"Closing 21"

...sounds forbidding, doesn't it?  Ok, maybe not to someone unfamiliar with the term or its circumstances.  Alas, allow me to enlighten you, as it is not something you want to hear in the army.  It means you are on base for three straight weeks, "closing Shabbat for twenty-one days."  But "closing twenty-one" isn't so bad.  The hardest thing is to think about home.  If that's not an option for three weeks, then there's no need to worry yourself and the time goes faster.  In addition, as my friend Shmaya from New York put it, "you're on base, the first of the month comes around, and next time you go home, you have a lot more money in the bank and no time to spend it!"

These were going to be three tough weeks.  First off, it was coming right after my regilah (break) week.  In addition, these were going to be three weeks in the shetach (field).  And it was the start of imun mitkadem, advanced training.

Indicators of experience:
Watch cover
received after the 6k masa

I had almost no trouble getting back into the swing of things after my week of rest and relaxation with my friends at the beaches and clubs of Tel Aviv.  That Sunday we had our first krav maga session.  It's about time we learned some close-hand combat!  My Mem Mem (platoon commander) had commented that it was unfortunate we don't learn more krav maga, but the reality and time restraints of our training don't allow for the proper time required for its training.  This session we learned how to fight with our guns, much like our last session at Mikveh Alon.  After it, we finished packing our bags for the shetach and went to bed.

A few hours later, or at three or four in the morning, we woke, boarded a bus with our equipment, and drove off to the shetach for Shavuah Citah (Squad Week).  This week was to learn how to attack a hill as a squad.  For some reason, something that even my officer didn't quite know why, but I brought my MAG and all its equipment.  I had the gun strapped around my shoulders and the heavy vest on my back climbing up and down hills, providing covering fire and then running to catch up with my squad as they advanced.  The worst part?  The "covering fire" was just me shouting "MAG-a, MAG-a, MAG-a" over and over and over.  No actual bullets were fired on my part.  Wasn't exactly the most thrilling time for me in the shetach.

We did our daytime exercises, had lessons all day about the different specialty weapons in a squad, then had our nighttime exercises, and returned to base at three in the morning.  Hour free time before bed.  Over twenty-four hours awake.

We came back because Monday was a fast during the day.  It's the Seventeenth of Tammuz, a daytime fast to remember when the walls of Jerusalem were breached before the destruction of the Second Temple.  We woke late and then I met with the Mishakit Aliyah with the other lone soldiers to review for another test on our training.  The fast ended that evening and we returned to the shetach.   We slept, woke, did our daytime drills, slept during the middle of the day, and then watched a helicopter shoot up a few barrels with a Vulcan cannon.  My entire plugah (company) gathered on a hillside and waited as night descended to watch the reservists practice their drills.  It was pretty cool, if overhyped.  You could barely see the helicopter.  You heard the cannon fire and saw sparks shoot up a few hundred meters away from it.  It shot three times.  We did our nighttime drills and then returned to base.

Or rather, to the kitchen.  Again, not fun work being in the kitchen, but there are times that it beats being in the shetach!

For the weekend, my machlekah (platoon) went to Hebron for guard duty.  No one really gets excited about the prospect of a long weekend standing up and missing out on a relaxing Shabbat back on base.  For me, at least this was different than the last time I was in the city of Judaism's second holiest site.  We woke early and packed up to go.  This time, Kfir, another infantry unit, was on duty in Hebron.  The machlekah was split up and I was sent to a base with about forty of us.  I started guard duty at four in the afternoon and didn't end until ten.  Standing.

So where was I guarding?  Specifically?  Let's just say, from this photo from almost exactly a year ago, you can almost see where I was.  Off to the right is a street, or more like a dirt path, that leads to an Arab section of the city.  About fifty meters up that path is where I stood.  My surroundings looked like a scene in the video game "Assassin's Creed," a game that takes place in the Holy Land during Medieval times.  I'm completely serious.  I stood on a platform ten feet above the road, across from a house.  Really it was just a makeshift metallic slab that constituted a door and a tangle of stairs that disappeared into a construction of brick, wood and mud that called a house.  In addition, they had a horse and cart.

There were little kids in the area.  Either they walked through or played in the turn in the road, or peered out at me from behind green-barred windows.  (Why do I mention they're green?  Because I think they're intentionally that color as it is the color of Islam.  Hence the Arab section.)  I'm dressed in full combat gear, complete with a bullet proof vest filled with ceramic plates.  Heavy and gets hot.  Also difficult to bend over to pick up your water.  But you feel like you're doing something legit(imate).

And I was doing something important.  Around seven at night, people, meaning Jews, starting walking down the path towards the Tomb of the Patriarchs for Shabbat.  I was standing, protecting my people as they went to practice our faith.  Isn't that why I'm here?  Hell yeah it is.  It was tough standing for six hours.  It was tough to see a two-year old Palestinian girl throw a rock at me.  But it was great for the young and old, the men and women to take the turn in the road, look up at me in my uniform, wave or give a slight salute and greet me with a "Shabbat Shalom!"  An ego trip?  Ok, maybe a slight one.  Fulfilling?  Definitely.

