The Occupation

My Unit has come to a new phase, we have moved from training to deployment and are now deployed to the Judea area, south of Hebron. I at times may seem short on details, I am sorry but this is an open blog and not everything can be published to the world.

The first thing I want to note is the security fence running in our area. Some have smeared it as a wall, and while yes parts are walls they are the minority and by far. We have one kilometer of wall on over 40 kilometers of fence, and it is separating a very problematic village from a well used road, where in the past there have been shots fired at and stones throwhow bor
n at civilian cars. Today still they attempt at throwing rocks over the wall at civilian cars, but always fail. The fence is there because of Arab misbehavior, and terror, and no other reason.

Next I would like to note how the world has been pressuring Israel to cease building in Judea and Samaria. This pressure comes from the Arab claim it violates the Oslo accords which state neither side will try and change facts on the ground. The Arabs claim Jewish building does this. But then so does Arab building, and they do so and with gusto. I was told to learn a navigation for a foot patrol in a village, with a map 3 years old. I told my officer I will learn but the map and reality are not going to be connected. I was right, the village had been so changed in 3 years I could barely find my way from point to point.

Finally I want to discuss how boring this work can be. Most of the last week was spent on static roadblocks, in the cold. During the day I could go a half hour with not a car going by. On a six hour shift at night I could see only 5 cars, with 3 hours between cars. But these long periods of boredom are broken by moment of adrenaline and excitement. The precious hours of sleep broken by a wake up when two Arabs broke into a settlement. The mad sprint to ones vest, helmet in hand an vest still half open to the armored car, strapping everything in place on the way. Breathing a sigh of relief when while still on the way we are told they were caught and we are to stand down.      

Geting Ready To Move On

           I have come to the point many an Israeli has reached, the look forward and out; out of the Army, out of the system, out onto a new life. I am ready to step out of the army and into the life as an Israeli citizen. Just a month or two ago, I was far from here. I was fighting hard to go to officer’s course, unwilling to leave the army, and looking for ways to stay. But this has all changed, I realized to be a combat officer here is to give up all of one’s life, everything. Relationships, things you enjoy, you, and all other things go second to the job you take. I simply have too many other things I would like to do with my life to give up another 3 years. The army has also so thoroughly screwed me over I will be happy to leave them behind, at least somewhat I will have 20 years of reserves to do. 

            But its more than that I would like to do more with my life. The people I care about I would like to see, spend time with them, to be there when they need me or have special occasions. When my friends come through I want to see them and not have a quick conversation on the phone trying to explain why the army won’t let me out. I want to see them, and to be there for them.
            I want to do the things I enjoy in life as well. I want to get back into marathon shape and begin to run again. I want to run the Tel-Aviv marathon, the Jerusalem marathon, and I want to break three hours on a marathon. I want to know I am running because I want to and wish to and not because the army makes me, and at their pace. The sense of accomplishment and thrill I go from my first one has been calling me back for some time now. The shape I was in also had me feeling amazing. I would also love o run for Chai Lifeline, and organization which supports kids with cancer, and lifetime disabilities with love and summer camps. To run for them and complete a marathon, as well as know I raised money for such a deserving organization would bring me great pleasure.    
 
            I would also like to get back to school. I enjoyed the learning at West Point and hope I enjoy it just as much here in Israel. While the studies might be a bit more challenging in Hebrew I don’t think it will be an insurmountable challenge. I am still no sure what I want to study, but it does not matter yet, I have time to decide. I keep bouncing between economics, foreign relations, and engineering. 

            The army was always something I wanted to do, and now have done. I think it’s time now to keep moving forward and check off more of those boxes on my to do list.

Thrill

There are some thrills you can only experience in the army, and one of them I had the chance to experience many a time this week. Usually in the IDF when one does an infantry drill you do it first “dry,” meaning shouting bang! bang! and with no magazine inside the gun. Only after finishing the whole exercise this way we then go back to the start, and do it all over with live fire. While being safer this takes away from the reality of the drill, as when we go to war the first time we see our targets it will be the first time an we will be shooting live rounds. But …. occasionally when the right safety percussions are in place we are permitted to go straight to live fire. 

This past week we did a company drill straight to live fire. We started just as the sun was creeping up over the edge of the Golan Heights, and the air was frigidly cold. We began in the tree line and waited for the spray down of the targets by the company’s heavy machine guns. When they finished team one and three began to bound out quickly to clear the “killing ground” before the targets. (The killing ground is the flat area under complete control by fire and observation by the enemy) As they got to the bottom of the hill team four, and my team, team two, began to follow in their footsteps as support. The adrenaline now is pumping, the rounds are flying (I am not shooting yet but that changes nothing), and we are all in the height of Rabak. This is an IDF term which is hard to translate, but its meaning is something along the lines of being really pumped up, into something and full of aggression. We are right behind team one, as their hill tops come under their control we got ready to make a flanking maneuver to the enemies right side. They begin to pour out cover fire, and we start to bound out. The rabak now is really going, as we spread out into our fighting line. We are starting to pour our own fire down onto the targets, and are quickly advancing. Because the targets are so close we are quickly in charging distance and straighten out our line as we rise to charge the hill top. We come up and over the crest of the hill and quickly lay down flat and begin to cover team one as they did for us.                

