A fundamental aspect of the decision to live in Israel is that we try to balance our personal lives and needs, with our national ones. Over the years Israel has become a place where one can live very comfortably - it is no longer true, as it once was, that the decision to live here necessarily means also a decision to live with a lower economic standard. Yet there remain many aspects of life in Israel which are harder than elsewhere. It's a country at war, surrounded by hostile nations. Some merely hate us but live and let live, and that's fine. Others hate us so intensely they're willing, even eager, to set aside the pursuit of their own well-being in order to harm us.

The decision of adult Israelis to live here and not elsewhere is a determination to balance the personal with the national. We entwine our personal travails and successes with those of the nation. They can be separated, of course, and often are: there's nothing fascist about Israeli society. Yet they aren't separate. Collectively we look at the mostly clear skies of this very dry winter and worry at the lack of rain. We know our sportsmen won't bring us much honor, but we take satisfaction from the startling number of Hebrew books translated and sold in large numbers in the same European countries whose media is so critical of us. The hi-tech whiz-kids and their abrasive older brothers who foist technological innovation where-ever there's an opening: we regard them as ours, even if we've never met them. We haggle and squabble - oh, do we ever haggle and squabble - about everything possible, every detail, idea, possibility and crack-pot scheme; and we take immense pleasure in the haggling, squabbling, and the schemes: they're ours, and we're them. We're an extraordinarily vital place, or deafening cacophony, both.

And when the need arrives, as it periodically does, we set aside our personal gain and comfort and batten down with grim determination. In this decade alone, this has happened at least three times. In 2001-2002 activities such as taking a bus, going to the supermarket or walking on the street were life-threatening; we curtailed them as much as reasonable, but kept on living our lives until someone figured out how to defeat the suicide murderers who thought they knew how to break us. In 2006 we went to war against a movement whose hatred of us overrides everything; our generals and minsters, it turned out, didn't know what they were doing, but the determination of the men in the field and the populace behind them was such that when the fog of war cleared, Hezbullah had lost its appetite for destruction, at least for a while, as we've just seen.

Throughout it all, we felt a growing unease that the people in Sderot and vicinity had been abandoned. Year after year their town was shot at, normal life was impossible, their businesses limped on at best, their children were growing up in a world of sirens, rockets and occasional tragedy. Finally we again set aside our normalcy, and did something about it.

Against that backdrop, the fears of the parents, the siblings, the wives of the reserve soldiers and their children, these must all take second place. Like most Israelis, we raised our children to bear the burden of defending their country, while hoping it might not be needed; having raised Achikam to be there it was our task to support him and his friends, unnatural as such a position might seem as parents.

A number of years ago, not long after Meir began his military service at the height of the 2nd Intifada, the army discharged me after decades of reserve duty. On the night Achikam's unit was sent down to Gaza, three weeks ago, I decided to use this blog as my reserve duty. As a place where I might try to explain what I thought was happening, in the hope someone out there might listen, and I might make a small contribution to the effort, alongside the very large one being made by Achikam and his pals. It was also, I admit, an act of channeling my energies, so that they not go in directions that wouldn't help anyone.

Now he's out and this round of violence, I expect, is behind us. As I told Michael Totten shortly after the previous war, in August 2006

There's no doubt that we are preparing for the next war against Hezbollah. We're not ready for it now. And given the depth and breadth of the stupidities and mistakes that we just did, then it will take a while. But we won't make the same mistakes twice. Lebanon and Hezbollah will now remain on our radar. They're not going to drop off like they did before. And remaining on our radar means that serious money and serious effort will be put into preparing for the next round.

No, in summer 2006 I didn't know the next round would be in Gaza. But I knew there'd be a next round, and I knew we'd learn from our very many mistakes, and that when the next time came, we'd be all the more lethal for having learned. With hindsight it's pretty obvious that our poor performance of 2006 mislead Hamas to think we'd lost our determination and abilities, not only temporary lost our footing; this mistake made them reckless and stupid, and far too many of their own people paid the price for it. One now hopes that our far more convincing performance will give them pause, and perhaps delay the next round by many years. Our people must be starting the preparations this very morning.

