Today is Tuesday Feb. 10th, 2009 and it is now 12:37 AM here in the Philippines.
Continuation...
So the war came, and I stayed at my Yeshiva, and became active in the Kahane Movement within Israel. It was a time of great awakening in my country. We were founded by extreme leftists, harcore Socialists and Communists.
One man who was the diametric opposite and yet an ardent Zionist was Vladimir Jabotinsky who went by his Jewish first name, "Ze'ev."
"Jewish Names" are our religious names, the names we use in religious functions. The Ashkenazim believe naming a baby after a living person will bring death to one or both of the people (adult and the baby) so they name after dead relatives. Other Jews have no such qualms and you even have Sephardim naming sons after fathers which is horrific to most Ashkenazim.
Since my mum was Ashkenazi, I was Religiously named after 2 long dead ancestors, Uncles "Yosafe (Yosef)" and "Amel." My religious name is Yosafe Mendel and my Religious surname is "Ben Yankel Yehoodah," meaning "Son of my fathers Religious names. "Yosafe Mendel Ben Yankel Yahoodah."
Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky was an Eastern European Jew who believed that Socialism was not the cure to Jewish ills, and who believed Jews needed to concentrate more on self defence than on farming, which was the opposite of what Socialists, et al were pushing at the time.
Jabotinsky founded a youth movement in Eastern Europe, "Betar," which was the launching pad for a whole generation of Jewish Nationslists. Menachem Begin, a PM of Israel and one of the men who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, was a Betar leader for all of Poland and even did time in the Soviet Gulag for his activities before being freed in WWII to fight with the Free Polish Army.
Anyway, Jabotinsky was a freind of Rav Kahane's father, and often stayed at their Brooklyn home whenever his activities led him to the US. This shped Kahane's early years.
I started going to weekly meetings, and then every 2 days I was going to meetings plus serving guard duty at my school, anf of course training all day with my paramilitary unti.
The IDF ended up bogged down after hitting the Beirut suburbs and falling back out of the city as the US and a multi-national force landed to take up "Peace Keeping " duties there.
So, the "fast " war ended up lasting of course, until my 16th birthday which saw me on a bus up to the border at Rosh HaNikra, on the Israeli coast on the cliffs at the Lebanese border. I was in town for 4 days and then caught a tank ride asross. I ended up taking almost a week once in-country to make my way over to my first posting, on Mt. Hermon which is a mountain on the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
It was 1983, and Fatah Land had been reduced to a tiny swatch thatw as centered on the LEbanese side at the base of Mt. Hermon, so the base I was deployed to was in the thick of it. Despite this, my durties wer elimited for a couple of months, to Perimeter Duty.
The base had chainlink and razor wire, a sand track, another, outer fence, and then another sand track, and then mine fields down the mountain. Every shift had to run an APC (an
M113) with an Engineering implement on the back, like a little paver, to roll the sand flat so that any footprints might be easily seen.
In front of the M113 an Engineering unit had to demine the track to rid it of any IEDs or possible mines that might have been laid.
I was to ride with my head out of the hatch of the M113, with my Galil, and serve as part of the fire team that rode as Security for the Sand Track unit.
"Gailis" are an Israeli rifle, no longer really used. Based on the AK, with receivers made by a Finnish company that had liscenced the AK, and with the rest having been made by the Israeli military complex. We had alot of M16s, but they tend to jam up in dirty environments, so that anytime an IDF soldier carrying an M16 killed an enemy they always hoped they would nsag an AK and after a while our 08s (COs) were ignoring the fudging of the regulations so that they could have an effective fire team.
AKs will almost never jam from dirt, not even the ultra-fine silicate that you see in our part of the world. Desert countries, have a talcum power like dirt and sand, nothing like beack sand. Even if you clean your M16 every shift it will jam and one thing you do not want is your piece jamming in a firefight. It has happened to me a few times and it is one of the worst things that can ever happen.
Galils were decent pieces, but expensive to make as opposed to the price we were paying for the
M16 hand-me-downs from Big Brother/Uncle Sam.
I got into my first firefight while doing Perimeter. We would be sniped at regularly, so much so that we ended up no longer riding with the hatch up, but using the fire holes on the M113s. Still, from time to time the PLO would apparently get bored and we would get a small squad trying to probe our Defences. It was one of those forays that saw me in a short firefight.
I had 3 of them over the course of about 4 months, and then we ended up taking out the PLO fort on the bottom of the mountain . We could have bombed it into oblivion but there were often uneasy times where we lived and let live, for whatever reason. One argument was that it was much simpler with them at the bottom of the mountain then deep in the countryside where we could not maintain such a close vigil on them.
