Not Anonymous

Friday 4/08/06
It's amazing how much happens is such a short amount of time.

On Friday my sister Leigh and my nephews Amos and Shaul returned from their long stay in Cambridge, England (my brother in law Ariel is still there to tie up loose ends and will be joining the family later this week) and they've come back permanently. Leigh, now a Ph.D, has a post-doc position at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva. They still need to make all sorts of arrangements, but they should be moving some time next week. At the moment Leigh and the kiddies are staying at home with us, making it a bit of a full house, but it's fantastic to have them back, and if it weren't for the fucking war and my reserve duty I'd actually be able to spend some time with Amos (who's five ) and Shaul (who will be two in October).

I had a shift on Friday, making me utterly drained of energy, but I decided I would go out since I can't be cooped up 24/7, even though I am four days every week. I can't believe it's been going on for a month now. ( More Friday )

Satruday 5/08/06
Free day.
Woke up lateish, found out we were going to spend the mid morning at our cousins place because they have a pool. It was my first day of real summer, since it was the first time I wore my brand new swimming costume and looked great. The one good/bad thing about the war is that I'm shedding a hella of alot of weight, I'm a bit worried about that because I'm eating normally, if fact I eat so much junk at my station I have no idea how I've managed to lose so much weight, but I looked better in the costume now than when I bought it a month ago.
I swam and played with Amosi, but Shaul clung to Leigh since he was a bit scared of the water, also I don't think they're used to the heat the Israeli Sun is able to produce.
It was a fun morning.

Later that afternoon I met up with Shimrit and Shira, since I am not able to meet with them as much as I like.
We had coffee and cake, Shira gave me a belated birthday gift; a great "Nine West" purse! And after we said our goodbyes I spent a little time with Shimrit.
( Psycho-babble )

Nothing really interesting Sunday, except that Sharon (one of the guys that sits with me and hagar_972, he noticed I looked tired (and felt like crap from my crying the night before) and did his best to cheer me up. He also mentioned that he read my lj and was surprised at how good my English was (I'm a total bilingual) and how political I am. He was also dissapointed he wasn''t mentinoed. Well now he is.

Other than that Sunday was the same as any other crappy, no good, war mongering day. Yaron is very good conversation, he's obviously used to people agreeing with him and I do believe meeting someone with concrete ideals and a realistic veiw on the issues threw him a little.

Monday and Today after this.

And so should you.
Her words are wise.

Her name is Wafa Sultan and these are her words.

Dr Sultan certainly knows her stuff.

Hezbollah are ruthless, heartless human beings.
Again and again they claim to have Lebanon's interests at heart - when in fact they are merely using Lebanon as a base in order to further Syrian and Iranian agendas.
Again and again they have claimed Israel to be targeting civilian outposts for destruction - Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation which uses guerrilla tactics to fight; that means it uses the local population as #1 Weapons stations, #2 "Military" bases, #3 Canon fodder - If anyone thinks Hezbollah didn't first stuff that building in Qana with weapons (knowing Israel would find that weapons store) and then stuffed it with innocent civilians just so Israel would bomb that building and make the world see "Israel for the monster it is", then you are sorely mistaken, because that is exactly what they did.

Hezbollah has and is using and abusing the Lebanese, I've said this before and I'll say it again, Hezbollah and Nassrallah couldn't give a naked, shit infested rat's ass, over the Lebanese, who they would sacrifice in order to promote their own hate and war mongering aggression filled agendas.

Moreover, Fouad Sanyora, Lebanon's Prime Minister, thanked... *thanked* Hezbollah for standing up to Israel. That man is corrupt, Hezbollah is not Lebanon's army, it is, as I've stated, an organisation interested on furthering Syrian and Iranian interests! He has let his people down in a way I cannot imagine them ever recovering from.

Israel does what it can to warn civilians about coming attacks, Israel hides nothing of what it does; Hezbollah claimed they had no rocket launching out posts in Qana, we proved they did and attacked, we warned the civilians (and that includes Hezbollah, because the message is heard by everyone) and Hezbollah used those innocents to create anti-Israeli propaganda. They used human lives in the most callous, disgusting way possible.