But that's not my job. So this morning I am completing my reserve duty. In my normal life I post to this blog from time to time. Some days three posts, but some weeks only two. The number of readers is accordingly small. Those of you who joined for the war, I thank for your attention and the comments you made, and recommend that you now go away.

:~)

21st Birthday

Achikam turned 21 today. He's been on the battlefield for 9 days.

I have various images from the day of his birth, as any parent does. In the late afternoon I returned to the hospital with Meir and Nechama so they could meet their new brother and see their mother. I remember walking down the hall pushing the tiny bed, with two-year-old Nechama strutting ahead of us, bursting with pride that she had a little brother.

His company sent a pickup truck around the country today, collecting packages. Junk food and sugar, but it comes from home so it's special. And we added a letter, saying the usual and predictable. Since it's his birthday, I added a comment about turning 21: in some countries this has legal aspects of full adulthood. Not here, where there's no legal signifcance to turning 21 - and how could there be, when we train our 18-year-olds to shoulder the ultimate burdens a nation can ask of its men, and they accept?

Another Link in a Chain

Achikam is fighting in Gaza.

This morning during services at synagogue we added a public reading, sentence by sentence, of Psalms 121:

(א) שִׁיר לַמַּעֲלוֹת אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי אֶל הֶהָרִים מֵאַיִן יָבֹא עֶזְרִי:

(ב) עֶזְרִי מֵעִם יְהֹוָה עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ:

(ג) אַל יִתֵּן לַמּוֹט רַגְלֶךָ אַל יָנוּם שֹׁמְרֶךָ:

(ד) הִנֵּה לֹא יָנוּם וְלֹא יִישָׁן שׁוֹמֵר יִשְׂרָאֵל:

(ה) יְהֹוָה שֹׁמְרֶךָ יְהֹוָה צִלְּךָ עַל יַד יְמִינֶךָ:

(ו) יוֹמָם הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ לֹא יַכֶּכָּה וְיָרֵחַ בַּלָּיְלָה:

(ז) יְהֹוָה יִשְׁמָרְךָ מִכָּל רָע יִשְׁמֹר אֶת נַפְשֶׁךָ:

(ח) יְהֹוָה יִשְׁמָר צֵאתְךָ וּבוֹאֶךָ מֵעַתָּה וְעַד עוֹלָם:

1I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

2My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

3He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

4Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

6The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

7The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

8The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

However, as I'm a historian, I find greater solace in Psalm 83. It was written something like 2700 years ago; Jews have never stopped reading it, in its original language, ever since it was written, and all you have to do as add additional names of Israel's enemies. They come and go, some are still recognizable, others have long since disappeared in the dust, new ones appear and disappear... It's a long story. Though the ability of the Jews to hit back has gotten significantly better the past few decades.

(א) שִׁיר מִזְמוֹר לְאָסָף:

(ב) אֱלֹהִים אַל דֳּמִי לָךְ אַל תֶּחֱרַשׁ וְאַל תִּשְׁקֹט אֵל:

(ג) כִּי הִנֵּה אוֹיְבֶיךָ יֶהֱמָיוּן וּמְשַׂנְאֶיךָ נָשְׂאוּ רֹאשׁ:

(ד) עַל עַמְּךָ יַעֲרִימוּ סוֹד וְיִתְיָעֲצוּ עַל צְפוּנֶיךָ:

(ה) אָמְרוּ לְכוּ וְנַכְחִידֵם מִגּוֹי וְלֹא יִזָּכֵר שֵׁם יִשְׂרָאֵל עוֹד:

(ו) כִּי נוֹעֲצוּ לֵב יַחְדָּו עָלֶיךָ בְּרִית יִכְרֹתוּ:

