Live vicariously through me and my experiences as an oleh chadash (new immigrant) and my experiences from having served as a combat soldier in the IDF. What will happen next....????
Sunday night was the start of Yom Hazikaron - Memorial Day. Today we remember the people and soldiers whohave died defending the land of Israel. I went to the ceremony at the kotel where Shimon Peres - the President and Benny Gantz - the Chief of Staff spoke. There ceremony started with the lowering of the flag to half mast - and this began our day of mourning. Benny Gantz ended up walking by me about 10 feet away. After the ceremony on my way back out of the kotel I bumped into some people I knew from Toronto as well as one of my tour guides that led one of my trips 2 years ago.
The flag lowered to half mast
Representatives from the army (green), navy (white) and airforce (gray) standing at attention during the ceremony
Twenty five hours later after remembering the sacrifices of others for this country we began celebrating what we have. The flags were raised to full mast and the start of Yom Ha'atzmaut - Independence Day , Israel's 63rd birthday. I met up with a bunch of friends and headed to Machane Yehuda - the open air market for an outdoor party. Just as it felt like the party was getting started, at midnight they abruptly turned off the music and said party is over and you all have to leave. With that dissapointment we headed to the next street party which lasted until about 3AM when again - party over, go home. This time, however, I did. After partying pretty hard, it was time to call it a night beacuse there was still more celebrating to do once I woke up.
Nothing says despite your best efforts to destroy Israel and the Jewish state we once again live on to see another birthday (and many more to come!) like a BBQ! If your not having a BBQ on Yom Ha'atzmaut then your pretty much not celebrating it at all. At around 1130 I got to Gan Sacher where the entire city of Jerusalem was having a BBQ. The (first) one I went to was organized by the Michael Levine Lone Soldiers Foundation. It was a lot of fun and there was lots of food. I was able to see friends I hadn't seen in a while and make lots of new ones. After a few hours there I headed over to a second BBQ with my sister and her friends. Shortly thereafter I bumped into other friends and headed to a 3rd BBQ run by the student center at Hebrew University. The weather was absolutely fantastic for a fun day out in the sun. After some time at the 3rd BBQ a few friends and I started a journey to find some wine and continue our mild shenanegans.
In the afternoon, Israel was showcasing its airforce by having jets and planes fly over Jerusalem and the rest of the country. I got a pretty good look at them as they flew overhead but couldn't help but think what the hell are they thinking???!?!! Only 3 days earlier there was a fuel crisis where they found a contaminated substance in the jet fule leading to grounding of most flgihts, balaganim at the airport and a fuel shortage! No I know that the air force for sure has their own fuel reserves but if the entire country is in a jet fuel crisis - even if it is just temporary or even if it is currently being resolved I personally don't think its the smartest idea to send a dozen or so fighter jets for a fuel burning joyride across the country. On the other hand, it was pretty awesome!
Once I got back to the appartment I had one full day to plan my trip to Italy, pack and go exchange money before my flight.
Neon light flag of Israel that lined the old city wall just outside Jaffa Gate
I decided to do a one week program in Tzfat through Livnot u'lhibanot - which means to build and to be rebuilt. The program concentrates on volunteering, learning about Judaism and doing some hiking. The group consisted of me, a bunch of Americans and a Jew from Glasgow, Scotland. My volunteering time was spent laying floor tiles in a bomb shelter, and helping out in an Etheopian absorpotion center - helping the kids with computers and playing soccer with them. The first day I got there on the Sunday was Holocaust Memorial Day, which always falls one week before Yom Hazikaron - Memorial Day for the IDF and those hwo have been killed defending Israel, and 8 days before Yom Ha'atzmaut - Independence Day. We attended a service set up by the community, which was very nice. It's a good thing I understand Hebrew otherwise it would have been lights out immediately for me.
One of the evenings we went into an old water cistern which was completely pitch black and had an awesome echo. We set up a bonfire and had a very awesome jam session which included a guitar, drum and violin.
We did 2 organized hikes with the group - one through nachal Amud and the second was to Bar Yochai. Both were very nice and very green. On Friday before shabbat, we head free time and I decided to go on a hike in the forests just south of Tzfat. The hike was nice, none of us had done the hike before so it was a nice adventure. We saw a bunch of cows, goats a turtle and even a funny looking something-or-other with a long tail (he was too fast for me to snap a picture of it. Once we finished the hike I decdied to continue on my way down into the nachal that we had hiked a few days earlier. I hiked the nachal for a few kilometers before I had to get back to Tzfat in time for shabbat.
The entire stay in the old city of Tzfat was quite unique and even moreso to be there for shabbat. Before heading back to Jerusalem on Sunday morning I booked my flight for a 12 day vacation in Italy in which I was to leave on the Thursday and have to be at the airport by Wednesday night - in 3.5 days!
After a good nights rest in a bed in Eilat, Ari and I headed up north via bus to Mitzpe Ramon - the town overlooking Maktesh Ramon - the Ramon crater. Our plan was to start hiking at around 4PM after the peak hours of heat. We took our time walking around and we went ot the supermarket to get food. We found out that the heat was not nearly as bad as it was in Eilat and there was no problem starting to hike at 3PM. We started the hike along the boardwalk which offered fantastic views of the crater. Once we made it down the 400 meters of elevation the view was less impressive. Not so shortly thereafter we noticed that we were not on the correct path. We got back on trail and calculated that we had unnecessarily hiked an additional 5 kilometers. Once back on the trail we continued hiking towards THE (emphasis on the word 'the') noteworthy item of the days hike. Within the hiking book it points out the highlight of today was THE tree. Yep, the highlight of the entire day was THE tree. Not a tree, but THE tree. Despite the fact that the desert has been blooming - there is plenty of agriculture in the negev desert, there seems to be a need to make note of trees to the point where they need ot be highlighted as highlights. There must be something wrong if I ask someone if they saw THE tree and they know exactly what I'm talking about. By now its probably clear that this hike was something dissapointing if I'm spending this much time talking about THE tree I bet your wondering what THE tree looks like by now. Well I'm going to build up the suspense!