Still, there came a time when we had to move past them regularly and having them fully armed down there was not going to float. They bombed it into dust, and we mopped up and then the following month we began heading up into Beka'a.
"Beka'a" is a flat valley, in far eastern Lebanon, bordering Syria. It is also a prime drug producing region where poppies and cannabis are grown in abundance. #2 heroin was the staple of the local economy, and some of the best hasish in the world comes out of the little valley.
It is also prime Syrian and even Iranian country. Iran's "Revolutionary Guards" maintain 2 bases there to the present day, and were the group who founded Hezbollah but that is a while yet, in the future of my entries.
At that time they had not yet opened their first base, but Syria was large there. They had SAM batteries up and down the valley. We would move in cooridnated pushes with Armour, and with the IAF above us, taking out these installations.
One day, nearing Ba'alabek in Beka'a, when I was 17, we were engaged by 3 PLO RPG teams. They used to have 3 man teams, usually young teens, younger than me! And they could pin us down and make it hell for the tanks. I ended up getting snagged by a ricocheting bullet fragment that came in under my forward jaw, up through both jawbones, shattering 2.5 of my upper front teeth and settling in my sinus cavities.
I remember my head snaping back and then I blacked out. I came to as they had me on a stretcher, bagged already with saline and more morphine. See, we used to have 2 syrettes, which are disposable preloaded syringes, full of morphine sulphate. I guess someone had injected me already, and by the time I came to they were pushing me into a copter, with 2 IV bags, one of which was a steady morphine drip but I do not remember much of it.
The first time I did "Drugs" was at 8 days of age. Jewish boys get circumcised at that age. 8 days means that you will probablly live a while, so they either get you drunk by taking cloth, dipping it in sweet grape wine , squeezing it out tightly, and then letting you such the cloth, or they instead do the same with poppy tea.I was given tea like most in my Clan.
From 8 days until age 17 I had done nothing, save for a little cannabis in NYC while hanging out instead of going to school, which of course was what got me sent to Israel!
The copter ride was a blank but I do remember coming to again on the gurney in Hadassah Hospital inside Israel. I was there for 3 days, ptched up and given 30 days R and R, and ensconced at a abse outside of Jerusalem.
After 1 week I was ordered to do guard duty in Jerusalem, sorting out the Christian Pilgrims. It was there that I met my father in law.
I will continue...
Continuation...
So the war came, and I stayed at my Yeshiva, and became active in the Kahane Movement within Israel. It was a time of great awakening in my country. We were founded by extreme leftists, harcore Socialists and Communists.
One man who was the diametric opposite and yet an ardent Zionist was Vladimir Jabotinsky who went by his Jewish first name, "Ze'ev."
"Jewish Names" are our religious names, the names we use in religious functions. The Ashkenazim believe naming a baby after a living person will bring death to one or both of the people (adult and the baby) so they name after dead relatives. Other Jews have no such qualms and you even have Sephardim naming sons after fathers which is horrific to most Ashkenazim.
Since my mum was Ashkenazi, I was Religiously named after 2 long dead ancestors, Uncles "Yosafe (Yosef)" and "Amel." My religious name is Yosafe Mendel and my Religious surname is "Ben Yankel Yehoodah," meaning "Son of my fathers Religious names. "Yosafe Mendel Ben Yankel Yahoodah."
Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky was an Eastern European Jew who believed that Socialism was not the cure to Jewish ills, and who believed Jews needed to concentrate more on self defence than on farming, which was the opposite of what Socialists, et al were pushing at the time.
Jabotinsky founded a youth movement in Eastern Europe, "Betar," which was the launching pad for a whole generation of Jewish Nationslists. Menachem Begin, a PM of Israel and one of the men who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, was a Betar leader for all of Poland and even did time in the Soviet Gulag for his activities before being freed in WWII to fight with the Free Polish Army.
Anyway, Jabotinsky was a freind of Rav Kahane's father, and often stayed at their Brooklyn home whenever his activities led him to the US. This shped Kahane's early years.
I started going to weekly meetings, and then every 2 days I was going to meetings plus serving guard duty at my school, anf of course training all day with my paramilitary unti.
The IDF ended up bogged down after hitting the Beirut suburbs and falling back out of the city as the US and a multi-national force landed to take up "Peace Keeping " duties there.
So, the "fast " war ended up lasting of course, until my 16th birthday which saw me on a bus up to the border at Rosh HaNikra, on the Israeli coast on the cliffs at the Lebanese border. I was in town for 4 days and then caught a tank ride asross. I ended up taking almost a week once in-country to make my way over to my first posting, on Mt. Hermon which is a mountain on the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
It was 1983, and Fatah Land had been reduced to a tiny swatch thatw as centered on the LEbanese side at the base of Mt. Hermon, so the base I was deployed to was in the thick of it. Despite this, my durties wer elimited for a couple of months, to Perimeter Duty.
