Always About Itself and Something Else... by jadedmuse
While in the Golan, you may even come face to face with practicing troops. Though these young men are casually smiling, I have to quote Tom Friedman again for his poignancy:"...from the moment a baby is delivered and the nurse says "ben" (Hebrew for "boy"), every Israeli mother starts to worry. She starts to count the days until her son will join the army. It's a mental calendar...10 years to go...1 year to go...And then once he's in the army she counts the months and watches the map. Will he be assigned to Lebanon? Nablus? Hebron? Or, G-d willing, a desk job? Every mother secretly wishes for a desk job, every son openly aspires to join an elite unit - ideally the air force. It is no wonder that Israel is the only country where people's moods soar and dive on the basis of what they hear hour by hour on the radio news. The beep-beep-beep that comes at the top of each hour announcing the news reminds me of one of those heart monitors, only it's hooked up to the country's heart, giving an hourly status report on its vital signs. And it all goes back to that moment of birth, and the clock that starts ticking when the nurse announces "ben" or "bat, boy or girl."