(ז) אָהֳלֵי אֱדוֹם וְיִשְׁמְעֵאלִים מוֹאָב וְהַגְרִים:

(ח) גְּבָל וְעַמּוֹן וַעֲמָלֵק פְּלֶשֶׁת עִם יֹשְׁבֵי צוֹר:

(ט) גַּם אַשּׁוּר נִלְוָה עִמָּם הָיוּ זְרוֹעַ לִבְנֵי לוֹט סֶלָה:

(י) עֲשֵׂה לָהֶם כְּמִדְיָן כְּסִיסְרָא כְיָבִין בְּנַחַל קִישׁוֹן:

(יא) נִשְׁמְדוּ בְעֵין דֹּאר הָיוּ דֹמֶן לָאֲדָמָה:

(יב) שִׁיתֵמוֹ נְדִיבֵימוֹ כְּעֹרֵב וְכִזְאֵב וּכְזֶבַח וּכְצַלְמֻנָּע כָּל נְסִיכֵימוֹ:

(יג) אֲשֶׁר אָמְרוּ נִירְשָׁה לָּנוּ אֵת נְאוֹת אֱלֹהִים:

(יד) אֶלֹהַי שִׁיתֵמוֹ כַגַּלְגַּל כְּקַשׁ לִפְנֵי רוּחַ:

(טו) כְּאֵשׁ תִּבְעַר יָעַר וּכְלֶהָבָה תְּלַהֵט הָרִים:

(טז) כֵּן תִּרְדְּפֵם בְּסַעֲרֶךָ וּבְסוּפָתְךָ תְבַהֲלֵם:

(יז) מַלֵּא פְנֵיהֶם קָלוֹן וִיבַקְשׁוּ שִׁמְךָ יְהֹוָה:

(יח) יֵבֹשׁוּ וְיִבָּהֲלוּ עֲדֵי עַד וְיַחְפְּרוּ וְיֹאבֵדוּ:

(יט) וְיֵדְעוּ כִּי אַתָּה שִׁמְךָ יְהֹוָה לְבַדֶּךָ עֶלְיוֹן עַל כָּל הָאָרֶץ:

1Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

2For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

3They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.

4They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

5For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:

6The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;

7Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;

8Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.

9Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison:

10Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.

11Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna:

12Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession.

13O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind.

14As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire;

15So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.

16Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD.

17Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish:

18That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.

What We Teach Our Children

This morning we completed the Kidushin tractate; tomorrow we start Bava Kamma. The final Mishna in the Kidushin tractate talks about the education and vocational training a father must give his sons. The final viewpoint, that of rabbi Nehorai, is that the single most important, perhaps even exclusively important one, is to teach them Torah.

As I've written elsewhere, the tradition of Daf Yomi, the daily page of Gemara learned in cycles of seven and a half years, is new: it was invented a mere 80 years ago or so, even if by now hundreds of thousands of people, men and women, participate. The tradition of learning, however, is ancient. On any given day, and every single given day over the past 2,200 years, through thick or thin (there has been lots of thin), Jews have been studying the Mishna and its ever-growing supplementary layers; the Mishna itself looks back to centuries of learning Biblical sources. When we participate today, and tomorrow, and next year, we're participating in a lively conversation that has been going on, literally uninterrupted, for more than 2,500 years. The conversation has spanned the entire Jewish world, with contributions coming from today's Iran westward to America (recently); from Northern Europe to Yemen. At all times the discussion included intricate and detailed things about the Land of Israel, Erez Yisrael; most of the time, though not for a few centuries before and after the fist Christian millennium, some of the participants have been Jews living here. The last time this wasn't true was about the time Columbus was discovering America, perhaps a bit earlier. Ever since then, however, there has been an uninterrupted presence of scholars contributing to the discussion from this holy and unique land.