So we got to THE tree, took a few pictures, rested a bit then continued on our way. We hiked another mountain (120 meters in elevation in 0.5km) and then went to bed as it was dark. In the morning we hiked 3 or 4 kilometers to the main highway and hooped on a bus to head back home. After the 2 day hike from Eilat this hike did not compare. The views from the cliffs were much more impressive than those from inside the crater.
hiking total: 13 km plus 5 for having gotten lost
Now you can rest at ease, here is a pic of THE tree. I hope you didn't cheat and scroll down here without reading the blog post. SHAME!
For these few days of hiking that we did we managed to hike about 44km of shvil Israel which is 4.6km of the entire trail. It looks like I have a lot more hiking to do if I want to complete this trail one day.
In the story of passover, it says that the Israelites were liberated from Egypt and started what would be their 40 year journey through the desert to the land of Israel. In this I saw a challenge. Since I had got to Israel, I had always wanted to do hiking, and there is one famous trail called Shvil Israel (the Israel trail). This trail crosses the entire country from Eilat in the south all the way up to Kiryat Shmoneh in the north. The entire trail itself is 953 km and takes about 40 days to hike. Well, I don't have 40 days to hike the entire country, but I did have about a week to hike with a friend. Our plan was to go down to Eilat and hike a few days there starting from the beginning of the trail. Then we would catch a bus up to Mitzpe Ramon and hike into the Ramon Crater along the same trail.
Day 1:
We started our journey after shabbat ended. I took an overnight bus into Eilat which got in at 430AM where I met my friend Ari. A third friend was supposed to join us but unfortunately had to cancel at the last minute. We had planned on getting an early start to the hike but were delayed beacuse the friend that couldn't come was the one who was bringing the maps. We had to wait until about 9AM and search for a place to buy maps. I ended up buying a fantastic book with the maps and directions for the entire shvil Israel. It gave us fantastic directions once on the trail, however I ran into some problems as we attempted to start the hike. Looking at the maps there were 2 places to start the hike. The real start of the hike was about half a kilometer north of the border crossing with Egypt (the most southern point in Israel). The secondary starting point was a few kilometers north. I expected there to be some sort of large sign saying something along the lines of 'Welcome to the beginning of Shvil Israel, good luck!'. There was nothing aside from the painted route marker on a rock. The problem was that the red and white marker on the rock was indicative of the secondary trail, and I was looking for an orange/blue/white marker indicating shvil Israel. we asked people where the trail started and nobody seemed to know exactly. Something just didn't make sense. The red and white trail seemed like the only logical trail to take, but the colours didn't fit what it said in the book. We ended up continuing south for a few hundred meters until we got to the Taba border crossing. We had clearly gone too far. We walked back to the red and white marker and figured that this absolutely had to be the beginning of the trail even though there was no sign at all.
By 1130AM we started our hike with all the necessities for about 3 days of living: sleeping bag, food, warm clothes for the cold desert nights and 11 liters of water. In total my backpack weighed 22 kg. The closest town was about 40 km away and there was no civilization or water along the way. The hike was quite challenging, as we spent a lot of time climbing upwards into the Eilat mountains. We got some fantastic views of Eilat and the Red Sea. The weather was really hot and by 130PM we had no choice but to stop hiking and wait out the hottest part of the day. After a 3 hour rest, it was still very hot, but we continued trekking on. We past a number of hikers along the way and even some bikers, but for the most part we were totally on our own with the desert. At 2 points in the afternoon we passed by 2 army posts set up as they were guarding the border with Egypt. We managed to rest there for a few minutes and even refill out water. By the end of day 1 we had made it to a campsite on the side of the highway. Once it got dark at about 730PM there was nothing for us to do. We ate some dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags and got a good night sleep after a full day of walking.
Day 1 stats: almost 12 km of Shvil Israel plus a few other kilometers getting lost and trying to find the start of the trail. Fairly mountaneous climb, scaling over 300 meters in elevation.
The Shvil Isreal path marker
Day 2:
We woke up early at about 630 in order to hike before it got too hot outsite. We started by hiking up Mount Shlomo, which gave us a great view of more desert, sand, rocks, and moutains. We saw a lot of that on day 2. What was interesting was that when we got to the peak and started to hike downwards we saw a plaque on the ground at an intersection between 2 trails. One trail took us down the mountain and the second one was shvil Israel which continued around the mountain ridge. We decided to go down the mountain because we wanted to make up some time because we had set out late the day before. It ended up cutting out about 3km. The plaque read 'This peak which you pass is the meeting point between Mount Yehoram and Mount Shlomo. It is one of the only places in the world where you pass 500 million years.' Mount Shlomo, which we had just climbed was a dark red moutain and Mount Yehoram wich was right in front of us was more of a light sandy mountain. As we followed the trail down the mountain we constantly were crossign between the darker rock path to the lighter sandier path, which was pretty cool. In the picture below you can see what I described, Shlomo on the right and Yehoram on the left. The second picture is one taken from a distance.
Day 2 stats: climbed 3 mountains. about 11km. climbed to a highest elevation of 706 meters. Steepest climb of about 30% for a distance of one kilometer.
