Flipping between CNN, FOX, and BBC on the TV in the office, I watch reports about Israel’s operation. But instead of mentioning that Israel is trying to protect its citizens, or explaining that Israel launched a defensive operation to prevent weapons smuggling following the attack, the media is slamming Israel for destroying homes. Every reporter forgets to mention that these are homes that terrorists use as cover for weapons-smuggling tunnels. Reporters don’t even mention the Kassam rockets that are being fired at homes in Sderot, Israel. I know reporters want to be unbiased, but not every side has a legitimate or valid message. Not every side should be treated equally. An army blowing up a terrorist arsenal should not get the same type of coverage as a terrorist intentionally launching rockets into a kindergarten.
My skin goes cold when I think about the mothers of the soldiers who were killed last week. Like I’m playing a game of Ouija, my hand instinctively moves the mouse to open up PowerPoint. Sitting at my desk, I stare at the blank slide and start typing. I add pictures of the Kassam rockets, of the weapons-smuggling tunnels. I add colors and titles. I want to show the world that Israel is defending itself. I want the world to see that it is not Israel, but the terrorists themselves that are harming the Palestinian population. The terrorists use the homes of the Palestinian civilians as cover for their weapons smuggling; the terrorists strap suicide bombs to their kids at summer camps like they are flotation devices. I want to show the connection between the terrorist activity and the IDF response.
Hoping that I can actually make a difference with my presentation, I work all day. I don’t get up to eat or to use the bathroom. I show Dan the presentation and, after he reviews it, he looks at me as if he sees my potential for the first time. I think to myself that maybe there is still a chance that I can make a difference in the IDF in the next year and half I still have left to serve.
On the bus ride home that night, when a fellow Israeli passenger strikes up a conversation with me, I’m not too shy to answer. I’m not embarrassed about my accent. I’m proud of my Hebrew. I speak confidently, as if I have nothing to hide.
* * *
1 . For a list of army slang and terminology, please see the appendix.
6
Changing the Status Quo
If Jerusalem is the religious capital of the monotheistic religions, then Tel Aviv is its antithesis. It is the city that makes sinning fun. During the Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, men dress up in pink, orange, and green neon-colored G-strings, knee-high boots, religious top hats and long, curly sidelocks, and they dance on floats. It is hard to find a kosher restaurant in Tel Aviv, but every doorframe of every building has a mezuzah1 on it. Tel Aviv is young. Fun. Liberal. Full of energy. The city is always bustling, whether with cockroaches or people in cafés. I always wanted to move to Tel Aviv. I never planned on staying in Jerusalem.
I step out of the air-conditioned van that the army loaned to me with a driver for a day as one of my lone soldier benefits. The humidity sticks to my skin, but I prefer the sweat of the secular in their swimsuits on the beach to that of the religious in their never-washed wool suits.
Opening the door to my new apartment and seeing the dark-wood arch, I realize that it is even better than I remember.
I found the apartment after a particularly long and exhausting night of searching. It was the last apartment on my list. All the other apartments that I saw that night made me miss the tents from boot camp. Out of exhaustion I nearly didn’t go to see this one.
I walked up and down Ben-Gurion Boulevard for twenty minutes, trying to find the apartment. I didn’t want to call because I was embarrassed to admit I was lost. While wandering the boulevard, I found myself passing the café where my family had eaten ten years ago, during our first trip to Israel. I paused, surprised by my reflection in the café window. I perfectly blended into my surroundings.
During that two-week family vacation, we had experienced everything Israel had to offer. We swam with the dolphins in Eilat. We hiked in the enormous Maktesh Ramon crater. We climbed Masada and were amazed by the story of the Jewish fighters who fought the Romans. We floated in the Dead Sea. In the north, we stayed at a kibbutz and bathed in the Sea of Galilee. We spent our last days in the country swimming and sunbathing on the Tel Aviv beaches. On our last night, we ate at this very café on the street named for the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.