Tzanchanim tag
received after 7+1 masa

The ten or so of us who were on duty for that shift were picked up and returned to the Kfir base at the end of the evening.  Then we had a Shabbat meal with the base.  It's cool to have one on an operational base; it's what military service is really like.  But the next morning, woke up for a seven to eleven shift, then a quick afternoon break and back again from five to eight.  I was located at a closer location to the Tomb for the morning shift and was able to have short conversations with the Jews as they passed.  I was able to converse pretty easily in Hebrew.  I always made sure to say something if I heard English.  There was a group of guys from Brooklyn who I got to know that morning and we had a nice conversation about the army, America, politics, Judaism in the evening.  I also received quite a few invites for Shabbat and even for places to live.  Jews helping Jews is a beautiful thing.

(For me, in Hebron, for the first time, the Islamic call to prayer became a noisome cacophony of sound.  I was saddened and surprised to feel this way.  I've heard the call numerous times before and always thought it a beautiful thing about Islam.  In fact, the Arabic that i sounded from the tops of the minarets strikes at the beginnings of my interest in the Middle East.  For me, songs and sounds, both in Hebrew and Arabic, of this region are so full of yearning; for truth, for understanding, for reason.  It transports my mind to a much different realm, in time and place, to the beginning of beginnings, to where answers can be found to some of the most fundamental aspects and questions of life.  It makes me realize how old this place is, how many centuries people have lived here and throughout the wars, conquests, and disputes, still live everyday.

The sound is of yearning.  It was this sound that probably had the biggest impact on bringing me back to Judaism.  When I first heard the song "Yedid Nefesh" at the Western Wall a year and a half ago on Birthright, the sense of yearning and simple desire to live that the vocals arose within me made me think of my people being loaded into box cars, about them forming lines and being told who will live and who will die, and primarily, of walking out into a forest to dig their own grave, be shot, and fall in...all because they are Jewish.  How can I not want to fight back?

But I digress.  The call to prayer those two days in Hebron all jumbled together to hurt my ears.  Maybe all the mosques are competing for air space.  It seems like businessmen know no boundaries.  The commercialization of religion?  Topic for another time and place.)

One week down.

The start of the next week was a time of catch-up for me.  Back during Pesach, I got extra time off and missed throwing grenades.  About two dozen of us in the plugah were yet to learn to throw and Sunday was the day to finally catch up.  We again put on the protective vest under our combat vests.  Climbed up a hill and practiced with a rock and dummy grenade before the real thing.  The whole while, I had a live grenade in a pocket on my vest directly over my heart.  Honestly, it was a little freaky.  The guns and everything don't bother me.  This highly explosive devise with a kill radius of eight meters and can wound up to fifteen meters made me a bit nervous.  I pulled the grenade out of my vest and pulled the pin.  Thrust my arm behind me and threw it.  I ducked behind the bunker.  I heard the lever fly off with a surprisingly forceful noise and counted for four seconds.  Then BOOM, 1,024 pieces of shrapnel flying out in every direction.  Even from a distance at the bottom of the hill, you see the violent explosion and then hear the noise.  It's quite incredible how powerful something the size of a baseball can be.  It also made reality for me a bit more real.  War has got to be a terrifyingly hellish time.  Your world explodes into a violent fury of noise and steel.

But for now, I'm still in training.  And I'm relatively safe from everything.  Sure the grenade made me nervous at first, but I approached it like a roller coaster: I'm somewhat scared of heights, but if I'm strapped in, I know that countless people have already done what I'm doing without any harm and I know I'll get through it with no problem.

Discete (dog tag) cover
received after 10+2 masa

After the grenade, I rejoined my plugah to do some shooting exercises.  Run two hundred meters and shoot at a target fifty meters away with five bullets, all in two minutes.  Shoot a target two hundred and fifty meters away.  Shoot at fifty standing, then then kneeling, then prone.  Fun but surprisingly very difficult.  In addition, we did another buchan maslul, the obstacle course.  I improved my time from 8:30 to 8:13.  I'm happy with that time, but will probably do it again.  Looking to get under 8:00.

The shetach experience that week was learning to fight in an urban environment.  It was fun but very hot.  The IDF had built a group of a few dozen square, cement blocks that mimicked buildings and rooms.  We learned how to enter through the door as a unit of two or four, advance into more rooms, walk up and down stairs, and how to climb over a wall with the squad while advancing in a village.  Essentially, I put my back against the wall and bend my knees.  The soldiers climb onto my thighs, then my shoulders, then over the wall.  It builds and tires the legs.

