The Culture of Mandatory Military Service and Related Ramblings

            I asked at lunch the other day how far Be’er Sheva was from the Dead Sea.  They told me it was really far away.  A whole hour and a half. 

            I laughed, because by American standards, that’s not very far at all.  Since I go to college in New England seven hours away from my hometown of Buffalo, any time I meet anyone from Rochester (1 hour), Syracuse (2.5 hours) or let’s be real, even Albany (4.5 hours), I feel like I’ve found my upstate New York kin. 

            The irony is that apparently an hour and a half is a long time to drive somewhere, but in Tel Aviv, with rush hour traffic, tons of people take the train in the morning or drive and get stuck in traffic and spend an hour commuting from the suburbs anyway.  My 11 minute train ride results in a commute of 50 minutes to an hour by the time I walk and wait for the train, etc. 

            The point is, Israel is a tiny country, and as I’ve mentioned before, trains are packed at rush hour.  The same goes for traffic on the roads (Hello Boston, you’ve met your match). 

            It’s tiny and it’s locked in by several countries and a couple oceans… surrounded by nations with entirely different cultures, entirely different people, many of which would rather not recognize Israel as a nation. 

            That’s why every morning as I board the train, it’s packed with men and women younger than me in uniform, carrying huge duffle bags as they embark on whatever adventure awaits them at work.  That’s why everyone working at EarlySense is older than me because after four years of mandatory military service, they start university as the bulk of Americans graduate.  That’s why Israelis are so well traveled, why the man sitting across from me at lunch has seen more American national parks than I have (I’ve been to 5), why they’ve all been to Thailand and the United States and Australia, why they all say “Americans don’t really travel” (but is that really a fair comparison considering the massive population difference?). 

            I grew up in a border town, being able to cross into Canada every day if I wanted.  When I was little, we would go for haircuts and grocery shopping.  As I got older and the American dollar weakened, I would go to run and bike along the Niagara River.  It took 2 minutes to get across, or worst case scenario, an hour waiting in traffic, a couple questions, a check of your passport… I was shocked when my friends who could genuinely see Canada from their houses lacked the ability to go because they lacked passports. 

            But what would it be to be Israeli, live down near Eilat (the southernmost point in Israel) and be able to take a boat into the Red Sea where you can see Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel all at once?  To climb up the Golan Heights and see Syria but realize you will never go there? 

            You can never go there? 

            Do you even want to? 

            Does it look the same?  The geography what you’ve grown up with extending past the arbitrary (or not so arbitrary) line that someone drew a hundred years ago or fought for, agreed to, negotiated?  You get my point.  It’s not black and white.  Wars happened.  Israel pushed up through the Sinai Peninsula and then they were forced to back down.  The world demanded that they concede.  Peace talks occurred.  Villages burned.  Diplomacy governed.  People on both sides of the equation were disappointed in the process, disappointed that they had to evacuate their homes, disappointed that the world didn’t give them more support in their quest to take back what they truly believed was theirs, but at the end of the day, borders were set.  Cultures dictated on one side of the line and conflicting ones on the other, and in the case of the Palestinian Arab-Jewish equation, it’s a little different because they coexist to a degree.  Arabs live in the territories, but sometimes, so do the Jews.  Jewish people live in Israel, but sometimes so do the Arabs.  Some Arabs are tight with the Jews, like the Bedouins or the Druze who despite the culture difference, are proud to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, and others may apply and be rejected due to the security risk Israel would be opening themselves up to by accepting them into their Armed Forces.  There’s a continuum, similar to the one I talked about before regarding the levels of religiousness in this country.  There is hatred and there is acceptance.  There is fear and there is gratitude.  There is confusion and there is understanding.  People are starting to understand that this is the Holy Land not just for one religion, but three, and yet, there is a desperate need to protect the Jewish State as well. 

            A nation of prosperity on one side of the line.  Boys and girls who learn to fight, to lead, at 18 whether they want to or not.  They’re not like the Americans who join for the money or the glory or the pure desire to serve their country.  They have to; it’s so ingrained in their culture that they expect it.  Even if they hate it, they do it.  They’re brought up to see it as part of their lives.  They’re ready to go down fighting for their nation, like their ancestors did, but only if they have to. 

