Jerusalem stencil: "Soldiers aren't cookies"

Photo by Mekron, used with permission

These stencils -- which read "Soldiers aren't cookies" in Hebrew -- have been spotted in Jerusalem: Flickr user Mekron says he found the one above in central Jerusalem, while this one has a more specific ID of Hillel Street. Mekron didn't have more context for the work or who's behind them, but only says it's an antiwar stencil.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the message. One Flickr user translates the text as "War isn't cookies." That is, it's not a cake walk, a piece of cake, easy as pie. But the more direct read is that, like cookies chewed up and spat out by a hasty ravenous monster, soldiers are victims of war, too. In spite of the fact that, as an institution, the IDF is one of the world's best-funded, most sophisticated fighting forces, the individual soldiers are, well, fragile. The sentiment brings to mind a speech by Haruki Murakami I often quote here. He used an egg and and a wall in a metaphor for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. One way to read the metaphor, he says, is that unarmed civilians are the eggs, while tanks, guns and white phosphorus shells are the wall. But he also offers a more nuanced interpretation:

Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

Via @craftivista.