We did countless drills peering around corners, into buildings, entering buildings and clearing rooms.  It was again a little freaky doing the drills with live ammunition.  Each machlekah had a special room to fire in.  The walls were padded with fiberglass and plenty of other thick material.  But the quarters were really small, maybe fifteen feet by fifteen feet.  The first soldier peers around the doorway, spots the terrorists, lets off a few shots, then they both enter and shoot the back wall, spraying their fire from corner to corner.  We certainly wear earplugs.  The room smells of gun powder and you can see the dust kicked up by our boots and bullets lazily waft around the beam of sunlight from a small ventilation hole in the roof, providing the only source of light.  At night, vision was essentially nil.

We finished the shetach after two nights, three days, and came back to base.  One of the machlekahs went to Ein Gedi for guard duty while mine and another stayed on base for guard duty and kitchen work all of Shabbat.  It was really not the quiet, relaxing Saturday that I desperately needed and wanted.  Instead, kitchen work means long days on your feet and guard duty means odd shift hours and an irregular sleeping schedule.  We were on this rotation until Tuesday.  It was a tough last twenty-four hours for me.  Sometime on Monday, word got around that we were going to close another twenty-one starting the following week.  In addition, I had been getting fed up with how completely crappy the jobniks who work in the kitchen as their military service treat us.  We work all week in the field or on base, sweating, bleeding and not sleeping, and then we come to work in the kitchen and these guys expect us to worship the ground they walk on.  Most of them are there because they were injured early on in their kravi service and their just finishing out their three year service in the kitchen.  They probably hate their lives, even though they get a week on and week off rotation.  Sometimes I feel bad for them, but when they yell at us to work and then they go play on their iPhones for hours, I don't care for them.

Two weeks down.

Tuesday evening was the beginning of Citah Mitkadem, Advanced Squad training in the field.  Supposedly it is one of the hardest weeks of training.  To make it a little easier, that afternoon, the entire plugah gathered for a brief ceremony where we broke distance with all of our commanders and officers.  Finally, the mental relief that I wrote about last time was here.  The first two weeks we were still in Tironut (Basic Training).  Now, with calling everyone by their first name and other informalities, the mental stress relaxes, only to be replaced by more physical difficulties.

The beginning of the field featured a short masa (hike): 5+5 (five walking, then five more carrying a stretcher).  And we did it with 35-40% of our body weight on our backs.  We were weighed earlier in the day and then added our equipment for a final count.  I weigh 87kg, and then added the heavy water bag and weighed 118kg.  Never before have I ever weighed 87kg/191lbs.  I've only ever reached about 185, and that's after lifting a lot of weights.  It's my legs, they're getting stronger from all the walking.

And this masa proved that.  It was hard, surprisingly so, despite it's relatively short distance.  At the end of it, we were expecting a 'layla lavan' (white night), where you stay up all night.  Instead, thankfully, they let us go to sleep.  But it's not fun having your uniform soaking wet and trying to sleep outside.  In fact, one of the most difficult things about the shetach is that you sweat so much during the day that when night falls, you start to freeze at night.  And we had received new combat vests the week before, and they cover the entire chest and stomach, which makes breathing and ventilation a little more difficult.

Infantry pin
received after Masa Sammal

Anyway, this was a week (or really a day and a half, which was enough) where my Mefaked didn't even know what the schedule was.  We would receive our orders through the radio and carry them out.  Food would be dropped off at different locations and we had to hike there to get it.  And by hike, I mean carry someone on the stretcher up and down hills, with the weight on our backs, not knowing exactly where we were going, and sometimes our Mefaked also not knowing.

Similar to Citah Week, we also did exercises battling up hills against cardboard enemy targets.  Before one of these exercises at night, one of the guys in my citah got sick and had to leave.  It was a little scary because we had been warned and heard about guys in other units getting heatstroke.  We were sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day as a precaution.  My friend was evacuated by jeep, but we carried on until the next day.  The second morning we woke up and immediately put our packs on our bag, put a heavy guy on the stretcher and followed off after our Mefaked....for over an hour and fifteen minutes, about four kilometers.  It was one of the hardest things I ever did.  There were about six or seven of us carrying the stretcher the entire time.  A lot of time carrying and not much switching.

But then the hike finally, mercifully, ended and we boarded a bus that picked us up to bring us back to base.  The end of the week--the three weeks.  We had a short run that evening and went to bed early.

The other week, the August draftees came to base.  A lot of the Israelis were really stoked that they we are the big guys on campus and not complete novices anymore.  That's definitely not true.  I was personally excited to see them because it showed how far we've come in just four months.  I think back to what we've accomplished, been through and what the new guys will have to endure.  It's just another time marker.  In country for nine months; in the IDF for seven and a half months.

Done with the twenty-one.

On Sunday, we train with helicopters!

All now permanent fixtures
on the uniform, with Shimon

Israel Defense Force's Tironut/Basic Training? Check

Demonstrating the MAG

I am done with basic training in the IDF!  Wow that feels great to say.  I have a full week ahead of me of relaxation, called 'regilah', a break soldiers are supposed to get about once every four months.  This is my first one since December.  December!  Seven months!  It is much needed, especially after the last two weeks of training, which turned out to be anything but a cakewalk.

