Golan Heights Battalion Exercise, Drudgery, Temple Mount Violence
The week before last was mixed. Mixed in the sense that there were some exceptionally difficult moments but they had an element of fun. Yes, the IDF life can have some fun in it, if you're the type to enjoy things in the midst of what is mostly pain and discomfort. The entire battalion spent the week training in the northern Golan Heights, and in the area of Mt. Dov and Mt. Hermon. The living conditions were not pleasant. We slept in what are basically old shipping containers painted with what I assume passes for artwork. Winter in the north means rain, cold and a bitter wind. The veteran companies in my battalion were doing most of the "action" and we, the training companies, were doing a lot of the setting up and guarding. Towards the end of the week, however, we participated in a war game.
My platoon was playing Syrian commandos. After 24 hours of heavy duty marching, alternated by periods of rest and food, we set up an ambush, which essentially meant we lay on the cold, muddy ground for 8 hours straight. We were getting rained on, and yet we had to hold the position in order to spring the ambush properly. It was the height of discomfort. Finally, the "enemy" walked into our trap and we wiped them out. Needless to say, the "Israeli" forces were not supposed to get their butts kicked, but that's what happens when Felix is on the warpath. If I do say so myself, I was hardcore. At some point, I crawled around the buffudled "enemy" and took out a bunch of them from an unexpected angle with that stupid laser attachment we all affixed to our guns. Old school, with a new school touch.
It turned out my squad performed better than the others, who suffered heavy "casualties." We had only two "wounded" and took out over half of the "enemy." My mefaked, commander, who looks like a darker and shorter version of Bruce Lee, is partially responsible for our success, but most of the credit goes to me and to four other standout guys in my squad - a 23 year old kid from Boston who recently moved to Israel and became religious and is hence zealous, a Russian kid who's the quietest person you'll ever meet, and a guy from the Atzmona mechina and another one from the Eli mechina. A mechina is a yeshiva that combines Torah learning with army preparation, and these have become immensely popular with dati-leumi, national-religious, young men. The Atzmona mechina used to be in Gaza, but was moved to the border with Egypt after the disengagement. Eli and Atzmona are the best mechinot in Israel and its graduates are always in the best units in the army. The army is basically a joke to the two guys from the mechinot, they are clearly overprepared.
But the fun part was not the fake combat. After all, 36 hours of running around hilly, rocky, muddy terrain with little rest and eating only two slices of bread with jam once every 6 hours can hardly be called fun. The natural surroundings were the redeeming quality that made the pain (kind of) worth it. The Golan and the north in general in the winter is stunning. The hills are covered in lush greenery and the rain brings out a rich brown and black in the earth. The air is clean and wet. When we were training to the south of Mt. Dov, we had the pleasure of one of those great views the feeling of which no digital media can capture. A snow-covered Mt. Hermon to the North, its series of peaks reaching into the low winter clouds. The ruins of Nimrod's castle on the southern side of Mt. Dov, shining golden in midday. Kiryat Shmona and picturesque farmland sprawled out in deep valleys.
We were only a few kilometers from the Lebanese border, and Hizbollah has some stunning real estate, no less impressive than our own. What made the scenery even more dramatic was the fog that came and went. At times, it travelled over the tops of the mountains, like a blanket lifted, exposing the terrain beneath it. At other times, it crawled down the slopes and into the valleys. The fog moves as a certain mass, and before it reaches you, it shrouds a mountain or a village or a valley, and you can clearly see the shape of this mass of fog and the movement of its inner strands. It's quite hypnotic.
Last week was all guard duty and kitchen/cleaning, during which the only truly military thing we did was running the obstacle course in full gear. In a way, it was a hard week. The guarding is on a 24-hour schedule so your sleep cycle is distorted, which tires you out. Random physical work is tiring and the obstacle course is a royal pain. You put on about 35 lbs of gear, run a kilometer, do the obstacle course, and run half a kilometer. We did that every other day. On the days we didn't, we had krav maga, which consists of sprinting and crawling back and forth for an hour straight on a basketball court, while the instuctor and your commanders randomly hit you. That would probably be a tolerable experience if you didn't get hit by Yevgeny, the insane krav maga instructor. He brings the pain. Krav maga in the army is definitely not at all related to the type of krav maga people learn in martial arts schools, with all the kicking, punching and other such silliness. Krav maga is about making you fit and tough enough to take hits. Actually teaching you to hurt an opponent is the last and least important stage.
