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Travel Journal of My Sar-El Experience

 By Mark Werner

          I was delighted that David agreed to come with me again on another Sar-El stint, given how difficult our 2010 stint had been.  We only discovered after our return in August that the summer of 2010 had been the hottest recorded summer in Israel since the founding of the state in 1948.  We both agreed that our next stint should be in cooler weather, so we picked mid-May just after David finished his second year of law school. 

         The intervening nine months since our previous trip to Israel had been tumultuous in many ways.  First, under prodding from the U.S. government to enter into direct peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel had agreed to a 9-month moratorium on construction of new housing in the West Bank -- the PA’s pre-condition for direct talks.  But once the moratorium was in place, the PA refused to engage in direct talks and, instead, waited until month 8 of the moratorium to meet with Israeli representatives.  At that meeting, the PA representatives refused to engage in substantive talks, instead insisting on a 3-month extension of the moratorium.  The U.S. government tried to offer Israel various security guarantees to induce it to accede to the 3-month extension, but on December 7 the Obama administration announced that it had given up its efforts to persuade Israel to extend the moratorium. 

         In the meantime, the unfortunate pattern of corruption and misbehavior by Israel’s elected officials continued.  Shortly after David and I returned from Israel in August, Israeli police informed former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that it would recommend his indictment for corruption charges in connection with taking bribes relating to the Holy land apartment project in Jerusalem.  And in December, former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was convicted of raping a former employee and sexually harassing two other women.  In March, he was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment in a landmark case which demonstrated that, despite Israel’s macho culture, no man was above the laws protecting women’s rights.  While Katsav was the highest-ranking Israeli official ever sentenced to jail, he was one in a long line of Israeli officials convicted of crimes of corruption and misbehavior.

          In the meantime, I continued to follow with interest the economic development in the West Bank, especially in the Jenin region.  I had been stationed directly across from Jenin during my 2008 Sar-El stint.  Through that experience I learned that Israeli troops were directly involved in assisting the PA police force to restore “law and order” to the streets of Jenin by arresting Hamas and Al Qaida militants in the area.  At the same time, the PA was receiving training assistance from U.S. General Dayton with the goal of having more professionally trained police battalions.  Through the Israelis’ “behind the scenes” cooperation, the West Bank was becoming a safer and more secure area under the PA control.  And with the strengthening of PA police force, Israel was able to reduce its military presence in the West Bank to half of what it had been during the 2000-2004 years of the Intifada and to remove most of its check points within the West Bank.  The combination of safer streets and easier transit attracted increased levels of investment.  Despite the worldwide recession of 2008-2010, the West Bank economy boomed.  IMF figures showed the West Bank economy growing at an annual rate of 8 to 9 percent, while the developed world struggled to pull out of the worldwide recession.

          The most significant development in the Middle East since our last Sar-El stint was the “Arab Spring”, which actually started during the winter of 2010-2011.  It was triggered in an unlikely way.  On December 17, a 26-year old Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire after having been slapped, beaten and humiliated by local police.  His martyrdom set off an explosion among young Tunisians unhappy over the bureaucracy, government corruption and economic stagnation during the 23-year rule of dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.  This single event sparked an upheaval in the Arab world, wakening unrest among the Arab young frustrated with the absence of economic opportunity and lack of political freedoms.  The Tunisian public rioted against their dictator and by January 14 he fled the country.

          The unrest quickly rippled throughout the Arab world.  With the Tunisian example fresh in their minds, Egypt’s young people demonstrated for the removal of their own dictator Hosni Mubarak.  After 18 days of demonstrations and clashes throughout Egypt masterminded by a young Egyptian Google executive, Mubarak’s 30-year rule ended as he fled the country.  Demonstrations also broke out in Yemen, Syria and Bahrain against their respective dictators.  And in Libya, a civil war broke out between supporters and opponents of Libya’s long-time strong-man Muamar Qaddafi.  Prompted by France and the U.K., U.S. and NATO planes enforced a “no-fly” zone to prevent Qaddafi’s air force from crushing the Libyan revolt.  With his air force neutralized, Qaddafi imported African troops from sub-Saharan countries to replace the Libyan military elements which joined in the revolt.  And the conflict settled into a civil war which appeared to be a “draw”, unless NATO and the U.S. decided to do more than simply enforcing a “no-fly” zone.

          Disaffection towards existing regimes also spread to the Palestinians.  For the first time under Hamas rule, spontaneous demonstrations broke out in Gaza.  The protesters urged that Hamas and Fatah overcome their historic enmity to form a single Palestinian government.  Public pressure among West Bank Palestinians compelled PA Prime Minister Abbas to reach out to Hamas to seek creation of a national unity government.  In early May, Fatah and Hamas announced a unity government covering all Palestinians.  The U.S. and the European governments called for the unity government to recognize the right of Israel to exist and to enter into peace negotiations with Israel.  Fatah had already accepted these terms but Hamas remained committed to the destruction of Israel.  So the Palestinian unity government did not respond to the calls from the U.S. and the European governments. 

