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wasn’t as accurate as the M16, it did the job when “zeroed” properly—that is, calibrated by firing a succession of test shots at the same target. That’s one reason that people had their own personal weapon: no two rifles shoot the same.
    A female soldier, Avital, taught us how to shoot straight. This was not unusual: the IDF doesn’t put women on the battlefield in ground units, but they do serve a wide variety of combat roles as, for example, pilots and naval officers. And many others, like Avital, become instructors. Some Israelis argue the country should go further, fully integrating the forces right down to infantry platoons, tanks, and commandos. Based on my army experience, integrating women into combat ground units changes the traditional buddy-based social dynamic necessary for battlefield team-building. In Israel, there is another argument: any female soldier who becomes a POW in a Middle Eastern theatre cannot expect to be treated in a gentlemanly fashion.
    As well as teaching us how to shoot, Avital ran us up and down hills in full gear, and administered a course of gut-busting calisthenics. All this was conducted in the rough training grounds of Nachusha, an area in the West Bank selected because of its similarity to the rocky scrub terrain of southern Lebanon, where Israel was then fighting a counterinsurgency campaign.
    Having already received rifle training in the Canadian army, I excelled at the range, and my target groupings were often used as an example to my fellow soldiers, which resulted in my being the subject of some good-natured abuse. One day I had to shoot a bunch of balloons at long range while my whole platoon watched. Yaron, who’d made light of my Canadian roots just days before, dubbed me Tsayad Hatsvayim , or “Deer Hunter”—high praise, indeed.
    Lieutenant Tal didn’t witness that demonstration, but he must have heard about it, because he approached me a few days later and offered me a plum assignment: carrying the platoon’s “MAG,” a nearly six-footlong Belgian-made belt-fed machine gun that spits out 850 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition a minute. It’s highly effective at ripping up large concentrations of troops. In the right hands, it can also be used as an accurate long-range sniper rifle.
    Being offered the MAG was considered a great honor in IDF combat units. It meant you had not only the skill to fire it, but also the strength to carry it and the enormous amount of ammunition it tore through. With the MAG and about 450 rounds of ammo, I was hauling some eighty pounds of gear—or about half my own weight. My ankles, back, and joints all took a pounding. But the heavy load was necessary: without an abundance of ammunition to feed it, the weapon is just a hunk of metal. (The need to carry such large loads is another reason women are excluded from combat units. For all her extraordinary abilities, I doubt that even as fit a specimen as Avital could carry eighty pounds on a long march.) The weeks we spent on infantry training in Nachusha was one of the physically hardest periods in my life.
    I was one of three men issued MAGs in our 150-man company. We were instructed in their use by Lieutenant Doobie, who’d been a MAG operator during the war in Lebanon. When we started, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but after a few weeks I was shooting like a pro. I could even cock it with one finger on the run by using the tension of the carrying strap around my neck and shoulders.
    My teammates were issued other weapons. Peter was assigned to carry a rocket-propelled grenade along with his Galil, and Gary was issued a 53mm hand-held mortar. Robert, the budding correspondent, was given the radio. I remember telling him that his career as a broadcast journalist was getting off to a promising start. “Go fuck yourself, Rambo,” he promptly replied.
    Over time, we were taught how to camouflage and conceal, patrol,