The view from mount Amram - elevation of 585 meters.
Day 3:
Another early start to the day. We started our walk down mount Amram, and it was all downhill from there, which was a nice change after a day of lots of ups and downs and some very steep ups. We walked all the way downwards until we reached a turnoff to the town of Be'er Ora. This was the best spot to get to the main highway. From there we were going to head up to Mitzpe Ramon to do some more hiking. Once we detoured off from the main trial, we came to a ghost town which we thought was Be'er Ora. It was kinda creepy because it was in the middle of the desert and it looked like a really creepy ghost town you see in the movies. We passed the ghost town and around the corner we finally saw the real town of Be'er Ora and was a bit more relaxed. All we had to do was then walk around the entire town because it was fenced off. We finally got to the highway and we tried to catch a lift or a bus up to Mitzpe Ramon. After 2 hours of waiting we decided to call it quits and go to Eilat for the day and from their head to Mitzpe Ramon the following day.
Day 3 stats: 8km of the mail trail plus an addition 5km or so to get to the main road.
Once in Eilat we found a nice appartment for the night so I was able to sleep in a bed. Then we immediately went out to eat shwarma. After living off of matza and dried fruits and nuts for 3 days - it was passover so I wasn't really able to eat much else - it was great to have some bread and meat. For dinner I had a nice pizza.
Of the entire trail, I completed 2 days (stretched into 3) of it and hiked about 31 km, or 3.25% of the trail. Due to the heat, and the heavy packs we were carrying it was a fairly difficult and challenging hike. It would have been easier had we done it from north to south. I felt like an infantry soldier carrying everything on my back, and I got an appreciation of how much it sucks to be in infantry :-)
I caught a bus from Jericho to Jerusalem to my sister's appartment so that I could drop off what remained of my belongings. On Friday I went to Tel Aviv for the weekend. My friend Jon had come in from Toronto for his sister's wedding that day. I went to the wedding and it was a beatiful affair. It was a nice outside afternoon wedding with the ceremony overlooking beatiful fields. After the wedding we headed back to the hotel on the beach. We played some beach volleyball until the sun went down and in the evening we went out on the town. Saturday we went to Jaffa and had a nice brunch on the port and then walked around the city.
After shabbat ended I headed to my cousin's house. Passover was starting on Monday night and I was spending it with them. I came a bit early because they needed my help. I got to his house at about 1030PM and his neighbour was starting to barbeque. He was making all the food that was not kosher for passover so we had a nice feast before getting to work. For those who don't know much about passover, cleaning for the holiday sucks. We are not allowed to eat bread and many other things and out houses must be cleaned thoroughly in order to rid them from the contriband. We had a lot to do before the holiday which started on Monday at sundown, which basically included cleaning the entire house, with extra emphasis on the kitchen and cook an entire meal for 15 people. So after the BBQ at about 1130 we started to get to work. My first task was to clean the fridge. At 230AM we called it a night and headed to bed. Sunday was a full day of cleaning and entertaining the kids (ages 3 and 5), and then cleaning after the kids. My sister also arrived in the afternoon to lend a helping hand. After the cleaning was done they went shopping for food. Monday was the cooking day where I was the designated potato peeler. The passover seder (the traditional meal eaten on passover) was a lot of fun. There was great company, and great food. At some point I had some sort of hamster (I think of it more as a rat-mouse) thrown on me. Don't ask - and no it doesn't have anything to do with any judaic passover related rituals. Having eaten seconds and thirds of just about everything (except for the wine which was four helpings) I was plenty satisfied. The next day it was another delicious carnivourously themed BBQ where I ate even more delicious food. It was a good thing that I had skipped breakfast.
The following day we went on a nice hike with a few families including my cousins and a whole bunch of kids. After the hike, as if I hadn't had enough BBQ, we had another one! Just as delicious like the last two.
The next day I headed back to Jerusalem and went on a nice tour of the first community built outside the old city walls of Jerusalem, Mishkanot Sha'ananim via Segway! It was really funny to be riding around on a Segway and having every single person on the street staring out me like I'm riding a space vehicle of some sort. The tour was really interesting, we got some cool views of the city and I had got a chance to see some things that I hadn't seen before.
Sorry for this post being 2 weeks late, but I have been busy (lazy). So on April 14th I left my kibbutz with all my remaining belongings and headed to base to get discharged. Now that I'm out of the army they stop paying for me to live on the kibbutz so I had to leave. A day earlier my battalion had finished with their stay in the base in the golan heights and headed over to Jericho where they are to be for the next few months. So me with my 3 massive bags of stuff had to figure out which busses I needed to take to get to the new base which is somewhere near Jericho. Luckily once I got to the bus station in Jerusalem I saw someone from the battalion and he told me where to go. Once I got to the base, nothing was set up and nobody knew anything (not that that is anything new). I found the office and said I was here to get released. They asked me if I had filled out the form where I had to return all my stuff and I had told them I had already done that a while ago. The next thing they asked was if I was doing reserve duty (with mahal I don't have to do reserves) so there was a bunch of other paperwork that I didn't have to fill out. Next I gave back my uniform and my kitbag. Lastly I cut my ID card in half - I got to keep the half with my picture on it as a souvenir :-) And thats it; officially a civilian again. They gave me a bus ticket so I could make my way back home. I said goodbye to the few people that I knew that were on base, ate lunch and then headed to the bus! Very anti-climactic and non eventful.
Moments after the cutting of the ID card and my official release!
So what the heck do I do now that I'm out of the army. Great question (continue reading my blog to find out). I can't get a job here beacuse my visa doesn't allow it. I don't have a permanent place to live, so I am jumping from place to place every few days. I'm in Israel for another 2 months so I'm bound to do some interesting things which will be blogged about.
