Hard for a mother, but...

Yes, in some parts of the world it's Mother's Day, so you may find this a strange piece for me to be posting. I'm the mother of two front line IDF veterans who are subject to reserve duty.

When our elder son was inducted into an elite unit, the speeches and the "souvenir video" we ended up with struck a peculiar and unexpected chord. The officers promised to take "good care" of our sons, and the video commentary kept harping on the premise/myth that "it's your darling son's first time away from home." Strange. Our son and all of his friends had just spent four years in a yeshiva high school dorm and then many a year or more in a pre-army "preparatory" yeshiva. That's not counting the overnight treks with Bnai Akiva from as young as elementary school. So, obviously, by the time he was drafted into active service in the army, he was a veteran of being "away from home."

Unfortunately, we weren't naive to the reality of Israeli military service. Two of our friends from New York Betar had been killed while fighting the Yom Kippur War in 1973, eight years before that son was born. We had all experienced terror attacks, and I was even injured when he was in high school.

Of course, we hope and pray that our children, their friends and all Israeli soldiers come home safe and sound, but nothing is guaranteed, and the army isn't just another summer camp.

You can't be victorious in a war if all you care about is not getting hurt. The point of war is to defeat the enemy, not to warn them before attacking and not to endanger our soldiers in order to protect enemy civilians. War is dangerous, and it hurts.

There's something dangerously perverse in the Israeli Government's attitude. Read this article from IMRA:

Sunday, May 13, 2007
Uri Heitner: If top goal of an IDF operation is not to get hurt then mission is superfluous

Reserve duty. We came up to the line for active duty and met the area
commander for a briefing.
At the end he remembered that he hadn't yet presented to us the main point:
"and the most important thing is that you all return home safely. All of
this activity isn't worth it to us if one hair on the head of one soldier
should fall," said the commander, pleased with himself for the populist
remark.

This wasn't a one time occurrence. It took place many times, with many
commanders, including one regional commander.

These remarks always angered me.

If the most important thing is that we return home safely then why did you
call for us? After all, we could have remained safe at home. Not a hair on
our heads would have fallen if we stayed there.

If this is more important than the mission then the mission is completely
superfluous.

Victory first and foremost depends on fighting spirit. We were victorious in the past thanks to our fighting spirit and we failed in the Second
Lebanon War because of the lack of fighting spirit. I am not talking about
the fighting spirit of the soldiers and the lower ranking officers but
instead mainly of that of the senior IDF command and the government
leaders..

Uri Heitner, Kibbutz Ortal
In a letter published in Nekuda - May 2007 edition
English Translation by IMRA