This war is not iron swords, it is tongue-twisting. The media draws the line, we are all new media, and there is no room for information gaps.Anyone who dreamed of it and did not wake up from the warnings about Hamas camps coming to ferret our kibbutzim received live what most parents in Israel are not willing for their children to see even on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Since then, we have been consuming harsh war videos. This week I met another video.
Pieces of home in the heart
The most important video from this war does not show blood, but it is sacred in blood. Blood that flows through the body and is passed down from generation to generation, and blood that caused Armored Officer Shahar Levy to be hospitalized in Soroka, and the doctor who saved him, Dr. Assaf Aker, head of the Department of Orthopedic Trauma, to stand by his bed in a rare moment that was documented and strengthens hearts.
In 1974, with the end of the Yom Kippur battles, the Armored Corps Band embarked on a new show, "From the Wild East" ("Plan" they called it). Eitan Paldi, the education officer of the Armored Corps, decided to infuse the show with the spirit that should beat the people the day after the battle, and will characterize the strength of steel and the human softness that distinguishes the corps. Shosh Paldi, his wife at the time, wrote the words, which 50 years later accompanied a summit.
A great evil is rising and growing: Dr. Assaf Aker and Lieutenant Shahar Levy, photo: screenshot
It took me two minutes to find Shahar's number: "Golenchik was lying in bed across the curtain, and when the doctor was done with him, he came over to me," says Lieutenant Shahar Levy, who was wounded in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago by sniper fire. "He said to me: 'I heard your MOCs and I thought you'd be happy to hear it, I'm an armorer too...' Then he activates the most beautiful song in the world from his cellphone, I started singing with him and my mother took pictures."
"The sands that were then witnesses / Already gone and wandering / And from the dunes that light up / Burn only our eyelids
From the joy of Shabbat to a team alike / From a day of rain and stinging wind / From the fire, the smoke, the dust / From the pieces of the house in the heart
And great evil arises and grows / of man and man, of man and machine / and creak steel armor because of them / their teeth at the heels of the road."
Armored personnel must be moving on to the next house now. I also know this song from home, because my father was an armorer, and my uncle, and during our childhood in Tel Aviv, we went all over Sukkot to Kings of Israel Square (at the time), where they brought tanks with a black-green flag, to the delight of the public, which climbed and groped cannons. Even in the house I built, where children grew up who went to a variety of other units, this song starred - that's how it is when you're included in Yair Rosenblum's double collection.
Armored tank off the coast of Gaza (archive), photo: IDF Spokesperson
Like when I was 10, my throat choked on tears when the band sang "From the Pieces of Home in My Heart." Sometimes you feel longing without naming it. Today I think about my soldiers and sometimes all the other mothers, but Shahar, who was mostly wounded in the trapeze, in the back, said that it wasn't actually a line that who-knows-what did this to him. Boys, go figure. "I like it when they say cast iron force, it gives me goosebumps."
Their teeth at the heels of the road
The Paldi family's mobilized art quickly became the anthem of the armor. It is played on the radio mainly on Independence Day, but soldiers use it to increase motivation.
Any Hebrew mother who educates children about Yair Rosenblum's double collection will know that on the day of command, this is first-rate national consciousness material that marches young people and stutters motherhood: "The anthem is very old, maybe it doesn't cool people, but I love it. That's the pride of the unit. I sing it in the shower and before we go home, every circle the company makes when you want to talk before you go on the attack, everyone puts their hands on each other, humming the beginning together. It's crazy." Shahar, a graduate of Yeshiva Bnei Akiva Ra'anana, has been buzzing since basic training. "It was my sergeant's ringtone on the phone, now it's my ringer. When I was a commander in training, I said to myself: You are a Rebquist, teach your soldiers. And every time we went on a hike to the shooting ranges, we sang that song."
If we see tanks in the heart of Tel Aviv, it won't be a good sign, even though last month I saw with my own eyes a shield not far from my quarry reactor near Kikar HaMedina. In order to hug a tank, you can go to Latrun, or be born in the wrong generation – one of many – and occupy an IDF front.
We are used to looking at the common thread between the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur, and iron swords just to Shell
Armor (archive), photo: IDF Spokesperson
Jonathan. Obviously, because it's terrible. If there is sense and there is strategy, there is no justification for grandparents and sons and grandchildren to know tanks from the inside in real time and not out of nostalgic affection.
But given that we are a people that needs to set a few alarm clocks to change its behavior patterns, the song that wakes us up should be of the right genre. "The video became so famous that something amazing and exciting happened. The lead singer of the Armored Corps Band Moshe Becker called me!" says Shahar, who had already been discharged and left for a battalion summary talk. In the 50 years since military bands set the tone here, we've been tempted to think that the genre of war songs was written with a hint of militarism. Well, it was love.
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