Chutzpah & High Heels

by Jessica Fishman

  “Maybe I’ll get to do something important,” I think to myself.

  “This entire building is j’ifa,” Liveah, one of the unit’s head officers, says to us with a scolding tone.

  “What is j’fa?” I turn to a female American who speaks better Hebrew than me. I wonder if it means in danger.

  “It is Arabic for filthy,” whispers the fellow soldier.

  All this excitement is about cleaning? I thought there was going to be a big operation. Sadly, this has been the most action I have seen since I arrived to the unit a few months ago.

  “Don’t you people care about the cleanliness of the place where you work?” Liveah roars. With her pants so tight and high up on her waist, she looks like Debbie Gibson. It is hard to take her seriously while imagining her singing.

  As we are all listening to their lecture about how filthy the building is, the building’s cleaning lady walks through with a squeegee, a rag, and a bucket full of water. Pushing a dirty puddle of water through our meeting with a squegee, she is complaining to herself and to anyone else within shouting distance about how dirty the building is, and how much her back hurts from squeegee-ing.

  “Why should our cleaning lady have to clean up after you every day? She is old, frail, and it is hard work for her,” Dan says, thinking that he is making a good point, but obviously forgetting that she is a cleaning lady and unlike us, she is employed at will and paid a salary above poverty level.

  “You all have the next hour to show us that you know how to clean. Both Dan and I will come around to each department to check the cleanliness. Every single one of you needs to be cleaning,” Liveah says as if she is a stereotypical stepmom in some fairytale.

  “How often does this happen?” I ask the same American girl next to me.

  “Oh, usually once a week,” she says solemnly, having succumbed to the fact that the IDF Spokesperson Unit is obviously run by people without any media training, but with severe OCD complexes.

  I can’t believe that this is the army. That I gave up my life for this. This was not my dream. I could be doing this in any army. I came here to be a part of the Jewish army. To make a difference. Instead, I feel useless. Cleaning and sitting bored in a closed-off room doesn’t make me feel any more connected to Israel or my Jewish heritage. The thought of doing this for nearly two more years makes me sick to my stomach. But if I throw up here, they’ll just make me clean it up. I swallow hard, trying to keep the acid from rising.

  One girl raises her hand and, without being called on, says, “I have to set up for a live interview with CNN.”

  “Cleaning takes priority,” Dan says emotionlessly.

  After being dismissed, I’m now pushing dirty water back and forth on the floor with my full-size squeegee. Becoming disillusioned, I’m starting to understand how we are losing the war on the media front, but at least we will have a clean workspace.

  “How is your army service going?” Ester asks me later that night, back at Merkaz Hamagshamim.

  “Yeah, we haven’t seen you in ages. How have you been?” Ephraim asks. “You seem so busy with top secret army stuff.”

  “So, do you still think that your worst experience in the army was at the drafting office?” Uri says sarcastically and laughs.

  “Come sit down and have dinner with us. We just started,” says Jackie, the openly gay rabbinical student.

  I collapse on a chair.

  What am I supposed to tell them? That I ride buses for four hours a day, shred papers that I didn’t even write, and the only time that anything exciting goes on is when we have to clean the building?

  “It’s good, thanks. I’m exhausted. The army wears me out. How is everything with you guys?” I ask, trying to change the subject and avoid thinking about how I’ve failed at both becoming more Israeli in the army and at achieving my dream.

  The IDF Fashion Police

  Surrounded by old, squat buildings and with the sun beating down, I’m wandering around The Campus trying to figure out where I’m supposed to show up for guard duty. Nimrod, our logistics officer, asked me a few hours ago if I could fill in for one of the girls in my department. He told me that I wouldn’t actually be guarding, I would just be an understudy. He didn’t give me any other instructions. He didn’t tell me where to go, when to get there, or what to wear.