Zionism is not, by and large, a religious phenomenon, nor even a cultural one, though it is also them. It is not to be explained simply by the Jewish insistence on carrying on that conversation no matter what, nor because of their insistence on doing so here. But it is also that. Jews who wish to look away from these facts may do so: we're an argumentative bunch and we always argue about everything, including crucially important things. Non-Jews, however, who take for themselves the right to decide what we may or may not dream of, may or may not aspire to, may or may not attempt: they surely are denying us the right to be who we've always been. This, most emphatically, is a form of antisemitism, have no doubt about it. No matter how they play with words or profess otherwise.

We teach our children to be Jews: we teach them to be part of the discussion, with all the responsibilities that entails.

Achikam just called. They're turning off their cellphones now. We've done our best to teach him; now he's shouldering the responsibilities.

Achikam in Gaza

Achikam called earlier this evening. His unit is moving down to Gaza.

In some ways it's easier to be the soldier than his parents.

Reeling to Strength

I spent my three-year military service in the mid-1970s in an IDF that was still reeling from the failures of the Yom Kippur War. I remember how in my first year or so the failures permeated everything we did, from the form our training took to the less than minimal number of hours we slept under the command of a traumatized company commander to the ethos of our sergeants who had seen the war as fresh recruits in a dazed army. The entire structure around us was committed to getting over the trauma, learning from the mistakes, and returning to the confidence of an army that knew what it was doing.

(And no, we had nothing to do with the Palestinians. In those days the Palestinian men worked in Israel and the IDF wasn't called upon to dominate them in any active way. The first Intifada was more than a decade away, and the "brutal Israeli occupation" some people so love to speak about was not yet a figment of anyone's imagination. Seen through the perspective of the present decade, it was a time of peace, or at least, a time of calm).

The stories Achikam tells me about his service often remind me of that period. He went in a year after the debacle of the 2nd Lebanon War, and joined a reeling army - but one committed to getting over it. As this article demonstrates, the reeling is over, and the recuperation is in full swing.

The changes are, of course, much deeper than merely the number of days each unit now dedicates to training. The 1990s were the decade of complacency: peace was on its way, and the need for such an expensive army had passed, we foolishly told ourselves as we slashed the military budget year after year. The beginning of this decade was the Palestinian era of the IDF: faced with an entire nation committed to terror tactics, Israel had to forge a method of beating waves of terrorists eager to die killing Jews. The pundits all told us it couldn't be done, and the pundits were all wrong, but the price was that we forgot the other enemies, and the IDF forgot how to operate as an army and concentrated (brilliantly) on counter guerrilla warfare. The war against Hezbullah served as a waking call.

My Lai, Kfar Kassem, and How to Train Soldiers

Achikam was home from his unit over the weekend. At one point he asked me if I thought that young Americans know as much about the massacre at My Lai (40 years ago last month) as young Israelis do about the massacre at Kfar Kassem (51 years ago last Fall). He's right that the two cases can be roughly compared. The Americans at My Lai murdered a bit more than ten times as many civilians as the Israelis did at Kfar Kassem; but at My Lai there was at least one case where an American helicopter crew trained their guns on fellow Americans in order to save lives of Vietnamese; there was no corollary to that at Kfar Kassem. In both cases justice was never really achieved, and the few culprits put on trial were quickly pardoned.

I told Achikam that while I don't know, I assume that most young Americans don't know about My Lai, and many Americans of all ages no longer care. That war is long over, and its events have long since receded, even if they still instruct the political understanding of a segment of America's voters - but not the rest. (My American readers are welcome to contest this statement if they wish: I'm writing from anecdotal knowledge, not well founded knowledge).

Then I asked Achikam how many young Israelis does he think have ever heard of the massacre at Kfar Kassem? Perhaps he, Achikam, is unusual in knowing about it?

Impossible, he said. Anyone who has gone through basic training has heard about the massacre at Kfar Kassem, as part of the training to prevent anything like it ever happening again.

