A Shot in the Air

A Soldier's Mother

Paula R. Stern

22 September 09

Sometimes, you measure your progress in milestones, ones you knew would come but forgot you were expecting. Actually, in all likelihood, this latest milestone has come and gone (I'll have to ask), but this is the first time I'm hearing about it, so it is new to me.

I drove Elie to my office today, there to wait an hour until he could catch a bus to his base. He surfed the Internet and played games at the table in my office; I sat behind my desk answering emails and planning my week. It was quiet, but pleasant as the moments ticked away. We'd talked quite a bit over the long holiday weekend; sometimes the quiet is a comfort.

Too often on this winding street where my offices have been for the last few years, we hear a screech of brakes and wait. Sometimes we hear a thud; sometimes we don't.

Today we heard a thud, both going quickly to the windows that overlook the street. We saw a woman with her hands held to her head, obviously distressed, run around the car. She got into the driver's seat and sat there. She was fine. No injuries; but clearly she was upset and from all that we could see, it was her fault.

We looked to the second car and at the people around the street. No one seemed concerned; no one was racing to help; I could tell that Elie was trying to determine whether there was anyone injured. The other car door opened and a man stepped out. No injuries, a fender bender.

Elie stayed with me as we watched. The woman got out of the car, walked across the street...and put on her shoes that were on the sidewalk. Huh?

So, the best we could figure was that the woman had pulled up to the curb to buy something in the coffee shop on the ground floor of our building. She must have forgotten to put the car in park (did I mention that my street is a hill, gently sloped?). We assume her car began to roll backwards; she watched in horror as it slammed into the back of a car that had just passed in the opposite lane. In her haste to get to her car, she must have kicked off her open sandals. A mystery solved - not even 9:00 in the morning.

They exchanged information; the excitement was over, thankfully, no one was injured. Back to the computers for a few more minutes. All too soon, it was time for Elie to leave.

He picked up his heavy backpack and swung it onto his back. Without thought, I leaned over and picked up his gun to hand to him. It seemed silly for him to bend with the heavy backpack on his back.

"You aren't scared to hold it anymore?", he asked, clearly amused.

"Well, it's not like I'm firing it," I answered back.

"Not like me last week, huh?"

Okay, this was new. We'd just spent the last four days together and I hadn't heard anything. As calmly as I could, I asked him to explain. No big deal, an ordinary event, Elie said. Too ordinary, too common. An Arab approached the checkpoint and was asked for his identification. He handed it over and it was clear that it wasn't his; he'd stolen it and was trying to cross into Israel illegally for purposes unknown. It could have been to work...it could have been to steal, to harm, to kill. At that moment, it was anyone's guess...and you don't risk people's lives on a guess.

(Continue)
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When Right Seems Wrong...but is Really Right

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
14 September 09

I called Elie today. I've been missing him a lot, which is, of course, silly since I just saw him last weekend. Life is particularly pressured right now and it seems to have manifested itself in a number of ways, including this feeling of being out of touch. So, I called with a ready excuse about the cellular phone company service. Elie asked me if I was near a computer and when I told him I would be in 5 minutes, we agreed that I would call him back after I got home.

He guided me to a website - "Go to YNET," he said, explaining that I needed to go to the Hebrew news site and not the English one. "click News."

He guided me to a news article and asked me to capture the video. It took me a while to understand the story and what the video was showing. The story goes like this - at least the published one:

An Arab truck driver pulls up to a checkpoint at 6:30 a.m. with proper paperwork. His truck is filled with rocks designated for building. The soldiers inspect the truck and ask the truck driver to dump his load so they can check under the rocks. The truck driver complies. The truck is emptied. The soldiers don't find anything and allow the truck driver to continue. However, in order to continue, he must now hire a tractor to pick up the rocks and put them back into his truck. This is at his expense and his lost time.

"How can we live this way? What kind of life is this?" another Arab tells the camera.

I watched it a few times and then called Elie back. What am I missing, I thought to myself. This doesn't make "us" look good.