Aside from my own little IDF world, there's also the greater political reality that is widely referred to in the liberal media as the "Middle East conflict." Israeli archeologists have been digging around the Temple Mount for a few years now. Depressingly, the Israeli government has allowed a local Muslim council known as the Wakf to have local sovereignty over the Temple Mount itself, even though the State of Israel is 100% sovereign over all of Jerusalem, including the area of the Temple Mount. I know this is a contradiction, but that's the idiocy of the situation. The Arabs have used the fear that successive Israeli governments have had in asserting control over a piece of real estate that the Jews actually own to convince the world that the Temple Mount is a place that belongs to Islam. They have renovated the two mosques that are there, the Dome of the Rock (the one with the golden dome) and the Al-Aqsa (the smaller grey-domed one), which had been in decay under the Moslem Ottoman Turks for about 500 years. They have also built madrassas, Islamic schools, and the Al-Aqsa university on the Mount itself that teach the standard fare of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The Israeli authorities decided to improve on the ramp leading from the plaza below the Temple Mount to the Mount itself. The ramp has existed for hundreds of years and has been buttressed by wooden supports for decades. The Israeli government decided to build a new, more solid and more modern ramp that is, of course, in keeping with the architectural integrity of Jerusalem. After a week of saying nothing, suddenly the Arabs of the Old City, and those who come from the surrounding villages to the Temple Mount to pray, started to riot against the construction process. Israeli police units were called in, and some dramatic-looking images were photographed by annoying European journalists who seem to be central to the modern media's drive to replace sound facts and solid evidence with flashy images. The media then throws in a quick soundbyte to promote an ideology, and you have propoganda in the digital age of attention deficit disorder. Very sad.
The essence of what is going on with regard to the Temple Mount has nothing to do with what happened this week. The underlying issue is that the Moslems know that their claim to the Temple Mount helps weaken the Jewish claim, even though the Jewish claim is stronger from both the religious and historical perspectives. Religiously, Jerusalem isn't mentioned in the Koran, neither is the Temple Mount. The Moslem claim is based on medievial commentary that suggests that Jerusalem was the place from which Mohammed rose to heaven. But Jerusalem is not in the word of Allah that was revealed to Mohammed. In the Torah, on the other hand, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are described in extensive detail, as is all the land in the area. The Temple Mount is a key element in the Torah and its meaning to Jewish belief and observance is paramount.
Importantly, the historical and archeological evidence for the First and Second Temples is overwhelming. There can be no doubt that Jews lived in Jerusalem and the surrounding area from about 1100 B.C. until the expulsion of 70 A.D., and during most of that time the Jews had a functioning Temple with priests, Torah learning, Jewish law courts, etc. The Arabs came to the area as conquerors in the 8th century A.D. and even though they staked a political claim, they didn't stake a strong historical and religious claim until the Jews started arriving in Israel in great numbers in the first half of the 20th century. And only after 1967 (surprise, surprise) did the Israeli Arabs and the Moslem world in general come to think that the Islamic claim to the Temple Mount is unequivically central to their faith. Well, they admit it is of tertiary importance, behind Mecca and Medina, but important nevertheless...?
Yet, the reality is that we have Moslems and Jews with competing claims. The Arab leaders who control all education and media in their countries and in the PA-ruled territories use the Temple Mount to rile up passions and to launch attacks against Israel. The current flare-up is an attempt to psychologically prepare the Arabs for the third Intifada. Also, since Iran is now calling the shots in the Moslem world, especially with regard to the destruction of Israel, the money and weapons flow to Hizbollah and to Gaza have reached unprecedented heights. The various terror armies in Gaza are nearing the armament levels of Hizbollah. It is in Iran's interest to have Israel simultaneaously fight in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, and in southern Lebanon. This would deflect US attention from Iran's nuclear program and give Iran breathing room to figure out what to do with massing American forces in the Persian Gulf which are soon to reach levels that can demolish Iran's nuclear and military facilities by air strikes and shipborne missiles.
The connection between the Moslem religious leaders in Jerusalem and Teheran is direct and the latter have plenty of financial and political influence over the former. Iran is the force behind all the various groups in the Arab world, and the Moslem world in general, that are working towards Israel's collapse. According to the Torah, competing spiritual and political claims to any part of Israel, the Temple Mount included, is a test for the Jews. We must either stand up and take and fully control what is ours or we must make compromises with the enemy, breaking the fundamental laws of our religion. Since the majority of Israel's Jews have been seduced by the modern Tel-Aviv lifestyle, and since a shrinking majority is a majority nevertheless, Israel has a government it deserves - a weak, corrupt, disorganized group of money-obsessed party men, answerable to no one but the small central committe of said party.
We are, as a result, spiritually too weak to be able to use our physical strength. But, as I've described, a multi-front conflict of serious proportions will soon break out and Israel will hopefully come out of it with limited damage and as few casualties as possible. Once that happens, our leaders can either act Jewish or they can act European as a way to solve the conflict. In the latter case, they must be replaced by better men, men who represent the feeling and mood of the right and are able to bring in the confused center into the governing coalition.
Until the above happens, a large conflict must occur, and Jerusalem will be key, as always. As for when, I am no prophet, but no earlier than April.
