What can the IDF do when a soldier cannot handle the stress?
A story of an Orthodox Israeli Jew who wants out of the IDF.
By AARON LEIBELUS NAVY and Army veterans at a Los Angeles homeless shelter, where many end up after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder(photo credit: LUCY NICHOLSON / REUTERS)
This somewhat baffling work of fiction deals with an Orthodox Israeli Jew who wants out of the IDF. It raises questions with me because I am not sure what the author is trying to say or why he wrote the novel.However, the publisher says in a blurb on its cover that “it is a tour of the soul and depths of Israeli society and of those everywhere who resist regimentation and violence.”Let’s leave “soul,” “depths” and “violence” for another time and concentrate instead on “regimentation.”I assume author Yair Assulin would concede what to me is obvious – that, since its founding, the Jewish state has been surrounded by neighbors that wish it ill and would gleefully take part in its dismemberment. To prevent the country’s destruction and the probable mass murder of its Jewish citizens, the IDF was formed.If you concede the continuing need for an army, then regimentation and its handmaiden discipline are necessities – although from what I recall about my service in the IDF, spit and polish, inspections and saluting were not the essence, the heart and soul, of the modern Jewish army.However, the level of regimentation and discipline that the young man in The Drive encountered clearly overwhelmed him. His service was “suffocating” him, giving him the feeling that he was “dying in the army.”He began to envision his demise. “I am no longer afraid of death,” the young soldier says. “I was suffering so much that death became a presence in my life, a logical option for escape, a solution. Death became my second shadow.”He became, in his own words, “a walking corpse,” with “death sitting inside me like a stinking lump of shit.”And he started to think about suicide, at night finding himself waiting on a road for the appearance of headlights so he could jump into the path of an oncoming car.Only at home and in the synagogue on his base did he feel safe. He says “the synagogue was my hiding place, my refuge, my fortress.... For me the synagogue was like a terminal, a neutral place where no one could touch me.... Outside they could destroy me.”Clearly, the youngster was disturbed and should not have been in the army. Psychological testing should have prevented his induction.But once someone like him becomes a soldier, any army will be hard pressed to deal with him. Armies are about convincing young people to risk – or even give up – their lives so that their family, nation and state will survive. Self-sacrifice is a tough sell.Army officers are rightly worried that in an army of conscripts operating in a democratic society, being more concerned about the welfare of individual soldiers than the good of the army could be dangerous.At the end of The Drive, a mental health officer in effect countermands her superior’s decision and gives the youngster what he wanted – a promise of a transfer from his unit. (She granted him sick leave, after which he supposedly would be transferred to another unit. The book ends with that decision, but I suspect that in such a case in real life, the young man eventually would receive not a transfer but a psychiatric discharge.)So, I came to realize that Assulin, who received two awards for The Drive, is trying to teach us the importance of compassion in the IDF.Certainly, I would be the last person to undervalue the importance of love and understanding for Israeli soldiers. One of my granddaughters was discharged from the IDF several years ago, her younger brother, last year, and his younger sister was inducted in April. And two of their cousins’ times are fast approaching.Israel must cherish its children-soldiers. But it must never compromise the IDF’s ability to keep them, their younger siblings, parents and grandparents safe. And that means some regimentation and discipline alongside the compassion.It’s a tough balancing act.The writer is a former editor at The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish Week. His novel, Generations: The Story of a Jewish Family, which spans 1,500 years and three continents, is available online.The DriveBy Yair Assulin andtranslated by Jessica CohenNew Vessel Press130 pages; $15.95