While I was staring out the open windows of the café at a group of young, strong and handsome Israeli soldiers in uniform who were laughing and carrying their M-16’s and Uzis through the middle of this peaceful and touristy city, my dad interrupted my concentration. “Jessica, for the third time, what was your favorite part of Israel?”
I gazed back at the modern-day biblical heroes with their semi-automatic weapons. “Jerusalem,” I lied, but it seemed like the right answer at the time. It was really the soldiers. It was the story of the Six Day War in the Golan Heights. It was the Tel Aviv beaches.
“Do you want to come back?” my dad asked.
“Yes.”
I had told the truth.
Back then, I had no idea that I might actually end up living on Ben-Gurion Boulevard, as an Israeli soldier, or that one of Ben-Gurion’s decisions while forming the State would soon seal my fate.
I now stared at myself in the windows. Wearing my uniform, I looked just like the soldiers that I saw passing the café fifteen years ago. Newly determined to find the apartment, I pulled out my phone to get directions.
“Hi. I’m looking for the apartment. I’m on Ben-Gurion and Dizengoff, right next to the juice stand and the sandwich shop,” I said when a guy answered the phone.
“You’re only two blocks away. Just head east and it is on the right side. I’ll see you in less than five minutes,” he said.
The apartment is located close enough to Kikar Rabin, the square where all of Israel’s biggest rallies are held and the same square where Rabin was tragically shot by a religious fanatic for signing the Oslo Accords. I can walk to the beach in less than ten minutes. On every corner there is a café. It has huge windows that look out onto Ben-Gurion Boulevard.
After unloading all of my boxes in the living room, I begin cleaning my new room. With all of the cleaning, it feels like a normal day in the army except that no one is yelling at me in the background to clean harder or faster.
While I’m cleaning, my new roommate finally comes home. Excited to finally be living with an Israeli, I walk out of my room to say hi.
“When are you going to be moving your stuff out of the living room?” my new roommate, Alon, pronounced ah-lone, asks as he turns his head from the living room to me, with a perturbed look on his face.
“Uhh, I hope soon. I’m just cleaning first,” I say with a smile.
He walks into his room and shuts the door. I go back into my room hoping that he just had a bad day. “I’m sure we will be friends,” I say to no one.
I spend the next few hours cleaning, organizing, and decorating. For nearly a year and a half now I have been moving to a new place every few months—from Oshkalon to Migdal Ha’Emek and then from Jerusalem to the Youth Village and then back to Jerusalem for a few months of ulpan. I have begun to feel like a nomad, a fugitive, a wandering Jew. I need this new apartment to feel like home.
After organizing all of my belongings and decorating the room with Zionistic posters and pictures of my friends and family, I go into the living room, put my feet up on the coffee table with satisfaction and turn on the TV. This is going to be the beginning of a new life. Even though the army has not lived up to my expectations, I’m sure that Tel Aviv will.
Alon’s door opens. He walks past the living room. He then walks back into his room.
Ten minutes later he walks out again. He walks past the living room and then returns.
He does this five other times in the next hour. It is like watching a really slow game of tennis. He keeps heading in the direction of the bathroom. I wonder if he has diarrhea.
By 9:00 p.m., I’m tired. I have to go back to making those all-powerful PowerPoint presentations in the army tomorrow, although I’m beginning to feel that they are not having as much influence as I’d originally hoped.
The second that I shut my bedroom door, Alon’s opens. I hear him walk into the living room, sit down on the couch, and turn on the TV. I guess his name is also his preferred state of being—alone.
As I crawl into bed, I’m already disappointed by my first day in the new apartment. I expected that with this step I would be emerging into Israeli society, but I feel lonelier now. As if to emphasize my loneliness, there is moaning and the pounding of a bed board being repeatedly banged against the wall. I don’t have a radio or TV in my room to drown out the noise. I try to cover my head with my pillow. When the moaning turns into screaming, I put in the army-issued earplugs that I used at the firing range so I could drown out the noise . . . and a bit of my jealousy.
Knee Deep
“Can you li’kfotz li?” I ask Orli over the phone as we are trying to make plans for going out tonight.