The week before last was mixed. Mixed in the sense that there were some exceptionally difficult moments but they had an element of fun. Yes, the IDF life can have some fun in it, if you're the type to enjoy things in the midst of what is mostly pain and discomfort. The entire battalion spent the week training in the northern Golan Heights, and in the area of Mt. Dov and Mt. Hermon. The living conditions were not pleasant. We slept in what are basically old shipping containers painted with what I assume passes for artwork. Winter in the north means rain, cold and a bitter wind. The veteran companies in my battalion were doing most of the "action" and we, the training companies, were doing a lot of the setting up and guarding. Towards the end of the week, however, we participated in a war game.
My platoon was playing Syrian commandos. After 24 hours of heavy duty marching, alternated by periods of rest and food, we set up an ambush, which essentially meant we lay on the cold, muddy ground for 8 hours straight. We were getting rained on, and yet we had to hold the position in order to spring the ambush properly. It was the height of discomfort. Finally, the "enemy" walked into our trap and we wiped them out. Needless to say, the "Israeli" forces were not supposed to get their butts kicked, but that's what happens when Felix is on the warpath. If I do say so myself, I was hardcore. At some point, I crawled around the buffudled "enemy" and took out a bunch of them from an unexpected angle with that stupid laser attachment we all affixed to our guns. Old school, with a new school touch.
It turned out my squad performed better than the others, who suffered heavy "casualties." We had only two "wounded" and took out over half of the "enemy." My mefaked, commander, who looks like a darker and shorter version of Bruce Lee, is partially responsible for our success, but most of the credit goes to me and to four other standout guys in my squad - a 23 year old kid from Boston who recently moved to Israel and became religious and is hence zealous, a Russian kid who's the quietest person you'll ever meet, and a guy from the Atzmona mechina and another one from the Eli mechina. A mechina is a yeshiva that combines Torah learning with army preparation, and these have become immensely popular with dati-leumi, national-religious, young men. The Atzmona mechina used to be in Gaza, but was moved to the border with Egypt after the disengagement. Eli and Atzmona are the best mechinot in Israel and its graduates are always in the best units in the army. The army is basically a joke to the two guys from the mechinot, they are clearly overprepared.
But the fun part was not the fake combat. After all, 36 hours of running around hilly, rocky, muddy terrain with little rest and eating only two slices of bread with jam once every 6 hours can hardly be called fun. The natural surroundings were the redeeming quality that made the pain (kind of) worth it. The Golan and the north in general in the winter is stunning. The hills are covered in lush greenery and the rain brings out a rich brown and black in the earth. The air is clean and wet. When we were training to the south of Mt. Dov, we had the pleasure of one of those great views the feeling of which no digital media can capture. A snow-covered Mt. Hermon to the North, its series of peaks reaching into the low winter clouds. The ruins of Nimrod's castle on the southern side of Mt. Dov, shining golden in midday. Kiryat Shmona and picturesque farmland sprawled out in deep valleys.
We were only a few kilometers from the Lebanese border, and Hizbollah has some stunning real estate, no less impressive than our own. What made the scenery even more dramatic was the fog that came and went. At times, it travelled over the tops of the mountains, like a blanket lifted, exposing the terrain beneath it. At other times, it crawled down the slopes and into the valleys. The fog moves as a certain mass, and before it reaches you, it shrouds a mountain or a village or a valley, and you can clearly see the shape of this mass of fog and the movement of its inner strands. It's quite hypnotic.
Last week was all guard duty and kitchen/cleaning, during which the only truly military thing we did was running the obstacle course in full gear. In a way, it was a hard week. The guarding is on a 24-hour schedule so your sleep cycle is distorted, which tires you out. Random physical work is tiring and the obstacle course is a royal pain. You put on about 35 lbs of gear, run a kilometer, do the obstacle course, and run half a kilometer. We did that every other day. On the days we didn't, we had krav maga, which consists of sprinting and crawling back and forth for an hour straight on a basketball court, while the instuctor and your commanders randomly hit you. That would probably be a tolerable experience if you didn't get hit by Yevgeny, the insane krav maga instructor. He brings the pain. Krav maga in the army is definitely not at all related to the type of krav maga people learn in martial arts schools, with all the kicking, punching and other such silliness. Krav maga is about making you fit and tough enough to take hits. Actually teaching you to hurt an opponent is the last and least important stage.
