Loyalty In Uniform

It's the rite of passage for every Singaporean male to spend a couple of years in Temasek green. The experience which is supposed to separate the men from the boys, the committed citizens from the flitting foreigners, can also be deadly - suffocation from smoke grenades, amputation by naval mooring gear, or simply crushed by runaway army vehicles. Someone should do a tally of the cost of national defence in human terms.

Author Joel Chasnoff took the leap of faith from Chicago to Tel Aviv to sign up with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) because he thought it was cool to fight for his race, threatened with extinction by nasties like Hezbollah suicide bombers. It turns out that in-camp training with the IDF was no boy-scout camp, and graduation meant a posting to the Lebanon Security Zone, where a real war is fought out amid orange groves teeming with seasoned guerrillas. Told with humour, his accounting also includes shedding of blood and loss of limbs - Joel fired his first anti-tank missile and rained artillery on a stray dog, that looked suspiciously like an enemy.

The real kicker is when he tries to marry his sweetheart - other reason for trading his stereotype American Jew comfort zone for a Uzi and dog tag - only to be told he's not a Jew because his mother's conversion was not Orthodox. Explaining that the mitzvah certificate used to join the army is unacceptable, the rabbi deadpanned, "That's civil law. Marriage is religious law. It's the law of God." His best man screamed, "He's in the army! He's in Lebanon! What could be more Jewish than that?"

So it comes down to that. Will two years in uniform make one a loyal citizen? The answer depends on whether we are called to defend our loved ones or some bureaucratic machinery who spends millions on a welcoming party for foreigners.