Transferred!

Well, last time I left you all, I was freezing my tzitzit off way down low in the Negev desert's slowly encroaching winter. While I had thought that desert winters consist of boiling days mixed with glacial nights -- marked by a rapid transition from one to the next -- what I found was a distinct lack of boiling days. The subject of this post is how irrelevant these descriptions became, for we quickly left the desert: Boot camp over!

For advanced tank manouvers, we were transferred to the Golan Heights, a strecht of land extending from East of the Gallilee North to the Hermon mountain and Mt. Dov (Bear Mountain?). Elevation ranges from around 300m to 1100m above sea level, I am given to believe. We were around 650m, near Alika and Nafah on the Eastern border with Syria (a few miles away).

For advanced tank manouvers, we also left behind "random" pushup sessions, fun midnight runs around the barracks, and "white nights," which are like a kilayim of Shevuot and a Mr. Clean commercial ["I see a speck of dust behind your bed's wall-side under the mattress. Now you can take that mattress outside and whack it clean for 30 minutes in the glacial night. Do pushups if you're chilly, or run around the barracks. Heck, why not do pushups and run around the barracks anyway? At the same time."] Now we were no longer maggots. We were bona fide grunts, the highest of the low.

Discipline in the straight-laced Tank Corps is only on a high level relative to the rest of the Israeli army. Despite being the stuffy Britons of Tzahal, we no longer shouted "attention!" for our commanders, and saluting our officers became a fine joke. Soldiers start loosening their trousers to Marky Mark states of laxity, such that one's boxers are put on public display. [I have no idea why this particular form of brain-dead activity is popular, but 1 in 10 secular, male soldiers prefer it.]

Nevertheless, the biggest change is obviously the landscape. No more sand dunes and sand dunes, wishing futilely for at least a durned tumbleweed to break the monotony. We have trees galore in the Golan, grass and mud, a hefty amount of manure-producing animals, hills for them to graze upon, and sunsets to take your breath away. Mei Eden mineral water streams from the tap [really!]. There are little cottages dotting the landscape, such that I find Switzerland and Italy recalled to the mind.

Where's the Funny?

Well, after the first rains, 'terra firma' becomes a misnomer. There is mud, muddy water, and more mud. Ugh! It gets in the boots, in the socks, in your hair and beard. It also has the properties of quicksand, to about knee-height. Marky Mark soldiers can lose their pants, therein discovering The Funny.

Our rooms have heaters, and we are given full-body coats that allow us to keep all the heat in the same place: inside.

Instead of the six or seven hour ride to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, it's now only a four or five hour ordeal. With enough sleep deprivation the night before, these rides pass like a dream.

Because we're doing actual manouvers, it's harder to get time off. I have missed a wedding, two britot, and sheva brachot, as well as Y. Szyf's visit to the Holy Land, which I most certainly would have gotten time off for in boot camp, seeing how everything there is make-work anyway.

I think I'll return to the Small Post custom, so people might actually read the post. Exaunt Left

I was in Gush Qatif

I think it's about time I speak out about this issue, considering how the media has left it for dead, and I'm not likely to kick up any dust devils about such old news.

I was in Gush Qatif.

I served there, for a very brief time, less than a week, but in that time I'd seen what a waste it was to pull it down, in absolute, concrete terms. A physical community was destroyed for political reasons. Are politics and other abstracts more real than a house? Termites can destroy a house, a plague of red ants or a flood can destroy huge tracts of farmland, but what is this abstract idea of "boundary" and "theirs" and "ours" that necessitated bulldozers? Those reasons motivating the purge are abstract, sophisticated, perhaps bordering on artificial. There were no arguments about water, land distribution, deeds of sale and lost property. The land on which the settlements were built was literally sand dune, not arable in the slightest, nor useful for any purpose other than open space; so if you liked jogging and were an Italian training for defending your boxing title, that's one place you'd go.

The economy of the Gaza settlements consisted of hydroponic farms, churning out desirable if expensive produce superior in quality to other similar foodstuffs due to the controlled environment in which the fruits and veges were grown: organic, bug-free, and beautifully symmetric and firm. They had also received large benefits from the government when they decided to relocate there in the first place. They also, I am given to understand, employed Arab labor.

What are the details surrounding the whole hullabahoo? Security, that is, threat of murder, caused the more-than-inconvenience of thousands upon thousands of Gazan Arabs. Were Arab workers exploited? That depends who you ask. You'll have read about such things in the media, but the statements without judgments boil down to wages lower than any Jewish Israeli would accept. 2nd-hand reports through my personal channels admit that, but point out that they paid well above the norm for Gaza, and that families could live off of those wages.

Were Arabs patronized, made to feel inferior? Well, when you've got soldiers protecting a hydroponic farm from a vague Arab threat, and are yet hiring Arabs, trust is eroded. Not a good situation at all. But even more basic, when all the bosses are from one group, and all the workers are from another group, you get the feeling that there is a statistical imbalance from the sheer numbers, even if there is no meanspiritness; and so the very question is irrelevant, since the Arab workers shouldn't feel their position is so hot no matter what.

The truth is, that the economy of Disengagement does not add up, when politics are let alone. Why cannot Israelis live under foreign political rule? If the soldiers retreat, why do the civilians die? If the soldiers take a wrong turn, why are they lynched? Rabbi Riskin put it well, I feel, when he said that until Disengagement does not automatically necessitate destruction of communities, but results in the political transfer of land and what is within, then something is direly wrong with the situation.

But I feel differently. When I saw the demolition, the ruined food crops; when I dismantled (i.e., cut to ribbons) perfectly usable greenhouses and hothouses; when I saw the shattered windows of a defunct pizza shop; when the detrius of modern human life crunched beneath my boots, I thought of the pure and utter waste of the livelyhood and living space for 8,ooo people.

I saw a sign, drawn by a child, "Netzarim is my ". Children had grown up here, born here, fell in love here.

So put politics aside, (try, real hard). Discard adjectives like 'good' or 'bad idea,' 'betrayal,' 'moral obligation,' etc. Do not consider, when I ask the following question, the political context, for I am not making a practical point, nor demanding action. Perhaps I am offering advice in a mourning cry regarding pure, needless destruction:

Why couldn't someone else have taken over the hothouses and farms? Why couldn't someone else have lived in the houses? Why is peace such a destructive affair?

If this is peace, who needs war?