The first of my last two weeks was another one in the 'shetach', in the field.  It's late June and the weather in the Judean desert has been heating up for weeks.  Israel maintains a heat index for the country; if it's too hot, soldiers (and people in general) are told not to be outdoors.  As will be explained, it makes for a very interesting training schedule.

We all knew that we had a week of field training ahead of us as we pulled into our base Sunday morning.  We just didn't know exactly when that week would begin.  The day was spent preparing our equipment and as night descended, it still did not look like we were to be leaving anytime soon.  We went on a few kilometer run around base, given an hour's break and sent to bed.  Then, at three thirty in the morning, we were woken up, ordered into our uniforms, grab all our gear and load a bus to take us into the shetach.  Our week had begun.

This week was called חוליה 'huliah' week.  It built on our previous shetach week; last time we learned to operate in two-man units, now we learned to operate as part of a four-man unit.  And these units of four in the larger citah (squad) are going to be our permanent units for the rest of training and operational status.  Each unit has a commander and then one or two specialty weapons, such as a sharpshooter, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, Negev or MAG.  As the MAGist of the machlekah (platoon), I am the specialist in my huliah.

So what do we do throughout the day?  Well, the 'day' has become a rather interesting concept.  I don't know exactly where to begin to describe a typical shetach day, but bear with me.  We wake up at four in the morning after sleeping in or on a sleeping bag for two hours.  If we need to move camps, we pack up our gear and walk the few kilometers to the next platoon's encampment, and they also rotate camps.  The morning is spent preparing the assigned hill for the 'targilim' (practices) for that day.  Since that only requires a few individuals and the officer, everyone else does 'yevishim.'  (See the video at the end of this post.)  These are 'dry' drills where our commanders yell the distance of the enemy and we jump into the proper firing position.  Then they shout that we have a problem with our magazine, gun, bullet, something.  We crawl.  We roll.  We don't stop.  And with the MAG, it's just all the more hard because of the weight of the weapon.  Yes, I had the MAG with me the entire week, although I never fired it once.

Once finished setting up our training course on the hill, the officer explained the drills and safety measures, then the rest of the morning was spent rotating huliahs into the 'retuv' or 'wet' area, meaning live rounds are used in our work to capture the hill as a four-man unit.  It's fun to begin to imagine what it's like to operate as a team with a common goal and purpose in mind.  It's exciting to feel a part of this military, knowing that it is comprised of your friends with faces and personalities and lives, not anonymous and distant individuals that you may hear about on the news back home.

It takes most of the morning for all of the huliahs to get their training in on the hill and we eat lunch from our field rations and then are sent to bed.  Yes, you did read that correctly.  Around one or two in the afternoon, the platoon gathers underneath a large tarp that provides (some) shade and we sleep for about six or seven hours.  In reality, it's never that long.  There always has to be two people awake to guard us while we sleep, which we rotate every twenty minutes, and you're sleeping on a thin mat on rocks and hard ground, and the sun shines brightly through the tarp, and the heat, and the flies....not a lot of fun.  But there is certainly a difference between one o'clock heat and seven o'clock heat.  You go to sleep sweltering and wake up somewhat cool.

Then the sun begins to set around seven thirty or eight and we do the 'rituv' drills again but at night.  This goes until two in the morning and we sleep (or nap) until four and do it all over again.

By Wednesday, we knew that the week was ending and that it was likely we were to have a masa (hike) that evening.  The other gduds (battalions) in Tzanchanim had completed their masa Sammal, the Sergeant's masa.  It is supposed to be one of the hardest masas because, as I've heard, the Sammals will kill themselves just to kill us.  They're in charge of discipline and their masa will reflect that.  Of course, a lot depends on the Sammal himself, if he's in shape, has the endurance, the will, etc., to put us through punishment and hell.

It quickly became no big secret that we were to have our masa Sammal from the shetach that Wednesday evening.  This was our first time going on a masa straight from the shetach as opposed to from base; it just provided an extra element to deal with.  All of the machlekahs gathered in the central encampment as, amazingly, we had a decent dinner brought in from base.  I didn't know if I was to bring my MAG along for this masa, and thankfully was eventually told to leave it aside and just carry my M-16.

We started the masa well after midnight.  As the third machlekah, we were last in line to begin.  Ahead of us, I could hear gun shots and the thunder of boots and shouts as the others began.  I looked at my friends in line and smiled, excited with the anticipation.  Eventually, only we were left.  Our Sammal appeared at the head of our two lines and spoke a few words that were difficult for me to discern.  But I caught the gist: no one stops.  Then he quickly turned, loaded his rifle, and took off at a dead sprint, firing shots into the air.  We didn't hesitate: we all let out our own "Rebel yell" and ran after him.