Israel does not want to fight in villages, but Hezbollah uses those villages as outposts and villages that harbour criminals know what to expect, because we tell them to leave!
Hezbollah fires missiles every, goddamn, day! On regular, innocent, Israeli, civilians, it is not the Lebanese army doing this and we are not fighting the Lebanese army, but the world refuses to see Hezbollah for what they really are and the Lebanese are the ones suffering from a corrupt leader, a terrorist organization using, abusing and basically murdering them and an army (IDF) that has no choice but to bomb them because of the reasons above.

Hezbollah has made villages into battle fields and dead children into propaganda, the IDF has done everything in it's power to target only Hezbollah outposts and rocket launchers.
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization with an illegal militia wing using Lebanon as a base of operations. The IDF is the army of a sovereign country.
Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers (and has great influence over the kidnappers of a third), the IDF reacted to a Casus Belli!
Hezbollah are the ones who began fighting and in that instant they became the aggressors, Israel will do what it can to end this with the least amount of death on either side, because that is how we try to do things. Hezbollah couldn't care less about how many innocent people die, the more Lebanese civilians die, the better anti-Israel propaganda Hezbollah has and so they are willing to use an many people as possible in order to get that end, because the means are really not an issue for them.

Well Hezbollah has decided to use their long range missiles a few minutes ago, known as Zilzals and Phajers.

This is bad; since they cause a hell of a lot more damage than the missiles they've been using to get to Haifa, Tiberius etc.

This is good; The rocket launchers are bigger and easier to hunt, so Israel will target that instead of buildings.

I'll know more when I go back tomorrow, don't know what to tell though, all the info is in the News, which seems bizarre to me, but times are in constant change.

It was a very bad day.

I don't have a body count yet, I'll probably know tomorrow just how many people we lost at Bint Jbiel today.
The News says eight... I know for a fact that it's more, but I suppose not everyone has been identified, nor have all the families been informed about what has happened. And since I've stopped listening to the news, I'll just have to wait for oral reports from my peers, or read it on someone else's blog.
I just finished crying for the second time today.
I reached the limit of how much I can internalize, today was a day of breakdowns and many leanings against other people's shoulders.

In Israeli news channels they show much aerial photography the Air Force (where I serve) provides them. Obviously they don't show the gory details, or the sensitive secret stuff.
I see the gore and I cheer, because I know we're killing Hezbollah operatives and taking out more and more rocket launchers that send their Katyushot, Zilzals and many others onto Israeli towns.
When I got home I cried and am still crying because I'm part of the machine killing people, but Hezbollah is my country's enemy and so I must be happy that we're killing them.
I feel so torn and... I can't even describe it.

Add to that, that I've been in this war since Monday the 17th, that's ten days and I'm getting burned out, some of my comrades have been in this since the beginning and they're burned out and going on, I'll have to as well.

I'm so tired.

I really should wait for my free day to write so that I sound a little coherent.

Being back in the army has strengthen my personal ideologies in such a way, that I believe we are need of a radical reform in almost every aspect of life; how and when that will come about I don't know, I'm still thinking about that and discussing it with people who don't really agree with me, so that I can learn the flaws and strengths in my arguments (the one benefit of serving again is meeting and working with men, religious among them, who take what you say seriously and are very engaging conversationalists).

More than ever am I a Feminist - I can see again why the Army is important and how integral it is to our national identity, and also how it imbues everyone with Nationalism, making it "us vs. them" which a more destructive ideology cannot be found. The Army also shows, in an extreme way, exactly how our country is constructed and how everyone is still arbitrarily categorized through gender and race, just as an example, where I am currently serving there is approx. the same amount of women as there are non-Ashkenazi men. Yeah, "White is right" my peachy, Ashkenazi ass!

More than ever am I a Humanist - the Israeli Defence Force... not really; in times of war we can't afford to be, we tell civilians about the bombings coming in, but they are held hostage by Hezbollah, who holds all of Lebanon hostage for Iranian influence. Not to mention that Syria is still aching to get their hands back in Lebanon, which they see as another piece of the Middle-Eastern Pie as far as they are concerned.
And through Hezbollah, we also get Hamas, which is sending it's citizens into Israel to kill themselves in order to murder Israelis.

