My experience this week with the army got me thinking more broadly about the model which now shapes the Israel Defence Force. I don’t have much hard evidence of my opinions, only a little firsthand experience.
The position I thought I had, mentioned in previous post, within the education core has somehow fallen through the tracks of communication within the army’s chain of command. My name had be lost off the placement officers’ lists and I was one “yes sir” away from being placed working daily shifts from 8am-5pm in a warehouse on a base 3 hours from my house.
This wasn’t a blow to my ego, a friend of mine which a Masters in Mathematics and an undergraduate in computer engineering had been placed there as well. I knew that it wasn’t a reflection of what the army though about me - that the task of doing stock take on toilet paper rolls and paint tins was all I could amount to within the army.
This didn’t cross my mind.
Refusing to take the position, I was seated in front of a commanders office and told to wait. A sentence which ended up being for 5 days, from 8-5pm.
Throughout the week I took it upon myself to shorten those hours, so that by the last day I was only there from 11 till 1:30pm with a solid two hour lunch break in the middle.
I used my time to read my book, speak to friends on Skype and I would give myself top secret missions each day; to find the cable TV, the cafeteria with the best food, and to find the army base café.
Outside of army time I also managed to fill my evenings with activities to excite the mind and ignite the soul. African Dance is my new hobby, the class is simply electric, and the next day muscles I didn’t even know I had ache.
I also went to a cool gig in a hippy commune in down town Jerusalem, a band of 6 phenomenal musicians were playing Ladino tunes from Bulgaria, Libya, Greece and Turkey.
Finally on day 5 of the waiting I received my transfer documents to a base a short bus ride from my house. On Sunday I start the process again.
It wasn’t the waiting which upset me to the core. It was the defeatist attitude of the office workers there. This base I was waiting on is the size of a small city, run by people 19.5 years old (by my estimate average), and every person I spoke to just answered “that’s the way the army is, you can’t change it”.
I started thinking to myself, when did the army which was founded by a Youth Movement mentality start to extinguish the power of youth?
There was a time in this country’s history where the youth volunteered to serve, and did not consider it revolutionary, simply a “conservation of the fruits of the revolution of their parents’ generation.”1
The amount of social loafing and disenchantment in the very fabric of the army amongst the youth who represent the army is sad. I don’t think this is coming from a place of doubt in the morality of the army or a disagreement with its actions. I think it grows out of the soil of disempowerment of youth from the ‘contracted soldiers’ who are hired by the army after their compulsory service.
For an 18 year old, 3 years (the required service for men) or even 2 years (the service for women), is an eternity! Even for me as a 24 year old 3 years seems like 12 lifetimes away. What you could do, see and experience in that time!
Perhaps, and I hope, it is just in the category of the army I am experiencing. That is, the paper pushing departments. I’d like to think that the soldiers who are given leadership training and responsibility feel a sense of achievement, self-importance and most of all the knowledge that things can change, because the youth are still the foundations of this army.
1. Adler 1963, p12. In Roots of Civic Identity: International Perspectives of Community Service and Activism in Youth. Edited by M. Yates, J. Youniss. 1999. Pg 209-11.
