A bartender, not really a soldier

Last week I was traveling around Israel together with the rest of the people in the programme I am participating in, in order for us to get some more Israeli aspects on the situation here. We met with several peace activists and heard many stories. We visited a kibbutz and we even met the spokesman of one of the illegal settlements close to Bethlehemn. A meeting which left many of us angry and disillusioned. However, what left its strongest impression on me, was the random meeting with an Israeli bartender in a Russian bar in Haifa.




On the last evening of our Israel trip I went with two of my colleagues to have dinner and a drink in the German Colony of Haifa. We wanted to relax. We wanted not to think about the occupation and to try and have a normal time. The mood was light and we were laughing and joking, just as anyone would do on an evening out with their friends. As we are busy cracking jokes, the bartender whose name I can't remember but whose face I will never forget, asks us where we are from. He wants to know what we think of Israel. Not only that, but he wants to know what we really think.


Shifting uncomfortably in our seats we say that we like the beach and the food. Looking at my two friends and I can tell that they do not want to give too much information about our work, in order to avoid angry confrontations. But the bartender wants to know what we are doing in Israel. He is not stupid and he knows that we did not just randomly decide to fly in from Norway, Ireland and South Africa to meet up in the port town of Haifa, Israel. Eventually I decide to tell him who we are and he looks at me for a long moment and says sarcastically "Poor Palestinian children, huh?" before going back to the drink order from the group of Russians at the other end of the bar. I feel angry and look at my friends. They are no longer laughing and I can tell that they feel the same as I do.


As the bartender returns, I ask him if he has ever been to Bethlehem. "Yes, I've been all over the West Bank. And even Gaza, a couple of months ago." His eyes are a strange mix of joking, sad and cold at the same time. I feel uneasy, but I sense that he wants to tell me more about it. And I have to know. So I ask, knowing and dreading the answer, what he was doing in Gaza a couple of months ago. "What do you think I was doing there?" He laughs and pours a glass of wine for someone. "My job was to go behind enemy lines and tell the others where to bomb." I feel the wind knocked out of me and my mind instantly wanders to the two UN schools that were bombed in January while being used as refugee centres. I think about the children who died. I want to know how he feels about his experience in Gaza, so I ask him. "It wasn't nice. In fact it was horrible. I saw some of my friends being burned alive. But Lebanon was worse." he says with a half smile and empty eyes. Lebanon, 2006. Another sad story.

When I ask him how he feels about outsiders such as ourselves coming to interfere he gives a long sigh and a look that seems as if he is pondering whether to mock me or not. Then he tells me that he thinks it's important that we are here and that the world knows about this."There has been too much blood... On both sides."

"So why do you do it then? Why not refuse to serve?" I ask him. I am curious about his answer as I remember our meeting earlier in the week with the Israeli organization New Profile, which works to de-militarise the Israeli society and offers advice for people who wish to get out of the military service. "I have to", he says. "I am in the reserve army and once a year they call me in." He gives a short and sad smile before his eyes go cold again and he turns away.

I feel that it is not my place to lecture him on alternatives for military service. In fact, I feel a little stupid. I realise that there are so many layers to this conflict that I have never even thought about. I cannot go to Haifa to have a good time and escape the occupation. This person in front of me mixing fancy cocktails for Russian Israelis is also a victim of the cruel system that drives the conflict forward. This man's dream was probably never to kill innocent people or being forced into a situation where he has to see his friends die in horrendous ways at a very young age for reasons he never could influence.

In his own words he is "a bartender, not really a soldier". I talked to him for less than an hour. But the psychological trauma he goes through is evident. He is angry, but he does not know where to direct the anger. His gaze wanders around the room and he seems restless. I feel ambivalent towards him. A part of me feels extremely sorry for him and wants to say something to make it better. But I can't. Another other part of me is furious and wants to talk him to his senses and tell him to stop making excuses for the murder and harassment of innocent people. But I can't do that either. What upsets me the most, is that he is just one of so many. How many of all the young men and women we saw on the beach earlier the same day have a similar story? We saw female soldiers take off their uniforms on the beach revealing colourful bikinis. M16's are carried around like handbags. That is how militarized the Israeli society is.


I turn to my friends. The light mood from the beginning of the eveing has vanished. We pay our bill at the bar, and as we are about to leave the bartender turns to me again and says "I am not a hater, you know. I don't hate Palestinians. I wish we could all live peacefully together. But after all this is my country... and I have to defend it."


I smile and tell him it was nice to meet him. That is a lie. I wish I hadn't. But I am glad I did. I walk back to the hotel with my friends in silence as I try to process the unexpected meeting with an IDF soldier. The next day I feel relieved to leave Haifa. I won't forget the conversation I had there, but I will probably never go back.