  I have never guarded on The Campus before, but I assume that it will be like guarding at “S” House, which is also guarded 24/7 to protect the top-secret information of how the IDF Spokesperson Unit is so clean. The guard duty at the “S” House is as easy and mindless as my job at the JCC when I let people into the locker rooms, except for here I have an M-16—even though I do have serious doubts regarding the gun’s usefulness for anything other than a paperweight. We all use the same gun for guard duty and I don’t know the last time the gun has been fired or cleaned. If a terrorist comes in, I’d probably do more damage throwing the gun at the terrorist than actually shooting him.

  I walk past a fenced-in basketball court where there are more than a hundred girls lined up, being yelled at by a boy who looks like he should be practicing his bar mitzvah portion.

  “You are not allowed to eat. You are not allowed to chew gum. You are not allowed to read. You are not allowed to sit. You are not allowed to talk on the phone. You are not allowed to listen to music. You are not allowed to text. You are not allowed to play games on your phone. You are not allowed to drink anything except for water from your canteen. You are not allowed to go to the bathroom.”

  This sounds worse than Yom Kippur. If we could have gotten through guard duty without breathing, they would have forbidden that too.

  The soldier continues shouting. “If you see a suspicious person, you first yell ‘Ahztur! Stop!’ two times. If the person does not stop you shoot a warning shot at sixty degrees in the air. If the person still does not stop, aim for the legs to stop them.” I could barely hit a non-moving cardboard cutout at boot camp a few months ago; I certainly can’t hit a moving terrorist in the legs.

  Hearing these instructions, I know that I’m in the correct place, but I’m too scared to go inside. This seems more serious than my typical guard duty. I’ll probably be yelled at for being late. Instead, I decide to play the only card I have—the I’m-a-poor-lone-soldier-who-is-a-dumb-American-and-can-still-barely-speak-Hebrew card.

  When the bar mitzvah boy finally finishes screaming and the female soldiers scatter, I walk up to him and ask him in as broken and accented Hebrew as I can manage, “I here for guard. Here I be, yes?”

  He looks me up and down, stares at me, and then starts yelling at me: “Look at you! You’re not even dressed for guard duty!”

  “Ehh . . . I no . . .” I try to respond, but can’t form any words. I’m no longer faking.

  “What is this? You’re in sandals for guard duty!”

  I look down at my feet.

  “And they aren’t even army-sanctioned sandals!” He is yelling at me like showing up for guard duty in sandals is worse than wearing a black purse with brown shoes.

  “But . . . shoes . . .” I say as my bottom lip trembles. I’d prefer Joan Rivers tell the entire world that I have no fashion sense instead of being yelled at by this short teenager with grease-backed hair. I feel like a failure as a soldier. I’m having no impact on Israel’s media image. My lack of Hebrew is holding me back. I can’t stop crying when a kid yells at me. How would I ever be able to stand up to a BBC reporter, or much less a terrorist? I wish I could just run away. Give up on this dream to have a meaningful part of our collective Jewish history.

  “Why didn’t you arrive on time?”

  He doesn’t care about my lack of Hebrew skill. I’m just another soldier for him to yell at. Tears stream down my cheeks. This is not my proudest moment. Here I am, a grown woman with a college degree, crying because a boy, whose mom still folds his underwear, is yelling at me.

  Ignoring my distress, he continues yelling, “You and the entire spokesperson unit
think you’re too good for guard duty! And what is this? You are wearing a dark-navy hair binder instead of black! Oh, this is unbelievable! And your nail polish! That is brown nail polish! You are only allowed pink nail polish!”

  Now he has gone too far! Offending my nail polish color! I’m wearing OPI’s shade called Not So Bora-Bora-ing Pink—it even has pink in the name! It is AEɸ-approved! As much as I can’t stand my AEɸ ‘sisters,’ there is no way he understands fashion better than them. Besides, the IDF doesn’t give us swatch samples to let us know what is considered the right tone of pink.

  “It’s black . . . pink . . . I just . . . but . . . lost . . . sorry,” I sob. I try explaining through my tears that the terrorists would win if I was ever wearing brown toenail polish.

