Gracious service?

In a collection of monologues, a writer explores the level of patriotism of the country’s soldiers.

By DAVID GEFFEN
Soldiers on tank 370 (photo credit: Illustrative photo: Ariel Jerozolimskicourtesy)
Soldiers on tank 370
(photo credit: Illustrative photo: Ariel Jerozolimskicourtesy)
For many years now, Israel’s citizens have been expected to serve in the IDF. This derives from the idea that the country is surrounded by Arabs who want to destroy it.
But, “can we expect young Israelis, when called to the service of their country, to have the maturity to weigh the issues of conscientious objection and draft dodging?” asks Prof. David Ranan in A Land to Die For? Using 37 monologues taped in Hebrew and translated into German and English, Ranan develops a picture of the patriotism of the country’s youth and of former soldiers under the age of 30. Since there is a draft for all 18-yearolds in the country, the author has a living database for research.
One former soldier, now a 30-year-old student, discusses searching the homes of Palestinians for suspects: “Since you are wearing night vision gear, you can find any door which you want. In about three minutes after entry, you’ve already got the suspect and dragged him out into the street. You hear the women’s shouts, but it goes right over you.”
This individual, who rose to the rank of sergeant, served at a time when riots were going on at a particular intersection that Palestinians used.
“Many times,” he says, “I went there [to the intersection] so I would not get bored.”
There was action there – bullets, gas, stone-throwing – but as he stresses, “you’re in fully protective gear.”
“I’d go there for my weekly sport, to increase my adrenalin,” he recalls.
“Mainly, I wanted to feel that I was contributing something.”
A 29-year-old Ethiopian woman, also a student now, came to Israel as a child with her parents. She sought to become a combat soldier so she could feel her military efforts were real. After completing basic training, she and four other women were assigned to a combat unit – which was otherwise all male – in the military police.
“There, aside from the general work challenge, there was also the challenge of proving you’re a fighter,” she notes. “The girls had to prove that they are just as good fighters as the boys. When you are in pain you don’t say anything, for fear they might think that as a female fighter it hurts you more than it does a male fighter.”
She recalls that in the first stonethrowing situation she encountered, she was scared.
“You hear about a demonstration on TV but you can’t imagine the reality of contending with massive stone-throwing,” she says. “Here I see a mob running toward me, pelting us with stones.”
She also offers the truism that “as with any difficult assignments, over time you get used to it with all the protective gear you wear.”
The next interviewee is Orthodox, 25, and married with two children. For him, Israel is something for which the Jewish people have yearned for almost 2,000 years, a milestone after the exile from the Holy Land and in the wake of the Holocaust.
“In the normalcy of our situation, we can create our own government and have our own army,” he says.
The IDF is a state-builder, he continues, because “these youth in service can scatter their physical strength in all kinds of less positive directions. When summoned, they choose to be in the army and contribute to the state.”
As an officer, he commanded a squad.
Three of the four members of his squad selected for officer training were religious.
He claims that already, 30 percent of IDF soldiers are religious.
There are monologues in Ranan’s book from conscientious objectors, some of whom were convicted and sent to prison. The saddest parts of the book, I feel, are the tales of the draftdodgers – secular, Orthodox and ultra- Orthodox. One way to escape the military is to pretend to be nervous, since after investigation, that individual can be declared mentally unbalanced – and freed from fulfilling his duty.
I contend that this tortures the average Israeli because he, his children and his grandchildren enter the IDF out of the desire to serve.
Why are books like this written? Perhaps they hope to prove through personal interviews that Israeli youth are becoming like the majority of young people in the world. In most countries, people do not want to place themselves in harm’s way, but to live their lives without fear of dying. As this book emphasizes, Israeli youth are changing, but the majority are still prepared “to enter the army of Israel, where they could die for their country.”