On my vacation I have been doing a fair amount of travelling. From my kibbutz I took a number of day trips to some relatively far away places up north. Since I get free public transportation I went to visit the places that are far away, and thus expensive to get to by public transportation. While I have the opportunity to get to these places I needed to travel at least 3 hours in each direction with multiple bus/train transfers to get to some of these sites. I would return to my kibbutz at the end of the day so I wouldn't have to rent a hostel in that area. The places I visted had discounted entrance fees for soldiers, but since I was there on my own they were nice enough to wave the fee entirely. Additionally I think they were shocked that I had decided to come on my own without any direct means of getting there. All of these things I did didn't cost me a single shekel so I was very happy to have this opportunity to see a lot of things and not even have to think of how much it would cost me.
In addition to the travelling, I have continued my relaxing on my kibbutz and frequenting Jerusalem to visit my sister and friends. Another reason for going to Jerusalem is that once I get released from the army, they stop paying for me to live on the kibbutz. Therefore I need to start moving my things out of the kibbutz. I have waaaay to many things in order to make the move in one trip. Every time I went to Jerusalem I would take a large bag of things and leave it at my sister's appartment.
I have broken the post down into the following sites. You can click on the link to jump to that specific part of the post. If your lazy and don't want to read you can jump right to all the pictures I uploaded on these 2 pages here and here.
Very interesting museum which had a lot of artifacts including a battleship and a submarine that we were able to walk through. The museum discussed the history of the Navy from how it was established to the present day operations that are declassified. The Navy started with a single passenger ship - its crew were not military personnel but anyone who knew anything about boats or water became part of the navy. The few guns and cannons they did have were not intended for boat use and were extremely inaccurate. Fake dummy guns were mounted to the ships so they would appear to be powerful.
I had always thought that the living quarters on a ship/sub were really crappy - very cramped, small spaces, etc. Now having walked through the two ships all I could think was look at all this space! From the perspective of someone who lived in a tank, a ship didn't seem that bad in terms of living conditions. The only downside I could see is that in the navy you can spend 3-4 weeks straight at sea.
The kibbutz was founded by holocaust survivors and those that faught in the Warsaw ghetto uprising - hence the name of the kibbutz which means ghetto fighters. It was an excellent museum with many artifacts. In the museum ther was a large section specifically devoted to the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto. I tagged along to a tour that was in process and there were two fantastic stories that the guide talked about. The first one being about the Treblinka extermination camp. A model of the camp had been created by one of the founders of the kibbutz who was one of only 70 people to ever escape the camp. The tour guide described the entire process that the nazis used to exterminate the Jews. Over 700,000 Jews were systematically killed in the gas chambers in under just one year. The camp was designed as a killing machine in order to kill as many jews in the most efficient way possible. The process was streamlined and attention to detail great in order to keep the Jews fooled as to where they were heading until the very last minute. When the train pulled into the station the Jews would disembark and be led to beleive that they needed to take showers before being processed into the camp, when in fact once they got into the 'showers' they were gassed. Towards the war once the Nazis realized that they were going to lose they began to destroy all the evidence of the secret camp by burning the bodies instead of burring them and completely erasing any evidence of the existance of the extermination camp.
The second story was about Janusz Korczak - a Polish Jew. He was a widely known, successful and respected figure within Poland. He was a children's author and a pediatrician and an owner of an orphanage. He continued to take care of the children when they were placed in the ghetto. Due to his public stature there were people who offered him help to get him out of the ghetto, however he continued to refuse the help unless the help was also extended to the children for whom he cared for. When it came to be for the children to be shipped off to the gas chambers in Treblinka, instead of Korczak accepting the help to escape he decided to stick with his children. Knowing that they were on their way to be murdered, Korczak dressed the 200 children up in their nicest clothes and kept the children calm as he accompanied them to their death.
Rosh Hanikra is located at the most northern point of coastal Israel. Just north of Rosh Hanikra is the border with Lebaanon. After taking the steepest cable car ride in the world (70 degree incline) to get down the the grottos where we see what the site describes as a never-ending love story between mountain and sea. Even on a calm day one can see and hear the water crashing into the rock walls. There was a fantastic view of the coast of Israel and I could even see all the way to Haifa!
The kibbutz is located close to the southern border with lebanon. I don't quite remember anything extremely interesting about the fortress (its been quite some time from the time I was there to the time I am blogging). This place was virtually impossible to get to without a car. There was a grand total of one bus that went there all day. And guess what! I missed it!!! I took a bus that took me closer to the kibbutz and then managed to catch a lift the rest of the way. Its so far in the middle of nowhere that I didn't see anyone else touring the fortress. The fortress was not overly exciting, but it did offer a great 360 degree view of the surrounding area. The fortress was somewhat of a dissapointment, however I didn't have anything better to do and it didn't cost me any money so I'm glad that I managed to at least drag myself off the couch.
I spent Shabbat with relatives that live up north a little south-west of the kinneret. On Saturday we went on an offroad 4x4 trip through the fields. It was a beatiful day with clear skies and we could see quite far. After a few days of rain during the week, everything looked extra green.
Picture of me with the kinneret in the background
Another great view. The previous picture was taken from the middle peak.
