Species of Summer

5. gefen

5. gefen

Amir officially began his army service this week. He's been texting home all week, complaining about the conditions. Apparently, he's sleeping in a tent with a bunch of weird guys who don't know how to shut up. Ofri said (and Jack translated for me) that he's also suffering separation anxiety from Gal, who still has two weeks of freedom. Because Amir isn't an absolute idiot, a genius, or crippled in any way, he's in the combat regiment—haregalim. As Zohar explained, this means that he's being trained for about eighteen months how to fight and do all the scary stuff you think about when you think of soldiers. When he left, he said he was fine, but that's just Amir. I don't think he really wanted to leave his friends or his family or his house or his moshav or his routine partying. But it's the army, so it was nonnegotiable.

During a dinner after Amir left, we had a conversation about the army, because Jack and Ofri thought it was important for me to know about it. They explained that going into the army isn't like a draft—it's not random. Everyone does it in Israel, because that's the culture, and without mandatory army service (two years for girls; three for boys), there's a really good chance that Israel wouldn't exist. There are a lot of countries and organizations out there that really don't like Israel, so the Israeli army—the IDF—is left to defend Israel, in order to preserve its existence. IDF stands for Israeli Defense Forces. They don't attack, Ofri explicitly stated, but rather defend.

After high school, everyone goes into the army, save for a lot of the ultra-orthodox, Arab-Israelis, and a few other exceptions that I can't remember right now. The ultra-orthodox don't go into the army because something about fighting and they have to study or something, because if they don't, who will? Ofri kind of glazed over that, because as Zohar told me in an aside, she's not their biggest fan. But most Arab-Israelis don't go into the army because of a dual loyalty thing and you can't really force people to fight for a country they don't want to exist. And then there are other loopholes for getting out of the army, if you really, really want.

These Israeli kids go into the army at eighteen. They spend two or three (or longer, depending on their commitment) years there, and then they go to college, having served their country. I think that's amazing. I can't even begin to consider college, and they're already game for going into the army. But I have the luxury to blow off thinking about college as long as I want. I can even take a gap year, if it gets that bad. These kids can't do that. They have to defend their country, doing things ranging from physical combat to just helping out in urban schools with troubled kids, like Zohar wants to do. It's kind of crazy, but at least it's meaningful.

When Zohar and I got back from Jerusalem, Amir had already left. He'd be back on the weekend, and he didn't want saying goodbye to be made into a big deal thing. So he just left. Nana and Shaked have been doing it since the day they started their service, so Amir just continued that tradition. They leave for the week and they come back. It's life and it moves on.

To further my education of the IDF, Zohar, her friends, and I took a trip to Sderot this week. They didn't tell me anything about where we were going until we got there. It's a small city north of the Negev, thriving and growing, despite being in such close proximity to Gaza. I don't really understand the Gaza conflict. I know that there are people living in Gaza—Gazans—and that they have pretty bad conditions. I also know that Israel used to have settlements in Gaza, but they disengaged because it was too dangerous for the soldiers protecting those settlements. And now Hamas is in charge of Gaza. They're the ones who send rockets to Sderot and Israel (not the Gazans). They don't want Israel to exist, so they act as aggressors, sending missiles and shiz all over Israel.

What I saw in Sderot was this: there was a lot of construction, bomb shelters, and life. We went to a playground that doubled as a bomb shelter, so that if a siren sounded, signifying a rocket or a missile (a teal), the kids could be safe and keep playing. Zohar's friend Reut told me that even with the safety precaution, the kids still experienced extreme trauma, something that they would have to deal with for the rest of their lives. It was a heavy day. But Zohar wanted to show me, and Ofri and Jack said that they were glad she did.