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In Israel, you could see soldiers almost everywhere, some women but mostly men, dressed in uniform, armed, waiting for the bus or trying to hitchhike a ride to their base. My parents would stop the car to pick one up, especially when it was cold or raining, and they would even get off our route to take him to his destination faster. Every year we celebrated Independence Day. My parents loved to sing, and they would gather all their friends to sing along in our living room. Some of those songs were about men who died in battle, about medics risking their lives in battle to treat a wounded solder and about mothers who still wait for the son to return. In Israel, the national Memorial Day for all the war casualties takes place the day before Independence Day. At 11 AM, people would stop and stand solemnly for 2 minute in memory of the dead. Traffic would stop completely; all you would hear is a siren echoing with the sobbing [mothers] in the cemeteries. If you haven’t lost a relative or a friend, at least you knew someone who did. And so, every year we cried and mourned in memory of the brave heroic men that had given their lives in battle, so that we can live in peace. As a boy, I didn’t play war games. I didn’t have toy tanks; battle ships models with fighter jet-planes, small metal trucks carrying missiles and a bucket full of plastic toys to be my loyal soldiers. I remember the first time I met a soldier. I was a boy, around 5 years old, and my mother explained that some solders don’t see their families for months (well, we didn’t see our father a lot; it was 1982, there was a war going on in Lebanon and almost every man got drafted) so she agreed to host a few in our home. One afternoon they walked into our living room and I got so exited. I wanted to show them my collection of cars, my paintings and I remember playing my favorite album for them; it was the soundtrack of “The sound of music”. Today I wonder whether one of them had thought of the connection between the movie and what was going on in Lebanon.
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