Beyond the Green Line

Taking the First Step

The moment the plane landed in Israel a bomb exploded in my chest. Somewhere, something had been building up. I was in Israel, I was far away from friends, family and home, why? Dreams of joining the Paratroopers?Of becoming a general in the army? The absurdity of these fragile hopes hit me full force the instant the captain stopped talking. Now it was too late, I was stranded in this strange place with nothing more than childish notions of becoming a warrior. I had cheated myself, I had made a huge and terrible mistake, committing myself to something I didn’t understand for reasons I couldn’t fathom.

The rest of the day was tough, I had to fill out immigration forms at the airport while my mind was screaming at my body to agree to nothing, to sign nothing to declare that it had all been a terrible mistake, to remain at the airport and jump on the first flight back home, to the place that I knew and understood and where there were people who loved me. My body ignored my mind and went through all of the motions. I put myself on a cab to Jerusalem and the language course that was to be my home for my first 5 months in the Holy Land as an Israeli.

That night I made the call home, I spoke to my parents letting them know that I understood I had made a mistake and would be returning to their loving embrace very soon. I underestimated the powers of my mother. Her soothing voice calmed me down, “the course lasts 5 months, why don’t you give it a chance? You know you can come back whenever you like.” I remained unconvinced; we continued talking until we had decided that I might be able to stand it for a week. 

A week was long enough to take it for a month and a month long enough to start thinking that just maybe becoming an IDF Paratrooper wasn’t such a crazy idea.

The Next Steps

There were two other guys on my language course looking to sign up to the army. Dave was from Canada and Sean was from Miami. Sean and I were room mates, he was an amateur body builder with a law degree and just as motivated to go into the army as I was. He wanted to be in tanks though, much as I tried to convince him of the greatness of the Paratroopers he had his heart set on driving those metal monsters. Dave was a skinny little guy who kept his head buried in a book, when he did peep out of it he usually uttered something about how Israel was besieged on all sides by enemies and it was the duty of Jews everywhere to protect her. He was all fire and brimstone and didn’t much care where he served just as long as it was in a combat unit.

We had our identity cards and temporary passports, the next step was to talk to the army and undergo the preliminary tests that helped to determine which units we were eligible for. Sean wasn’t really in Israel for the army but for his girlfriend who he had met in Miami where she had been working as a nanny. But he had the army in his mind as a goal insisting that you couldn't be a 'true' Israeli unless you had served in the Israel Defence Force.

So after figuring out where the recruitment office was the three of us trotted down there one day. In Jerusalem the central army office was filled with people. The building was in a crowded part of the city, it was dilapidated and guarded by a very bored pair of 19 year old girls wearing battle dress and carrying M-16's. They glanced at our ID cards and waved us in.

I was exhilarated at the moment of my first meeting with the army, I had the sensation of being officially on my way to achieving the unachievable. The army was before me and they were listening, well I thought they were listening. As it turned out the recruitment office was a misnomer, it was more like a way station. Upon entry I found a bustle of young soldier girls wandering around carrying papers, overcrowded desks with documents falling off the edges and all kinds of people in civilian clothes there for various reasons that none of them looked happy about.

We were shunted onto some hard metal chairs and given various forms to fill out while we waited though no one told us what it was that we were waiting for. The three of us sat there in a row, opposite sat an anaemic looking Hassidic kid, there was nothing to him but pasty white skin and bones, he clutched a book  that he swayed into and out of while learning. Occasionally he would survey the room around him with furtive eyes looking out through his almost comically thick glasses. I knew immediately he was there to get out of his army service. After a matter of minutes one of the many anonymous doors opened and an older Hassid walked out smiling with an army non-commissioned officer. The beaming Hassid shook the soldier’s hand, moved over to the anaemic kid patted him on the shoulder and they both left.

The non-commissioned officer then beckoned to the three of us to step into his parlour. The office was in fact a large room with several staff members who were busy filing and generally bustling around. He motioned us past all of them and into a small office at the end of the room where we sat before him. His English was awful and our Hebrew was no better. He took the forms we had filled out and looked over them while we remained silent. This all began to feel very real to me now. He was a bald man with dark skin, I figured him for Moroccan, he was wearing glasses and had a big paunch.

He peered at me through his thick lenses, it was apparently my form he held in his hands. “You want sree munts?” he growled at me. “Er no I want to serve properly” I squeaked. He let out a long sigh, staring at me, he mopped the sweat from his brow. “What you want dis for? Take 6 munts!” It was a surprise that the recruitment sergeant in an official Israeli Defence Forces recruitment office was actually trying to talk me out of going into the army. “No, I want to serve!” I looked upon it as a test, it had to be, there was no way that this guy was really trying to talk me out of joining the army...surely he was merely testing me. “Okay, Okay 2 years”, he typed something into his computer and a moment later a young girl walked in with a form, he put it in front of me and I signed before my nerves or my senses could interfere. 

He took the form from me and away and I watched as it disappeared into a manilla folder that itself disappeared into stack of other files just like it on his overflowing desk. I had become just another anonymous folder among thousands of others. The sergeant squinted through his thick glasses into the computer screen, clicked his mouse and a moment later the same girl came back into his office with another sheet of paper. The sergeant, defeated after his attempts to talk me out of serving slid the paper over to Sean. Sean looked at the paper, picked up the pen and signed.

