Entry tags:

israel, liveblogging the war, opinions

A Wierd Israeli Jew in the army
Hullo there, I'm currently serving as a reserve soldier at the HQ in Tel-Aviv, it's a very tense time for me and I've been venting quite a lot lately.
I wrote couple of posts about what's going on in Israel which I thought I'd share here;

The Situation, Social Justice and the Human Condition

The Situation, Social Justice and the Human Condition

Being back in the army has strengthen my personal ideologies in such a way, that I believe we are need of a radical reform in almost every aspect of life; how and when that will come about I don't know, I'm still thinking about that and discussing it with people who don't really agree with me, so that I can learn the flaws and strengths in my arguments (the one benefit of serving again is meeting and working with men, religious among them, who take what you say seriously and are very engaging conversationalists).

More than ever am I a Feminist - I can see again why the Army is important and how integral it is to our national identity, and also how it imbues everyone with Nationalism, making it "us vs. them" which a more destructive ideology cannot be found. The Army also shows, in an extreme way, exactly how our country is constructed and how everyone is still arbitrarily categorized through gender and race, just as an example, where I am currently serving there is approx. the same amount of women as there are non-Ashkenazi men. Yeah, "White is right" my peachy, Ashkenazi ass!

More than ever am I a Humanist - the Israeli Defence Force... not really; in times of war we can't afford to be, we tell civilians about the bombings coming in, but they are held hostage by Hezbollah, who holds all of Lebanon hostage for Iranian influence. Not to mention that Syria is still aching to get their hands back in Lebanon, which they see as another piece of the Middle-Eastern Pie as far as they are concerned.
And through Hezbollah, we also get Hamas, which is sending it's citizens into Israel to kill themselves in order to murder Israelis.

These are not good people in the upper crust of those governments.

More than ever my government is one of the worst; where are our Representatives going on public broadcast telling the civilians that the war effort is going well? Where is our Prime Minister telling us that the army is doing the best job it can defending the home land? Where are the bittersweet lies people want to hear that their children on the front line are doing what is needed?
Where is the sympathy towards the 500,000 Lebanese refugees in southern Lebanon? Where is the UN to help the Lebanese government regain sovereignty over it's entire land? Where is the impartial media to tell both sides of what the fuck is going on?
This is the real world, and those things are lacking, much like an news about what's going on in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is still killing Palestinians and Gilad Shalit is still captured?

This war has also put on hold every other social issues in this country - just because we are at war does not mean we are not still living our lives, hundreds of senior citizens are being displaces, far too many children do not have the support Social Services is supposed to provide for them, still women are smuggled (even more easily now, since no one cares about anything other than bombing Lebanon and watching the news to see if their house was bombed) into Israel in the "white slavery" market economy.
Where police should be investigating rapes and murders they are guarding against "enemy incursions".
We have a Defense Minister for the war, a Foreign Minister for dealing with all the other people outside of Israel talking to us and a UN Ambassador who is actually doing some hard talking for Israel. I don't know what his politics are, but I have a feeling that once his tenure as Ambassador is over he'll be coming back and running for a pretty high government office, and since in Israel one very rarely votes for a party, but for the person heading the party their politics are not that important (sad, but true).

And so, not only is Israel condemned by the media, it is condemning itself into social disaster, It has to start;
#1 giving people information that actually helps and doesn't bombard them (bad pun, sorry) with how many missiles have injured, killed and destroyed in their neighborhood.
#2 Going on with life, yes there's war, but not everyone is fighting and Israel has to continue to be a government to the back lines who are still trying to live the semblance of a normal life.
#3 Treating humans beings as human beings; we are not only harming Hezbollah outposts and offices, we are hurting innocent people, those people are not "fucking Arabs"! They are humans trying to survive with guerrilla extremists using them as cannon fodder and a government too weak to actually help them.
I will not be dehumanized, by dehumanizing the Hezbollah, or by dehumanizing the innocent Lebanese men, women and children who have to live in those conditions.

