When in Israel, it’s difficult not to notice the overwhelming presence of the Israeli Defence Force. They are everywhere: sleeping next to their guns on trains and buses, manning checkpoints, lying on the beach, wandering around tourist attractions. The IDF doesn’t disclose the exact size of its army, but as of 2004 the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London has estimated that there are about 125,000 ground soldiers.
The IDF is considered one of the best equipped and best trained armies in the world right now: these 125,000 form part of a force that has sparked international debate around the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the very existence of the country they protect. But this isn’t what I wanted to talk about with the IDF soldiers I interviewed during my time in Israel.
Rather, I wanted to discuss what everyday life was like for these soldiers. Perhaps the first interesting thing to note is that out of 125,000 soldiers, the IISS estimates that only 40,000 are career soldiers and the remaining 85,000 are conscripts. The further 600,000 reserve soldiers are thought to be largely conscripted. Since being created by Israeli Defence Minister David
Ben-Gurion in an order given on May 1948, the IDF has been a conscript
army. Differing to most military organisations internationally, the IDF
conscripts pretty much everyone.
It is the only army in the world that expects mandatory service from women, and regularly places them in direct combat situations. Unless they are not eligible – very unlikely considering the range of stations and roles – men and women are drafted at the age of 18. Men are conscripted to serve for 2 years, and women for 21 months.When this is completed, each soldier is assigned toa reserve unit should they be needed in the future; reservists who have served in combat are not discharged until they are 45.
These are not just facts and figures: these are real, living, breathing people. Interviewing IDF soldiers, I did not talk to a single one for whom the army was their career path. There were soldiers who wanted to go into finance,
study economics, set up charities, run businesses, but none who showed any ambition to to fight for a living.
Whilst talking to a discharged soldier one night, I walked with him through the city of Old Jaffa, an area of Tel Aviv, which is the second biggest city in Israel after Jerusalem. It is beautiful: historical, but still living and vibrant. Conducting my interview, I noticed something strange. Just across from us, there was a crowd of soldiers. They didn’t appear to be doing anything. As we watched, they peeled off in ones and twos from their group and came back with ice creams and fizzy drinks.
Gradually, they were joined by more and more, until there was a whole little unit standing under the coloured lights of the Yafo, eating sweets and drinking pop. Looking at the soldier beside me, I saw he was laughing. He pointed to the group’s uniform and said, “They’re sailors… without a boat!” I stared at him. So what were they doing here? There is no naval base anywhere near the Yafo. It is the one place in Israel where there are barely any soldiers.
My interviewee was still giggling. Observing the sailors, I couldn’t help but
feel like they didn’t have any more of an idea of what they were doing in the Yafo than I did. The soldier beside me explained. “They’re on a field trip; the army does field trips.” What? Like the Boy Scouts? “They’re having a tour — want to join?” He was laughing at my incredulous expression. I mean, they’re an army. And they were in uniform, having an evening tour of the Yafo with ice-cream. This shows that most of the IDF’s soldiers are kids. They eat ice cream, they go on field trips. They just so happen to be carrying M4s at the same time.
The soldier I was interviewing that night was actually from New York. He was one of many lone soldiers who do time in the IDF, and then return to their home country. Drafted at 18 and just discharged, he is 20. Asked whether he believed in Zionism, he replied, “Well yes, I have to.” Israeli soldiers had the same attitude. Zionism is more assumed than it is believed.
The soldiers’ stories of combat training include living in the desert for months without running water, being made to drink two litres of it before exercise so they vomit, and going on raids to arrest Palestinians.
The reality is that if you give an 18 year old kid an M4 and teach them how to aim, and if you take them away from their family and out of education for two years, they are going to have to believe in what they are doing it for.
They have no choice — how do they otherwise reconcile the idea they may have to shoot that M4 at a human being? So, what this produces is a generation of people who have fought for the Israeli state, a country itself founded on Zionist belief. It also leads to a heavily militarised country, where soldiers are just a part of everyday life as they constantly go from post to post. As one Israeli infantryman put it, “Everyone here is a soldier.” In a country surrounded by conflict zones, there is a logical argument for conscription. But with the Israel/Palestine conflict’s only hope of resolution being diplomacy, it cannot help to encourage this kind of fundamental belief in the Jewish state.
Israel has become a country where war is normal, where fi ghting is a rite of passage, and I wish I had a solution. A start, though, would be expanding the use of the professional side of the IDF: if you want to find terrorists, send trained soldiers to specifically target them, lessening civilian casualties. Don’t man an airstrike post with 18 year olds who have just left home. Teach Israeli soldiers Arabic so they can talk to the Palestinians they deal with; emphasise the operation as a defence of national security rather than as a furthering of Zionism. It is hard to deny that Israel will be militarised for a long time to come, but, when you see the IDF in the news, remember that most of
them are kids.
They are kids who practice army-crawling on the beach, who eat ice cream on duty, and who believe in the cause of the IDF because they feel that they have to.
