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Comedian recounts Israeli army service

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The World’s Matthew Bell talks to American comedian Joel Chasnoff about his memoir on his experience in the Israeli army. It’s called “The 188th Crybaby Brigade.”

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MARCO WERMAN: There’s no shortage of books about Israel and the ongoing military conflict with its Arab neighbors. What’s rare is finding one that’s described as hilarious. How about “hilarious and insightful.” That’s how The World’s Middle East correspondent Matthew Bell describes the memoir by an American comedian. The book is called The 188th Crybaby Brigade.

MATTHEW BELL:  The subtitle of Joel Chasnoff’s book says a lot. A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah. Israel is the only country where Americans are allowed to enlist in a foreign military. Chasnoff told me his reasoning for signing up had two parts. The first had to do with growing up with a strong Jewish identity and being bombarded with the message that Jews belonged in Israel.

JOEL CHASNOFF:  And the other part of it was I wanted to be a cool hunky soldier like the ones I saw in Israel when I was a teenager and was skinny and scrawny and couldn’t get chicks.

BELL: So, in 1997, at the age of 24, Chasnoff told his father that he was moving to Israel to serve in the army.

CHASNOFF: He wasn’t wild about it at all and he tried to paint it as a bad career move. He tried to convince me that I should go into comedy and writing and acting, which is very odd. Because when I first told him when I was kid that I wanted to be a comedian, he wasn’t in favor of that either. But suddenly, compared to the army, being a comedian was about as stable as law school. But I think ultimately what he was really scared of was my safety. His friend from college was killed in Vietnam. And I think my dad didn’t have the vocabulary to say that he was scared. So, instead he just tried to make it as a bad career decision.

BELL: Chasnoff got that hunky soldier’s body he wanted. He got the cool uniform, the shades and the assault rifle slung over his shoulder. But in the end what stuck with him was the idea for a great book. Overall, his account of a year of service as a private in a tank unit is an unvarnished look at the Israel Defense Forces, warts and all. He describes the IDF as being an organization for children, run by children. He writes about how poor planning led to near-death incidents during training exercises and how, at times, the Israeli army was surprisingly insensitive toward observant Jews serving in the ranks.

CHASNOFF: There’s plenty in the book where I praise the Israeli army, when we talk about our discussions about morals on the battlefield and how to act ethically in war. I praise the army for taking those issues into account. But I also feel like it does nobody any good to write a fluffy memoir that’s simply not true. Also, I don’t think I’m revealing any secrets that Israel’s enemies don’t already know. Anything I’m saying, Hezbollah or other enemies are already well aware of. But I think a lot of this book is about growth and about identity, and there’s no true way to write about one’s own personal growth without being completely honest. As you said, warts and all.

BELL: Without ever getting wonky, Chasnoff also writes about life in Israel. Military life, dating, marriage, Jewish conversion, war and politics. And he does it with humor and substance. At one point, he also writes about the enemy he’s about to face in South Lebanon in a surprising way. Here he is reading that section.

CHASNOFF: What are you doing Hezbollah guerilla that I’m going to kill? Do you know that I am out there and that one day I will end your life? Or he could just as well kill me. How very strange, that the person who might end my life is out there right now, engaged in some activity that will lead to another activity and all those activities will eventually lead to the activity of killing me. How odd that for the past 20 years we’ve been living these parallel lives, but that soon our lives will cross and one of us will end the others for good.

BELL: That passage really struck me and after I closed the book, even remembered it. That’s why I wanted to go back and get you to read it. It’s almost empathy and you’re expressing humanity for the enemy.

CHASNOFF:  Completely. I think so much of war I think relies on not seeing the enemy as human. But someone has to pull that trigger. A muscle has to move to pull that trigger and fire the bullet. It’s people. And I just had these moments here and there where that would strike me.

BELL: Joel Chasnoff, author of The 188th Crybaby Brigade, spoke with me from New York. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Jerusalem.

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