I thought that the Yehiam castle was difficult to get to; a piece of cake compared to Nimrod's castle. At least Nimrod's castle was worth the trouble. A car is really needed to get to these places. Nimrod's castle is at the base of the Hermon mountain overlooking the valley where kiryat shmoneh lies as well as the hills leading up to the golan heights including the Banias. The weather was very typical for the golan at this time. Believe it or not but the two pictures below were taken not even an hour apart. There was a bit of rain and clouds for a few hours but by noon it had completely cleared up and there wasn't a cloud in the sky for the rest of the day. It was windy on Nimrods castle because it was very high up. The fortress was huge - about 500m in length by 150 meters. When the clouds were not blocking the sky the view of the surrounding area was fantastic.
I caught a lift with a nice family from Nimrod's castle to the Banias Nature Reserve, which was only a 10 minute drive from the fortress. There was an option to hike down from the fortress, however it was a bit chilly, and I had managed to find a lift so I figured to take advantage of that. In addition, there was plenty of hiking to do at the nature reserve. Once at the nature reserve there were 4 different trails to walk. In about 2.5 hours I walked all 4 of the trails. In addition to the fantastic scenery, and the waterfall at the end of the hike there were lots of ancient ruins from the time of Herod.
Sorry I haven't blogged in a number of weeks. I've been enjoying my time off from the army. Since I have time to relax and I'm always around a computer I am not pressured to get a blog post up. Usually I end up waiting until the last minute to get a blog post up before I need to get back to base for a few weeks. I would typically post my blog at about 2 or 3AM and catch a few hours of sleep before waking up at around 6 to head back to base. Since I don't have that pressure I have just been constantly pushing off writing another blog post. I would appologize for my laziness but I'm not at all one bit sorry. After practically finishing up with my army service (I am on vacation until I get discharged) I needed time to wind down and I haven't been in the mood to blog regularly. Additionally, there hasn't really been anything interesting enough to devote a blog post... until now.
Without getting into too much details here are some things that have been going on with my free time.
The week following the last week of training was a nice relaxing week that our entire battalion spent in what can be described as an army resort. It was a relaxing week that we spent together and hung out. These opportunities are donated by large organizations to provide combat soldiers with a nice vacation during our intense and stressful service. It provides us with a time to relax and enjoy ourselves outside the confines of the army structure. We had a sports day and there were a number o comedy acts in the evenings. For the most p
art I spent the week just relaxing and hanging out with friends.
At the end of that week I met my sister at the airport - she is here for the next 5 months. I helped drag all the bags to a relatives house where we spent shabbat and then to Jerusalem where she will be living.
Headed back to my kibbutz and took a nice day hike in the area. The community in the picture below is my kibbutz. More pictures from the hike here.
Celebrated purim in Jerusalem. It was great to see people walking around in costumes for a number of days.
My account of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem:
Yesterday afternoon I was in Jerusalem and on my way to the central bus station to catch a bus to Rehovot for a cousins bar mitzvah party. As I was on the bus about 10 minutes away from the central bus station I saw an ambulance fly by our bus, and then a second one. At that moment I didn't think anything of it as that can be a frequent occurrance in Jerusalem. A few seconds later came more sirens - ambulances, motorcylces, police, all sorts of other emergency vehicles with sirens flew by our bus within a matter of one minute. At that moment the bus driver turned up the radio and everyone was listening attentively. I didn't pick up everything that was said as it was in Hebrew, but I heard enough "bus bombing on Binyanei Ha'umah". Binyanei Ha'umah is the street across from the central bus station where all the inner city busses stop - exactly where I was going. I picked up my phone and called my mom in Toronto to say we were okay, and then started calling other people as well to ask if they were okay. It was extremely difficult to make calls because the network was working overload as everyone was doing the same thing - calling everyone they know at the same time. A few minutes later I got off the bus with my sister and started walking as traffic wasn't moving. I made my way to the scene and all I could really see was a broken bus window. The bus was blocking my view of most of the scene. My initial thought was that for a bus bombing it did not look that bad - but then again I had no information as to the number of casualties and I had arrived about 20 minutes after the explosion so the injured had for sure already been evacuated. I later heard of reports that the bomb was not on the bus itself, but ouside which explained why I did not see much damage.
We heard reports that the entrance to the city was closed and that we might not be able to get out of the city. We were contemplating heading back into the city. We then suddently saw a team of paramedics sprint down the street to their ambulance and drive to a different location. A number of other vehicles followed. Another attack? Shortly after we heard rumours of a shooting nearby (in the end it was just rumours and nothing had transpired). We decided to go to bus station in the hopes that the busses were still running, which they were. Very quickly it seemed as life was returning back to normal.
We got back to base, quickly had lunch and then immediately went to the field. It was pouring rain and we had to prepare the tanks for the company exercise. During the afternoon it was decided to delay the start of the exercise from the middle of the night to the next morning. Before we headed back to base we aligned the tanks so they would be in position for the start of the exercise. On the way we managed to get ourselves stuck really deep in the mud. Since the mud was wet from a full day of rain the tank sunk to the depth of about one meter all the way around the tank. We had to get out of the tank and connect the towing cables to another tank. Instead of being able to lift the cable, the force of the cable pushed me further into the mud - up to the knees. We managed to get ourselves out of the mud, but my boots were full of mud and water. At least we were heading right back to base where I could put my boots right next to the heater to dry for the night. Right before the bus was about to leave I heard someone yell my name. Get off the bus they said, your staying the night to guard.What followed was a long series of swear words and phrases that lasted throughout the night. It continued to rain but I don't think I got any wetter. Everything was already full of mud and we needed a place to sleep. Our options: muddy tanks, muddy regular APCs (armored personnel carriers) or new APCs (called the Namer which only the Golani brigade have) which were also full of mud. The Namer is a lot more spacious and comfortable (in theory). One of its cool features is that its back door opens like what you would expect a UFO to do in the movies. In short, I had a horrible wet and muddy sleep if you could call what I did sleep.
