By Adar
Israel's memorial day has two sirens: one at 8pm on the evening before and one at 11am on the day of. Wherever you are, people stop their cars. They stand up, stay silent, and look straight ahead. An entire country completely pauses for a minute during the siren, to pay respect for those lost in combat and affected by the 14 wars Israel has been involved in since its start, 65 years ago. Unlike Memorial day in the United States, which is a great excuse for sales, picnics and parades, Yom Hazikaron in Israel is fairly somber. Israeli flags are everywhere, and many businesses are closed. There are ceremonies and services, and thousands of people visit Har Hertzl, a military and diplomat cemetery in Jerusalem.
I was talking to my adoptive student yesterday about growing up in Israel. He began telling me about the Second Intifada which was going on when he was twelve. Though it seemed like he meant to breeze right over the subject, I could tell how traumatic it had been for him, and he began telling me memories of places that were bombed, schools that were targeted, and buses filled with kids his age that exploded on main streets. About how every time there was another bombing, his mom would take him to his grandmother's house and they'd all sit and watch the news together. I think one of the biggest challenges in this country would be to find someone who wasn't affected personally by the Israeli Defense Forces (HaTzavah) in some way or other. Because almost every citizen goes through the military as part of a national service, most people are bound to know someone who's family suffered great losses. And what's more is that everyone who goes through the military is absolutely psychologically affected by it. It creates outward ranks and evaluations of your peers. It gives people positions of power over others. It puts you through discipline you often don't want and mental stress you don't need.
The IDF is a point of separation within the country as a whole. Those who don't serve in the IDF are looked down on by those who do. What? You want me to protect you and spend three years of my life serving this country when you don't? Serving in the military falls directly on the concurrent cleavages of Secular v Religious and Jews v Arabs, because orthodox Jews as well as Arabs are not obligated to serve, creating more fodder for the tension between groups.
So why not get rid of conscription? I think many young Israelis will agree that they would much rather not have to do military service. And I'm sure many parents of young Israelis would as well. But I also think that when asked if they think the IDF is necessary, nearly all of them would say that it absolutely is. I think growing up in America makes it difficult to understand what it means to be surrounded by enemies. We may have plenty of countries that don't like us, but there is very little direct threat and a very large space between them and us. But here in Israel, you grow up looking North and seeing Lebanon and Syria; East and seeing Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia; West and seeing Egypt and Sudan. Not a single one of those countries readily recognized the diplomatic existence of Israel when it was founded, and still most of them do not. After the UN partition plan to create two states in 1947, a civil war began between the Jews and Arabs, which turned into Israel's war of Independence in 1948 when Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria joined.
Combine the constant threat of the neighborhood with a post-holocaust need for strength in defense. The weak, bookish, peddler Jew of the nineteenth century that suffered so much persecution came to Israel to create a new image of a strong, hard working, laboring, resilient Jew that would not be messed with. And today we have in Israel a principle of Security First. I think the simple truth is that if the IDF was not as strong as it is, this country would no longer exist and neither would I (my parents are both Israeli). That being said, there are some aspects of the Security First principle that I absolutely hate and cannot get over. The racial profiling, the anger, the inhibiting national memory and feeling of burden, the victimization. It is at the point where my friends, Americans studying at the University of Haifa, who are traveling abroad to go visit an Arab country, get frisked at the airport and questioned for over an hour. It's at the point where cars going through a checkpoint who's driver has an Israeli accent get let right through while if the driver sounds a bit Arab, every inch of the car is searched. How can people live like this? Being put into such defined boxes that they grow up knowing exactly their place in society in this state, and treat others that way too?