Israel has been in the news again today and again for all the wrong reasons. Today it voted to give the government the right to cancel decisions made by the Supreme Court so the government can override decisions made by the Supreme Court any time it wants. It’s yet another step away from true democracy and towards darkness …
However - I was talking the other day with a friend about things that I remembered from my time in Israel and I thought I really should write them down. In fact, I’m actually going to speak them out loud and let Word do the transcribing into text – three little vignettes all to do with war and guns.
1)
I was 21 when I first went to Israel. I certainly had
absolutely zero experience of war apart from knowing old people who had probably
been to war. But I never really had
conversations with anybody who had been to war I had this kind of suicidal
attraction to the idea of war; to know more about it. I was working every day with people who were
probably 5-8 years older than me - certainly all younger than 30 - and they'd
fought in two wars already: the 1967 and 1973 wars in Israel. I was also working with Henny, a volunteer
from Holland, and Henny was the same as me. She was fascinated about what it
was like for these people who were our friends by now and colleagues that we
worked with every day, and we continually asked them “what was it like to fight
in a war?” But they would never talk about it and always fobbed us off and moved
the conversation somewhere else.
But I guess we were persistent - stupidly - and one day - I
don't remember whether it was me or
Henny who asked the question again – “tell us what it was like to fight a war?”
but this time Gilboa slammed his coffee
cup down on the table, sat forward on his chair and said something to the
effect of “OK if you want to hear about war shut up and listen. This is what
it's like" and for several minutes he ranted about what he'd seen, what he felt,
and it was clear that it was a very traumatic experience for him to talk about
it and it was so blunt and brutal that Henny and I felt the power of his anger,
his obvious disgust, his unwillingness and shame. He talked about a specific
occasion somewhere between Israel and Cairo when they were moving through
Egyptian villages taking villages one by one as the Egyptian soldiers retreated
and they had been told that there were still soldiers in this village. But when
they attacked the village, and it was a full-on onslaught, and when everything
was quiet the Israeli soldiers went into the village and found that all the men
had long gone and all they'd done is killed and terrorised women and
children. It was an occasion in my life where I realised it's very unfair and
uncool to ask someone who's been in a war to tell you about what it's like
because it's so horrific; it's so
traumatic; they should never have to relive what they've seen and done and felt
but the damage was done. Henny and I got to hear what it was like to be a
soldier in a war and I think we were ashamed that we'd been so persistent in
asking for this story from our colleagues in the chicken houses.
2)
Wherever you go in Israel there are guns. It's a fact of
life every time a group of people go anywhere there's always an armed guard
with the group. I don't mean like a family group going down to the shop but a
school group, or kibbutz group, or a group from a club would always have an
armed guard with them and so it was even on Shabbat evenings when no work was
done and it was normal for us to have what we called a disco on Friday nights. The volunteers and young Israelis would gather
and dance and drink and have fun. On one
of these nights I had this vision burned into my brain of something that was
amazing and beautiful. I think the soldier in this story was actually Kobi. I'd
become friendly with Kobi so I knew him as a fellow worker and fellow young
person on the kibbutz. This night it must have been Kobi's turn for guard duty.
The steps coming down into the cellar where we held our disco on Friday nights
were quite steep and I was dancing to the music and I noticed this soldier
coming down the stairs - a person in uniform and of course he had a gun (probably
an Uzi) and as he reached the bottom step and touched the floor of the disco
all in one movement he put his gun up against the wall and danced his way off
the bottom step into the people milling around on the on the disco floor in
full uniform. I don't know how long he stayed - I'm guessing about 10 minutes -
and I watched him wondering how long he would stay and how will he actually disconnect
from the dancing crowd but he kind of detached himself from the group and went
back on guard duty and without saying a word to anybody. When the time was up he danced back toward the
steps, all in one motion picked up his gun and disappeared up the steps as if he’d
never been there. It was graceful,
elegant, and responsible and again it was just one of those moments where I
thought ‘this is life in Israel’.
3)
Back then, and I'm talking about 1976, 1979, 1981,
hitchhiking was very very common in
Israel. All of the soldiers used hitchhiking to get around from base to home to
kibbutz to job and it was more or less understood that that's how soldiers got
around. They could catch the bus or they could drive themselves but there were
always groups of soldiers at major intersections looking for a ride to their
destination and it was quite acceptable for young travellers like me to stand
near the soldiers and if a car was going to where I was heading or in the right
direction I could hop aboard with the soldiers. This happened one day and I'm I
found myself in the back of what's a kind of covered ute - just myself and this
one soldier. Again probably about my age or maybe a bit older and he's chatting
away – where am I from? which kibbutz am I on? what did I think about Israel?
The usual kinds of questions but he sensed that something was bothering me. What it was is that while he was talking to me
he was sitting with his legs apart and with his gun - his Uzi - just kind of supporting him. He's got both his
hands on his gun between his legs while he's facing me so his gun’s between me
and him. I wasn't in danger; I didn't feel in danger. I just didn't feel very
comfortable talking to someone while this gun was right there. His response,
without me saying a word, when he realised this was an issue for me, was to
throw that gun towards the back of the vehicle loud enough for the gun to clatter
when it hit the floor and then he looked at me and said “OK there's no more gun.
It's just you and me. Let's talk. “ And we did, and it was a much better freer
conversation. I was amazed at how kind of sensitive he was knowing that that's what
was preventing us having a decent conversation, and caring enough to want a
proper conversation to ditch the gun. I don't remember anything after that.
I just remember him throwing the gun away, looking into my eyes saying OK the
guns gone let's talk and it's just another moment burned into my memory that
I'll take with me to the grave as another example of ‘this was life in Israel.’
