Welcome, everyone!

Hello, everyone.

My name is Sasha, but i'm more usual when people call me Sova or aka_sova on internet, so i would appreciate that here also. The goal of this blog is to show the world the real face of Israeli Army. Not the one you see on euronews, where impudent israelis "kill" "puny" palestinians and bereave them of their last livelihood, but the view from inside, explaining a bit what serving here is, what soldiers feel about that and everything goes around here. In the beginning, a bit of general information about preparation for the service.
First time people get interacted with army is the period of last grade in school. They receive an order to come to the base (closest base for recruiting) on a certain date. In hebrew it's called "Tzav rishon" - first order. On this day they pass some medical tests there, tests on computer with lots of stupid questions with math, understanding texts (at this stage i had problems cuz hebrew is still a bit unusual for me to read), and understanding orders. Then there is interview with one of the people who sit there, that asks you about your family, interests, friends, what would you like to do in the army and so on. After medical tests each one gets his "profile", that defines his drill - physical capabilities. I'm still not sure there for good or for bad, but I've got 97-th profile, which is the highest a man can receive. With this profile there are many chances of becoming a combat unit, actually the higher the profile is, the more army needs you (surely if you are very smart army also needs you a lot), so many people tried to decrease the number in order to avoid "hard" posts. I didn't do so. I'm very bad at lying. Very bad. But let's continue.
After that you may be invited by different army divisions (like air forces, sea forces) to their base to get some information about what they do and to decide for yourself whether it's what you want to do or not. I got one invitation from Sea forces, for some some reason i refused. I wanted to get what i want, i wanted to mess up with graphics, or physics, programming...soon i will regret that (refusing to attend this Sea Forces event). Then future soldiers receive by mail their recruitment date with name of the base where they have to arrive. For most of people that date comes right after finishing school - in the period between July and August. For males the service lasts 3 years, for girls only 2. After that you can remain in the army and they will pay you you full wage, which is not little if you have advanced during those years. When i finished my 12-th grade, I was only 17, so army had no right to recruit me, and I had one year free. I got recruited only on August 3, 2010. In the next post I will explain to you how recruitment goes. With photos. :)

I hope that was interesting for some of you. Feel free to ask any questions, i would gladly answer them if i know the answer :)