These are not good people in the upper crust of those governments.

More than ever my government is one of the worst; where are our Representatives going on public broadcast telling the civilians that the war effort is going well? Where is our Prime Minister telling us that the army is doing the best job it can defending the home land? Where are the bittersweet lies people want to hear that their children on the front line are doing what is needed?
Where is the sympathy towards the 500,000 Lebanese refugees in southern Lebanon? Where is the UN to help the Lebanese government regain sovereignty over it's entire land? Where is the impartial media to tell both sides of what the fuck is going on?
This is the real world, and those things are lacking, much like an news about what's going on in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is still killing Palestinians and Gilad Shalit is still captured?

This war has also put on hold every other social issues in this country - just because we are at war does not mean we are not still living our lives, hundreds of senior citizens are being displaces, far too many children do not have the support Social Services is supposed to provide for them, still women are smuggled (even more easily now, since no one cares about anything other than bombing Lebanon and watching the news to see if their house was bombed) into Israel in the "white slavery" market economy.
Where police should be investigating rapes and murders they are guarding against "enemy incursions".
We have a Defense Minister for the war, a Foreign Minister for dealing with all the other people outside of Israel talking to us and a UN Ambassador who is actually doing some hard talking for Israel. I don't know what his politics are, but I have a feeling that once his tenure as Ambassador is over he'll be coming back and running for a pretty high government office, and since in Israel one very rarely votes for a party, but for the person heading the party their politics are not that important (sad, but true).

And so, not only is Israel condemned by the media, it is condemning itself into social disaster, It has to start;
#1 giving people information that actually helps and doesn't bombard them (bad pun, sorry) with how many missiles have injured, killed and destroyed in their neighborhood.
#2 Going on with life, yes there's war, but not everyone is fighting and Israel has to continue to be a government to the back lines who are still trying to live the semblance of a normal life.
#3 Treating humans beings as human beings; we are not only harming Hezbollah outposts and offices, we are hurting innocent people, those people are not "fucking Arabs"! They are humans trying to survive with guerrilla extremists using them as cannon fodder and a government too weak to actually help them.
I will not be dehumanized, by dehumanizing the Hezbollah, or by dehumanizing the innocent Lebanese men, women and children who have to live in those conditions.

Do I even want to get into what this war is doing to the Animals living in the North and is Southern Lebanon?
*sigh*

Once agian, a few lines from a song;
Woodstock by Joni Mitchell
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everytime there was a song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotguns in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
We are golden
And we have to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By sheer (and good or bad, depending how you look at it) luck I got my off day on a Saturday.

I no longer listen to the news, when it's on I switch it off, when my parents ask e to translate I leave the room to read a book, when the radio has an "emergency announcement" I listen to silence.
Listening to the news reports things that I in some way already know since I'm in the think of things and have no need to know what is going on through civilian eyes (yes, I do feel I'm back in active service, the work is intese and never-fucking-ending). I also don't want to know how many missiles have hit Quiriyat Shmona, Zfat, Aker, Haifa or any other northern town, all that tells me, is that in some way, I failed to do my job properly and it just makes me feel guilty and when I feel guilty I wallow.
I don't have that privilege.
And seeing as I am not updated on current events I don't really know how many of our ground troupes have been injured, killed or God forbid kidnapped. I also don't know how many more Lebanese civilians we have injured and killed, how many more homes we have destroyed and how many more weapons Hezbollah supposedly has.
I just can't any more, I'm almost a week into this war and I feel as if it's been a month and for all we know we may go on for another month.
Seeing though that I read other people's blogs, specifically hagar_972 with whom I am serving I thank her for letting me know, through her blog how many, up to the time that she wrote it, the number of our dead.
Because we have to remember, not glorify (it's one of my most hated Israeli traditions, this glorification of dead soldiers, since in my opinion all it does is glorify war, which can never be a good thing).

Maybe I'll update some more later today, if not.
Peace.

Please, let this be over.

