Bad Words

I guess the people have voted and you have to give the people what they want.

So I am still in the Defence Force serving one of my countries. My Hebrew speaking skills, and my be-a-barsterd-bureaucrat skills are improving immensely.

My only problem is still the slang, I can translate things in my head, but they make no sense in the context of things, so I just sit there and allow the floods gates of potty-talk take shape in my imagination.

NB: If your parents believe in censorship of bad-naughty words, or you have a weak heart, keep reading (I don’t give a shit).

So the other day this comrade of mine is telling us all about his weekend and how amazing it was, then he says “Achalti ochel BEN zonah” which literally means “I ate food son of a whore”.

SO I’m thinking, okay, so he ate the food of a son of a whore, but is happy about it, so maybe the son of a whore’s mother came out to give him the food and gave him a ‘plus 1’ for more tips.

Or maybe he ate the food of a son of a whore, who in the womb contracted one of her many STIs and then her son passed in on to my friend and now the disease is taking over his mind leaving him with that stupid smile stapled to his face. Syphilis can do that!

So I ask: “Why would you eat the food from a son of a whore”, people laugh.

Me: “no, seriously”…

FYI – eating the food of the son of a whore means it was a good thing. The term can also be used for video games: “That video game, son of a whore!”

Favourite tunes “that song was son of a whore”.

But not people “That guy is a son of a whore” is still an insult, but if he serves you food, or plays a song, it’s good!

By now I am a really confused son of whore!

Next this female comrade asks a fellow soldier to help her clean the office, he don’t take no orders from no woman. So she tells him, that she doesn’t care and can also “lizrok zayin al ha’Kol” – which to the literal reader means “I can also throw dick on everything”.

So I just get visually raped time and time again picturing this young girl throwing penises on everything she sees.

Where does she get these penises? Who is now walking around without their penis? Who is going to clean up these penis casualties and tell their parents that they fought bravely and died with dignity?

I later find out after another embarrassing question that it means to “throw your dick away” mean to “not give a damn”. With loose Socratic reasoning, it makes sense!

I also learnt a euphemism for homosexuals; it roughly translates to “a guy who runs backwards with his eyes closed in a field of corn.”

So colourful this holy tongue!

I am no longer worried about learning the language of the Hebrew Man, now it’s all about learning the language of the Hebrew Teen.

P.s. You can still vote on this post.

The Power of Youth

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.

A Very Basic Training

Before I started my compulsory service in the Israeli Defence Force I got a facebook message from a friend saying “be safe, and moral”.

Two things ran through my mind in reading this statement.

Firstly, that my friend thinks that the army is like a sausage factory, where things go in alive, whole, free thinking, and come out as phallic objects filled with filth, snout and entrails.

Secondly, that my friend has enough respect to think of me as moral prior to enlisting, but not enough faith in me to avoid influence of the ‘rape, pillage, and burn’ mentality they supposedly teach there.

It’s possible that she confused the Israeli Army with a band of drunken Vikings. It is also possible that I am blowing her well-wishes out of proportion.

This is not a political blog so I am not going to go into what I do and do not think about the army. Instead I want to share my experience.

I recently finished basic training ‘02’, the second most basic training of the army. The training is for soldiers who will not be anywhere near combat during their service.

We learnt a bit of self-defence, how to shoot, learnt a little history, first aid, how to put on gas masks in the event of chemical warfare from our friendly neighbours, and how to wait.

Waiting is a skill I think I mastered in the month basic training.

The number crunch of the month:

50 sit ups

70 push ups

45 bullets shot

5 km of running

15km of walking

5.7 hours of sleep/night

12 showers

350 shekels earnt

And 212 hours of standing

At the end of the service, you are offered three jobs; fixing the wheels on tanks, fixing radios used in the war with Vietnam, or driving a truck. What great opportunities for my comrades, some of which have two physics degrees, some wuth aeronautical engineering degrees, many spoke more than 3 languages fluently including Arabic, some had officer training in the Russian army. 

Your humble narrator was offered a job in the Education Core creating lessons aimed to strengthen the Jewish and Zionist identity of people in the army on the condition that he sign on another 6 months.

A short sob-story about being alone in the world and a sick dog got me out of signing more time. I am happy to be starting a job I am most probably passionate about and isn’t going to melt my mind anymore that basic training has.

As a reflection on the whole experience we say in the army “היה טוב, אבל טוב שהיה” “it was good, but it’s good that it was”. I made some great friends and the experience cleared up a lot of the concerns I had concerning the army.

The Army

I struggle through my final push up and complete my punishment, but I'm still laughing. My commander opened the floor for us to share headlines we had read in the paper that day, Wanting to lighten the mood from articles about iran's nuclear program advancing and rockets hitting the south of Israel from Gaza, I tell the group about Macey Gray regretting her trip here. The commander askes me to explain who she is so i enter into my best rendition of here one hit. ''I try to say goodbye and I choke, try to walk away but I stumble...'' the soldiers and the commander laugh and I get punished. No singing in the army.

So far the army has not been worth the anguish I was feeling before I drafted. It's oddly a lot like summer camps. The commanders are like the camp councilors and I'm once again a participant.

The people in my unit are aged between 23 and 30 and for all of us Hebrew is our second or third language. It's hillarious at times, because when we get an order to run somewhere, most of us either dont listen or dont understand, so we end up running off like a herd of confused wilderbeast.

