Where's Jameel? In the army.

Hi People.

If you haven't been noticed, for the past few weeks, I've been blogging far less than usual. One of the reasons for it, is I've been doing IDF military reserve duty in evenings (after work hours), to prepare my IDF Company for a long haul.

I spoke to the IDF spokesman about my upcoming reserves, and they were very encouraging that I should blog it. Obviously, nothing will break military censorship rules or disclose classified IDF information, but they were definitely of the opinion that I should blog the experience.

Today was commander briefing day, as we went to the IDF regional command center for a full day briefing on what to expect when we start our 24 day tour of service in Judea/Samaria (West Bank).

We were told that our particular region would experience almost every type of conflict that Israel has to offer. Palestinian Terror, civil violence, anarchists, left-wing demonstrations, settler "price tag" repercussions for a myriad of scenarios, world media, photographers from all sides, and attempting to keep the roads open for everyone to keep some semblance of normality to their lives.

Personally, I'm exhausted -- and I'm going back tomorrow for more. However, this is just the preparation for our reserve duty which will commence immediately after Pesach. Till then, I have hours and hours of preparations to ensure our military service will go as smoothly as possible.

I hope to bring a personal angle to much of what I see, and I will try to photograph interesting situations as well.

In the meantime, I'll be blogging on and off, (with Joe and friends keeping things on the blog up to date).

It was weird this evening when I was driving home, and in my car was my commanding officer, platoon commander, and manpower officer, and I got a phone call from the IDF spokesman about something IDF related and the blog. After the call was over, my CO asked me why the IDF spokesman was calling me -- and I told him, because they think my name's Jameel Rashid.

He thought it was rather amusing...

A quiet evening to all.

Jameel


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