Now team one does a flanking move and when they control their hilltops we go out for our flanking maneuver on the last and tallest hilltop. Little by little our line is formed as all of us bound out in small groups and the fire increases little by little. Finally we start going up the hill as one group, bullets screeching at our targets. Then we are in charging distance, the order to get ready to charge goes out. Magazines are switched, and then the assault gunners go up on one knee and star to spray down the targets. The fire power is awesome, and invigorating. Then all together we rise and begin to move forward. I am now giving two rounds to each target I see, with adrenaline pumping, breath coming ragged from running up the hill, and hundreds of rounds flying around me. Then it’s over, we are at the top, the hill is clear, and we begin to let off some of the pent up emotion.

There is something about shooting a live round which gives one such a thrill. The knowledge you are in control of something so deadly, and dangerous. The power you hold in your hands over life and death.  It’s an awesome thrill only multiplied wih each round you fire, and is fired around you.

Frustration

The army often works in mysterious ways, and sometimes it does not work at all, but sometimes the army is frustrating. Since the day I have joined the IDF been telling them I want to go to officers course, I want to be an officer. I have been an upstanding soldier, with good grades, marks, and reviews along the whole way. When my tzevet would be discussing amongst ourselves who should and would go to officers course my name would always come up, if not the first one to do so. I finished training as the number two soldier in my tzevet of 17. I spent time in the company in both training and operational activity. When I finally went out for the NCO's course (the first step to officers course) I was not only one of the best from the tzevet, and company I was experienced. In the course its self I did well, one of the best levels of fitness there, good reviews from my commander, and his endorsement to send me to officers course. Buutttt.... my battalion commander has other ideas.

 When I sat down to talk to him he told me under no circumstances would he make me an officer in my unit. I instant;y asked why? He told me I had a bad opinion about me from my commander, and I was befuddled. So after speaking to him I went and checked my record in the course, and found my opinion from my commander, and it was excellent. It had high marks in every area, and recommended me for officers course as well. I was so frustrated, angry, and pissed. Why were they lying to me? Why would my battalion, one who has an officer shortage not send me when I was begging to go and was totally qualified? Why was I being treated so poorly? One of my first reactions was to just shoot the bastard and get it over with, but the cooler side of me prevailed and I did not. shoot anyone. Instead I said I will show these bastards. My battalion commander had said "and officer in this unit you will not be," I said "an officer I will be" and was determined not to come out the liar.

I began to work as hard as possible to win. I began to speak to connections, to try and find a different unit who would send me to officers course. I began to talk to my company commander and see what he could do for me and began to draft a letter to the brigade commander in an attempt to have him intervene. In the mean time I have been told I am going back to the brigade training base, and will be a platoon sergeant for the the basic training of the November 2011 draft. I can not lie the position is a good one and gives me the chance to do what I always wanted, make so Israeli soldiers into disciplines American style soldiers. These kids are going to suffer if I go in the end. The problem is it means I can not go to officers course though, as I will be to far into my draft service. The whole frustration of the idiocy here, and the plain old army incompetence is really too much at times. You try and tray give it your all and the army just kinda leans over and craps on you for it. It is really maddening. All I can do now is fight hard and hope for the best.

Bochan Gadsar

This past week I passed the bochan gadsar, a combat fitness and combat shooting test. The test is run in full combat uniform, vest with 6 full magazines, a liter and half of water in canteens or in a camelback, and ones personal weapon.

The test starts with a two kilometer run, which opens with climbing over a wall, parallel bars, and monkey bars. The obstacles are but 200 meters or so of the two kilometers. At the end of the two kilometers one is back at the wall, and begins some 500 meters of obstacles. There is again the wall, parallel bars, monkey bars, followed by a 6 meter rope climb, a high crawl, climb up to and a walk on a log two meters above the ground, a pyramid, and finally a low crawl. At the end of the obstacles is an open run of 700 meters to the finish line.

I started the test on a bad foot by struggling to get over the wall, but gave a good sprint to make up lost time on the rest of the obstacles and finished them first in my heat. On the rest of the two kilometers I made excellent time and was over the wall by 10:30. I made it over the obstacles with no problem, and stood up from the low crawl at just before 14:30 on my watch. From here I could see the finish line, and began to give the run everything. Along the way I began to pass other guys, who had been in the heat before me, and the whole way I kept saying to my self just break 17:00 minutes, nothing matters after that. I ran exactly 17:00 minutes, close but missed by a second. My results for the run is excellent, its the second best in my platoon to date and in the top ten percent of the company.