I end this post with the lyrics of the song I'm, currently listening to:
( For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield )

I was not happy to be called up for reserve (miluim) for a number of reasons.
#1 It meant going back to a unit I was quite happy to leave by the time my number was up.
#2 Things had to be pretty dire for the people sitting at my old emergency job desk to need me.
#3 Not having been to any kind of drill on nearly a year.
#4 I was quite happy to be doing nothing (*tongue in cheek... kinda).

It all started from a phone call to my cell, I already knew it would happen. After what happened in Haifa on Sunday they couldn't not need an extra pair of hands, ears and lips.
So I got a call and was asked to come on Monday morning to my base (the Quiriya).
Speaking to hagar_972 (who trained me for this particular task) and hearing the way she sounded pretty much convinced me (though I would not have said no in any event seeing as we're at war).
My parents were not particularly understanding IMO.
"Why aren't you proud to serve your country?"
"Aren't you patriotic/Zionistic?"
"Why do you have to be so negative?"
"Not everything is about Feminism and Gay rights you know"
That was their attitude because of my lack of enthusiasm to going to miluim.
The fact that I'm going to do a job that needs to be done with no order what so ever, but by just volunteering obviously means nothing. Perhaps I still had (at the time) the inside view of the situation and knew exactly what was going on and exactly what I was going to be doing that made me a little negative.
And no I'm not particularly patriotic and Zionistic, yeah I love my country but over the past few decades Israel has not done many things I totally agree with.
I'm negative 'cause it keeps me real, if I become to positive and I fuck up, the fall out will only be worse.
And everything is about Feminism since my perspective is of the feminist kind and Gay rights are merely an issues I'm very passionate about, so sue me for taking my issues seriously.
So to the Quiriya I go to see hagar_972 after not seeing her for six months.
Can we say squeal :)

More on the actual days a little later.

I'm listening to a very appropriate song by an alternative band called Smile Empty Song.

It's called ( This is War )

I feel this song is a criticism of war. The mood of the song is very dire, making it sound like the speaker (the soldier) has no identity other than that prescribed by the atrocities of war and that everything in his life is less important than the demands his country place on him during war.

In the militaristic country I live in this is very true.
The lives of thousands of reserve soldiers have been put on hold.
The lives of their families have been put on hold.
This entire country is, as I have mentioned, in now in the shits because of this situation, which coulda', woulda', shoulda' been avoided.
But it's too late now and we have to fight.
The international media depicts Israel as a monster, because we are so much stronger than Lebanon when it comes to military means.
Israel tried to act as humanely as possible, if we really wanted to over-react we could have destroyed practically the entire country, instead we target specific location in order to cause as little collateral damage as possible.
This is at least the way I see it.
I find the whole situation abhorrent and find the deaths of Israeli soldiers and the aiming of missiles towards Israeli citizens equally awful and I may cry. I find the murder of Lebanese citizens so awful I may cry as well.
There is no way for Israel to come out "okay" in the eyes of the media, because no matter what our reaction would have been it would have been viewed as an over-reaction, simply because Israel's military power is greater than Lebanon's.
What I feel the media is missing is the way Hezbollah uses the Lebanese as their cannon fodder, as their storage stations, as their own personal guerrilla strong holds.
Guerrilla tactics are unpredictable and there is no way to fight it with out causing damage that I carnot even begin to contemplate.
I really want this to be over.

Please.

Last night Shira and Shimrit got my welcome back party done and it was great!
Most of my friends came, those who couldn't had really good reasons, ya know Finals at Uni, serving in the reserves at the Army.
I suspect we saw some missiles being fired from somewhere (we looked up to the sky and saw a few fiery trails that could not be fireworks) but wherever they landed it was no where near where we were since we didn't even hear them trail in the air.

It was amazing seeing so many of my friends again, there was lots of junk food and good ole' Israeli Pizza (which is just like American only a little thinner and without so much cheese).

So it seems I'm "officially" back.
I suppose I'll have to stop slacking off and actually plan to do something, like, hmmm, maybe register for college, see if I am actually able to afford traveling again, and just stop procrastinating.

I'll be doing all that tomorrow :)