The innocents aboard

This Rosh Hashana, the train arrived. I mean that the line between my home town, Karmiel, finally opened after many years of work, including a 2.3 kilometer tunnel, two new fancy stations with plenty of parking and bus lines from neighboring Arab villages to feed the stations. The Galilee is now connected directly by train to almost all of Israel, as far south as Beer Sheva. Given the ever worsening traffic jams in the once pristine North, it is a blessing for thousands of commuters.

Since it opened during the High Holidays and is free for three months to local residents, many people, including families with many children, have been taking advantage of the opportunity to travel for free.  It is interesting to see the excitement of many travelers, both young and old, when taking it for the first time. Although carriage and track transportation dates from 1825, the joy of countless faces was no less than that of playing with a new iPhone, a much more modern innovation. The exclamation “the train has arrived. I can’t believe it” is heard everywhere both on and off the train. The magic of the train lives on.

Unfortunately, in my eyes, Israelis behave in trains as they behave in home.  First, as a matter of comparison, I clearly remember a five hour train trip from Paris to Brittany. In addition to the quietness, possibly due to the fact that the cellular phone was not yet invented, I was shocked that I didn’t even notice that there were children in the carriage until some four hours in the trip.  Everybody sat quiet and passed the time in an unobtrusive manner. The Mediterranean being the Mediterranean, that self-control is not to be expected on an Israeli train. Aside from loud phone conversations and playing video games at full volume, parents let their children run up and down the corridor and play musical chairs. The blind, originally intended to block the sun, became a way of entertaining the smaller ones. The parents are not much better, albeit preferring to sit the whole trip.   Cutting the trip to Haifa to 30 minutes is nice but it is not that much more relaxing at this stage.

Still, I am optimistic that some of the excitement and annoying noise will decrease as people get used to taking a train. For all those working in Haifa and Tel Aviv or going to and from Ben Gurion Airport, the train is definitely a blessing. In the meantime, I may have to become modern and attach an earphone to my telephone and enjoy some music……

Military ribbons

I have lived in Israel since 1989, some 28 years, not including one year as a volunteer. I was 28 years old when I made alia, immigration, and have since spent half my in Israel. In many ways, I have become local, as colonials would say. I speak Hebrew, don’t stand on protocol and understand almost all of the jokes. That said, I recognize that I will never be 100% Israeli, mainly because of a lack of military service.

 I simply never went through baku, the enlistment center, and basic training. I arrived too old be an effective soldier. Thus, I was given a health exemption. I can’t say that I fought the decision as I was a newlywed. Neither I nor my first wife was enthusiastic about me away for long period of times or optimistic about my ability to even make a bed the army way. The IDF did not really need me either. So, I missed the Israeli male-defining experience of proving myself as a soldier, doing mandatory service and reserve duty. I also did not go through that male-bonding experience that leads to so many friendships in Israel.

The other military experience I missed is that of a parent of a soldier. I have a daughter who did not serve in the IDF, having received an exemption. As a result, I never escorted by child that same baku, see her come home on weekends exhausted with a pile of dirty clothes, drive her to base and appear in uniform with a rifle whenever she had leave during her duty. For that matter, I never had to wonder where exactly she was, what she was doing and if she was safe. There are many Israeli parents that would envy me on that matter.

On the other hand, I have done my civilian “duty.” I have sat through endless special broadcasts on TV, discussing the latest military campaign. I have celebrated my birthday by going into a “protected” room as a gift from Sadam Hussein (Gulf War). It was no gas, as they say. I have seen “the rockets’ red glare” during the Second Lebanese War and chosen to stay in my house despite the frequent sirens. In fact, I no longer count how many military actions I have been viewed as a civilian. However, to my credit or stupidity, depending on your point of view, I have never run to safer pastures, instead standing my ground in Israel. I “understand” what it means to be an Israeli civilian during war.

To clarify any confusion, I am neither proud nor regretful of my lack of military service. Given the circumstances, that was the reality. On the bright side, I and my immediate family have never had a bullet shot at them or even in our direction and have never been in danger of being killed or wounded in military action. Likewise, I would have liked my daughter to do military service but fully understand why that was not practical at the time. In the opposite sense, my life would be perfectly fine without knowing how to put on a gas mask or the size of a hole created by rocket on a road. For better or worse, I accept what I have been given.

Yet, no matter how long I live here, I will always have a bit of galute, Diaspora, in me, not only because of my accent, manners or way of thinking but also because I never experienced what it means to be an Israeli soldier.