I was a mite surprised by this (not greatly so, but a little bit) and asked him who talked about this in his basic training, and if perhaps that individual might have been unusual.

Nonsense, he said. The topic was raised repeatedly by the lieutenant, not one of the NCOs, in official training contexts that were repeated throughout the training course specifically to sensitize the soldiers to issues of morality at war, and they weren't the idea of that specific officer because he was working from a syllabus that was handed down from the educational branch of the IDF; Achikam's friends in other branches were getting the same materials. "It's inconceivable that a soldier who goes through basic training (which means, all soldiers) would NOT have heard about the time Israeli soldiers massacred Arab civilians in cold blood during the Sinai Campaign (October 1956)".

Those of you who have read Right to Exist may recollect that I told about having this experience when I was in basic training. But that was quite a while ago, and the event we were being warned about had happened around the time of our birth, which means that the older officers and sergeants - not our staff, but the top brass at least - still remembered it. Achikam is telling that he and his comrades are being warned to remember an event that happened before their parents were born.

Dying for Something

Another soldier in Achikam's training course has died, the third so far.

Some would say they're only children, these young men. 18, 19, 20 years old. Certainly, there is no lack of 22-year-old children on many a university campus in many countries. These young men, however, are not children. In the loads they bear, the responsibilities they shoulder, the challenges they must overcome, they are fully adults, indeed, more so than many of their peers in other countries will ever be.

A few weeks ago I posted a rumination about killing people and the need to be willing to be killed, in extreme cases:

Sometimes, says a grieving mother, you have to be willing to lay down your life. Protecting your fellow citizens from death, for example, is such a case.

An extraordinarily strong statement, don't you think? Makes one wonder if the preachers of total non-killing would be willing to lay down their lives for anything, or perhaps more important, for anyone.

In response, one German reader named Hans scoffed:

Who is this talking ? Darth Vader? You seem to have more respect for those wanting to die for what you would consider the wrong thing than for those who are on your side but refuse to die for whatever ( And quite frankly I think refusing to die AT ALL is a sign of being mentally healthy ).

I have been thinking about his comment, because obviously, no-one wants to die for any reason except perhaps extreme old age. Having said that, however, in an extreme case that hopefully will never happen to anyone, I expect that quite a number of us actually could conceive of dying for some very special people in our lives, such as our children.

This afternoon, while hurting for the parents of Achikam's fellow soldier, it occurred to me to wonder if there might be a connection between the sentiments Hans expressed, and in which he is undoubtedly not alone, and the fact that the society he lives in seems not to be having children anymore. Maybe he really does come from a place where they can't conceive of dying for anyone, not even their children, and therefore they don't conceive the children.

Living With War

The violence in and around Gaza has been escalating for quite a while. Israel probably should have reacted with severe force on the day the first Qassam rocket hit after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Instead, we told ourselves that these were the actions of a small minority and all those fairy tales, and ever since the Palestinians have been ratcheting up the violence, the world tut-tuts but warns Israel to be proportional in its responses, never to harm non combatants in any way, not at all, and to recognize that eventually there will have to be negotiations with Hamas. (Not clear what about).

You can read diverse ways of reporting today's violence here (Y-net reports on the Israeli civilians being targeted), here (NYT, in a reasonable depiction of what's going on), and here (The Guardian: Israel is evil). The BBC, of all places, actually offered a reasonable analysis.

Earlier this evening we went down to the ceremony where Achikam and his friends completed their tank-crewmen training. A few hundred of them, 18- and 19-year-olds; two have died in training so far, hopefully no more will.

Many years ago young Israeli parents told their children they wouldn't have to fight in wars. The children told their children they hoped they wouldn't have to fight wars. When my children were born I didn't know what to say, but when they were in grade school and the Oslo process seemed promising I dared to hope that, while they most certainly would need to serve in the army, perhaps it wouldn't be a fighting army. Someday, I expect my grandchildren will fight in their wars, but I can at least dream that they won't.