Aside from my own little IDF world, there's also the greater political reality that is widely referred to in the liberal media as the "Middle East conflict." Israeli archeologists have been digging around the Temple Mount for a few years now. Depressingly, the Israeli government has allowed a local Muslim council known as the Wakf to have local sovereignty over the Temple Mount itself, even though the State of Israel is 100% sovereign over all of Jerusalem, including the area of the Temple Mount. I know this is a contradiction, but that's the idiocy of the situation. The Arabs have used the fear that successive Israeli governments have had in asserting control over a piece of real estate that the Jews actually own to convince the world that the Temple Mount is a place that belongs to Islam. They have renovated the two mosques that are there, the Dome of the Rock (the one with the golden dome) and the Al-Aqsa (the smaller grey-domed one), which had been in decay under the Moslem Ottoman Turks for about 500 years. They have also built madrassas, Islamic schools, and the Al-Aqsa university on the Mount itself that teach the standard fare of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The Israeli authorities decided to improve on the ramp leading from the plaza below the Temple Mount to the Mount itself. The ramp has existed for hundreds of years and has been buttressed by wooden supports for decades. The Israeli government decided to build a new, more solid and more modern ramp that is, of course, in keeping with the architectural integrity of Jerusalem. After a week of saying nothing, suddenly the Arabs of the Old City, and those who come from the surrounding villages to the Temple Mount to pray, started to riot against the construction process. Israeli police units were called in, and some dramatic-looking images were photographed by annoying European journalists who seem to be central to the modern media's drive to replace sound facts and solid evidence with flashy images. The media then throws in a quick soundbyte to promote an ideology, and you have propoganda in the digital age of attention deficit disorder. Very sad.
The essence of what is going on with regard to the Temple Mount has nothing to do with what happened this week. The underlying issue is that the Moslems know that their claim to the Temple Mount helps weaken the Jewish claim, even though the Jewish claim is stronger from both the religious and historical perspectives. Religiously, Jerusalem isn't mentioned in the Koran, neither is the Temple Mount. The Moslem claim is based on medievial commentary that suggests that Jerusalem was the place from which Mohammed rose to heaven. But Jerusalem is not in the word of Allah that was revealed to Mohammed. In the Torah, on the other hand, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are described in extensive detail, as is all the land in the area. The Temple Mount is a key element in the Torah and its meaning to Jewish belief and observance is paramount.
Importantly, the historical and archeological evidence for the First and Second Temples is overwhelming. There can be no doubt that Jews lived in Jerusalem and the surrounding area from about 1100 B.C. until the expulsion of 70 A.D., and during most of that time the Jews had a functioning Temple with priests, Torah learning, Jewish law courts, etc. The Arabs came to the area as conquerors in the 8th century A.D. and even though they staked a political claim, they didn't stake a strong historical and religious claim until the Jews started arriving in Israel in great numbers in the first half of the 20th century. And only after 1967 (surprise, surprise) did the Israeli Arabs and the Moslem world in general come to think that the Islamic claim to the Temple Mount is unequivically central to their faith. Well, they admit it is of tertiary importance, behind Mecca and Medina, but important nevertheless...?
Yet, the reality is that we have Moslems and Jews with competing claims. The Arab leaders who control all education and media in their countries and in the PA-ruled territories use the Temple Mount to rile up passions and to launch attacks against Israel. The current flare-up is an attempt to psychologically prepare the Arabs for the third Intifada. Also, since Iran is now calling the shots in the Moslem world, especially with regard to the destruction of Israel, the money and weapons flow to Hizbollah and to Gaza have reached unprecedented heights. The various terror armies in Gaza are nearing the armament levels of Hizbollah. It is in Iran's interest to have Israel simultaneaously fight in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, and in southern Lebanon. This would deflect US attention from Iran's nuclear program and give Iran breathing room to figure out what to do with massing American forces in the Persian Gulf which are soon to reach levels that can demolish Iran's nuclear and military facilities by air strikes and shipborne missiles.
The connection between the Moslem religious leaders in Jerusalem and Teheran is direct and the latter have plenty of financial and political influence over the former. Iran is the force behind all the various groups in the Arab world, and the Moslem world in general, that are working towards Israel's collapse. According to the Torah, competing spiritual and political claims to any part of Israel, the Temple Mount included, is a test for the Jews. We must either stand up and take and fully control what is ours or we must make compromises with the enemy, breaking the fundamental laws of our religion. Since the majority of Israel's Jews have been seduced by the modern Tel-Aviv lifestyle, and since a shrinking majority is a majority nevertheless, Israel has a government it deserves - a weak, corrupt, disorganized group of money-obsessed party men, answerable to no one but the small central committe of said party.
We are, as a result, spiritually too weak to be able to use our physical strength. But, as I've described, a multi-front conflict of serious proportions will soon break out and Israel will hopefully come out of it with limited damage and as few casualties as possible. Once that happens, our leaders can either act Jewish or they can act European as a way to solve the conflict. In the latter case, they must be replaced by better men, men who represent the feeling and mood of the right and are able to bring in the confused center into the governing coalition.
Until the above happens, a large conflict must occur, and Jerusalem will be key, as always. As for when, I am no prophet, but no earlier than April.
posted by Felix at
12:39 AM
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