  He keeps screaming. My tears keep flowing. But at some point he begins to feel sorry for me.

  “Who is your logistics officer?”

  “Officer Nimrod. He never told me the rules—where to go, how to dress, or what to do,” I respond, trying to choke back my tears and regain some self-respect. Officer Nimrod and his laziness has already cost me being able to go to officers’ course and caused me to be court martialed, for telling me the wrong time for a meeting. I only had to pay a small fine then, but if this guy court martials me, I might be sent to some deep, dark hole.

  A look of gleeful disgust spreads across the bar mitzvah boy’s face. He turns to a female soldier next to him and says, “We have to do something about him. That Officer Nimrod never does his job. He has a small head.” (Small head does not refer to the size of a man’s hat or condom; it is an attitude of intentionally avoiding responsibility. It is one of the worst insults in Israel.)

  The bar mitzvah boy turns to me. “I see that you’re a good soldier. You didn’t mean to make the mistake. Come back tomorrow in proper dress and we’ll forget this happened. I’ll take care of Officer Nimrod.”

  The next day I showed up in a newly-ironed uniform—even though synthetics don’t need to be ironed. The bar mitzvah boy from yesterday says not to worry about a thing. He reassures me that I won’t be court martialed and while Nimrod will be reprimanded, he will never know that I was the one who caused the commotion. The bar mitzvah boy then winks at me and tells me to stop by anytime.

  While I want to laugh, I smile back, as I’m not too proud to do a little flirting in the hopes of getting out of guard duty next time.

  Hell’s Kitchen

  The humidity inside is higher than outside. My stick-straight hair has turned into curly pubic hair. Sweat is dripping from every part of my body. My uniform is so un-breathable that a plastic bag would be more comfortable. This place is proof that hell exists.

  It is my first day of kitchen duty.

  When I was being drafted and even throughout boot camp, I naïvely or optimistically thought that the army would exempt me from the grunt work since I am older and have a degree. I thought the army would have made better use of its resources than have a person with an $80,000 degree wash pots and pans. Since I never had to do kitchen duty or bathroom clean up during boot camp, I thought it was an unspoken, unwritten sign of respect for me: but really, they had just somehow overlooked me. Or maybe I just misunderstood them.

  I am sticking my hands in pots that are as big as a washing machine. The cheap, plastic dish gloves that I bought a few hours earlier are already full of holes and my OPI nail polish is chipping.

  Elbow deep in food, grease, and soap, I see my college education going down the drain with the brown and sudsy water. I had tried to get out of the worst kitchen duty job by flirting with the soldier in charge, but I was not the only one trying that trick. Besides, by his standards, I, at twenty-four years old, am already a cougar.

  I could deal with doing this grunt work, if only I was also doing real work on my other days. I keep scrubbing away for the next few hours until all the pots and pans are clean. I look at the pile of clean dishes and think to myself, at least I accomplished something today.

  After my kitchen duty is over, I head back to my department. Shmuel lets me leave early. I think he is being nice, but it is probably because I stink and he doesn’t want to share the small, airless office with me.

  When I get home, I see that my roommates have left their food out, their dishes in the sink, and a mess on the stove.

  I walk into my room and slam the door.

  Wordsmithing

  After a few months of being in the tzevet t’guvot department, we are given one of our first tasks. We are asked to suggest names for the structure being built to keep West Bank suicide bombers from reaching buses, night clubs, and cafés in Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Jerusalem. It sort of feels like someone is asking us to name a dog after it already has a tag. The media has already, unbiasedly, named it the “separation barrier” and is pounding the country with criticism of being apartheid. No media has or will bother to report the declining amount of terrorism. Before the construction of the fence, there had been two suicide bombings in my neighborhood in Jerusalem—one at café I frequented and the other on the bus line that I take every day. Since the construction of the fence, I feel safer. As far as I’m concerned, the media can call it a mechitza. Besides I’m doubtful that the media will ever hear our suggestions, much less use them. I’ve given up on this unit. But as part of another lesson in futility, we, confined to our small room, suggest such names as the “security fence,” “anti-terrorist fence,” or “seam zone.”