"Where you there?" I asked Elie. I had looked each of the soldiers carefully, but I didn't see Elie. Then again, some were turned away and from the distance, it is hard to tell.

"No," Elie told me. "But they're my soldiers. I can tell who they are, and even who isn't in the camera but was there."

"Elie, what's the story here? It doesn't look good."

That's when Elie explained. The driver isn't so innocent. He's known to the soldiers. The fact that THIS TIME his truck wasn't carrying anything that he wasn't allowed to transport, doesn't mean he wasn't caught in the past. More important that the story, for the soldiers in Elie's unit, were the comments. Almost 70 of them, "and Ima, all of them are good. They all understand."

Yes, they are supporting the soldiers and that is what made Elie happy.

• Don't surrender to them. Much honor to the army.
• And what would you say if between the stones, you found explosives?
• it's difficult to stand at a checkpoint and spend hours guarding for eight hours and have people come and question all that you do. As one of those who examine the merchandise and goods that are brought across checkpoints, I try also to do the best I can for each side. It isn't easy to sleep at night knowing that you could end up passing through explosives or the next suicide bomber. So to all those who have a complaint against the army or the soldiers, keep it to yourself. (Signed a Soldier on a Checkpoint).
• Nothing wrong with what was done. If they let them pass without being checked, then I would say that there is a problem. Kol Hakavod (all honor) to the soldiers for doing a great job, protecting all the people who sit in Tel Aviv and always complain.
• It is obviously a security issue. A full truck comes to a checkpoint. How is a soldier supposed to know that there are no explosives inside? It's obvious the rocks aren't the issue. It's something I learned as a soldier. If we don't check, the Arabs learn and bring in explosives. It doesn't matter that in this truck, there was nothing. Now they see us checking and won't bring in explosives that harm our civilians. Kol Hakavod to the soldiers.

And on it went, comment after comment, in Hebrew and in English. What the soldiers did was correct. This time, the truck didn't have explosives; this time, nothing was hidden under the rocks. On the same day this happened, several knives and firebombs were found at other checkpoints. Perhaps this wouldn't have made the news if something had been found. Yes, the driver was inconvenienced; yes, it is a sign of the situation in which we find ourselves.

And as the many commentators wrote...and as our soldiers read - all honor to our soldiers. So many times our soldiers feel that the world doesn't understand their work. This time, they understood, they read. The article wasn't very positive, trying, as YNET often does, to paint our soldiers in a bad way and yet the readers proved to the soldiers that what they did was correct.

THIS time, the truck had nothing on it so the driver will go on his way. But just as important, many other drivers who might have thought to smuggle something through that checkpoint will understand that the soldiers are checking. A friend, who daughter was killed several years ago in the Sbarro pizza bombing attack once yelled at a reporter who was concerned about the conditions under which the Palestinians live and the damaged "quality of life" they may experience because of the security situation.

"Don't you dare talk to me about the quality of their life," the bereaved father answered, "when my daughter has no life."

Sometimes, what seems wrong, is really right and what is right, seems wrong. I am often told that peace will come to the Middle East when the Israelis do certain things. Stop the occupation, they say, and there will be peace. But there was no peace in 1966, before the so-called occupation began. All the return of the refugees, people say - but we too had hundreds of thousands of refugees and we took them in, gave them homes and a land and a part of our future.

There are so many issues in the Middle East that can be summed up very simply, though the world likes to make it complicated.

On Friday, Israel launched artillery into Lebanon...yes, it's true. But the artillery was in response to two katyusha rockets fired at Israel. The katyushas were fired at our cities; the artillery was fired at the launching ground of the katyushas. Had there been no rockets launched at Israel; there would have been no artillery being fired. The UN promptly stepped in and, once again, made fools of themselves by asking for a cessation of violence.

Idiots, I want to tell them. Don't you see? Stop the rockets, and there will be no violence, no artillery. Stop the smuggling and attempts to blow up our civilians, and there will be no need to search your trucks.

Sometimes, when right seems wrong, it is because you aren't looking at the whole picture.

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