The fiery killer

Keeler is stripped of uniform                                         

I graduated from military service in August 1980, exactly three years after I enlisted. Three months before release, I had already started growing my hair back. I felt I was going to come back to myself after three lost years of this time-honored defense army.

Despite the desolation and waste of the long days, weeks, months and years, we did not regret the very fact of military service. In the environment where we grew up and acted, there was no room for evasion. Our childhood heroes were, in part, perhaps due to brainwashing - also the IDF champions and war heroes. Eric Sharon, for example, and his famous photograph with the bandage around the forehead. As children we collected cards with the photographs of the generals of the Six Day War, as birthday gifts The victory albums of that war, and before we dreamed of an onslaught with guitars, we fantasized about being soldiers fighting me.

In my childhood neighborhood, on the sports street at the top of Mount Carmel, we collected various books and items and sold them to passers-by from a makeshift booth that we set up on the street. We also sold cold drinks. We later donated the coins accumulated in the glass jar for the Phantom Project. Yes, at ten or so, I tore my ass and dared to make my humble contribution to purchasing the Phantom Jets from the United States. We even received a certificate of appreciation in return, and it hung for years on the wall of my friend Nadav Schreiber's room.

Still, I did not feel for one of these three years that I was a soldier in the Defense Army. I felt I was acting on a false identity. in disguise. And that, regardless of the IDF and the covert conduct. Soldier? Did you make fun of me ...

We were punk soldiers, rock soldiers. With our own uniform, the anthem we wrote ourselves, and always ready for battle. I kept waking up in the mornings with songs of the Ramones, sniffing the Sex Pistols during the day, and falling asleep to the sounds of the Bazcox at night. Lots of my new songs accumulated during this time, many of them we recorded in the room, in my parents' house, on a tape recorder. We filled tape after tape (then called cassette tape). Whenever a tape like this filled up (60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes), I made a special cover for it, usually it contained pictures or illustrations from foreign magazines, and I gave it a name, just like an album.

All these dozens of recordings still lie in my closet, and I'm afraid to put them on tape and check their survival. Afraid to find that the brown magnet