On-Call

I came back to Israel last Thursday, and reported to the army that Sunday.  It just so happened that on that very same day Israel decided to enact a unilateral cease-fire.  Therefore, everyone who had been in Gaza was called back to Israel.  Contrary to what I had previously thought, my company was in fact called upon to participate in the war.  I had been fairly certain that we would simply continue with our training, but apparently the army felt that we were ready.  Accordingly, the 4 teams that make up my company spent about two weeks in Gaza, and it was these soldiers that I was going to meet on Sunday.

Due to the nature of the cease-fire it was unclear what Hamas's intentions were/are and it was necessary for Israel's army to maintain a state of readiness should the need to return to Gaza arise.  Thus, the entire paratroopers brigade spent the week at a nearby military base...on-call.

It was an interesting week to say the least.  It was the farthest thing from a normal week in the army that I have had.  As far as my army experience goes I have been in training for the last 10 months, so I was a little taken aback when we were basically on our own for an entire week.  Because we were on-call, there was really nothing that we could do.  Our entire company slept in what was essentially I giant hangar.  

I got to hear everyone's stories about what they had been doing for the last two weeks, I honed my backgammon skills, and I think everyone gained about 5 pounds.  It was simply unbelievable the outpour of support from both Israelis and people throughout the world.  There were mountains of packages filled with candy, socks, thermal undershirts, chips, cookies, and more candy.  And these were just the packages that weren't sent into Gaza.  I later heard that one of the grocery stores in Israel put together close to 90,000 packages for soldiers, and I believe it.  In addition to all of this, there was a Nestea van that came around and handed out free drinks, there were stand-up comedians who came and put on a show, parents came and cooked out almost every night, and someone came to give everyone haircuts (From what I understand he is supposed to be the Israeli equivalent of "Paul Mitchell."  I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a famous hairdresser, but everyone insisted that he is the most famous hairdresser in all of Israel.  His name was Shuki Zikri, in case that means something to someone.  I also put a picture of it up, he is the third haircutter from the left, although I think it you would have to be pretty bad to mess up an "army" haircut).  

From what I understand the war was considered a great success.  Israeli intelligence predicted that the IDF would incur 40 wounded soldiers a day, which in reality was far from the truth.  Throughout the entirety of the war only five soldiers were wounded in my entire batallion, and as it turns out they were all from my company.  I have spoken with all of them and they seem to be doing fine. 

Apparently, there is a slight disconnect between what I had been reading in the news and what the soldiers were hearing.  According to the news, Israel's goal was to end Hamas's rocket fire into Israel.  According to what my friends were told, they were going in to show to Hamas that there are consequences for their actions, and to significantly limit their capability to launch future rockets.  While the understood goals of Hamas, to the best of my understanding, was to open its borders and be allowed to police themselves.  Everything that I have heard since returning was that Hamas's main goal was to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to use them as bargaining pieces.