So I've been in Israel for 45 days now.

Every day, something makes me sad. Nothing drastic, but I notice new things about my surroundings that are, well, fucking depressing. For example, every single day I see soldiers walking around. I expected that. I did not expect to see children in those uniforms.

There are kids that serve in the military here that I would ask to fuck off if they asked me for a cigarette had they not been in uniform. I wouldn't believe that these children are over eighteen years old. It's astonishing. I realize that eighteen year olds join the military in the United States regularly, but there is something about compulsory military service that I cannot get behind.
Israel, in the position its in, certainly needs compulsory service, and I understand that. Yet seeing these children walking around in uniform, sweating profusely from the heat (and the fact that they're kids and aren't built for this kind of shit), trying to balance a machine gun in one hand and an Iphone in the other to text whomever, is terrifying.

This is what really fucks up my day. I am teaching children English. We play simple word games, writing exercises, and various other things that I would refuse to do too. One of the classes is currently learning about British teenagers, and comparing themselves to such.

"What don't Israeli teenagers like?"
"Arabs."
"Why?"
"Because they try to 'boom-boom' all of us."

Maxim is ten years old.

We share three languages in common. Russian, Hebrew, and English. Between those three, we don't have a solid enough background in any of them to communicate fluidly. I cannot explain to him the importance in separating extremists from the population they are commonly associated with, and the implications on either side of a conflict with lumping populations into a single category. I hesitate to believe that anybody will correct him in this society, rather, they will fuel this fire. Maxim will join the army when he turns eighteen like many other children. He might die.

I look around at my classroom and my heart breaks. With the exception of those that enter social service rather than the military, the majority of these children will serve. Some of them will die, and I cannot believe that they don't already know that. In a society whose thoughts gravitate constantly towards war and conflict, these children know people who have died. They hear about it every day. A murder in the United States is nothing. This is a small country, that would fit quite nicely in between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in which people die constantly.

If there is one thing that I can do with my year here, it won't be to teaching English. My emphasis on language has passed. I now wish to communicate with my students in a manner in which I can explain to them the problems that are fueled by statements of "Because they try to 'boom-boom' all of us."