False Dichotomies

Between the original False Dichotomies and the resurrected version, there was Hayal Boded, an exclusive email  consisting of tales from The Most Moral Army in the World. False Dichotomies is proud to present, for the first time, Hayal Boded – The Tales of a Lone Jobnik…

She emerged from the night rain, her shining and hidden at the same time. We gathered around her, eager to meet this new figure in our lives. Just a few minutes earlier, we had been drifting off to sleep. For the second successive night, we had been ordered out of our bed to do exercises. The night before had been a fire drill – and amidst the din, I thought it was the same again. But no. This time we were meant to be in full military garb. Time was running out, so I decided to forgo socks. But this time we had to run, with urgency, for our important meeting. As I stood there, feeling the pain of my dumb decision, straining to see the samelet [corporal], my mind wandered to the opening line of London Fields: This is a true story but I can’t believe it’s really happening.

***

It first dawned on me that I was really in the army on the bus that transported us from the processing centre to our base up north. After a drunken night followed by a series of tests and injections, I was ready to relax with my new iPod. Again, no. Our mefakedet [commander] was quickly barking out our first instructions. We were not to listen to music or to talk on our mobiles. And if a terrorist threw something at the bus, we should duck. There and then I realised that this is my new life. What can I tell you? I could pause to consider this rationally, but there would be no point. Asking questions would not help me. Existentially an absurdist, politically a rationalist, a lone soldier like me is caught in a bind. To question or not to question. To think or not to think. To play the game or not to play. These are the issues at hand. But before explaining them, I must explain the game’s rules.

We wake at around half past six in the morning. We have twenty minutes to get into our uniform, and then we need to form ourselves into a letter het so as to greet our commander, a girl barely – if at all – out of her teens. We stand in bakshev, an uncomfortable flexing of the elbows and hands behind our back, but easy enough to slip into a slouch when no-one is looking. We greet her with ritual: Five minutes to reception of the commander, if you’re ready to receive the commander, stand to attention. ATTENTION! we roar. Or at least that’s an approximate translation. We are then sent to order our bags or to tidy our rooms. Again, we have a proscribed amount of time to complete the task. One second more, and it’s press-ups, albeit unobserved ones. For the hell of it, we spend half an hour changing from Uniform A to Uniform B. Pointlessly brilliant.

The walk to the dining hall for breakfast is a three minute stroll. Or it would be if it we didn’t spend its duration forming parallel lines every twenty metres. If we want to speak to our mefakdot we say Akshev [attention] Mefakedet. If we forget to say Ken [yes] Mefakedet after every exchange, we are liable to be punished. We gather outside the dining hall in lines of three, where we practice taking our hats off our heads and placing them under our shoulder strap. In one Chaplinesque moment, my hat fell with only one second to go. Then, when our samelet told us to put our hats on, I was still on the tucking in stage. My head was isolated and bared, and I was summarily dismissed to the limbo-land of press-ups. These are the basic rules of the game.

***

There are around one hundred soldiers in my programme. We will do a month or so basic training, a month or two of Ulpan [intensive Hebrew], and then we will go our separate ways. Some will become combat soldiers, others will begin to do a particular job within the army. It is a cliché, but thus far the camaraderie amongst the soldiers has been the best aspect of my brief army experience. As we are – at least in theory – mevugarim [mature], we are endowed with two essential attributes for dealing with absurd situations: a sense of irony and a heavy dose of cynicism. Politically, I was expecting the loony right, but again I have been pleasantly surprised by the variety of views and the commitment to reasoned debate.

Whilst carrying out the important task of guarding our bags from local marauders, a fellow hayal [soldier] tells me I look like I belong here. Of that I’m not so sure. As I said, thus far I’m playing the rules of the game. I’m thinking about the army as an institution; the extraordinary and mind-boggling role it plays in Israeli society. If I think too long, I will descend into hysterical laughter. My mefakedet will ask what’s funny, and I will devastate her with my patronising response: you probably won’t understand now, but believe me you will in a few years. I do not resent the role they play. The fact that they can keep it up all day every day is deeply impressive. But I do hope they are constantly thinking about it. As Socrates taught us, the unexamined life is not worth living.

I am extremely glad that I have joined the Israeli army. While it could never be described as enjoyable, it is a fantastic exercise in absorption , the first peep beneath the veneer of Israeli life. Ani hayal. Despite the boredom, the sleep deprivation, and the physical difficulties, it provides constant stimulation. And we haven’t even done anything yet. On Sunday, I will be issued with my M-16. So it begins.