My commander and I lifting one of the towing cables. Take note of my left leg.
The next day the exercise started. My tank did not have a job until the end of the exercise so at the beginning I was sitting behind the action just watching. After we finished with doing nothing we started driving to catch up to everyone else. Since my tank was behind the action at the beginning of the exercise I was able to take an awesome video, which unfortunately cannot be posted. After we started catching up to everyone suddenly my commander pointed behind us with a shocked look on his face. I had no idea what he was pointing at until he said 'cow'. Holy crap! I spotted the cow which was lying down hidden in the grass less than half a meter from where our tank passed. Then I saw that the APC that was driving behind us was heading right for the cow. I start waving my hands indicating to him to turn left. He didn't see me but he did turn enough to just miss the cow. Stupid lazy cow.
About halfway to our destination we ran into transmission problems and were forced to stop. That was the end of the exercise for us. Now, all we could do was wait for the exercise to finish and wait for the mechanic to come and check out what was wrong. I was really bummed out because we didn't do anything. We didn't even fire a single bullet! In addition to that when I was in training and we had our company exercise the exact same thing happened to my tank. After waiting a few hours, the mechanic came and decided that there wasn't anything wrong with it and we were free to drive. We were then told to head back to where we started the exercise because we had to rescue a tank in my platoon, tank #3, who was stuck in the mud. How did he get stuck in the mud? It was called back in order to rescue the other tank in the platoon, #3A who was stuck in the mud. We had passed 3A less than 2km into the exercise and as we passed them we had a good laugh at their expense, waved to them and continued on our way. As tank 3 was trying to pull 3A out of the mud it dug itself quite deep in the mud suck that the mud had reached the bottom belly of the tank and caused enough friction such that the treads couldn't do their work to pull out the other tank. While attempting to get into a different position tank 3 got stuck in the mud as well. So here we come, tank 3B to the rescue... ... or not. As you can see we also got stuck in the mud right as we were pulling in to position ourselves to rescue the other tank. So there we were, our entire platoon of tanks stuck in the mud one next to another. So the only thing we were left to do was to wait until the next day. In the morning a bunch of high ranking people came to take a look at our situation. They seemed to be somewhat surprised and maybe to some level impressed at how bad our situation looked. Two of the tanks 3A and us, 3B were in such bad shape that it appeared that we had intentionally tried to get stuck because we did such a good job at it. They told us that in the afternoon either 2 bulldozers would come or one bulldozer and a rescue tank. Yes, I said rescue tank. A few hours later a hummer came to pick up a few people to take them back to base and they gave us some leftover food - not good kind of leftovers; it was leftover battle rations. At about 4PM a bulldozer and the rescue tank arrived to start working. First, the bulldozer was able to pull out tank 3 without any problems. Next, it had trouble with 3A but eventually it managed to pull it out of the mud as well.
Bulldozer rescuing a tank
Last but not least, they had to bring in the rescue tank to help pull 3B out of the mud. The way it worked was that a massive cable was attached to the disabled tank and the rescue tank reeled in the cable (think of the disabled tank as a fish and the rescue tank being the one pulling in the fish). Now in order for this to work, the rescue tank had to be attached to some form of anchor. Thats where the bulldozer comes into play. It was connected to the other end of the rescue tank so that as it was attempting to pull on 3B the rescue tank would be able to pull on the disabled tank as opposed to the other way around. After a lot of work, we were finally out of the mud.
Rescue tank
We drove to where we started the exercise and I was finally headed back to base - it was about 9PM and I hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime (not that I had much to eat for that meal). (In relation to the blog title, the blog up until now has mostly referred to the muddy and half of the bad). The officer that gave me and one other person a lift back to base asked us if we wanted to stop off in the city to grab a bite to eat. YES YES YES YES YES!!!! We stopped off at a schnitzel place and everyone is staring at me because I looked like I had just gone through the last few days as described above. I was soooooo hungry and the food was soooooooooo good. (We ordered the same thing for lunch the next day and it did not taste nearly as good). When we got back to base, I finally had a chance to shower and clean all my muddy equipment.
The next day it was back to where we were in order to clean the tanks. In the afternoon my platoon commander told me that I was getting a perk for lone soldiers and that I should get my stuff ready to leave. (Referencing the blog title, this is the good part). Awesome. Just like at the beginning of the week when at the last minute I got royally screwed into staying in the field to guard while muddy and soaked to the bone, it can also happen just the opposite. Suddenly out of nowhere you have a gift coming your way. (more often than not you should be expecting the first case scenario as opposed to getting gifts). My commander couldn't elaborate and he didn't know where they were taking me or what I was going to be doing. Soon after, someone came to pick me up in a car and said that I was going on a helicopter ride. WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! He then tried to explain that to me in english as if I didn't understand. I said that I understood what he said, but I was in shock! They took myself and 3 other lone soldiers on a 10 minute helicopter ride (unfortunately it was not an army helicopter) around the north of Israel. The experience was a donation made to the battalion for lone soldiers. Here are some pictures below. It was an awesome experience, and I was in shock the entire time - I simply couldn't fathom that just an hour earlier I was going about my business as usual cleaning my tank not even thinking about helicopters, yet alone anything else aside from cleaning my tank. Well, the blog title is 'the good, the bad, the muddy, and...' and I think everyone knows what the next part is. I want to point out that I wanted to split this up into 2 blog posts, with the second one being titled '...the ugly', however that would ruin the effect because people would read the second blog post before this one due to chronological order. You would end up reading the punch line before the story leading up to it. I realize that this is already a large blog post but hang in there, I guarantee you that its worth the read. I know what your thinking - the bad and muddy parts of the blog could be considered ugly and I would have agreed with you until I experienced 'the ugly'.
