Gaza On My Mind

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

We began the day at the warehouse unpacking duffel bags dropped off by the reservists who just returned from Gaza. Each bag contained clothing; a mess kit (including a coffee cup, a bandage and some silverware that may or may not have been washed at some point since the Six Day War); a sleeping bag; the occasional helmet; and M-16 clips, many of them still holding bullets. Our job was to separate the items so that they could be counted and returned to the warehouse in order.

Not fascinating work … and yet.

Each duffel bag represented a soldier. I wondered what each soldier had experienced in the last few weeks. What went through the mind of the man or woman who carried the duffel bag when the mobilization phone call came? How did it feel to cross the border into Gaza, land which Israel gave up a little more than two years ago, only to see it turn into “Hamasistan,” a launching site for a seemingly endless stream of rockets? Did the helmet protect against enemy bullets? Did the person inside the sleeping bag get much sleep? How many of the bullets in the clips were used, and how many of those found their mark? Did the boots walk on areas above tunnels that had been used to smuggle arms and ammunition into Gaza?

No answers were forthcoming, but I wished those jackets and hats and supply belts could talk.

We saw and heard a number of jets overhead, and we soon learned of events along the Gaza border. An Israeli border patrol was attacked this morning, leaving one dead and three injured. The jets we saw and heard were likely engaged in counter-attacks against Hamas in Gaza. We are too far away to hear any shooting, but we knew it was going on. In Israel, news – especially bad news – travels fast.

The rest of the day was spent in the lower part of the base. Our first assignment was to open about 200 duffel bags, remove a sweater from each duffel, replace it with a plastic bag containing empty bullet clips, and close the duffel again. What was the purpose of this maneuver? As soon as I find out I’ll tell you. Happily, the concrete block warehouse was quite cool and the work moved along quickly with the help of two Israeli soldiers: a young woman of Ethiopian descent and a young man whose parents came here from Belarus in the former Soviet Union.

We were curious about one part of the building with shelves containing boxes marked “Kosher for Passover.” We couldn’t tell what kind of food was inside so we quietly opened one of the boxes and found cans of tuna fish, peanuts, halvah and a product that looked a lot like Spam. The peanuts quickly became our morning snack, and we put the rest of the box back … in the back. If you’re reading this, please don’t tell anyone.

By afternoon, the sun was high in the sky and it was just plain hot. It didn’t matter, however, because we were working inside a large covered warehouse area, sort of a garage open on one side. With the help of a half-dozen soldiers, we attacked enormous piles of boxes containing a wide variety of items. We separated everything from hazmat suits to wrenches to light bulbs, and I even found a carton of office supplies containing typewriter ribbons dating from 1981. (I’m not sure anyone in the IDF still uses typewriters or why typewriter ribbons were needed in Gaza. If I find the answer to that one, it will likely mean I’ve achieved a level of enlightenment that will also tell me why the bullet clips were substituted for the sweaters in the duffel bags earlier in the day.) Everything was boxed and carried away by a forklift driver who thought he was driving a Formula One race car. As long as you stayed well out of the way, it was interesting to watch heavy equipment doing wheelies.

Tonight’s “evening program” was scheduled to be Israeli singing. Instead, we had a very candid conversation about some of the soldiers working here and the frustrations of some of the volunteers. To put it as politely as possible, there is an enormous difference between the soldiers in Israel’s elite fighting units and the folks who get assigned to work in warehouses in the desert. The level of discipline among many of the soldiers here is low, the buildings and grounds on the base are in serious need of a cleaning, and some of the soldiers apparently think that the volunteers are here to work instead of them rather than with them. (A group of young ladies in the upper warehouse area came in for particular criticism because of their habit of resting on the piles of clothes while the volunteers sorted everything out.)

There’s no good answer to this problem. Among other things, it’s not likely we would be assigned to work with combat troops or jet pilots because there probably not much we could do to help them. ("Hi! Want us to take your tank out for a quick spin to make sure everything's o.k.?") We can do the most good in places like Netafim and Ktziot where, by definition, the work to be done doesn't take a lot of skill or training, and that means we’re not likely to be side by side with the cream of the crop. I’ve decided that the best way to approach the situation is to simply remember that we are here to help and that without us the work that needs to be done would take that much longer to accomplish. I also can’t expect that the eagerness and energy of volunteers spending a few weeks here can be matched by young men and women who may have to work here for the better part of two or three years.

I’m still with the cup-is-half-full camp and I’m happy I did this. At the same time, I try not to think about how much more productive we could be if the soldiers here had better leadership, better discipline and a better attitude.

Tomorrow is our last day of work. Early Thursday we’re “checking out” of "Hotel Ktziot" and heading for Sde Boker, the kibbutz in the Negev where David Ben Gurion spent his last years and where he and his wife are buried. I’ve visited Sde Boker twice before and still remember the remarkably vivid pastel colors of the desert. I’m looking forward to returning and enjoying the view again.