Petite and feminine with bright eyes and a big smile, it's hard to imagine first-year College student Michal Duvdevani serving as a lieutenant in the Israeli army.
It's hard to imagine how she felt when her mother was rescued from a bombed building or how she feels when she reads the news and sees the names of her friends listed among the casualties.
At 22, she has seen more tragedy and has been under more intense pressure than most of her fellow first years probably will experience in their entire lives.
These experiences have forced her to mature more quickly than many of the American students around her, giving her a unique perspective on the value of life, the importance of family and citizenship and the meaning of the college experience.
Michal's family immigrated to Israel generations ago and has been very supportive of the country that saved them from European persecution. Her father's parents escaped anti-Semitism in Poland and Russia, and her mother's grandparents escaped the Nazi regime to come to Israel.
Her mother currently serves Israel as a colonel in the police force while her father, a retired general, is involved in humanitarian work and once worked as an attaché for the Israeli government.
In this position, he represented Israel to Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, so Michal lived in Buenos Aires for three years, where she learned English.
It was in Buenos Aires that she also first learned about terrorism. She remembers one shocking day when the Israeli embassy exploded because of a car bomb. Her mother was the last person to leave the building alive.
"That was probably the first time I remember seeing something like that," she said, noting that she was nine or ten at the time. "We went to see the building because I didn't really understand what did that mean -- a bomb. It was not good to see. It smelled of blood. Half of the building was there and half wasn't."
After remaining in Argentina for another year, Michal's family returned to Israel where her father is employed by a wealthy Russian Jew. His main objective is to alleviate some of the terror which Israeli children cope with every day.
"The whole idea is to bring smiles to the kids in the settlements and wherever else citizens get hurt," she explained. "His job is to organize things for them because they are the future of our people."
In addition to organizing fun children's programs, Michal's father also grants special requests to hospitalized children.
"Once a girl a few weeks ago said, 'What I really want is for you to take away the fear I have when I go from school to home, so I won't be afraid anymore on the bulletproof bus.' And she was only like 10 years old, not even 10," Michal said, her face showing concern and understanding.
This ten-year-old girl, like Michal and every other Israeli, is expected to join the army after graduating from high school.
"In 10th or 11th grade, you all think about which school you want to go to," she explained. "We all think about what job it is we want to do in the army."
After Michal graduated, she was granted the honor of joining the brigade her father had created in 1983.
Although most girls join brigades in which they go home every night or every weekend, she chose to be in a fighting unit, which meant being away from home for weeks at a time, she explained
"It's not like GI-Jane unless you end up in a fighting unit," she said proudly. "If you end up in a fighting unit, you see the real stuff."
Pride is an extremely important component of how many Israeli youth view serving in the army.
"You go to find a job in Israel and before they ask what your major is, they ask what did you do in the army," she explained. "It's like everything is controlled."
She hesitated before continuing thoughtfully.
"If you don't go to the army in Israel, it's like you're bad. I would never be caught going out with someone who wasn't in the army. That's like a big no-no," she said with a look of disapproval, wrinkling her nose. "It's just a very social thing."
After serving as a soldier in her unit, she decided to become an officer and went to a special training school to become one.
"It was one of the toughest times in my life," she admitted. "It's just a lot of pressure. They teach you how to handle tough situations, how to be under pressure by being under pressure all the time."
For her, being an officer meant more than merely serving her country. It meant bringing even more pride to her family.
"It's like your parents brag about my son or my daughter is at U.Va.," she said. "That's what the parents in Israel say: 'My son or my daughter is in this unit or are officers.' It's a great pride, especially for my dad."
Of approximately 300 women in the officer training program, Michal was one of 12 selected to become a personnel officer and one of two to join a fighting unit.
After spending two and a half months in the women's officer school, she began training with the male officers for an additional two and a half months.
"We were probably tougher than they were because they took the toughest girls there," she said, laughing. "It was pretty fun."
After successfully completing the school, she returned to her original unit at her commander's request, an occurrence that rarely happens in the Israeli army.
"It was like closing a circle," she recalled.
Michal remembered her father coming home during the creation of the brigade and asking her and her older sister what color the brigade should be.
"We chose purple," she said giggling. "That's why it's purple. Because we were little girls, and that's the color little girls like."
Her brigade consisted of three units with about 200 people in each. Of these, two or three members of each unit were women, and she was the only female officer in the entire brigade. And unlike most female soldiers who serve in the army for under two years, Michal served for close to three.
