The Meaning of a Hebrew Word

Here is a strange little article from Breitart.com....

An Israeli soldier got three weeks in the slammer for yawning during a ceremony this week to mark the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, his mother said.
The concerned woman said her son yawned "without covering his mouth" while the commander of his air force base in the north of the country was speaking during the memorial event Israel held on Monday.
When the commander spotted him, he stopped his speech and later ordered the soldier to spend 21 days in jail for what the commander called his "disrespectful act," the mother told public radio.
Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist who opposed the peace process with the Palestinians.
Rabin is revered as a national hero, both for his legendary career as army chief and for peace efforts in the 1990s that earned him a Nobel peace prize shared with now President Shimon Peres and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

It reminded me of how I learned the true meaning of the Hebrew word "Balagan." A word that is heared quite often in Israel and especially in the Israeli Army.

In early 2007 I found myself on an Israeli Army Base as a Sar-El volunteer. One morning the base was having a special formation due to the change in the commander of the army. There was a podum and flags all around the parade ground. The whole base stood in formation to hear the words of the new army commander being read by the base commander. We Sar-El volunteers, in our ill fitting uniforms, stood in formation along with the soldiers. As the ceremony began, music began playing and an officer marched across the parade ground to the flag poll. With as much spit and polish and martial bearing, the officer began to raise the flag up the poll. As it got to the top, the base was called to attention and we all saluted. The officer steped back from the flag poll and gave a salute that would not have been out of place at West point.

It was at that point that things went wrong. The flag descended down the poll and fell on the ground. The officer had forgotten to secure the rope.

Balagan: All messed up, Snafu, A Big Mess, Things Going Wrong.