In the army today, I found out that all of my PowerPoint presentations were never used. The real bullets that the terrorists use in real guns to kidnap journalists are more convincing than the PowerPoint bullets I was using.
Fed up, I want to go out and forget the army.
Through her laughter she says, “You mean ‘Can I l’hakpitz otach?’ It is the same root, but instead of asking me to come pick you up. You basically told me to fuck off.” Used to my mistakes, Orli always knows what I’m actually trying to say. I’m glad I made the mistake with her and not someone else. She can finish my sentences for me . . . and usually does. It’s nice to be closer to her now that I’m in Tel Aviv.
“We are going to the usual dance club,” she says. Every Friday night we go to drink, dance, and flirt at Zamir. It is the only time that I can forget about the army and my disappointments. Unlike Jerusalem, which shuts down on the weekends, Tel Aviv comes alive. Instead of singing in synagogue, we are singing the words to one of Beyonce’s songs. Our Sabbath clothes are black tank tops, high-heels, and tight jeans. Our dancing is much more provocative than the hora, which actually sounds more scandalous than pole dancing, if you think about it. We drink more than the customary sip during Kiddush—in fact, we usually drink the entire bottle, not leaving even a drop for Elijah. But then again, I doubt Elijah drinks Red Bull and vodka.
“So, what time should we meet?” I ask, after we decide to meet at the club.
“Around 11:30. I’ll give you a call when we leave.”
Luckily I don’t have to go to the army tomorrow, but if I did, I’ve learned, just like every other soldier, how to perform my duties without sleep and with a hangover. It makes going to Friday classes after a frat party seem easy.
“Okay, see you all then,” I say.
As I walk up to the club, I see Orli and everyone else in line. When they see me, they leave the line and we walk to the front door. They push me forward.
“How long is the wait?” I ask in perfect English.
“How many people you with?” asks the bouncer in thickly-accented English.
“Four other girls,” I say. He waves us through. My English works every time. It is the only time I don’t mind standing out.
The pounding music, the flashing lights, the young, hot bodies, the smell of alcohol. Everything is so much more tempting in the Holy Land.
“So, where were you last weekend? Why didn’t you come out?” one of Orli’s girlfriends yells to me over the music.
“I had guard duty at The Campus.” I roll my eyes.
“That sucks,” she says, having finished her army service four years ago.
Yeah, it does suck! I think to myself. It really does suck that I left all my friends and family, that I moved to this country, that I volunteered for this army in hopes of making a difference, and all I’m doing is wasting my time.
“I need a drink,” I tell everyone. “Who’s with me?”
While I’m ordering a drink at the bar, a guy comes over and starts talking to me. I decide to play my “I’m an American tourist” game. This has become an old-time favorite of mine. In the game I pretend that I’m visiting Israel for a short time, don’t understand any Hebrew, and am awestruck by anything having to do with the IDF.
“So, how long you here for?” the guy asks
“A few weeks,” I say while twirling my hair. “I love Israel. This is my first time here.”
He smiles at his friend. “This is going to be easy.” I hear him say to his friend in Hebrew and then he offers to buy me a drink.
I accept. After all, I am a poor, lone soldier, even if he thinks I’m a rich American tourist. Just yesterday I had to eat my cereal with water because I did not have any milk.
“So, are you a soldier?” I ask with fake excitement in my eyes.
“Oh, yes. I’m a soldier. You come over and see me in my uniform?” He asks me in broken English and then again turns to his friend and says in Hebrew, “I’m going to bang this American tonight.”
While I sometimes feel guilty playing this game, it is a good way to weed out the douche bags.
I lean into him and whisper in Hebrew in his ear, “You’d have a better chance with Hezbollah than you do with me.”
I walk away with the drink he bought me. I’m not interested in finding a boyfriend now. I want to make it here on my own before I rely on a boyfriend. There are just too many tales of girls falling in love, breaking up, and leaving the country. And I’m determined to make this country my home.
