ABSTRACT
A while ago, a few of us, Israelis who live in New York and others on a visit from Israel, gathered for an evening at the Brooklyn house of a friend. Over dinner and wine, a conversation developed about the extent to which parents have influence on the choices their children make. We spoke about influence in general, and since there was a teenage boy among us, in particular about whether Israeli parents can or should try to prevent their children from serving in the Israeli army. The question came up because all of us around the table were in agreement that the Israeli army has been for a long time the tool of highly questionable if not outright criminal repression and violence. All of us, either from personal experience or from exposure to the stories of others, had knowledge of the practical and ethical catastrophes inflicted by, and upon, young Israelis during their army service. Those of us who are psychologists could tell more about the insidious trauma, forever unsettling the efforts of soldiers to live their lives after, or as is often the case in Israel, between periods of enlistment. The 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, so careless of both Lebanese and Israeli lives and to the opinion of most a costly failure, was still fresh in our memory. The Gaza offensive of January 2009 was still to come. After years of scrutiny over the way it wages wars, reigns over civilian populations, and protects Jewish fundamentalism, the Israeli Army is no longer a sacred cow. Yet there were deep doubts among us as to whether our generation could or in fact should try to protect the next generation from the daunting prospect of army service and its traumatic consequences.
