His mother's son.

I am really really trying to manuever my blog towards its former lighter and more "normal" tone, but stories just keep popping up that I cannot resist but post or comment.

I promise that my next post will be musings on the daily life of a 20something urbanite. I'm gonna try my best to put some sort of a balance between the heavy and the light blog entries.

But first, here's another story that needs to be shared.

Israeli Military Service Unites Generations
Small Population and Frequent Wars Make for Shared Experience in Uniform

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 1, 2006;
Page A10

TALMEI MENASHE, Israel -- In the hours before he went to war, the family of Lt. Yair Cohen offered him time-tested advice around the breakfast table, some of it personal, some of it practical. Unlike the young soldier, they had been through this before.

"You're an officer now, so look after your soldiers, and always, always keep your eyes open," said his father, Yossi, who fought alongside two brothers in Israel's wars of 1967 and 1973 and was a 3-year-old child when his own father lost a leg to a land mine while fighting for the fledgling Jewish state in 1948.

"Oh, and you will get hot," he added, moments later. "Bring more water."
"That's not going to be what saves him," joked Yair's older brother, Eitan, who served in Lebanon eight years ago and had just been called up as a reservist in his brother's infantry unit. "Be safe," he said quietly. "Don't be a hero. I might see you up there soon."
Because of Israel's small population and frequent conflicts, war is an experience common to every generation, passed from fathers to sons in families such as the Cohens'.

Thousands of soldiers have made their way to Israel's front lines in recent days, including young conscripts serving compulsory three-year tours and the more seasoned reservists called up last week for the conflict with the radical Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah. Government officials said Monday that they planned to intensify the ground campaign underway in a clutch of small Lebanese border towns...read more here

I salute not just the brave young men of Israel for their dedication in defending their country's existence, but also their amazingly strong and resilient mothers whose hearts are broken repeatedly whenever they have to say goodbye to their beloved sons.

When I compare pictures of well-cared and fiercely loved Israeli boys and then pre-teen Palestinian or Iranian boys holding a rifle or lined up in a Hezbollah training camp, I just can't find an ounce of space in my heart to understand the minds and ideolgy of people who so loosely use the teachings and interpretation of jihad to intentionally encourage their sons to become martyrs. Aren't parents, especially mothers, programmed to protect their children at all costs?

If the Holocaust survivors went into that line of thinking, I wonder how many Germans would have been blown up. Fortunately, the destitute Jews thought otherwise and went off to make themselves smarter, stronger, and richer after they experienced the most inhumane of circumstances. I wonder if these extremists will ever get to figure that out before more jihadis and civilians are blown up.