The second half of the test is the combat shooting stress test. After a short break of 10th minutes or less one enters the range and is assigned a target. Once targets are handed out and everyone has placed his magazine before the target we line up outside. We lie down on our stomachs for the start of the test. The test is a 10th meter crawl, 90 meter run, turn around and 100 meters back to the range. We enter the range and return to our target, which is a paper tzevet shaped like a head at 40 meters. We fire three rounds kneeling, and three in the prone position. The minimum numbering hits to pass depends on ones run time. 20:00 - 19:20 is six out of six, 19:20 - 18:40 is five out of six, and under 18:40 is four out of six. I only had to hit four to pass. One who fails the shooting does the test from the beginning, yes running included. The time allotted to the shooting test is 1:40.

I start out strong being one of the first back to the range, but I can feel the deep muscular exhaustion, and exhausted muscles twitch, ruining ones shot. I line upon my target and get into a tight stance and place the red dot right on target, and ham! a good shot, but my bolt does not come back forward like it should, and I quick as possible clear the jam. I am now afraid I don't have enough time, so the next two rounds are quick and miss. I now know the next three in the prone position must hit, and each round gets the time it deserves. All three hit. PASS! What a great feeling hardest part of the course behind me.

Close to home ...

On Thursday the 18th of August a complex terrorist attack began on the border between Israel and Egypt 150 kilometers from Gaza. The attack began with the terrorists opening fire on a civilian passenger bus on its way to eilat. The bus driver was wounded but kept the bus going attempting to reach the IDF check point, while soldiers on the bus returned fire with their personal rifles. Dozens were wounded, but the word got out and the quick reaction force was on its way. The quick reaction force was from my unit Orev Golani, the parallel team of mine from draft November 2009. They were on site in minutes and as they arrived they hit a road side bomb, but kept going. The first terrorist was run over by the multi ton vehicle and died on the spot. The soldiers then began to exit the vehicle to kill the remaining terrorists. As the platoon sergeant left the vehicle and began to move towards the terrorists he took two rounds in the neck and went down. A sharpshooter shot down a second terrorist and then the squad there began to deal with its wounded. The platoon sergeant was dead and two more lightly wounded, and their vehicle was out if commission after both the bomb and gun fight. By this point a larger response had activated and anti-terror units had arrived and slain a third terrorist. The rest of the day had another few portions of the attack play out and a total of 7 terrorists were killed and another soldier was killed in addition to the one my company lost. The rest of the attack is not my focus though its the reality the loss brought home.

A member of my company was dead, it easily could have been our team and not the parallel team. His funeral was on Friday on Har Hertzel, the Israeli military cemetery. At 1000 stood all those from the company who could come, many being needed to stay back and fulfill the operational mission. The cemetery was full with not only soldiers, but civilians, friends and family.

At 1000 the body arrived, a simple wooden coffin draped over it an Israeli flag. His friends from his team took the coffin and hoisted it to their shoulders. While once they had carried stretchers together in training, today his freinds carried him in a coffin on their shoulders. Before him marched his honor guard, made up of soldiers he had trained as a squad leader in basic training. Behind his coffin came the family, a weeping, sad family. But as sad as they may be the family was not broken, for thrones their son died with honor. He did not go like an Amy Whitehouse with a needle in the arm, but rather in a charge on terrorists while protecting innocent civilians. There son was a true hero, under enemy fire he still jumped from the protection on the armored vehicle to lead his soldiers in combat. What came out in his funeral over and over was how he did everything all the way, and never half assed. Even in his death he went all the way. At the finish of the funeral the honor guard gave a salute of three rounds, each one sending a shiver down my spine. Each bark of the rifles, each time a new round was charged and a shell casing fell to the ground, a shiver went down my back from anew. Each round seemed to add a new level of finality to the whole event. The total finality sank in at the grave side, with the fresh dirt on it. It easily could have been my team, or even me there.

Today rockets are still falling on the south, on a school, on a shul, on houses. Many are calling for a fresh whipping of Hamas even if it means ground operations. After the loss the company suffered we are ready and eager, in the words of Ehud Barak "he who messes with us will have his head separated from his neck."

Rest in peace Moshe Naftali, you will be missed by all. The IDF lost both a great solder and commander, and the rest of us a great friend.

Nearly Two Years

I will shortly have been in Israel two years now. I wanted to reflect back over the past two years and see how far I have come and how far I have to go. I first arrived in Israel on August 4^th 2009 in a haze of emotion and excitement. From the plane ride which ws far top exciting to sleep on, to the arrival ceremony and receiving my Tudat Oleh (Immigration Certificate) from Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister and war hero, I was just not sure it was all real. But after the ceremony and getting in the taxi to head to the kibbutz I encountered the first change in who I was. The taxi driver with a devilish smile asked me where I was from, and I at first out of instinct said “America”, and then instantly said “No! I am wrong I am an Israeli!” I felt so proud being able to say those words.  