  It’s as useless as when the chief of staff, three years into the current conflict, suggested that we need to come up with a catchy name for the on-going violence. The Palestinians already branded it: the Intifada. The army’s operational name for it is Ebb and Flow. The Israeli population affectionately refers to it as ha’matzav, The Situation. Yep, one of the deadliest cycles of violent suicide bombings that Israel has ever experienced has the same name as some guy who is known for his spray-tanned six-pack from Jersey Shore. And I thought I would be making a difference here.

  Today the two other girls in the department are playing games on their cell phones while I am reading a book—since I grew bored of staring at the clock. The door suddenly opens and Dan walks into the office. We freeze and stare at him. I’m afraid I’m going to get yelled at. We get yelled at for everything in the army.

  Dan takes another step into the office and closes the door behind him. I and the other two girls in the office sit at attention and continue to stare at him. Shmuel slowly finishes a text message.

  Dan stares at Shmuel until he finally puts down his phone, then says, “There is a top secret operation coming up. It will be your job to prepare the press material beforehand. Your door needs to remain closed at all times while working on this subject.”

  I try to keep a professional, soldier-like face, but inside, I’m screaming with excitement to finally be doing something besides cleaning, guarding, or kitchen duty. This could be my big break.

  Dan continues, “In a week, the IDF will raid a bank in the West Bank to capture the funds from a Hamas account used to finance terrorist operations. This department is in charge of preparing all of the press material before the operation.”

  The next day I’m the earliest person in the office. I spend the entire bus ride thinking of what needs to be prepared. I start working on all of the press material. That night I stay extra late. I think back to the last big operation that the IDF performed in Nablus, Operation Defensive Shield. During that operation the media reported that the IDF was carrying out a massacre, but that was about as real as the “dead” child, who was being carried to his “funeral” on a body board, fell off the stretcher, and climbed back on by himself.

  I spend the rest of the week helping to prepare material such as talking points and official army announcements to prevent the same media disaster. The next week, I go into the office every day hoping to hear news about when the operation will take place.

  In the evenings at Merkaz Hamagshamim, when everyone asks me how the army is going, I
pretend everything is the same, but I smile to myself, knowing I’m actually making a difference.

  By the second week, the operation still hasn’t taken place. I’m beginning to feel disappointed and left out again.

  Then, one morning a few weeks later, as I’m putting on my uniform, I see on CNN a one-minute newscast about the bank operation for which I helped prepare media material. I freeze, with my shirt half on and my pants, unzipped, nearly falling off my hips. I don’t know how to feel. I’m frustrated that the rest of the world heard about the operation before me. I’m disappointed that all the work that I did only led to a minute of coverage. But I’m also relieved that all the material we prepared was used by the media. It was the first time I felt as if I had made an impact. It gives me hope that maybe I will be able to fulfill my dreams in the IDF if I am persistent.

  Operation Rainbow

  “I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt this class. I have some bad news,” says a female officer who is usually in the Spokesperson War Room, but has been teaching our class for the past few days.

  After finally getting a taste of what it was like to be a part of media preparations for an operation, I begged Dan to let me take a supplemental IDF Spokesperson course in the hopes of being able to make more of a contribution.

  “Terrorists have hit and destroyed IDF’s APCs (Armored Personnel Carrier) by the Rafiach Crossing in Gaza. Thirteen soldiers are dead,” she announces. The air is sucked out of the room. Our faces turn pale. My stomach clenches up. It feels like she has just told us that our brothers have been killed. She turns on the TV.

  On the screen, I see IDF soldiers crawling on their hands and knees looking for the mutilated body parts of their comrades from the explosion.

  The room is silent. I choke back tears.

  Six days later, the IDF launches Operation Rainbow to prevent continued weapon smuggling from Egypt to Gaza through underground tunnels.