            But what’s on the other side?  Beyond the borders of the Jewish State, even beyond the West Bank? 

            The Israelis speculate.  But, will they ever really know?  In some cases, they work with Palestinian Arabs, accept peace offerings of Coca-Cola to show that they respect them, to emphasize that they care about them, that they are willing to work with them, get to know them. 
           In some cases, their troops push through the Sinai Peninsula, refusing to back down, ready to prove to Egypt that they're a force to be reckoned with.  They proved in history that they know how to fight, that they will not be disposed of.  

            But, no world is perfect.  Sometimes they, too, live in fear.  They pull their children out of school when there’s a shooting and drive them when there’s an attack on a nearby bus.  But, quickly enough, they snap out of it.  They let their kids take public transport and attend class, because they have no other choice, without letting the terrorists win.  They go about their regular routines.  They post security guards outside their malls and check all bags as people enter.  They run belongings through security scanners and passengers through metal detectors as we rush to board our trains.            

            Before I got here, when I heard, “there are armed soldiers everywhere”, I was picturing snipers posted on roofs waiting for any sign of danger, ready to shoot.  What I see is very different though.  Eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-old soldiers, on their way to or from work or on a day of leave, carrying their rifle because it is his responsibility and eager to go on his way without taking the extra time to store it away somewhere, he takes it with him.   

            It’s almost nonchalant the way they carry them, just another part of their gear, their daily responsibility.  But, that doesn’t make them any less ready, the way they have to be. 

            It’s a complete 180 from the United States, where an ROTC cadet carried his decommissioned rifle somewhere onto campus last year and the police was called, and all ROTC units across the country were immediately demanded to keep their rifles locked up until procedures could be amended. 

            But that’s the culture difference.  We fear violence too, but we don’t prepare every single one of our young men and women to defend us from it.  

            That’s the thing.  Israelis are resilient.  They can’t go to Egypt or Syria or Lebanon, even if they wanted to.  Jordan, they technically can visit now, but a lot of people still don’t; it’s difficult. 

            They’re locked in by land and sea and a bunch of nations they don’t get along with, so instead of whining about it, they do their military service; they get the experience and perform their duty.  Then, they go off and see the world.  They flock to New York and Thailand and New Zealand or if they stay home, they get their friends together and hike the Israel National Trail.  They camp out, they go home on the weekends, spend time with their families and then do it all over again until they’ve completed the whole thing, a feat that is only possible because Israel is tiny.  If it was the Appalachian Trail, that wouldn’t be an option. 

            But, this is the Israeli condition.  They don’t plan ahead a whole year, the way the Americans do.  What’s the point?  Who knows where you will be a year from now? 

            They’re fully prepared to sprint into the nearest safe room the moment the sirens sound, no matter where they are or what they’re doing because you never know when it’s real or just a drill. 

            It’s part of their daily routine to have their bags checked as they enter the Dizengoff Center (a mall where a suicide bombing killed 13 Israelis in 1996) and any mall for that matter.  They’re used to going through metal detectors to board the train and having the world believe that they’re the most dangerous place on earth.  Even the employees of El Al Airlines when I was leaving Toronto for Tel Aviv, as they did my security check, grilled me on why I would want to go to a country that was considered to be dangerous.   But, for the record, I feel safer here at night and in general than back home. 

           A tiny country blessed with so much history, beauty, culture, hummus and falafel… The only nation in the world where you only have to be of a certain religion in order to be granted citizenship and on a scale where so many cultures have come to converge, so many companies have come to prosper, and more trees have been planted than taken down (which I recently discovered is because essentially nothing is built of wood here, but more on that later). 

           A nation that I have been blessed to see as more than just a tourist, to work with citizens of, to live like a local for just a short time.  It was well fought for, dreamed of for thousands of years, and has finally become a reality.  It’s not perfect, but nor is any country, and it has political issues that have yet to be resolved, but then again, so does any country. 

           That’s all I’ve got for now.  Catch you later.