The Volunteer Read Online Free Page B

military—especially in combat units—is a source of pride, fighting is still considered a necessary evil. By teaching its soldiers such lessons, the IDF ensures that it has not only a more effective military than those of its Arab neighbors, but a more ethical one as well.
    Each phase of our advanced training was marked by a long night march in full gear. On the final march, we left Nachusha and covered forty-five miles before reaching our destination the next morning. When we arrived, we had a torch-lit ceremony on a hill. Going from soldier to soldier, Lieutenant Tal placed a ceremonial beret on each sweaty head, coupled with a hard, but good-natured punch on the chest. It was one of the proudest moments in my life.
    In the months that followed, we patrolled the West Bank and did house-to-house searches for wanted terrorists. Sometimes it would dawn on me that Roman soldiers no doubt walked the same beat two thousand years ago. When I mentioned this thought to our company commander, he took a serious tone, reminding me that our little patrols were what prevented the whole territory from falling into anarchy. We also provided security on Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, and I guarded buses used to ferry international pilgrims to Manger Square in Bethlehem. People stared at me and my kit as I rode with them. Though I carried my Galil for such tasks, I tried not to alarm anyone. I remember an American boy, about six years old, staring at me during one bus tour. I smiled at him and asked if he’d been a good boy for Santa. His parents’ mouths dropped open in shock. They seemed amazed that an Israeli soldier would know anything about Santa, let alone speak fluent English.
    Another memory stands out vividly. An Israeli civilian had been shot at one night while driving to her West Bank home. Five of us set up an improvised roadblock to cut off the terrorists’ escape. They never came, but an older man in an Arab headdress came riding up. “Sabach al-hir (good morning ),” he said. I gave him the standard reply, “Sabach al-noor,” which means “good light.”
    It was almost dawn and we got word on the radio to stand down. The wizened Arab produced a coffee finjan , a single-handled pot for making Turkish coffee—known in Israel as botz , or “mud,” because of the large amount of sediment left behind in the glass. We lit a fire and filled the finjan with water, and the visitor added scoops of cardamonlaced Turkish coffee. We added sugar, and when the brew started to boil over we poured it into some small glasses he’d brought. We sat around the fire Bedouin-style and drank the coffee.
    I live on the west coast of Canada and, true to regional stereotype, am a premium-coffee addict. But nothing has ever matched the coffee we had that morning. When I look back, I see a quintessential Middle East moment: two cultures sharing a common pleasure without the fetters of politics and terror. The old gentleman knew we meant him no harm, and we respected him and his culture. His generation of Palestinians fought long and hard against the nascent Jewish state, but he seemed to know that we need to move on and make some kind of accommodation. Today’s Palestinian youths have been hijacked by a Hamas-led death cult. You would be hard pressed to find any one of them bringing coffee to an Israeli patrol. And if one did, he’d probably be treated as a potential suicide bomber. When I think of the elderly Arab and his kind smile, I feel a sense of loss for both cultures.
    Though I conducted lots of patrols in the West Bank, I never fired my weapon. In fact, my most dangerous moment in the army had nothing to do with Palestinian terrorists. I was on a training exercise in the Negev Desert. We were wheeling around in a modified Zelda armored personnel carrier (APC), a tracked vehicle that typically carries about eight soldiers. We were following a ridge line when the crew commander ordered