I loved maps, and matching the terrain to the lines drawn on the paper. The North Star, hanging above the Galilee, became a beacon for me wherever I found myself in the countryside I loved, finding signs of seasonal changes, recognizing winter’s end by the sprouting of wild lilies in the Galilee’s foothills above Nahalal.
And I knew that in the army, especially in the kind of unit I wanted to join — the paratroops sayeret, the most elite of the reconnaissance forces, which specialized in special operations — I would learn much more about fieldcraft.
I did not want an army career. I knew the army required discipline. Raised to believe in earned, moral authority, not the authority of rank for rank’s sake, I expected to find army life rankling. Medals for heroism or bravery had less appeal than the challenges I would find in a unit where I could bring to full expression my natural talents as an athlete and my love for the land.
Nonetheless, I knew I had talents for soldiering — as an athlete, as a field navigator, and perhaps most of all as a leader of my peers. But I left it unsaid amongst my friends from the valley, where bragging is frowned upon and modesty admired.
So, I spent my last summer before the November draft of 1964 honing my body through the hard work of the farm and athletic competitions. Nurit and I traveled the country, sometimes only the two of us, sometimes with other friends from the valley. We knew we would one day be married — it went almost as unspoken between us as the fact that we knew I would be a good soldier. We would have children and live in Nahalal, in the Dayan family house that she would inherit when she married. The tradition in Nahalal is that the youngest child inherits the farm, after the older children help to build it.
In the fall of 1964, my turn came to stop playing at being a soldier and get ready to become one for real. In those days only four elite reconnaissance units that the IDF calls a sayeret—Hebrew for “scouts”-existed.
The Southern Command called its sayeret Shaked, meaning almond. Famous for, among other reasons, its Bedouin Moslem commander, Amos Yarkoni (born Abed al-Majid), one of the unit’s founders in the fifties, Shaked tracked infiltrators in the Negev coming out of Egypt and Jordan.
The Northern Command also had a sayeret, drawn from the Golani Brigade, an infantry unit that specialized in the northern border’s defense.
The third sayeret was brand — new in 1964, and so secret that I knew nothing of its existence at the time of my draft. Run directly by the general staff, its very name only became public knowledge in the late 1980s, and then only because its successes made it impossible to keep its existence a secret.
So the fourth sayeret, the most famous on the eve of my draft, belonged to the paratroops brigade. Famous for its special operations and surprise raids against the enemy, the IDF considered the paratroops sayeret the unofficial heir to the 101st Unit, a legendary force established in 1952.
The 101st had struck back at the Arab fedayeen, the infiltrators who came across the borders as saboteurs and terrorists. They crossed borders into enemy territory to seek out the culprits and punish them. Ariel “Arik” Sharon, who went on to become a general and a politician, and Meir Har — Zion, who to this day is considered the most legendary of Israel’s fighters, led the fifty fighters in the unit.
The stories about the 101st describe them as wild and uncontrollable, soldiers who made rules for themselves. Wounded so many times — including once when he personally took revenge on a Bedouin family for his sister’s rape — Meir Har — Zion finally gave up soldiering to build a ranch on a Galilee hilltop.
The unit’s radical methods forced the politicians to dismantle the unit after only six months. But the 101st proved to the IDF that a very small number of fighters could deliver a very powerful message. It established traditions for using essentially guerrilla tactics in the strategic fight against terrorism. With the dispersal of the 101st’s officers and soldiers into the rest of the army at the end of 1952, those traditions spread throughout all the special warfare units in the army. The spirit of their personal heroism-and the skills they developed as trackers and fighters-remained embedded in the consciousness of the army.
The paratroops brigade, which Sharon commanded after the dismantling of the 101st, claimed the legendary unit’s mantle as the tip of the IDF spear, and the brigade’s scouts — the sayeret—drew its inspiration from the 101st.
My parents took me to the Haifa recruiting station on a brisk November day, knowing the paratroops sayeret was my goal. We parted in the manner of people from the Jezreel Valley. I clenched my father’s thick, hard hand and we shook once. ‘To your success,” he said.
“Goodbye, Abba” I said, then turned to my mother. “Goodbye, Ima.”
She handed me a bag with a sandwich for the bus ride to the induction center. I towered over her, and bent over to give her a peck on the cheek. She gripped my biceps with her own strong hands and, in a whisper into my ear, wished me luck and asked me to take care of myself before letting me get on the bus to the induction center. That is the way of the Jezreel Valley — laconic and understated, never sentimental.
Nowadays, the induction process to the IDF is computerized and before new draftees reach the center, they pretty much know where the army will send them. In those days, neither computers nor advanced registration existed.
But some things never change. A sprawling mass of wooden barracks, sheds, and dozens of tents set into clearings among the wooded groves and open fields of Tel Hashomer, east of Tel Aviv, the center draws all the new recruits to the IDF. Three times a year — February, August, and November — buses bring the eighteen-year-olds recruited in that season’s round of the draft.
It is a herding process that begins with chaos and confusion but very quickly turns into the strict organization of the army — even if that army is the IDF, which, as a people’s army based on a universal draft, has a degree of informality intolerable to any other professional army.
And like new recruits nowadays into the IDF, those of us arriving at Tel Hashomer that day in November 1964 knew that in addition to the two and a half years we would give to the country in enlisted service, another month in reserves would follow every year until we reached our forties. Most of the IDF is not even in uniform at any given time — it is the reserve force.
This has been part of life in Israel for as long as the country has existed. I wish now, just as I truly wished then, that for my grandchildren — it is probably too late for my children — it will not be necessary. But for all the years Israel and the Arabs have warred, one of the real secrets of the IDF’s strength is that almost every family in our tiny country knows what it’s like to have someone in the army.
I’m sure induction centers everywhere in the world share the same thing — shouting sergeants. In those days, the most famous sergeant in the IDF was a strict handlebar-mustachioed Yemenite-born tyrant named Hezi, who wore a sharp-pressed uniform and had a whistle hanging at the end of a braided lanyard that draped over his chest.
He rushed us through a series of barracks where it seemed we were given as many shots as a porcupine has needles, then led us into a huge storeroom. Clerks threw uniforms, duffel bags, helmets, and boots at us. Then we were rushed back to the main hall, where they told us where to find the recruiters for various units in the army.