This evening, as the violence in the south gets worse, Achikam is off on the town celebrating the completion of a tough course of training; the only reason he's not going to Gaza next week is that he has been sent on to a course for higher training.
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Maayan Rotenberg, RIP

19-year-old Maayan Rotenberg, who enlisted the same day as Achikam, and has been going through the exact same training at the same base, has been killed in a tank accident. His family donated his organs to seven others; since he had a rare blood type there was no Israeli candidate for his liver, which was flown to Germany. This link goes to a Hebrew-language report, but there's a fine picture of Maayan, taken the same day and at the same place where I took the picture of Achikam which I posted here.

What these young men are dealing with is no game.

Miltary Preperadness and Annapolis

30 years ago I was an instructor at the Armour Academy when Sadat came for his historic visit (as I reminisced here). During the visit the staff did everything possible to spend as much time possible watching the visit on TV; our trainees mostly continued training as usual.

Achikam is now at exactly the same stage of training that my soldiers were at then. Without wishing to divulge any military secrets here I can say that his unit has interrupted their training, and has joined the effort of ensuring there are no terror attacks during the week of the summit.

I guess someone is less optimistic now than then.

Achikam, Completion of Basic Training

Achikam, completion of basic training

I am aware that I haven't been telling much of interest about Achikam's experiences for a while. Actually, I hope very soon to pull together lot's of impressions he (and I) have been collecting, and to post an article about them.

A Visitor from the Army

Here's a story that would have been inconceivable a generation ago. Yesterday evening we got a phone call from Raveh, Achikam's Sargeant, who expressed his interest in coming to visit us today. Okay, we said, rather amused.

This afternoon he arrived. A handsome young man, bedecked with slightly more pins and insignia than usual - apparently this is his version of full regalia. He was obviously rather uncomfortable, which is not surprising given the situation. For the past few weeks he has been part of the team that has been grilling our son and making life hard for him; a significant part of this effort is the drilling into his head of the crucial and vast chasm between basic trainees, who are expected to do what they are told and only what they are told, and their commanders - of whom Raveh is one. Achikam and his fellow rookies are not permitted even to address Raveh and his colleagues in normal language, they must always shout the Hebrew equivalent of "YES SIR!" when spoken to, and infractions that would be laughable in any other context are followed by unpleasant punishment. Now here he was, sitting in our living room, telling and asking about Achikam. We could easily be his parents, too.

So what was it all about? Apparently, it is important to the army that the civilian parents of its soldiers feel confident that their children are in trustworthy hands. In order to achieve this the army must indeed be trustworthy, but also advertise the fact, and set up mechanisms of ensuring both the fact and lines of communication about it. So Raveh spent the entire day traveling around the country meeting parents of his squad to tell them about what their sons are going through, what the plan for the coming months is, but also to look for problems at home that could distract his soldiers from concentrating on their training. He even told that in a few cases the army will be sending special officers to see what additional support the soldiers might need.

Especially interesting to me was the requirement the army obviously has even of its lowest ranking commanders, that they be able to deal with such a task. Raveh's training is mostly as a tank commander, not a social worker, yet here he was, doing an aspect of the job that no amount of tank drills could prepare him for.

At one point I made a crack about the relations of rookies and sergeants. He already knew that I myself had had his job many years ago, and that we were not being antagonistic - not towards him, not towards the army - yet he felt defensive, and needed to reassure that the staff and the rookies really are all on the same side. This is of course fundamentally true, but perhaps not quite so obvious either to the rookies or even to their commanders - yet Raveh was telling that it was clear to the commanders, and even, he seemed to be saying, to the soldiers themselves. "We do it differently now", he told me, directly relating to experiences he assumed I must have had.

There is a much larger story here, but I'll wait to gather additional data before outlining it.