Despite being in a fighting brigade, however, Michal and the female soldiers were not expected to actually participate directly in combat. Instead, they assumed support roles, coordinating military strategies and helping soldiers deal with their personal lives.
"To be honest, I don't think girls need" to be fighting, she said matter-of-factly, dismissing the idea that the women may resent their safer roles.
"It's very --" she paused to think before responding quickly. "GI-Jane is not real, you know what I mean? The Americans have girls fighting, but the Americans are not really in war." They are not "constantly" in war, she clarified.
Michal said although she has a great deal of respect for the American army, she thinks its focus is more on training than actual fighting.
"I'm not underestimating [the American army] at all because we work a lot together, but there's a huge difference," she said. "We're in the reality of war and the American army is not in the reality of war. They just send people to other countries."
She conceded that Iraq was a real war, and explained how it had affected her personally.
"I was visiting here when everything happened and I was called back to Israel two times because I'm on the reserves now," she said.
She was able to postpone her return because she was attending Shenandoah University, but when she returned to Israel for the summer, she briefly returned to the army.
Throughout her service, Michal primarily was stationed in the Gaza Strip, an extremely stressful and high tension area.
"I came out of the army much more religious than I was because you just end up seeing so many things," she said. "You end up going to the Gaza Strip and your car has been bombed and everybody is screaming and whatnot and you just end up needing something to help you go through that."
Despite becoming more religious, she said she still questions aspects of her Jewish faith.
"I don't like when you're blind and you believe in everything because that's what God told you," she said. "The Bible never tells you to do that. The Bible always tells you to ask questions."
She said her experiences in the Gaza Strip caused her to question life and death, profoundly impacting her views on the subject.
"Now I feel like if someone dies it's because God needed him up there," she said with assurance. "It's because God takes the best people. It was just meant to be."
Seeing so many of her friends injured or killed also gave her a unique perspective on events outside Israel, such as the sniper attacks.
"It was like 'What are you guys doing?'" she said in amazement. "It was like, stop your life because of a little threat? I don't know. I've seen some nasty things."
She said she decided to come to the United States to form her own opinions about the world.
"My dad is like the figure that I admire," she explained, glowing with pride. "I wish I could be only half of what he is. And I wish I could give as much as he gives to my country at the end of my life, but I just want to have my own opinion."
She mentioned her father has Arab friends, but she has very little hope for peace in Israel in the near future.
Until peace can be secured, she thinks a separation of the Israelis and the Palestinians is the only reasonable solution, although she expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the wall Israel currently is building.
"[The Palestinians] can bomb it like they bomb everything else," she said with mild sarcasm. "It's part of the separation I believe there should be. I truly believe that's the only solution," she sighed. "I'm not saying it's a good solution or a bad solution, but I think for now that's the only solution because we hate them and they hate us."
She clarified that although she was brought up not to hate, her experiences in the Gaza Strip have made that difficult.
"If I go in the Gaza Strip and I see this 10-year-old throwing rocks at me and giving me the finger, and I look in his eyes and he absolutely hates me -- you can see it in his eyes -- that was it for me," she said, growing tense. "When I looked at him, when I saw his eyes -- there's no hope."
She expressed disappointment at the boy's being out on the street instead of being educated to pursue tolerance, peace and respect. Furthermore, she was disgusted by the encouragement such behavior receives from older family members.
"He's out there in the corner throwing rocks at me and his mom is telling him to do that because she knows that we'll never shoot the kids," she explained. "We'll shoot BB guns at the adults but not at the kids, so what they do is they put the kids in the front row, and then they stand behind them."
Her frustration with this practice has been intensified by the bias she said she observes in the media.
"I don't care what the news shows. I saw everything," she insisted. "They take the pictures from the Palestinian side and they show the Israeli soldiers shooting and they don't even say that it's BB guns. They just say that we're shooting at them, at little kids. We're not shooting at little kids."
She further explained that preserving lives on both sides of the conflict is one of the most important values in the Israeli army. In fact, she said that Israeli soldiers who disrespect the value of life are jailed.
"But the media doesn't show that," she said with frustration.
Despite her current skepticism of a forthcoming peace in Israel, Michal said she tries to remain hopeful.
"I'll be optimistic and say that if I raise my children not to hate and if they raise their children not to hate. I don't think
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