The base had chainlink and razor wire, a sand track, another, outer fence, and then another sand track, and then mine fields down the mountain. Every shift had to run an APC (an
M113) with an Engineering implement on the back, like a little paver, to roll the sand flat so that any footprints might be easily seen.
In front of the M113 an Engineering unit had to demine the track to rid it of any IEDs or possible mines that might have been laid.
I was to ride with my head out of the hatch of the M113, with my Galil, and serve as part of the fire team that rode as Security for the Sand Track unit.
"Gailis" are an Israeli rifle, no longer really used. Based on the AK, with receivers made by a Finnish company that had liscenced the AK, and with the rest having been made by the Israeli military complex. We had alot of M16s, but they tend to jam up in dirty environments, so that anytime an IDF soldier carrying an M16 killed an enemy they always hoped they would nsag an AK and after a while our 08s (COs) were ignoring the fudging of the regulations so that they could have an effective fire team.
AKs will almost never jam from dirt, not even the ultra-fine silicate that you see in our part of the world. Desert countries, have a talcum power like dirt and sand, nothing like beack sand. Even if you clean your M16 every shift it will jam and one thing you do not want is your piece jamming in a firefight. It has happened to me a few times and it is one of the worst things that can ever happen.
Galils were decent pieces, but expensive to make as opposed to the price we were paying for the
M16 hand-me-downs from Big Brother/Uncle Sam.
I got into my first firefight while doing Perimeter. We would be sniped at regularly, so much so that we ended up no longer riding with the hatch up, but using the fire holes on the M113s. Still, from time to time the PLO would apparently get bored and we would get a small squad trying to probe our Defences. It was one of those forays that saw me in a short firefight.
I had 3 of them over the course of about 4 months, and then we ended up taking out the PLO fort on the bottom of the mountain . We could have bombed it into oblivion but there were often uneasy times where we lived and let live, for whatever reason. One argument was that it was much simpler with them at the bottom of the mountain then deep in the countryside where we could not maintain such a close vigil on them.
Still, there came a time when we had to move past them regularly and having them fully armed down there was not going to float. They bombed it into dust, and we mopped up and then the following month we began heading up into Beka'a.
"Beka'a" is a flat valley, in far eastern Lebanon, bordering Syria. It is also a prime drug producing region where poppies and cannabis are grown in abundance. #2 heroin was the staple of the local economy, and some of the best hasish in the world comes out of the little valley.
It is also prime Syrian and even Iranian country. Iran's "Revolutionary Guards" maintain 2 bases there to the present day, and were the group who founded Hezbollah but that is a while yet, in the future of my entries.
At that time they had not yet opened their first base, but Syria was large there. They had SAM batteries up and down the valley. We would move in cooridnated pushes with Armour, and with the IAF above us, taking out these installations.
One day, nearing Ba'alabek in Beka'a, when I was 17, we were engaged by 3 PLO RPG teams. They used to have 3 man teams, usually young teens, younger than me! And they could pin us down and make it hell for the tanks. I ended up getting snagged by a ricocheting bullet fragment that came in under my forward jaw, up through both jawbones, shattering 2.5 of my upper front teeth and settling in my sinus cavities.
I remember my head snaping back and then I blacked out. I came to as they had me on a stretcher, bagged already with saline and more morphine. See, we used to have 2 syrettes, which are disposable preloaded syringes, full of morphine sulphate. I guess someone had injected me already, and by the time I came to they were pushing me into a copter, with 2 IV bags, one of which was a steady morphine drip but I do not remember much of it.
The first time I did "Drugs" was at 8 days of age. Jewish boys get circumcised at that age. 8 days means that you will probablly live a while, so they either get you drunk by taking cloth, dipping it in sweet grape wine , squeezing it out tightly, and then letting you such the cloth, or they instead do the same with poppy tea.I was given tea like most in my Clan.
From 8 days until age 17 I had done nothing, save for a little cannabis in NYC while hanging out instead of going to school, which of course was what got me sent to Israel!
The copter ride was a blank but I do remember coming to again on the gurney in Hadassah Hospital inside Israel. I was there for 3 days, ptched up and given 30 days R and R, and ensconced at a abse outside of Jerusalem.
After 1 week I was ordered to do guard duty in Jerusalem, sorting out the Christian Pilgrims. It was there that I met my father in law.
I will continue...