It was a tough masa.  Every so often, the Sammal would sprint for a hundred meters and we would all have to keep pace.  It was pitch black outside and earlier in the week I had lost my contacts, so I was wearing glasses, which kept fogging up.  After about fifty minutes, we had a ten minute break.  Six kilometers down.  A fellow lone soldier who was carrying one of the three water packs for the machlekah was having difficulty with it and I took it off his shoulders.  Add about fifteen kilograms of weight.  A plus, however, for me to have the water is that now I am at the head of the column.  I have long legs and am generally able to keep up with the Sammal, the Mem Mem, or whomever is leading the masa.  I don't have to run every few feet, which is a terrible drain.  As our break ended, we reformed our lines, and again the Sammal let out a yell, fired and ran.  And I ran with him, for the entire hundred or so meters.  I looked behind me and there was no one around us.  He eventually stopped running and told me to stop yelling.

The terrain was tough, with the dirt and gravel road winding up and down, potholes and tire tracks pockmarking the path the entire way.  I had a friend behind me the entire time who would help push me every time we ran if I slowed down at all or failed to keep pace.  People were tripping and falling.  And one time I did too.  I went down with a bang and struggled to get back on my feet because of the weight of the water.  My knee hurt a lot but there was no stopping.  We kept going.  After another kilometer or two, the Sammal got on his stomach and started to crawl.  It wasn't for long, only about twenty meters.  I think I did a quarter of the distance.  The weight of the water shifted terribly every time I moved one side of my body.  By time I got going, the Sammal was back on his feet and sprinting.  I needed to get back to the front of the line.

We had another rest after an hour.  We opened the three stretchers and put sandbags on them.  I tried to check my knee but didn't feel anything.  The water was starting to break my back, but there were only about three kilometers left, I couldn't give it up now!  The base, the end of the masa, and the end of the shetach week were all in sight!  Just a little more effort and we would be done.

And the the last few kilometers was a piece of cake.  The Sammal still ran every time he heard people talking in the column, and we went up steep hills and down steeper ones.  But we sprinted the last couple hundred meters in the base to our quarters.  It wasn't punishment sprinting; it was an adrenaline-filled energized run to the finish of a tough week and the completion of another landmark.  It was 3:30 in the morning.  13+3: thirteen kilometers plus three with the stretchers.

We stretched and were awarded our infantry corps pins, another piece of hardware to denote your time in service.  I finally inspected my knee and saw that my pants were torn and there was blood on them and running down my leg.  After showering, I went to see the company medic and he said I would probably need stitches but would have to wait to speak to the doctor.  Went to bed at 4:30 am.

Conveniently, the doctor the next day said that I probably did need stitches (note the past tense) but since it was six hours after cutting myself, it was too late for sutures.  Instead, she just bandaged the gaping hole on my knee.  It still didn't change the fact that no less than a few layers of skin were missing.  With it, I received bettim, medical leave from physical activity.  I needed it; I couldn't bend my knee and putting pressure from standing for a while made my leg ache and my cut burn.

The next day was Friday, and Shabbat in the evening.  We closed and then started the new week.  This was to be our last week in basic training, and spent doing more work in the kitchen, guard duty, and other cleaning work around the base.  To be honest, all I can remember from this week are two things: my Yom Siddurim and the Mem Mem masa.

On July 4th I got a Yom Siddurim, a day to take care of personal items.  Lone soldier are entitled to one a month and they offered to give it to me on the 4th, which I was willing to take.  I went back to my kibbutz to put contacts back in, returned to Tel Aviv and pick up my mom's Blackberry that finally arrived, and talked with my family for a few hours on the phone.  Had a beer in the evening on the beach and went to bed.

I returned to base at noon, barely had enough time to grab a small bite to eat from the cafeteria, and went to my plugah.  We organized all our equipment in preparation for advanced training.  We had a quick dinner around six thirty and prepared for our masa.  This time I would be with the MAG.

Before each masa, the medic checks every soldier for his pulse and asks how he's feeling.  After inspecting my knee, he told me I was not to do the masa.  The scabbing had just started, which kept a lot of the wound exposed, and my swelling had not gone done.  I pressed him that I was prepared to go with everyone and do it.  At my insistence, he inclined.

I'm not gonna lie: this was by far the hardest masa.  I replaced a 3.5kg weapon with a 10.85kg one.  But it's not just the weight itself that makes the MAG difficult.  The Negev is a light machine gun that weighs  about seven and a half kilograms, but its much more compact, about the same length as the M16.  The MAG, by comparison, is 1.2 meters in length, and the weight is not distributed evenly.  Thus, it is cumbersome and difficult to carry.

The first six kilometers was...ROUGH.  I honestly thought that I might not make it the entire masa, which was to be a total of twenty-one kilometers, the last three with stretchers.  We had fifteen kilometers to go and I was already sweating like a pig, my arms ached and my back was tired.  I couldn't keep pace with the Mem Mem even though I was at the head of the column.  I had to run every few feet.  I had been holding the gun against my chest, resting it on the top of my magazine clips.  While it takes the strain off my back temporarily, it was not working for the masa.  At the break, a commander helped me tie the legs down so they wouldn't flop around.  Then I decided to just let the gun hang and try to let the strap hang around my shoulders.  That, and as we started walking, I began to sing songs to myself.  And boy did it help the time pass.  Without even concentrating I was able to keep up, thanks to "American Pie", "Kol Ha'olam kulo", Shinedown, and other songs and artists.