On Friday, the day after the helicopter ride we were in the field again setting up for the battalion exercise (32 tanks and a whole bunch of other vehicles). The regiment commander came to speak to our company. He made a point of finding out who was part of the platoon that was stuck in the mud during the company exercise. It seems like we have become famous or infamous. From what I have heard, not too many people have had the opportunity to see a rescue tank in action. Around lunch time, the company headed back to the base for shabbat and my platoon was stuck in the field to do guard duty. This was partially good and bad. The bad part was that I was stuck in the field for at least 3 nights (including shabbat) because of the battalion exercise that was to start in the middle of the night on sunday/monday. To make it worse, the forecast was calling for rain. The good part was that it was our entire platoon guarding so there was less guard duty.
The forecast was correct and it did rain a lot. Luckily I had guard duty shifts where there was not too much rain. Due to the crappy weather, and the poor lighting there wasn't much to do for the weekend. In addition to that the tent was leaking right where my bed was, so I curled up the entire time under the sleeping bag to keep warm and dry. After Friday night dinner (8PM) until Sunday morning I managed to sleep 22 hours. The only reason I didn't sleep more was because of guard duty. 92% of that time frame was spent either sleeping or guarding.
Sunday we started getting ready for the battalion exercise which was to begin at 3AM. All the commanders went off to do a dry run of the exercise during the day, so once our tank was ready we had the entire day and night to do nothing until the start of the exercise. My commander had left the company the previous week because he was going to officers training school so they decided to screw us (his crew) over. The third tank in my platoon is a tank designated for an artillery officer, so that tank acts independently during the exercise. They decided to switch that tank crew with mine because we didn't have our regular commander and they wanted to give the second commander more experience as being part of the platoon. So this artillery officer guy - he doesn't take the place of our tank commander. We were given a tank commander and the artillery officer is an additional person in the tank, making us 5. So with 5 people in the tank, my job changes a bit and I am given the title ta'an baytzeem (which translates to balls loader). So this 5th person in the tank stands on my chair with his head out of the tank. Since he takes up my space, I am stuck inside the tank (here comes the punchline) staring at his balls (hence the balls loader). There is no place for me to move and I am stuck standing with my face being 30 centimeters away from this guy's crotch for the better part of 12 hours. Aside from the balls staring I did absolutely nothing during the exercise. Not only did the tank not fire a single bullet, but I didn't even load the guns. And to think that I signed more time in the army in order to participate in the battalion exercise.
My job as ta'an baytzim. Two notes on the picture: 1 - this is not the natural posture - I am posing for the camera. If I were to stand naturally I would be staring directly at his balls. 2 - the picture does not give the best angle, yet I am much closer than it seems to his crotch.
Once we reached the end of the exercise and had already parked the tanks we had a chance to regroup, eat a bit, refuel, etc. I had finished talking with some friends and as I was passing by the deputy company commander he said to go put on our gas masks as they had raised the threat level. I got on the tank and as I was picking up the pouch that had in it my gas mask I already see I'm in big trouble as there is a massive cloud of white smoke about 5 meters away from me. As it seems one of the officers had thrown tear gas 10 meters away from my tanks and I was downwind from it. Well I jumped from the tank and started running, but I ended up taking in a gulp of it and I also had my eyes open because I had to look as I was getting off of the tank. The tear gas stung like hell - my eyes and lungs. I ran over to where the medics had set up a little infirmary and they took care of me. After a few minutes the stinging died down and I was back to normal.
I signed more time in the army because I wanted to participate in the company and battalion exercises. Call me crazy, but I suppose I had the silly expectation that in these exercises my tank would actually do something and not just be a waste of fuel and kilometers. These past 2 weeks my tank didn't fire a single bullet. All other tanks averaged about 2000 bullets from the MAG alone. I didn't expect to be stuck with the worst job of staring at an officers balls for an entire exercise. When I found out about it I tried to talk my way out of it. Apparently the sentence "I didn't sign an extra 2 months in the army in order to stare at the balls of an artillery officer" isn't a good enough reason. On the other hand I got to ride in a helicopter and at the end of the day it was funny as hell when we were all stuck in the mud. I didn't expect these 2 weeks to go by the way they did, but then again you can't really expect anything from the army to go one way or another.
On Thursday I finished! I no longer was part of a tank crew and I wasn't attached to any tank. I gave back all my equipment and even my gun! It felt really weird to give back my gun for good. It still hasn't sunk in that I'm actually done! On Sunday I go back to the army, but its for fun. We have a week where they take us to what is like a soldiers resort where there is good food, and fun stuff to do. After that I have until my discharge date, April 14th to do whatever I want! I don't know what my plans will be but I have free transportation until I get discharged so I will try to make good use of it to tour far away places. Not to worry, the blogging will continue.
Firstly, congratulations to me on my 100th blog post at kaldorskorner! Thank you to my loyal readers, and I apologize for not having this blog post up in timely manner.
