The few, the proud — and the Jewish:

After serving as a Marine in Iraq, nothing scares this suburban kid

Joe Stein doesn’t run into Jews very often. That’s because he’s in a place where there are hardly any to be found: the U.S. Marine Corps.

“There are maybe a handful,” said Stein, who is enjoying a 30-day leave at the Walnut Creek home of his mother and stepfather, since returning from Iraq.

In fact, Stein is often the first Jew many of his colleagues have ever met.

“Most people say, ‘I thought you’d be different,’ or, ‘You’re much better than I thought.’”

Though his mother and stepfather belong to Congregation B’nai Shalom, Stein did not celebrate a bar mitzvah or attend religious school growing up in Walnut Creek. Even now, he prefers the holidays celebrated at home, and he never attends services.

Yet, had there been a Jewish chaplain in the Marines, said the freckle-faced 21-year-old, he would have been grateful.

A graduate of Las Lomas High School, Stein took a decidedly different route from that of his other friends from well-to-do families. His mother owns two successful Walnut Creek restaurants, and his stepfather is a pediatrician.

“I don’t like how people who come from a lot of money become successful and then are handed everything,” he said. “If I just went to college, I wouldn’t have to struggle.”

Stein wanted to struggle, a lot.  So he chose the Marines.

“I wanted to do something so crazy — as rough as it gets — and so hard, that whatever happened in my life from then on, I’d know I never got anything for free,” said Stein, who is of average height and sports the short haircut of a Marine.

He describes his first two years, as a new recruit — or “boot” — as “the worst experience of your life.”

Superiors can force you to clean a toilet for 24 hours straight, he said, and will kick open your trash bag, for you to sort through it, for no reason. Stein was based at Camp Pendleton, in San Diego County.

He was deployed to Afghanistan, primarily to support the soldiers from the Army. Later, he was in Kenya. When he completed that mission, he had a 20-day leave and then returned to his base.

“We had a new battalion commander who loves war, so we started training to go to Iraq.”

“Gas masks and Doughnuts” became an institution, when on Wednesdays, someone would go to the local Krispy Kreme, and then the group would fully suit up in their anti-chemical-warfare gear.

When his unit went on leave at Christmas-time, nobody knew the group would be shipping out for the Persian Gulf on Jan. 17. It took 45 days to get to Kuwait.

At first, the unit spent countless hours waiting in Kuwait. On the way to Iraq — driving a Humvee loaded up with batteries, explosives, ammunition, food and water — Stein recalled sleeping with his head against the steering wheel for three hours at a time. He witnessed scene after scene of combat, with numerous dead on both sides.

“I can do that shallow thing; I try not to think about it,” he said. Only the sight of dead women and children affected him.

Stein had few kind words for the people of Iraq, calling them lazy and stupid. He said the majority of the world’s problems could be blamed on the Muslims, calling Islam a religion with “insane religious laws,” and its holy book, the Koran, “fiction.”

After witnessing two brothers stabbing a third man because he wanted to marry their sister, and hearing repeated cases where families killed their daughters for having premarital sex, Stein said, “Now I hate the Muslim people and Iraqis, if they have those beliefs.”

Stein said the Iraqis hated Jews, and he deliberately told people he was Jewish as a provocation. “If they’d piss me off, I’d point at myself and say ‘Zion.’

“They don’t know what two plus two is, but they know that Jews are bad.”

When asked whether he killed anyone, Stein responded, “I’m really disappointed that I didn’t.” He qualified that by explaining he wouldn’t kill someone just for the sake of it, someone who was not a threat. But he regretted that the opportunity never arose.

“I’d kill a guy caught raping a girl,” he said, “or I’d return fire to kill someone. But some people will kill for no reason.” He says he is not that type of person.

Stein has one more year in the service, and then hopes to perhaps go to college, or culinary school.

“I know I can do whatever I want,” he said, “because nothing scares me.”