I was a child and already a Zionist when Bill Clinton welcomed Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat to Camp David. My peers and I were inducted early into a particular understanding of the adult world, according to which lean, young, green-uniformed teenagers with M16s slung over their shoulders were all that stood between Israel and oblivion. I can’t remember the first time I stared in awe at those green-uniformed teenagers, or how old I was when I became aware that they, like all Israelis, were conscripted into the Israeli army at 18. I certainly did not yet know the word “conscription” when I first began to idolize them.
The Promise Defiled
