Dagan Jacobi looks like he’ll always be more comfortable holding a surfboard than an M-16. When he’s not studying for his high school finals, the 18-year-old with a sun tattoo etched onto his right shoulder blade is riding the waves of the Mediterranean Sea, which laps the edge of his farming village, Shavei Zion, in Israel’s Western Galilee. But on July 25, Jacobi will begin a three-year stint in the Israeli army.

“It isn’t what I’d want to do if I had the choice,” Jacobi said. “But how else can we defend the country?”

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