Abstract

This memoir is a detailed and reflective (though highly subjective) account of the author's experiences in the summer of 2006. Starting with the outbreak of the Second Lebanese War, it moves on to describe his call-up and conscription, border service at the IDF outpost in Metulla and participation in the combat inside southern Lebanon. The narrative follows the progress of an infantry unit from its point of entry on the Israel-Lebanese border, through the villages of Raj-A-Min, Sham'a and on to the coastal position it held until the end of the war at Ras-Bayada. The memoir draws particular attention to the paradoxes and ironies of the war from the point of view of a civilian reserve foot soldier and father of five serving in a frontline infantry unit. Significant sections of this narrative are dedicated to the moral, ethical, and religious questions that he grappled with during the war and to the intuitive political and religious conclusions that he reached. It is these intuitions that he refers to at the end “as the rethinking of his religion” that ultimately develops into the suggestion that a softer and more peaceful notion of theology is essential to the acquisition of peace