Change of Scenery

Sunday, January 25, 2009

We gathered at the Tel Aviv train station this morning to receive our assignments. We’re heading to Ktziot, a tank and infantry support base in the Negev desert not far from the Egyptian border. The bus headed south out of Tel Aviv on multi-lane highways and past the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, two towns along the Mediterranean that took rocket fire from Gaza before and during Operation Cast Lead

After Ashkelon, we passed between the town of Sderot on the east and the northern end of Gaza on the west. That meant we were between Sderot and Gaza, and about ½ mile away from the border. All eyes on the bus turned to the right, but we were unable to see anything of Gaza through the haze. We were all very aware, however, of where we were and what had gone on there. (Sderot was a constant target for Hamas missiles during the last eight years, and several volunteers rented cars and visited the town over the weekend to spend some money and show their support.)

We stopped at a rest area along the way and were joined by several busloads of soldiers from the Givati brigade (identified by their purple berets) who saw action in Gaza. Many of the volunteers in our group thanked the soldiers for their work, and posed for pictures with these young warriors. Each of the soldiers carried an Israeli-made rifle which, they said, was a much improved version of the M-16. The difference, they explained, was that the barrel of the gun extended nearly the full length of the weapon, resulting in a shorter gun with equal firepower.

We then turned southeast toward Beersheva, the “capital of the Negev.” From a small desert outpost, Beersheva has become one of Israel’s largest cities, and is the home of Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Beersheva also is the home of the Israeli national bird – the construction crane – and we saw many tall apartment towers under construction.

We also passed the Bedouin market, and caught a glimpse of the fresh fruit and vegetables on sale. South of Beersheva, we began passing Bedouin tents and metal shacks … many sporting solar-powered water heaters and satellite dishes! What a perfect life: a tent, some sheep and a 500 television channels.

We were now in the desert. Last week the world in the north was green and filled with trees. Now the earth was brown, and the trees soon gave way to low bushes and then to little more than sand. The mountains of the north were replaced by the low hills of the Negev. In just a few days we’ve seen a wide variety of topography and climate.

After dropping off some volunteers at another base, we continued to Ktziot and followed the now-familiar routine of getting clothing (all new!), sleeping bags (instead of blankets) and sheets. The clothing process took an unusually long time, in part because the soldiers in the quartermaster area operated with the speed and energy of garden slugs. As a result, there was not enough time to start work this afternoon. (In other words, the post‑war supply and reorganization effort yielded to a higher priority: finding belts and hats that fit.)

In the midst of the confusion and inefficiency, I asked one of our madrichot how Israel managed to win any wars. One of my fellow volunteers heard my question and suggested that the outcomes spoke to the level of the competition. We may be tired but our sarcasm level remains high.

We are in a two-story barracks building and there are two other volunteers in my room: Oleg, the computer expert from the San Francisco area who was with us last week in Netavim, and Shelly, a clinical social worker from a suburb of Chicago who worked at another base last week.

The good news is that we have lots of room; the bad news is that we are on cots instead of beds, and that the level of cleanliness we encountered left a bit to be desired. Let me rephrase that: the place was filthy, and the bathrooms were unspeakable. We quickly commandeered some cleaning supplies and washed down the floors and bathrooms. The challenge now will be to keep the place clean in spite of the young “regular Army” soldiers on the floor below. Hopefully, “roughing it” won’t mean “living like animals.” (I would have said “living like pigs,” but kosher restrictions prevent me from doing that.)

The base captain, Peter, who serves as the volunteer liaison briefed us on the schedule and the rules. Among other things, the captain told us that the soldiers on the base live here (since it’s too far away from population centers for them to go home during the week), and that one of the buildings on the base serves as temporary housing for Sudanese refugees. These people have crossed the Sinai desert to (illegally) enter Israel along the Egyptian border. After a few days here, they will be taken to a prison and then either released in Israel or deported to Egypt. We were told that contact with soldiers on the base was permitted (even encouraged) but that we were not to have any contact with the Sudanese.

This evening, two Army medics gave a presentation on Advanced Trauma Life Support, and showed a variety of procedures for treating wounds in the field. We saw several forms of tourniquets, including one developed by the Israelis and being sold to the U.S. and several other countries around the world.

The two medics, natives of Azerbaijan and the Ukraine respectively, have been in the Army for 2½ years, and have served together since basic training. They are “combat medics,” which means they carry weapons and are, first and foremost, combat soldiers.

They began their army service – and their training – shortly before the 2006 war in Lebanon, and witnessed many of the operational mistakes that resulted in so many IDF casualties during that conflict. Many of those mistakes were outlined in the report of a study commission (known as the Winograd Report) and the relatively low number of casualties during the Gaza operation (160 wounded and nine dead, several as a result of “friendly fire”) was a direct result of the vastly improved levels of intelligence, preparedness and coordination of forces called for in that report.

One of the medics addressed the difficult choices that must be made on the battlefield. He said that if a terrorist and a civilian are each wounded, or if a terrorist and an Israeli soldier are each wounded, the terrorist will not be treated first, regardless of the severity of his injuries. However, if a civilian and an Israeli soldier are each wounded, the person with the more serious injuries will be treated first, even if it means that the Israeli soldier has to wait for treatment. In such a situation, the first priority is to save human life, whether the life is that of an Israeli or an innocent civilian.

He also talked about the negative publicity to which Israel has been subjected as a result of civilian deaths during the Gaza operation. To illustrate the complexity of the situation, he described one encounter in Gaza. While on patrol, he and his colleagues spotted a house in which a head bobbed up and down in a front window. They determined that the person in the window was a spotter for Hamas, and had both binoculars and a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher. The Israeli troops fired several warning shots aimed at the vicinity of the house, to see if the spotter would stop his activities. When the person continued to appear in the window, tank fire was called in and the front of the house was blasted away, killing the spotter. When the troops checked the house, they found the spotter’s family, including two adult women and several children, all of whom were injured. They were all treated at the scene and, in coordination with the Red Crescent (the Arab equivalent of the Red Cross), were transferred to local hospitals.

The medic told us that while the Israeli troops had no intention of injuring civilians, the Hamas spotter's use of his own home while his family was in the house made such casualties unavoidable.

He also described the frustration he felt about the inability to “get the word out” about the way in which the efforts of Israeli soldiers are guided by ethics and values, and the contrast with the tactics of Hamas who use civilians, including children, as human shields. We told him that we shared that frustration, but that we would do what we could to tell this “side of the story” upon our return home.