Guns and Roses

A few weeks ago Yedidia returned from his basic army training, exhilarated about impersonating action hero ‘Rambo’ in the sand dunes adjoining the Northern Gaza Strip.Like many other adventurous Israeli youngsters watching the 'Survival' reality show, he enormously enjoyed camping in the droopy, rotten tents, where all new recruits are accommodated to get a flavor of desert 'joie de vivre' sprinkled with a whiff of authentic dust carried here from Saudi Arabia. Continually in danger of being blown over to enemy territory with all their wet belongings during a 3- day raging winter storm, all trainees were eventually forced into evacuation to the secure dining room. They ended up bunking down in a chaotic heap of damp mattresses, cheesy socks and muddy boots, mingled with half eaten provisions from the camp mini market.He elated in disassembling and cleaning his machine gun, firing bullets at paper-mache opponents and posing for the notorious heroic photographs with his manly co-fighters, looking extremely fierce when holding up the deadly weapons in imaginary victory. These digital ‘trophies’ are uploaded to the thousands into young Israeli’s Facebook accounts.However, the boys in his course neither possessed the physical stamina nor the desire to serve as combat soldiers. Most of these wannabe militants were equipped with medical attests, or, as in Yedidia’s case, were granted special status as ‘outstanding musician’, entitling them to alleviated terms during their 3 years of army service, enabling them to pursue their musical training while ‘fulfilling their duty to their country’ as so called ‘jobnicks’.But given a sandy exercise playground and a hot weapon, male creatures gladly transform into suntanned, sweaty die-hards, screaming hoarsely while storming the spiky concrete barricades, crawling on their stomachs, guns at hand through the mud like guerilla fighters through a jungle of old tires, rocks and building trash.The sirens giving 15- second- warnings of Cartouche rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas terrorists unto southern Israeli territory, the adrenaline produced while rushing towards the shrapnel shelters, the sandy Mediterranean scenery with rolling waves behind mysteriously moonlit dunes, all these created the ideal backdrop for my son’s fictional and unhesitant self sacrifice, when fervently ‘defending’ his fatherland.To completely knock us out with worry, he deliberately called home from the shooting stands to the ringing sounds of bullets or at night shivering on a forlorn watchtower guarding the border to our Islamist adversaries. He explained to us the different steps of warning to be followed, if a suspicious shadow would approach the twilight zone between the fence and the camp. From his lengthy account it seemed that before he would have had a chance to complete this whole series of shouts and shots into the air, he‘d be already dead and done with, if the intruder really came with malicious intentions. After all his sleepless nights under the Mediterranean stars, Goofeef was always happy to return for lazy weekends to our pastoral civilization, mostly sleeping like a log and occasionally tantalizing his orphaned violin with a few frantic bow strokes.These intermissions from warfare were also a great opportunity for us to admire his good looks in olive green uniform and Ray Ban sunglasses. Values like a non-violent approach to conflict, which we previously tried to implant in our offspring and a critical attitude towards militarism were hopelessly fading into oblivion. Following Goufeef’s call to arms, our family became suddenly infected by an ardent spirit of national pride, escalating in memorizing the names and symbols of the different ranks in army hierarchy up to the Commander in Chief and raising the flag every time he returned home bringing in his loads for the domestic washing machine.After basic training Goufeef was sorted into the army’s Educational Division and is now stationed high up on Har Gilo, a 15-minute drive from his mother’s kitchen stove, a well-kept base, which looks like a comfortable guest house embellished by geranium and fragrant pine trees. His job consists of organizing and evaluating different courses and seminars offered to officers as well as upgrading the library. He’s entitled to lots of free days in between duties to devote himself to the study of musical theory and the secrets of the ‘devil’s instrument’.Gone are the days of imaginary hard-bitten war games opposite the enemy’s lines and meanwhile my son turned into a desperado with guilt feelings of ‘not doing enough in the army’. Suddenly his privileges seem to him as an undeserved luxury and he sees himself as a parasite eating army meals and traveling for free on public transport. The army does not hold musicians in high esteem and their seemingly ‘lazy days’ are envied by the ones ‘doing the real thing’.It doesn’t matter how much we sweated bringing up young Mozart to enjoy his present Shangri-La, when he, instead of strumming the guitar on the beach with his gang, endured endless hours at lessons, accompanied by our efforts to supply him with fresh strings even during paralyzing snow storms in order to keep him motivated and prepared for the caprices of his demanding East European ‘torturers’.But when it comes to army service and national security Israelis are convinced that we can do without raising crazed artists and vain athletes. Even higher education can wait for much later. Everything has to jerk to a halt for 3 years of as much combat training as possible. Yedidia feels he's not ‘doing the real thing’ playing the violin for the troops or for bereaved parents at their son’s funerals, pursuing his musical ambitions while others are holding the Arabs at bay.I admit dreaming of saving my precious son from active combat by becoming a musician in the army since his childhood. We never encouraged our children to romance warfare as an adrenaline producing cliffhanger. Music was also one of the ways to keep us from falling into depression over the ongoing hostilities over territories, from getting sucked into the dead water of chauvinism and religious zeal.

Unfortunately, Israel without its army would not exist. The gap between us and our Palestinian neighbors deepens with each new act of reprisal and we experience the renaissance of animosity fueled by fundamentalist leaders. Both conflicting sides trust in solving the conflict with guns and the peaceful serenity of rose gardens we hoped to plant here for coming generations seams Paradise Lost.
As long as we will not finally cultivate and nourish a different belief, we will fill the trenches intended for roses with more and more victims of these hostilities.
On Memorial Days lamented to the sounds of a ‘surplus’ outstanding musician's instrument, more children will be cut off from their dreams like roses cut from their stems that dry up in graveyards instead of populating the Garden of Eden.