This article is from my Traveling Israel blog www.aviway.net
If you will ever visit Israel and use the public transport most chances you will see tired looking soldiers sharing the bus or train with you. And they will have assault rifles, just like that.
The soldiers in Israel use the public transportation to go on vacations, yes it is weird. If you are going south to the Negev, they can be half of the bus passengers. Most of the Negev is a huge empty hot place and no one wants to live there. No one asks the soldiers where they want to live so most of the military bases are located in the Negev.
In the past, a lot of terror attacks happened on public transports or central bus stations. At some point, the government decided to just let the soldiers carry their gun home and by doing that you get a quick response to any event. The soldiers are already there and we don’t have to pay them.
When you have to carry your gun AND Cannon....
OK, after you overcame the shock of armed young men walking around we can start to talk about how it is to be an IDF soldier.
So who has to join the Israeli military? girls? minorities? What is like to serve in the IDF?
No matter what your opinion on the state of Israel you have to agree it is in a tough neighborhood. It is a small country and in order to keep the presence on the borders and be ready to an emergency situation the country has to establish an obligatory service system. Man do 3-year service while the woman does 2 years unless they volunteer to a combat unit and then they do 3 years.
Man do 3-year service while the woman does 2 years unless they volunteer to a combat unit and then they do 3 years.
Most of the people understand why they are joining the military and want to do it. It is not like in other places in the world where soldiers are sent overseas, here in Israel the front line can be 10 min drive from a soldier home.
When there are rockets attacks during conflict times the front line can be safer than the soldier home. The soldier can be more worried about his family than the fact he is on the front line.
Combine it with the fact that it is a small country and there is a good chance you will meet your officer on the street or know some of his friends or his high school teacher, and you'll get special relations between commanders and soldiers.
The Israeli Melting Pot
Unlike how it seems in most Hollywood movies, in the IDF the relations between the commanders and soldiers is more like a Boy Scout or your big caring brother relations.
Less formal, less discipline
The commanders are not allowed to humiliate/hit a soldier and the relationship is based on trust and not disappointing the commanders or your friends. After basic training, you are allowed to call your commanders and officers by their first name. We don't have 'permission to speak sir' if you want to talk to your officers you just go and talk to them.
The IDF became what we call here "The Melting Pot". Because everyone has to join, whether you are rich or poor, finished high school or not and no matter what is your background, you are going to meet all kind of people in your service. People get friends all over the country, and people with low chances of meeting in real life can suddenly become best friends.
Mixing People from all backgrounds
In the army, your economic status doesn’t matter. It's not that you can buy better guns/uniforms/boots/beds. Everyone becomes equal and what matter is the character of a person. it all creates people who come from a different background to share this strong experience which creates a common story to tell, a sense of belonging and friendship that goes on to the civilian life.
So basically it is a country in which everyone is a little Rambo?
Of course................Not.
Most of the people who serve are not even in combat units. The military is a huge organization with many jobs. Because the country is small, a lot of people serve close to their homes so it's cheaper to the military to let them live with their parents. They come to the base in the morning, do their job which can be typing things on computers/cooking/truck drivers, mechanics and go back home in the evening.
Teachers, mechanics, drivers and even lifeguards!
Some soldiers serve as teachers for soldiers who didn’t graduate from high school. A soldier who didn’t finish high school can choose to spend his last months of service in a military school where he will learn math, literature or anything else he didn’t complete in high school. Some soldiers stay at the base and come home every weekend, some soldiers can stay at the base for a couple of weeks. All depends on the job.
A female soldier works as a reporter for a radio station on... a festival!
Each job gives the individual a completely different experience of "how it's to serve in the military".
You can see here an example of the effects on 18 years old teenagers after you put them in the hot desert sun for a long time:
An example of a job which takes you around the country:
An emergency instructor for schools!
Hi-Tec- One of the world Elite technological organizations
Because everyone joins, it means that also the smartest teenagers of the country join. The military knows that and created units of computer geeks. They are going through courses and using the latest technologies on the market. Some of those units are world class professionals when it comes to cyber and programming. Most of these soldiers as they finish their service joins startup companies in Israel or around the world.
If they IDF was a civilian company, it could be easily in the silicon valley next to the big boys.
Combat Soldiers
You have tones of info across the web. google it!
Combat soldiers - Most of the time cleaning stuff.
Reserve - The weird yet professional side of the IDF
After finishing the 3 years, some people go into a reserve unit depends on the job they had in the service. If they are assigned to a reserve unit it means they will go back to the military for 1-4 weeks a year to do probably whatever they did in their service....
If the regular army has low discipline the reserve can be ridicules. Your officer might have dreadlocks because he just came back from India, the sergeant maybe is now fat, that guy became a pacifist and is not coming to the reserve anymore, the chubby lazy guy became an iron man competitor and he is now an elite soldier and so and so...Everyone dressed sloppily with a combination of civilian equipment which can be more comfortable.
So if you see a soldier that looks sloppy, unshaven and looks more like an escaping prisoner than a soldier, he is probably on reserve.
Reserve hair style
in this video you can see that the soldiers are more mature and older than teenage at their 20's:
Minorities in the IDF
Bedouins
As I mentioned before, because of the political situation not all minorities are joining the IDF. The Muslim Arabs who lives inside Israel are mostly relatives with the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and in the surrounded countries. It can create sensitive situations and because of the historical status qu, the Muslims are not obligated to serve.
Druze
The Druze as a community chose to serve and be part of the state. some of them serve as high-ranking generals in the IDF. Who are the Druze you ask? Check this link.
Others
There are other minorities who serve like Christians Arabs, Samaritans, and Circassians. they don't join in large numbers so they don't have cool edited videos on YouTube to share...
(Which by the way is another job you can do, video editing)