SAREL 2002
By Pam Blustin

(edited by Hadas Baldwin)

My father was in Israel in 1947-8 and my husband, Leslie, was on one of the first planes out during the 1973 October War, so I guess it was par for the course that I go to Israel as a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defence Force.

I went through an organisation called Sarel, set up 20 years ago after the war in Lebanon by General Davidi. His idea was to provide 'cascade relief' to release trained IDF soldiers from general work that civilians can do for more specialist tasks in times of crisis.

A group of 30 or so Brits and Americans were taken to Julis camp, a large army base 10 minutes by road from Gaza. We had been well briefed in advance, so the living conditions came as no surprise.

After being billeted in our dormitories, next stop was the quartermaster for our fatigues and army boots - surprisingly comfortable in the 38 degree heat!

Julis is dedicated to basic training and to the maintenance of weaponry and transport, so several volunteers were allocated to work on tanks and armoured trucks, or to work in engineering workshops. Others were sent to the kitchen or bakery.

A third group, of which I was a member, was allocated to gas mask production at a smaller base a few miles away.

By the end of the welcome meeting that first evening we knew who each other were and why each of us had come. A very mixed bunch indeed, with ages from 17-79, from different backgrounds and occupations, Jews both religious and secular.

It was an act of defiance. We were angry, angry with the media in our respective countries. We were irritated by the interminable claptrap talked about Israel, by how all our conversations had been dominated by the subject for months; irritated by the passing of opinions, whatever their complexion, passionately held, but, necessarily, being based on limited and partisan information, often without substance.

It was an act of solidarity. We felt guilty, guilty that the Israelis were being left to face the music alone while we slept comfortably in our beds at night. We had felt frustrated, we just knew we had to do something practical and positive.

This evident unity was not altogether surprising. Utterly remarkable was the fact that several volunteers were not Jewish. These non-Jews' love of and commitment to Israel gave us Jewish volunteers, as well as the Israeli soldiers, new hope.

From the first day there was no need to ask whether our decision to go to Israel was worthwhile in terms of the work we were doing. But as days passed other benefits became clear.

After work each day we chatted with the soldiers. Matt from Connecticut had come on aliya 2.5 years ago. Non-religious, a Master's student in Zoology at Tel-Aviv University, he was doing miluim (the annual month's call up duty) and was stationed in Hebron. He was married, without children. His wife knew he was stationed there but he hadn't told his parents. He described how the IDF, knowing that blood was needed for transfusions, had offered it to the Palestinians but the offer had been refused. He said the IDF offered it again, even suggesting they could put the blood in a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance so no-one would know it came from Israel. The Palestinians still refused, saying they wouldn't use Jewish blood. (For those of you old enough to remember, the Pakistanis did the same in 1971 - refused to take Jewish blood, offered for their earthquake victims by Magen David Adom).

He said it was so important that as many people as possible just go to Israel, so when they go home they can redress the imbalances in the press from a position of hard knowledge. So dawned on us the virtue of just being there.

Matt, with his M16 on his lap, was 24. He then got a call to return to Hebron and we just had to watch him go.

Then again - walking past a guard house after work one day, the young soldier on duty, called to us - 'Having you here makes us strong'.

As if to underscore this - another day the Commander of the Home Front visited us at work. We had no idea that an officer of his rank would think of spending any of his precious time on us. He spoke of how much it meant to the soldiers who have to live with the situation every day to see they are fighting for a cause for which others would volunteer. Then he completely wiped me out as he said, with real emotion 'Thank you for coming to help save our children'…..I wanted to say 'They're our children too…'

So, what was the work?

After breakfast on the first morning, 16 of us were allocated to gas mask production, required because of the increasing likelihood of an American attack on Iraq and the expected Iraqi counter-attack on Israel. We were taken to an army warehouse and divided into two working parties, one for infant gas masks for ages 0-3, the other for child gas masks for ages 4-7.

There's something else. Anyone who has been to Israel is familiar with the streams of young Israelis in their khaki uniforms waiting at crossroads for lifts, on buses, everywhere. But it wasn't until I saw 400 18-19 year-olds in the base dining hall that it struck me these were the grandchildren of the young men and women, survivors of WWII, who had fought for and vouchsafed the State of Israel itself. 2 generations later, teenagers are still having to don uniforms in defence of Israel. It too broke my heart.

I would entreat Jews to consider that Israel with all its present concerns, with enemies at and within its borders, with all the problems of a mature and complex domestic and foreign political arena, with its own population to protect, with its economy going down the pan, that Israel is maintaining its historic and unconditional commitment to all of us, including them.

Pam Blustin, England