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March 17, 2006
Impossible mission unfolds
An IDF soldier's hopes for action are foiled by circumstances.
FREEMAN PORITZ
Near Nablus, Israel
You go up with the observation team, do what they tell you, and
then pretty much just watch," Eitan explained to me, describing
the events of the previous night. He told me all about his excursion
the night before with an elite Israel Defence Forces observation
section. They had scaled a huge hill in a mean-looking army Hummer
and arrived at a pre-arranged position located between two peaks
overlooking Nablus in the West Bank. There, they replaced the section
that regularly manned the area.
Wow! I thought. A real mission! I was beginning to wonder where
the whole action bit of the army came in. So far, there had just
been training, training, more training and a lot of relocating from
place to place – usually travelling on public transit. I had
already been in the army for about six months when my new commander
had ordered Eitan and I to take a break from our usual posting on
the Israeli border with the northern Gaza strip and that we would
be attached to a watcher/observer unit in the Nablus area for a
week.
For those of you who don't know, Nablus is situated deep in the
northern West Bank. A large Arab village of approximately 240,000
is overlooked by scattered Jewish settlements and IDF army bases.
It was a Wednesday afternoon – I remember because Eitan went
out into the field with the observation team Tuesday night and had
returned the day after looking ecstatic. "It was a crazy night,"
he said. "These guys are really good – their positions
are great and their knowledge of the area is impeccable."
I was bored. It had been a lame week. I'd been reading books, watching
the movies, chatting to the few girls in our section of the base
and playing way too much basketball on the makeshift basketball
course with the army convoy drivers. They were usually short and
fat, so being tall and lanky tended to give me the edge. So when
Eitan – my sergeant – showed traces of excitement, I found
myself eager to share even a tidbit of it.
I was slated to go up with the observation team on Wednesday night.
Little did I know that things wouldn't play out the way they were
supposed to. On the Wednesday afternoon, the commander of the observation
team assembled his team (including me) together for a routine inspection.
He went through the routine pre-operation questions before asking
me, "And you – when was the last time you fired your gun,
soldier?" I'd just exchanged weapons at the HQ base the week
before and hadn't been to the shooting range with the M-16 I was
now carrying. Now I had a dilemma. Did I tell the truth? Or did
I need to go on this exciting mission or deployment or whatever
you want to call it badly enough to tell them that my weapon was
sighted anyway?
In a way, I didn't have a choice. I told the commander that my gun
wasn't sighted. Human life isn't something to play around with.
Before I knew it, I and three others were being sped across the
greater Nablus area to the regional shooting range in order to sight
our weapons, so that we'd be authorized to participate in the deployment.
At the shooting ranges, things simply went from bad to worse. Shooting
SOPs (standard operating procedures) state that all weapons need
to have a thorough pre-shooting cleaning. Mine hadn't – and
it wasn't long before the shooting range officer had a piece of
flannel wedged in the barrel of my gun. My M-16 was definitely not
firing on this Wednesday. So much for the mission ... so much for
the wave of excitment that had come over me ... so much for the
chance at a real deployment. It felt as if I'd been personally rejected.
This is what I thought as I flushed all my hopes of contributing
somehow to the mission down the drain.
So I missed it – the mission of the century, which turned out
to be little more than a night-long excursion to relieve a weary
outfit. "You didn't miss anything," a buddy from the observation
team informed me upon their return to our Nablus base. I couldn't
help but feel as if I'd missed the world.
Freeman Poritz lived in Vancouver from ages of six to
19. For just over a year, he served as a soldier in the IDF's Golani
Brigade.
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