The rest of the masa was certainly hard, but not as difficult as it at first seemed.  I survived the next few hours and dozen plus kilometers.  The last six were the hardest.  My feet started to hurt.  My legs got tired.  We had stretchers and not everyone helped out carrying them.  It was rough.  But we eventually finished and the we assembled behind the plugah building, still holding the stretchers at our shoulders.  The Mem Mem called me to the front to do the honors of ending the masa.  I stood before everyone, held my MAG above my head, and shouted, "Machlekah shalosh! Alei! Alei! Alei!" At each shout, the group raised the stretchers above their heads in a last effort of adrenaline.  The masa was over.

Lone soldiers after the Mem Mem masa.
Our shirts were at one point the same color as our pants.

We had a nice barbecue for the end of basic training ready for us at the end of the masa.  It was after midnight.  The masa took four hours.  We were tired, hungry, sweaty and now cold.  Still, we had a great meal and awards were given for the best soldiers in the machlekahs and the plugah.  Finally, an hour break and went to bed around two.

Woke up at five to work in the kitchen for the day.  Long day.  We worked half the next day in the kitchen as well.  That evening, Thursday, we had a fitness test of pushups, situps and a two kilometer run.  I banged out the maximum pushups and situps (75 and 86, respectively) and ran 8:13.  My knee was really bothering me from the masa, still recovering.  This was actually the second fitness exercise that we need to pass basic training.  The other is called the "bulkan maslul", an obstacle course.  It combines a 600 meter run, obstacle course, then another 500 meter run.  A total of 2k, but the course includes climbing over a wall, tire runs, climbing a rope, crawling, and negotiating other obstacles.  I did it all in 8:30, the second best time in the machlekah.  Most people had to do it one or two more times to pass.

Thursday night, to end basic training, was our "misdar" Mem Pay.   The entire day was spent organizing our equipment on our beds in preparation for an inspection by the company commander.  That evening, he spent a good twenty minutes questioning random soldiers in my squad about the different specialty weapons, had me answer about the MAG, and explained why this is this way and that is that way.  Overall, it was an official inspection, and so another very military-esque thing, which is fun and exciting.

The week ended, I'm at my kibbutz but planning on returning to Tel Aviv for the week to be with friends.  I had planned on going to Eilat, but doesn't look like that is going to happen.  We'll see.  There are some people I want to meet up with in Jerusalem.  Pretty much going to take advantage of the time off to relax, relax, and relax.

(This video is on YouTube.  At 2:10 is a clip of the MAGists practicing 'yevishim' drills, I'm at the end on the right.  Then I have a cameo at 3:07 and 3:14.  Most of it is pictures of 'pakal' week, when we learned our new weapons.  Towards the end are pictures of the 'bulkan maslul.')

How & Why

One year.  Really, at this point, I have fifty-one weeks left in my IDF service.  At times, it doesn't seem like a lot.  But then again, I've only done six months and have a lot more training and difficult experiences ahead.  What makes it also seem long is the fact that because six months/one year is a benchmark, it stays in my head and my friends and I talk about it more, which makes time go slower.  It's a terrible cycle.

Every country has its place it would like to hide from the world; a location it is either ashamed of or has recognized that location as the pit of all evil.  Chicago has 333 West 35th Street (US Cellular Field), the US has....New Jersey (?), the world has Afghanistan, Iran, Joseph Conrad thought the Congo, others?  And Israel has Machanah Natan, a place in Beer Sheva where the units that train in the south gather on Sundays before buses transport us to our respective bases.  In the holiest land, it is the unholiest place.  Nobody likes being there.  Sundays have become very hard; battling to wake up and find the will to put on your uniform to start a long week or two or three; impossible to find a seat on the train to Beer Sheva.  It's amazing: there are so many people (mainly soldiers) on that train, yet it is the quietest ride the entire week.

All of these things make Sunday mornings very difficult.  On the bus ride from Machanah Natan to my base, I sat next to my friend Adam, a lone soldier from New Jersey.  He's in 202 with me but in a different machlekah (platoon).  We've become very close as the two lone soldiers who speak the least amount of Hebrew and consequently are equally lost and utterly confused at times.

We sat next to each other on the bus ride from Machanah Natan to our base.  Our conversations of late have revolved a lot around the passage of time and how much we have left in our service.  The thirty minute ride got me pretty depressed as we talked about our hard week ahead, wanting to see home and family and friends, thinking about when we're going to take our month off, frustrated with the continued pettiness of the things we do in tironut, and everything else at once.  It was one of those times, even sitting comfortably on an air-conditioned bus, that I needed a little pick-me-up and remember why I'm here.

