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<\/a>Israel Mourns its Fallen Soldiers<\/p><\/div>
\nLosing a soldier in Israel is a very national experience. Israel is a small country; everyone knows everyone. Imagine living in a large village and you\u2019ll start to get the idea. When Israel loses a soldier, the entire country grieves. <\/p>\n
Israel has a mandatory draft system for all male and female citizens eighteen years of age. To better understand how this impacts the country, it means every son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle and neighbor in Israel either is a soldier, was a soldier, or will someday be a soldier. Losing a soldier in Israel is personal and very emotional. <\/p>\n
American kids spend their senior year of high school preparing for acceptance into university while Israeli youth take army tests to see which military unit they are best suited to join. The worries of university applications only come in their twenties. Israeli men are required to serve in the army for three years and women for two years. While women are discharged after their service, men are obligated to return to the army for annual reserve duty. For up to one month per year, and more during war time, male lawyers, engineers, teachers, street cleaners and falafel stand workers put aside their private lives, say goodbye to their families, and take their turn as part of a reserve unit. Do all Israelis love the army and look forward to serving in it? No. Like any other circumstance where you bring together all different types of people in a forced experience, some will enjoy it and others will loath it. But, no matter their political leaning, Israelis understand that it is their national duty to serve, and very few citizens make the effort to receive exemption from army service. <\/p>\n
For these reasons, the death of a soldier in Israel is not as impersonal as it often is in other nations. As an American I must sadly say I do not know how many soldiers we lost in Iraq or Afghanistan during our years of war there, nor do I know either directly or indirectly any of those lost. Throughout these long and drawn out wars, American news rarely discussed the specific individuals killed. Well, maybe there was a mention in a local paper, but nationally the soldiers were numbers, a statistic. And, I am sorry to say, the nation largely forgot about these soldiers fighting a war for us on foreign soil far away from our daily lives and concerns. <\/p>\n
This is not the experience of war and soldiers in Israel. Wars in Israel are fought on the home front, making them very real, and everyone knows more than one person going into battle. And everyone knows someone lost. <\/p>\n
When a soldier is killed, whether in war or in a training exercise, Israeli news channels announce the death. The soldier\u2019s picture is displayed on TV and on the front page of newspapers. Information about the soldier as an individual is shared as well, as is something about his or her family left behind. Funerals are aired on national television and sometimes up to 20,000 people from around the country attend to pay their respects to the fallen soldier and his family. The soldier\u2019s death impacts every citizen of Israel. One of their own has been lost. <\/p>\n
At the time of this writing, Israelis have heard the news that sixty of its soldiers have been killed, and now one kidnapped. This is not some distant statistic without meaning. The nation\u2019s heart bleeds because another one of its children won\u2019t be coming home. Everyone knows that while today it may not have been their son\/husband\/father it may have been their neighbor\u2019s, and tomorrow it could be their loved one. Unfortunately, every loss in Israel hits much to close to home. <\/p>\n
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