After getting off base 3 weekends in a row, staying on base for 2 weeks felt like forever. It didn't help that the work that I was doing made the time go by even slower. We started off the week with a little trip around the golan heights. They took us to outposts on the border with Syria to show us where everything is situated and where all the Israeli forces are supposed to be in the event of an emergency. They told some stories about the Yom Kippur War in 1973 where my brigade played a critical role in defending the golan. The cool part about it was that as they were explaining the battle, we could see exactly where the battles took place. Once back at the base, I spent most of my time working in the kitchen, guarding and pitching a bunch of tents and arranging things to build us a 'base' in the field. One thing that I did that was supposed to be interesting was a tank simulator. They hooked the tank up to something like a virtual reality computer, gave the commander some cool goggles and ran us through a simulator. The driver got to sit in front of a computer and drive with a joystick, the commander as I said had his cool goggles and the gunner sat in his chair in the tank and was able to see what was going on through his eyepiece. I got nothing. They ran us through the simulator and everyone knew what was going on except for me. They gave us a practice shell to load every time the gunner had to shoot from the cannon, but I managed to avoid the actual work by just throwing the switch indicating that the cannon was in fact loaded. Things got a bit complicated when they told me to fire from the mortar launcher. I wasn't exactly sure what to do to fire it because they had some sensors hooked up to it, so I asked if I had to aim it or what exactly I had to do. They said 'just push the button'. Ah, so I pushed the button and continued doing what I was doing before, which was sitting on my chair in the tank and reading the news on my phone. Whenever I had to load the cannon I would lean forward a bit and throw the switch. This entire simulation lasted about 2 hours, and it was boredom to the extreme. After it ended they had recorded everything and played parts back for us to discuss what we did and how to improve. The simulator is primarily geared for the commander and the gunner and was able to identify things that could have been done better. It was really cool to see the simulator work after the fact when they showed us the video, however it was unfortunate that I didn't get to enjoy any part of it.
It was nice to have finished the very boring week, and I had a relaxing shabbat on base where I caught up on sleep and also went out for a 5km run since the weather was perfect after a week of rain, fog and of course, mud. After shabbat ended they told my crew that we were heading to the field to guard for the night. Aside from the fact that in the field there was a lot of rain and mud and a leaky tent that conveniently dripped water all night on my backpack I managed to get another long night sleep because there was nothing to do and no reason to stay awake. There was another tank company there as well guarding their tanks which were right next to our tanks so the 2 hours of guard duty flew by since I had someone that I had never met before guarding with me and we were able to pass the time quite quickly.
This week we learned and practiced how to capture an area that is intended to hold Syrian forced. We did this using both tanks and infantry soldiers. The most interesting part of the exercise was that we had to drive over a rampart which was fairly steep and at a height of about 5 meters. Video below.
After the few days of exercises we drove the tanks to a different area, so I was able to take a nice scenic drive through part of the golan. Its like taking a nice drive by jeep or ATV except its infinitely more awesome because its a tank! While I was moving the tank to a new area, everyone else was taking apart the camp that we had built in order to move it all to the new site. I was extremely happy that I didn't have to participate in the packing up of everything.
Once we got to our destination it was starting to get dark and we were staying the night. We pitched a tent and headed to sleep. It was a really ugly night because it was going to rain. By the time I woke up to guard for an hour at 4AM it had already rained a lot and it looked like it wasn't finished. I was standing literally inside a cloud and I was scared that any minute the sky would open up on me and I would get completely drenched from head to toe. I was guarding the 4 tanks that we had come with and I could barely see all 4 of them even though they were parked one next to another because of the fog. I spent the hour being very antsy and staring at my watch hoping that my shift would end before the rain started. It was a very stressful hour, but I managed to luck out and it didn't rain on me during my shift. In the morning it started to pour - to the point that i had to walk backwards when I was walking into the wind. They drove us to the new camp site where we started to built it all over again - this time in the rain. We were supposed to start our weekly cleaning of the tanks, but it continued to pour throughout the afternoon so we spent a few hours taking shelter in the tents. After the rain let down they sent us to start work. We put in a half assed afternoon of work because it was virtually impossible to actually clean anything because there was nowhere to put the parts of the gun when I took it apart because everything was full of mud. In short, it was a wasted afternoon, but we headed back to base in the evening.
On Thursday everyone was heading back to the field to finish the work that we started the day before, except I got half a day 'off'! I had been requesting my full day off for over a month, but they waited until the last possible minute until they HAD to give me some time off. My ID card was to expire on the upcoming Sunday because that was my scheduled discharge date. Since I had extended my service I had to go to some office in the city to get my card renewed. They waited until the last possible day to give me the time off, and they didn't even give me the entire day. The made me come back to base in the afternoon only to go home the next morning. That kind of pissed me off that they wouldn't just give me the extended weekend. I got back to base and did nothing until I went home on the Friday morning. When I was inquiring what I needed to do in order to renew my card I was told I just needed to go to this one office and they would take care of it and that there should be no problems. Having dealt with Israeli bureaucracy (that in itself is an oxymoron) in the past, I knew things usually don't work out. I get to the office and tell them that I need to renew my ID card. They tell me that I can't do that here - and that I need to do it in Tiberias (at least 2 hours away by bus - I was in Kiryat Shmoneh). Fantastic! I tell them no, I need to do it here and now because I have to catch a bus back to base (there was only one time to catch the bus) and that my ID card expires in 3 days. They say sorry, the closest place they issue the ID cards is in Tiberias we can't help you here. Well, I ask them if they can call the place in Tiberias and get me a temporary pass or some piece of paper saying that my service has been extended. Literally 4 minutes later I got exactly what I needed! It wasn't a new card, but it was a piece of paper that had my new discharge date on it. It really is amazing how stupid people are.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. At the age of 24 I voluntarily served my country and my people as a lone soldier in the 188th brigade of the armored forces in IDF (Israel Defense Forces). On July 12, 2012 I made Aliyah and thus officially became an Israeli Citizen.
This blog is about my experiences as a combat soldier in the IDF and my experience as an Oleh Chadash (new immigrant)
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