That week was "pakal" week.  A pakal is the soldier's assignment or specialty.  To this point, we've all trained with our M16s, but in combat, not everyone has the same role or responsibility.  For example, each citah (squad) needs to have unit commanders, sharpshooters, grenade launchers, light machine gun, anti-tank rockets, medic, communication, etc.  What assignment did I get?  מא''ג the MAG, a machine gun with some serious kick-ass power.

Developed by FN, a Belgian company, in the 1950s, it came to Israel in the 1970s and in 1994 Israel started to produce it's own design of the machine gun.  Each citah used to have a MAG, but in 1996, the Negev, a light machine gun, replaced it and now there is one MAG per machlekah.  Two people are assigned to the gun; the guy who shoots it and his partner who carries extra equipment, including a stand.

And this gun, for a mobile weapon, is powerful.  (A soldier on my kibbutz works on a tank and he says he fires this gun mounted on the tank.  I carry it around.)  It weighs 10.85kg and shoots a 7.62mm caliber bullet (compared to the 5.56mm of the M16 and the Negev).  In theory, it can rattle off between 600-1100 bullets/minute, but in reality you only shoot 60-120 bullets/minute.  In the prone position, I can accurately kill up to 600 meters away and hit a truck 800 meters away.  With the stand, the distances lengthen to 800 and 1200 meters, respectively.  And this gun has one firing setting: automatic.  Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm (toasty).  The first time I pulled back on the trigger, I was completely amazed by how relatively smooth the gun fires.  I expected a lot of recoil and to struggle to keep the barrel pointed at the target.  Instead, even shooting in bursts of three or four, with a little strength, it was pretty easy to shoot within a half meter of the target, even at distances of 100, 200 or 300 meters.  Of course, if you lost concentration, it was not uncommon for every few bursts to find a stray bullet or two land wildly past the target.  Some guys weren't strong enough to keep the gun steady and numerous rounds would hit halfway up the hill at the end of the range.  So long as you have your partner telling you to keep your barrel down or angle it up, you hold it steady, and shoot in bursts, then you have a powerful weapon in your hands.  As my friend in Golani wrote on his blog, "shooting a MAG is like nothing else: the sound, the power...this weapon  DESTROYS things.  DESTROYS.  People, tanks, hummers, puppies, rainbows, even God himself wouldn't $%#@ with a Magist."  Thanks Mike, I couldn't say it better myself.


So what did we do all week?  Carry weight and shoot.  Carried lots of weight and shot a lot.  The Magist has to be the guy in the machlekah that provides covering fire and destroys an area for the rest of the platoon to enter.  He carries a lot of bullets, there's two soldiers per gun, and the weapon itself is heavy.  So, to break us into this gun, the Mefaked (commander) who was in charge of the Magists all week had us carrying targets, equipment, bullets, everything to and from the shooting range, a distance of at least a kilometer and a half.  Monday was one of the hardest days of my life.  The night before, we were in class learning everything about the gun.  Monday was our first day actually using the weapon.  We sprinted with it, crawled with it, jumped over walls, held it over our heads, practiced the different firing positions, and more.  It was tough.

After that first day, I honestly thought it was going to be the longest week of my life.  Especially after Sunday, my mental fortitude wasn't so strong.  But the next few days weren't as bad.  There were certainly hard moments; like Tuesday evening when it took us two hours to clean up the shooting range and haul everything back to storage.  It would've been so simple to have a truck help us out, but no, we're Magists, we need to carry the weight.  It was, in short, a hellish time.

But there were definitely cool moments.  Shooting the gun is awesome.  Also, we had night firing exercises where the shooter wouldn't be able to see anything (because, obviously, it's dark out) but his partner had night vision goggles on and would turn on the laser attached to the gun to see the target downfield, then tell him to fire.  With the gun on the stand, it was easy to keep it steady.  The belt had about fifteen bullets, firing in bursts of two or three, with maybe one bullet reversed to create a problem that needs to be fixed.  The guy with the night vision could see the bullets hitting the target, the shooter would just see sparks fly 300 meters away.  Pretty awesome.

The whole week, we were looking forward (with dread, apprehension, excitement, a mix?) to the 300 meter crawl.  It's something the Magists and Negevists have to do.  Crawl 300 meters with their weapon.  Why?  Why not.  Seventeen minutes and thirty seconds later I was done.  How do you crawl with a nearly twenty-five pound weapon, who's bipod legs always get stuck on rocks or foliage?  You grab it by the barrel and throw it as far as you can (maybe ten feet) then crawl to it.  Fun.  My time almost beat the base's record of seventeen minutes.  But there were two other guys who were faster than me.  No big deal.