As the night gets later, we continue drinking and dancing. The club gets busier. The music gets louder. The people get drunker.
We take one shot after another. With each shot, I forget about another PowerPoint that I made that went to waste.
A popular Israeli song comes on and we all get excited. We jump up and down in excitement. We dance with abandon. We move to the beat. We don’t care what we look like. We don’t care about the security situation. We are having too much fun.
Right as the beat picks up, I feel a crunch in my left knee. But I don’t feel any pain so I keep dancing and drinking.
* * *
My head hurts. My ears are ringing. My mouth is dry. My knee is throbbing.
It is 1:00 p.m., but my bedroom is still dark. The best thing about Israeli apartments are the trisim, blinds. Unlike American blinds, the Israeli trisim completely block out light, as if the world has been cast into eternal darkness. With my trisim closed, I could sleep through an atomic bomb, which might actually be necessary soon.
I’m supposed to meet Orli and her friends at the beach. I look at my phone. Three missed calls.
I swing my legs out of bed. As I stand up, I fall back into bed. Not only am I dizzy, but I can’t put any weight on my left leg.
I sit in bed, not knowing what to do. It is my ritual to go to the beach on weekends—even though it is forbidden for soldiers to tan during the high-sun hours. Not because the IDF is worried about skin cancer, but because, just like a tank, an aircraft or a shirt, my body is army property and they don’t want me damaging army property by getting a sunburn. The army would be just as upset if I lost my IDF shirt as if I got hit by a car.
I call Orli.
“Aaaloo! Where are you? I’ve been calling you. Come to the beach.”
DOINK, DOINK, DOINK, DOINK.
I hear the matkot, paddle ball games in the background. Using the word doink to explain the noise that it makes is much too gentle for a sport that can be so vicious. The entire Tel Aviv shoreline is lined with matkot players. Trying to get through them and walk into the water is like trying to dodge the bullets of a firing squad.
“I’m not feeling well. I think I hurt my knee last night,” I say.
“You should go to the army doctor and get gimelim.”
“What are gimelim?”
“It’s sick leave from the army. Just tell him that you c
an’t walk. It’s that easy! I had gimelim for a few months when I broke my ribs in a car accident.”
An Apple a Day
“So, tell me what happened?” the doctor asks.
“I hurt my knee while serving in the Israeli army.”
When I arrived in Minnesota on my meuchedat, the one-month vacation I get as a lone soldier, my dad saw me limping and instantly made an appointment for me.
“How’d you hurt it?” asks my dad’s friend, the orthopedic surgeon. He couldn’t just leave it at that explanation. He wanted specifics.
“Uh . . . dancing drunk in high heels,” I fessed up.
He looks disappointed. He probably wanted to hear some superwoman story about fighting terrorists even more than I wanted to tell it. I just hope he doesn’t ask what I do in the army; I don’t think I could confess that I do nothing.
“Okay. Let’s take a look.”
It is nice hearing and speaking English. It is even nicer having a doctor that actually wants to help me.
I have been limping for the past two months. Getting gimelim had not been as easy as Orli said. In fact, just getting quality medical attention was difficult. Unlike civilian doctors who focus on making a good diagnosis, army doctors focus on trying to filter out the people who are actually sick from the fakers—and Israeli males are not good at telling when a woman is faking. Many soldiers will go to great lengths to get gimelim, from putting a potato on their skin for a week to cause frail bones to putting blood in their urine.
When I went to the army doctor to seek help, I was greeted by a doctor who yelled at me more than my boot camp commanders had. He didn’t believe that I was really in pain. He must have thought I’d be willing to go through unnecessary surgery just to avoid the army food. So like a settler in the West Bank, I refused to leave, and after some complaining, he finally gave me a referral for an ultrasound on my knee and a full body scan that pumped me so full of radiation that I could have been strapped on a missile and sent to blow up Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, when I showed him the results of the tests, (which I later learned were completely diagnostically worthless), he kicked me out. Limping out of his office, I didn’t know where else to turn.
Chutzpah & High Heels Page 14