Do I even want to get into what this war is doing to the Animals living in the North and is Southern Lebanon?
*sigh*

Once agian, a few lines from a song;
Woodstock by Joni Mitchell
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everytime there was a song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotguns in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
We are golden
And we have to get ourselves
Back to the garden

No Good Title

No Good Title

Another two days and it's my day off.
It's hard to say anything after the mega-post I wrote on Saturday; it seemed to spread over LJ like a small fire.
In reality what is there to add? I guess now that my current politics are out in the open I'll start talking about my emotions.

I'm tired, so tired and I've barely been touched by all this. From talking to other people in my station, it started out feeling like a drill; a regular drill; the Army and specifically the Air Force (which is where I served and am currently serving), they like having lengthy drills that train people up for war - amazing how good they are, kind of scary too.
Thing is, I didn't go into this thinking it was a drill, I was very, acutely, aware that this was about human beings, people being shot at, dislocated from their homes and me being in a position of great responsibility.
After six shifts, most of them scarily intense, and having not broken down into tears makes me very proud of myself, since, if you ask anyone they will tell you I am a cry baby, I mean I was nicknamed "Water Works" by my family.
I haven't cried yet.
So while I'm proud of that, I'm also a bit worried, because that means I haven't vented any of the accumulating tension that I can feel building in my spine, shoulders and neck. This also means I'm not getting de-stressed in any significant way and I'm really afraid I'll break down in the middle of a shift.
Another thing is the dissonance between how I feel about the Situation and what I am doing in the Situation.

I hate the Situation (like everyone), do I think Israel's reaction was disproportionate? Yes. Do I feel it was unjustified? No, it very much was. Do I feel it was unnecessary? No, but it was necessary five years ago. I know it's no good dwelling on the past, but if Israel had insisted on the disarmament of Hezbollah when we left Lebanon, this whole Situation wouldn't have happened, or at least the International community would have gotten off their fat asses and done something then.
I realize I'm making the War seem less by calling it a "Situation", but it's a small defense mechanism I allow myself at this point in time.

I am very angry about the way Israel is shown to be the "bad guy" in the media, specifically when Israel warns Lebanese civilians that planes are on their ways, that Israel has said time and time again that we have no beef with Lebanon, and yet the world sees Israel attacking Lebanese civilians as though they are the targets. Do they not know how guerrilla operatives work? They use the local population as bases, strongholds and silos! The Lebanese have two choices, accept Hezbollah, or be murdered by them. Add to that that Israel is keen on getting as many Hezbollah operatives as possible; collateral damage is bound to accumulate, that is the nature of war! One cannot be without the other! I am not washing Israel clean of this, far from it, and I hope Israel at the end of this takes proper care of the displaces Lebanese refugees in Southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah has used and abused them for far longer and in a far more profound way than Israel ever could.

I am deeply ashamed that Israel commits these acts, but I am angry... I am enraged that Hezbollah (it's head Nassrallah) has the gall to kidnap two young boys (because that's what our soldiers are) and use his influence over Hamas for the other young kidnapped boy (who has been held hostage almost a month) in order to further his own hateful, Iranian agenda.
And as corrupt as the Israeli government can be, I cannot imagine any of them being as cold hearted, malicious, cruel and so base as to chepaen human life, as Nassrallah, may his guts be eaten by pestilent maggots!
What he and Hezbollah have done to Lebanon and Israel is far worse than the damage done in the past two weeks.

Okay, that was a political rant again, but in Israel, more than anywhere else, the political is so very personal and one cannot be without the other.
Yesterday, during a slight break in the action, I talked politics (what else) with one of the older miluimnikim who sits next to me at my station; I am quite vocal about how I feel about the Situation and he asked me: "If you are such a left winger (שמאלנית), how can you be so dedicated to what you are doing here (miluim)?"
I told him "There is the world I want to live in and the world I am currently residing in, I cannot in good conscience desert my country simply because I disagree with the way we are going. Having ideals and ideologies, doesn't mean I don't live in the real world and do what needs to be done. I need to do the best job I can in this station, doing any less would be selling myself and everyone in this room short, and that is unacceptable".