The best part of the week came right before the crawl.  The eight of us came out to the fifty meter line and were handed a belt of about fifty or sixty rounds.  The instructions?  "Don't let go of the trigger."  We didn't have enough working MAGs left so we shot in two rounds.  I was the last guy to shoot.  The MemMem (platoon commander) in charge of us waited until I had loaded the belt into the gun and stood up.  "MAG mayuchan!" (MAG ready)  "MAG mayuchan!" I shouted responsively.  "Aish!" (Fire)  I lined up the barrel with the 100 meter targets, steadied my arms, and "Aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssshhhhhh!"  Within ten seconds, the bullets had completely emptied out. I tore up that target, Rambo style.

At the end of the week, I was told that in the competition between me and three other guys in my machlekah, I was chosen to carry the MAG.  It's an honor of sorts.  It's a very important weapon, but also very difficult because of the weight that I'll be carrying on weeks in the field, masas (hikes) of thirty, forty, fifty kilometers, and it already puts stress and pressure on my back.  I'll either come out of this very strong or strong and a little injured.

I had requested a Yom Siddurim for that Thursday and got it.  I left in the morning, went to Tel Aviv to take care of some personal issues, get away from the rough week, and re-energize a bit before going back to close Shabbat.

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"Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it." -George Santayana

Isn't that a haunting quote?  It makes you realize how easy it is, as an individual and as a people, to become trapped in an endless cycle.  If you don't learn your history, you will take the same steps as before and stunt, if not completely nullify, any chance of progress.  Then what's the point?  Why is capitalism better than communism?  Because it creates the conditions for human progress.  Why is the United States, Israel and a few other Western, capitalistic, democratically-inclined countries better than every other nation?  Because they create the best environment for individual and social progress.

The IDF takes this idea to heart and has each soldier learn about Israel's history during tironut (basic training).  I've written before about visiting Ammunition Hill, the City of David, and retracing the retaking of Jerusalem during the Six Day War.  While at Mikveh, we went to Yad Vashem, Har Herzl and Gush Etzion.  This past week was another time for cultural education and understanding.  And it was a great week.  We left base Sunday morning and drove to a place just outside Jerusalem, where we stayed until Thursday.  We were dressed in our Aleph uniforms all week.  We learned in classes.  We had an hour of exercise each day.  Compared to the previous week, it was glorious.

So what did we discuss and learn?  A variety of topics about Israel's culture, social identity, and history.  What does it mean to be Israeli?  (I used to think that it'll take a long time for me to feel like an Israeli and really have a strong connection [aside from my Jewish identity] to the State of Israel.  Then this week I just wizened up and thought: I pledged to put myself in danger to protect this country.  How can I feel nothing but the strongest connection?)  How does Israel reconcile its Jewish identity with being a democratic state?  What is the Israeli narrative?

We also discussed ethics in combat.  We watched videos, some based on truth, some fabricated, on what would you do in different situations.  How would you respond?  A lot of this has to do with human rights.  The word for respect in Hebrew is כבוד kavod.  Our MemMem actually taught us that kavod has three different meanings in English: respect, honor and dignity.  I thought that that was really interesting, how he would use English to help explain the idea of human rights in Hebrew.  An intensive discussion followed this, as was the case most of the week, and, with the debates, I quickly became lost.  My Hebrew is improving, but certainly not enough to keep up with a bunch of energized, shouting Israelis.  As the "resident university grad" with a degree in history and political science, the commanders often asked me to expound on things they would say about the history of Israel or the Arab states.  This was in part to keep me involved in what was going on and also for more background information.  It was nice that my degree is recognized but also extremely frustrating that I can't explain things as well in Hebrew.  One day, we started off with what the word "democracy" means.  A commander who was helping translate for me told me to speak up because I studied this.  True, while I can give everyone hours long lesson on what democracy is, I was completely hopeless in this setting.  Frustrating.

Then on Thursday we visited Kastel, an area outside Jerusalem that has a storied history with battles from before the War of Independence, Yad Vashem and Har Hertzl.  We were let go in the late afternoon for a chamshush (Yom Chamishi [Thursday] and Yom Shishi [Friday]), which is always great.  I went to the central bus station in Jerusalem to take a bus back to Tel Aviv, but was unable to because there was a suspicious package on the top level by the buses and everyone was evacuated.  While it turned out to be harmless, it's just another example of the reality of living here.  Last night, a soldier in my unit invited me to have dinner with him and his family.  It was really nice and I had a great meal with an Israeli family.  Went to the beach yesterday and today.  David, Amy and the kids left for a two month vacation in Europe and America so I will finally be without any family connections here.

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Despite the difficulty of each week, I always look forward to that train ride back home, but not for the same reasons from when I was at Mikveh Alon.  Instead, I look forward to looking clean and awesome in my Aleph uniform with my gun hanging over my shoulder, but feeling beat up, cut up and bruised.  A great sense of accomplishment comes over me as I play back through my head all that I had done that week.  My hands are different than what they looked like even three months ago.  I have several semi-permanent cuts and scars on them; they're calloused and sun-burnt.  Pain and discomfort is temporary.  A sense of pride and accomplishment is forever.