August 6, 2007

2340 hours

Somewhere in the north of Israel

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We started of this week's training with promises that as a result of the war, things would be different, that this year we have an open check and that everything is being done so that we can regain our combat capability.

The reality though is that as in the past, we are still lacking our full complement of officers, there is a shortage of weapons and most kinds of ammunition, and when the truck with our cooked meal failed to materialize, we were reduced to toasting slices of preserved meat from boxes of combat rations over an open fire.

"The real change is that we're training at all," said our company commander - and he had a point.

After over four years without anything more than the most cursory preparations before active duty, there's something reassuring just about being back in the old routine, with all its faults.

Grown men allowed to act as adolescents once again and to derive childish satisfaction from the pleasant zinging sound of a bullet hitting a faraway metallic target, the sheer power of a machine-gun and making a makeshift shower out of jerrycans.

Just the heavier breathing at the end of a long open-fire course there remind us of the years that have passed and that we aren't so young anymore. That, and our depleted ranks. The inescapable fact is that from a company with near-perfect attendance in the past and a sizable number of volunteers past the 40 years old exemption, only about 70 percent turned up this time. Some for perfectly legitimate reasons, such as business trips and family circumstances, but I know of at least a few who stayed at home out of disillusionment caused by last summer's war.

A couple of the younger ones who did turn up have already informed us that next time we won't be seeing them; they're off to seek their fortunes overseas.

Hard to say yet whether this is the beginning of a new trend or whether these are merely fringe elements, but there is definitely an underlying current of anger among those who did show up at still being taken for granted.

Obviously a small reserve unit isn't a reliable sample for serious sociological observations, but it is still a pretty representative cross-section of the young Israeli middle-class. And, to judge by the inevitable political discussion of the first day and a half, a new brand of basic and muscular patriotism is emerging. It scorns politicians of all colors, distrusts any Arab and sneers at peace dreams, and particularly hates the ultra-Orthodox community for living off the fat of the land.

In some ways it resembles the frustration of secular Israelis that led to the rise of the Shinui Party, now extinct, but it is less cosmopolitan than Shinui tended to be.

The most surprising aspect for me was the reactions here to the news of the 12 religious soldiers who had refused to take part in securing the outer perimeter of the eviction operation of two settler families in Hebron.

Disobeying orders would have been unthinkable for any of us, but almost all I heard today was support for the young soldiers. Not so much for political reasons but from the objection of all of them to using the army for such purposes. The basic sentiment was that we joined the IDF to defend the country, not to kick Jews out of their homes. And this was coming from men who are neither settlers nor religious, including a few who in the past might have voted for left-leaning parties.

I hope someone is trying to make sense of the effect of the accumulated experience of the last two summers - the disengagement and the Second Lebanon War - has had on the IDF's backbone. No one here is planning to go into politics or to spend much time on protest marches, they are all much to busy trying to eke out a decent living.

But despite the great majority of the reservists still showing up for duty, the message is loud and clear, a nation's leadership that calls up family men to put aside everything and to give up their basic comforts for almost a month each year, and endanger their lives in the process, should work much harder at proving itself worthy of such sacrifice.

Previous entries:
August 5, 2007: Olmert's own heritage is no excuse<