The sergeant reached for the paper at which point Sean pulled it closer to his eyes for another look. “So uh how long am I serving for?” He quizzed. “Two years, you serve two” came the reply. “And urm” he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. I looked at him with a sinking feeling in my stomach, he had turned pale. “What if I want to do one year?” The sergeant looked up, confused, So you can do one year” he says. “hmm yeah, I think one year sounds much better…actually, I’ll just take the form home and think about it.” 

My nerves had abated in the moments since my file had disappeared among all of the others. After signing and getting it over with I had felt better but now the adrenaline was starting up again. I had put myself on the line and now it was becoming clear that I was on my own. Sean was only doing one year.

Next up was Dave, the holy warrior, sure that in blood and fire did Israel fall, in blood and fire will Israel rise…and be maintained. I looked at him, he was younger than me, meaning that he had to serve three years regardless of whether he wanted to or not. There was no way he could back out. For the third time the soldier girl walked in with the form. For the third time the sergeant handed it over. For the third time someone who could barely speak Hebrew looked green with it in his hands. He looked at the sergeant who was waiting with all the anticipation of a recruitment sergeant who had no idea that his job was to actually get people into the army rather than keep them out.

David signed the form and I sighed a sweet sigh of relief. David’s anonymous file was open and the form had almost arrived in it’s bed ready to be laid to rest when he suddenly blurted out a string of words that I didn’t understand at all in the most perfect Hebrew. The sergeant peered at David through his thick lenses said “ok” picked up the form and ripped it up in front of us. I was on my own, two years of my life signed away in the blink of an eye. I had gotten just what I wanted and now that I had it I was by no means sure that I wanted it. A good lesson in life was there somewhere but damned if I could figure out what it was.

The End of One World the Beginning of a New One

My mum had said to me that she didn’t mind that I was living in a danger zone just as long as I called after each bomb blew up to tell her that I was okay. It was 2001 and the second Intifada had been going on for a while by the time I arrived in July of that year. It was inevitable that a bomb would go off some time in Jerusalem and I didn’t have long to wait. On August 9^th, less than a month after my arrival a bomb went off in a pizza parlour in central Jerusalem. I felt very far removed from it, as though it was happening in a different country somehow. Some of the other guys living in the ulpan with me took it really hard though, especially the Americans. A pregnant American woman had been killed in the blast and some those living with me at the ulpan knew her. She was one of 15 killed, seven of the dead were kids.

I went to one of the 2 payphones in the building to call home and let my family know that I hadn’t been anywhere near the blast. The phone rang and a couple of thousand miles away my mum answered. “Hi mum” I said in an upbeat sort of way. “Hi darling how are you? How are you feeling about everything?” Yeah I’m fine, listen relax, don’t freak out or anything but a bomb has gone off but I’m fine, everything’s fine I don’t know anyone who got hurt and everything’s fine.” I blurted it all out as quickly as I could. There was a pause on the other end, “Marc?” she inquired, “yes mum?” “ I want you get on a plane right now and come home, enough of this, it’s too dangerous!” she took me by surprise, her voice rising as she spoke before almost tailing off to a whimper as she finished. “But Mum what about all that stuff you said about me just calling you and letting you know I was fine? Here I am calling and I’m fine, there’s no problems!” 

Things had changed since that first week, step by little baby step my plan was swinging into action and was certainly too far along for me to let the bombing of a pizza place that I had always considered to be pretty average derail it.

“That wasn’t the same! Don’t you understand it’s dangerous!” The conversation was getting boring, I had performed my duty as a good son and let her know that a bomb had gone off and that I was fine. It was the last time I did so, if she heard about a bomb she could call me on my brand new cell phone to find out if I was okay. From that moment on the rule was if she didn’t call I figured she just didn’t know that anything had happened and I just stayed quiet.

A month or so later I was rudely awaken by a phone call. I had abandoned my Hebrew studies almost at the very beginning of the course, seduced by the night life that Jerusalem had to offer so it wasn’t unusual for me to sleep at just about any hour of the day. It was my grandfather on the phone, a rare honour. He was telling me that a plane had crashed into the one of the Twin Towers in New York. I shrugged him off with visions of a light aircraft accidentally crashing into the building somehow but he was insistent that something was happening so I got out of bed and went into the TV room downstairs.

People were there crying as I sat on a chair in silence and watched the images of smoke billowing out of what had been up to that point the marvel of the New York skyline. I watched the second plane fly into the second tower and I was no longer in Israel. I wasn’t in Israel and I wasn’t in the 21^st century, I was in Sarejevo, it was 1914 and I was watching the Archduke being assassinated. Before my very eyes the world was changing forever and I was witness to it. The stable world I had grown up in crumbled along with the towers as CNN broadcast the event live. 

I sat in that chair silently watching the news with my mouth open along with millions of other  people all over the world watching those towers fall, hearing about the attack on the Pentagon and listening to the terrified reporters attempt to remain in control enough to report the facts as they understood them.

I stayed there until the evening and then went for a run I attempted to puzzle out what had happened. The feeling of being around to witness the end of the world I had known and the beginning of a new one never left me. I was on my way into the Israeli army with the object of becoming a Paratrooper. If I succeeded I would fight those who hated me because of my mere existence. There was no room in this world for Jews they said. Those who attacked America agreed with them. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. I decided that in light of the day’s events all I needed to do was exactly what I was already doing. With that thought in mind I resolved to put myself forward for the tests to get into the Paratroopers the very next day.