After the airport came the kibbutz and the start of Garin Tzabar. Two years later I can say the kibbutz has really become part of my home. Be it my loving family here who takes care of me to all my friends in the Garin who are there for me or just to hang out with. I have really built a strong set of lifelong connections here. The kibbutz at first was a bit daunting for me. Coming from a Ronald Regan Capitalistic household and belief system to a socialistic commune is a big step. But I was quick to see the kibbutz had become mostly privatized, as have most kibbutzim in Israel, and no one was hanging up pictures of Marx or Lenin anywhere so I was good. 

On the kibbutz we began with our process of learning Hebrew, and while I had some basic foundations I was far from fluent. I remember my first cell phone bill, and wondering if I would have understood it better in Chinese. I was comforted only by the fact it was fairly low so I was pretty certain no one was trying to rob me blind. Then came the bank and mounds of papers in Hebrew, and a million lines to sign and a handful of words I understood. Thank god our Garin director was there to help us or I am pretty sure we all could have signed our first born children over and never known. Today the shock of a bill is only in its size occasionally. Now newspapers were also a challenge. In America I would read the paper every day from cover to cover keeping up to date on all the news. But suddenly I opened the paper and struggled with the smallest most inconsequential story. It would be months till I successfully read a full, real article in the newspaper and understood it. Today while I can open a paper and understand all her articles the extra effort needed for the Hebrew often requires the article to be quite interesting for me to put forth the concentration. 

A major goal of mine was to start reading books in Hebrew. I often pushed this goal off till I simply ran out of books in English. The challenge at first was to find a book in Hebrew which was both interesting enough, and of a high enough reading level I would not feel insulted by reading it; while also utilizing a level of Hebrew I could read and understand without having to pause to often to look up a word. The first book I started was fine for the first 10 pages and then took a turn into very high level Hebrew and I put it down. A month later I got the perfect book. Letters to Talya, the book was interesting, an intellectual grabber, and written in plainer Hebrew. From there I progressed onto two more books of a similar or slightly higher level. Today I have taken the leap to the next step with a book whose Hebrew is a bit more complex but I am going strong 35 pages in and loving it. I real feel this is one of my greatest feats in Hebrew to date and biggest steps to really entering Israeli society. Speaking is not enough reading is crucial as well.   

The central part of the past two years for me has been the army. I can honestly say I have gone through many changes in these two short years. From a know nearly nothing private to a sergeant after training in the Golani Recon Battalion, with operational experience, and time spent training with the unit. While I have the pins to show for it, my real accomplishments to me are not ones I wear on the chest. They are the things I feared or hated and yet overcame. Be it my fear of heights right before I jumped from the plane, or my dislike for fighting right as I sank my fist into my first opponent in my final act of Krav Maga, or the first steps on a solo 90 kilometer, two day navigation. It’s the knowledge I can overcome any obstacle or barrier, mental or physical. It’s the knowledge I have accumulated in my profession from training and experience. Now that I have also taken the first steps onto the road of command I feel almost as if I am starting my Army Career over again. Over the course of the next year I will go from a simple Israeli soldier to an Israeli officer, in the IDF. It is hard for me to imagine a more Zionistic pinnacle than to realize this goal.   

But now that I have looked back on these two years I must also look forward to the next year as well. Aside from the officership I am perusing I have several more goals I would like to realize. I would like to see myself moving to Jerusalem. This is both a spiritual and Zionistic goal. Jerusalem to me is both a Jewish religious center, and our nation’s capital. To live there is to join with the central nerve of both Israel the state and region. It’s to live in both the nation’s capital and gods house. I also want to make a real effort to learn this country better, and to this effort I want try and take more trips around the country to places I have not been. In my Hebrew I want to continue to build it up with my new focus being on grammar. I want to keep reading in Hebrew and to see the improvement in my vocabulary as well. 

As a closer when I was going back to America to visit my parents last February I had a stopover in Paris. As I was boarding the plane they were checking passports and I presented my Israeli passport. The lady looked it over and asked me if I was in the IDF I thought for a moment and said yes. She smiled at me and said it must be hard and I told her it definitely had its moments, she said “good for you” and I moved on.  As I boarded the plane I saw her check the passport of an American soldier who had been behind me, she also asked him if he was an American soldier and he said yes. But that was it, no question and no compliment. It made me proud to see the respect my army and thus my nation was given in comparison to the US Army. On the flight I though on far we, the Jewish nation, have come in 65 years from Auschwitz to the modern IDF; a powerful and respected army, guarding both our boarders and Jews everywhere.