We get less than 6 hours of sleep every night, but our productivity in the 18 hours we're awake is nowhere near what we could be achieving. In the 14 hours at the shooting range, only a quarter of our group got to shoot 6 bullets.

There is an internal logic in the army that changes every couple of seconds with each of the commanders, making it incredibley hard to be a good soldier even if I wanted to be. I get told to eat from one commander, then get asked by another why I'm eating by another. This gets intensley frustrating.

I'm enjoying the comradery between the group, we jel over our united hatred for the officers.

The food Isn't so bad, even for vegetarians.

We're sleeping in tents on a base left by the British so the piping is a bit old and so there is always a pungent smell of human waste.

There are probably two main goals for this training. The first in to intergate us into Israeli society. And the second is to turn us into obedient soldiers, you cant scratch your ass without permission. They give you too little time to run somewhere to teach you ask for more time. The is probably the most difficult thing to cope with in my unit seeing as we're all used to being o independent.

Personally, I'm not hating it here. Some things are fun. I'm learning Amharit from the ethiopeans and learning to swear with zeal from the russians.

Civilian T's to that Olive Green

I’ve liberated myself from the constraints of my luscious locks and am ready to trade in my civilian T’s for that olive green.

That olive green. The colour that inspires, and allows that blue and white to stay bright.

When I was in Australia I said, “Wherever I walk, I walk toward Israel”. When I got to Israel, I said “Wherever I stand, I sand in Israel”. Now, in my final hours of freedom I say “From tomorrow, wherever I stand, I stand for Israel”.

After my service I’ll say: “Shit, I gotta get a job.”

Friends who wished they had one last chance to run their fingers through my hair, or have one last beer with me ask me how I feel about it all. I thought I’d share it with you.

Firstly, joining the army, for me, is neither the realisation of political or religious agenda. It is a part of the reality in which I live. If a country is under threat, they need a defence force.

No idea why Australia has one.[1]

This is not to say that I want to go to the front line and monitor borders, or have to decide if someone should live or die. I would be happy to be behind a desk and not have any contact with weapons at all. There is no doubt that there a need for those kind of soldier, but those who know me, know that I’m not that kind of guy.

There are some things I am nervous about, and other things that I’m excited about.

Communal showers for example.

I’m no exhibitionist. I’d prefer to wash myself without being bathed by someone else’s gaze.

One thing that excites me is the chance to meet people from all walks of life who I would not have spoken to because of the city they come from or any number of reasons.

As much as Israel has abandoned the kur khitukh (‘melting pot’) model and has embraced integration over assimilation, there are certainly still elements of ‘becoming one of the flock’ when you pass under the shepherd hook of the I.D.F. It is an integral experience in being an Israeli.

No doubt it will be an eventful period of my life.

Stay tuned for stories.

Sgt. Jorje

"I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier. I've got ham, but I'm not a hamster"

איש חיל

So yesterday I logged onto the army equivalent of facebook. It’s pretty much the same, only with a few differences: The colour themes are camouflage green, rather than baby blue. There are chat groups where you can receive instant orders from your commanders in your free time. There’s no ‘like’ button, just one that says “yes sir”. It has tips on how to avoid smelling like a dead skunk while living in a tent in the Middle Eastern summer. What to pack for your next mission. There are also groups about you rights and your obligations – contrary to popular belief, you don’t just leave your civil rights at the door when you enlist. Another difference is that you don’t write your profile, it is written for you.

They don’t include what music your into, or what quote you’re finding most ironic at the moment. They just give you scores.

These scores are not like HSC (final high school examination) scores, which make you feel like shit because they’re never good enough but don’t actually represent your value as a human being. These scores do. They describe how you are physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually.

The army is so efficient at valuing your worth that they can do this after just 2 hours of examinations.

They checked my eyesight, my height, my IQ, my private junk, they ask you personal questions like “do you have friends”, “how many times a week do you call your mum” (it’s a Jewish army, so the more often, the better the score).

Digression: To get in to each of these examinations is like trying to convert to Judaism (despite there being conscription); you go into each office and they say “we can’t help you” three times before something starts happening. Only once your eyes are twitching from over exposure to the waiting room’s florescent lights, and your mouth is foaming from hunger and thirst, and your arms are flexed like an Alpha Male gorilla defending its pack do they say, “Ok, now you’re ready to enlist.”

I overused the sentence “אני לא זז מפה עד שתתנו לי מה אני רוצה” (I’m not moving from here until you give me what I need) so much so that I could shorten it to “לא זז” (not moving). I walk in past the security guard saying “לא זז” (no move) waving away his objections. I walk past reception “זז” (move) they just knew what I meant. Then I’d wait until someone called me in.

So I’ve finished this process and I’m on the army facebook and I open my profile and it turns out my marks are posted and they happen to be the highest you can get! Yay me!

I mean, I always thought I was a Wolverine. Ultimate warrior! Like if Xena and Yoda had a kid. (sick³) Toughest mucho man, most emotionally stable soldier to be!

Anyone who knows me knows this is a gross overstatement. I can do one sit up a day, and that’s when I get out of bed.

I know what you’re thinking, first you thought “wow kudos, you’re my hero”, then you though “I bet you only got that score because you let the doctor cop a feel of your dangly bits.”

Well you know what?

Sometimes a man’s gotta do awkward things to get what he wants! I’m not proud of it, but I’m trying to succeed here.

What’s worrying about this score is that the army likes to chup (scoop up) the guys with high scores and try get them to enlist for longer…

Why didn’t I wear my man-kini to the psychological interview!?!