American and Israeli on Israel
Dec 29, 2016
In: General
My birthday is the day after Christmas. I spent the day relaxing at my father-in-law's house in the Dallas area, watching my facebook feed blow up with birthday wishes, while writing about President Obama's betrayal of Israel and the American people. One of the wishes came from someone I befriended a couple of years ago, and while I wanted to finish the piece I was writing, I wanted to reach out to him.
My friend is Ran Zisovitch, a Major in the Israeli Defense Forces. He retired from active service, but he's still in the regular reserves. At one time, he was a deputy battalion commander for the 77th Battalion in the 7th Armored Brigade Israeli Defense Force.
Last night, I did just that. It was almost midnight here, and it was almost 8am in Israel when we started our chat on facebook messenger.
We exchanged our customary pleasantries, then I came right out and asked about the impact of the resolution passed by the United Nations Council. His responses about Obama weren't too surprising:
"Most Israelis don't like obama"
"He might was good to the us"
"But left a mess in the world"
"Horrible mess in the middle east"
He went on to say:
"I'm in favor for peace, and we tried that in Gaza strip"
"We withdraw from every inch"
"And we got rockets on tel aviv"
"So Obama is naive"
"No more experiment on our back"
I replied, "22 more days and he's OUT! Can't come soon enough."
"Yeap"
"Exactly what we say here"
Then, I asked the big question, "What will happen to [Israeli] settlements with the new resolution?"
"Nothing"
"It is not a decision with actions"
"But still not a good one for Israel"
"Obama left all his friends in the middle east"
"Also Egypt and Arab Saudi"
"And now we have a mess"
My final question on the topic was, "What do you think it would take to fix the mess?"
"It is a new world"
"No one knows"
That part of the conversation left me feeling some relief that Israelis know it was Obama and not the American people that betrayed their trust and our alliance. I didn't get this from reporters or politicians, I got it from a real person who really lives there.
We went back to talking military. Ran is a tanker, and I'm not. I was in a tank unit for a good chunk of my military career, even being "blessed off" by the Texas Adjutant General as a tanker so I could deploy to Iraq in a tanker slot in 2004. I've only piloted the M113/M577 Armored Personnel Carrier and the M2 Bradley. Those were as close to tanks as I ever got.
Ran was a 2nd Lieutenant in 1995, and I was a private going through Basic Combat Training. He already had combat engagements by that time, and he's only two years older than I.
He shared several pictures with me, and gave permission to post them here for your viewing enjoyment. The pictures were from Ran's deployment with the Harel Brigade in the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict also known as Operation Protective Edge. Their mission was to protect the northern part of the Gaza border, and their deployment lasted a month.
God bless Israel!
*** Note: I just installed the Photo Gallery module, so this is a temporary link that will be updated when I have time to fine tune the code... ***
Click Here to View Photos
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