          This situation posed a dilemma for Israel.  Israeli leaders (including Prime Minister Netanyahu) had committed to negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.  But how could Israel negotiate with a Palestinian national unity government which included Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel?  That would be too much to ask, unless that unity government disowned Hamas’ position.  Otherwise, it would be like asking the U.S. to negotiate peace with Al Qaida while the latter remained committed to attacking the U.S.

          Another important event occurred in early May, but it was unclear how or whether it would affect Israel.  American Navy Seals broke into a lavish compound in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden, almost 10 years after he masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  While American forces had spent years searching for him in the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, it turned out he had been “living in the lap of luxury” in a suburb of Islamabad reserved for high military officials.  The Pakistan military had either knowingly sheltered him or were extremely incompetent.  I assume the former is the case.

          While the assassination would not eliminate the Al Qada terrorist organization because it was a very decentralized group, this action eliminated its symbolic leader and mastermind.  There were some muted celebrations in the U.S. over the elimination of Bin Laden.  I was surprised (and disappointed) that some Americans expressed disapproval over the fact that we had assassinated Bin Laden.  He was no different than Admiral Yamamoto who had masterminded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  We had assassinated Yamamoto without any public disapproval – why was assassinating Bin Laden any different?  I was not surprised when Hamas issued a statement condemning Bin Laden’s assassination and declaring him a martyr.

 Wednesday, May 11

          The timing of this vacation couldn’t have been better.  I was exhausted from work-related stress.  Aside from the usual heavy workload trying to tie up loose ends to take a 2 ½ week trip to Israel, a unique and stressful situation had been emotionally weighing on me.

          A friend and colleague at work, who was also an outstanding lawyer, was being prosecuted for allegedly making misrepresentations to the federal government.  My friend was innocent of the charges, but an overzealous federal prosecutor decided to indict her anyway.  She had to suffer 4 years of being a target of a federal prosecution, and eventually took early retirement to be able to work full-time with her defense lawyers. 

         I was worried over how my friend was standing up to the pressure of being prosecuted.  So were my colleagues.  Morale on my team plummeted.  The opening of the trial 3 weeks ago heightened the tension.  Adding to the stress was my status as a defense witness.  I had been slated to testify yesterday (Tuesday), following the close of the government’s case.

          Fortunately, on Tuesday morning the presiding federal judge took an extraordinary action.  He dismissed the case at the close of the prosecutor’s evidence without the need for my friend to put on a defense.  In his scathing written decision, the judge stated that no evidence had been presented to allow a reasonable jury to conclude that my friend had committed a crime.  In a slap at the overzealous prosecutor, the judge asserted that this prosecution should never have been brought against her and that she should be free to resume her career.

          The relief and celebration at work lasted all day yesterday.  But in enjoying the happiness of the moment, I realized that with the release of the tension over the trial I was emotionally exhausted.  I needed a break and this trip to Israel couldn’t have come at a better time.

          For David, this was also a great time to take a vacation.  He just finished his final exams for his second year of law school and faced the prospect of two summer jobs before starting his final year.  We had gone out to dinner last night both to celebrate the end of his school year as well as the just conclusion of my friend’s trial.

          The day after his final exam, David had a committee meeting at his law school in downtown Raleigh.  A Jewish lawyer with strong leftist leanings who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activities happened to attend the meeting.  Learning that David was about to leave for Israel to volunteer on a military base, the lawyer asked David:  “Aren’t you concerned for your safety?”  David replied:  “No.  We’ll be in uniform and the Palestinian terrorists only attack civilians.”  The lawyer was left speechless!  I was proud of David for his quick response.

          Settling into our seats on the El Al 747 jumbo jet at JFK Airport, I realized that I may have set expectations for David which I could not satisfy on future trips with him to Israel.  I had cashed in airline mileage to book us in business class.  David loves gadgets, and the automated seats and electronic capabilities embedded in these seats delighted him.  So did the comfort of wide seats which recline into a comfortable bed.  I hope he didn’t expect this luxury on every future trip.

          As we taxied down the JFK runway, the pilot explained the writing on the outside of his compartment in front.  This plane, as well as 3 other El Al jets, had participated in flying over Tel Aviv as part of Israel’s Independence Day celebration last week.  And El Al had dedicated its flights to Gilad Shalit and other Israeli soldiers held captive by Israel’s hostile neighbors.  So the plane bore an inscription on the side of the cockpit reminding all passengers of their plight.

         We settled down for the 10-hour flight, which lived up to David’s now-heightened expectations.

 Thursday, May 12

          The sleeping pills we took after dinner on the plane worked so well that we missed breakfast and woke up just as the plane was landing about 1:00 p.m.  Our ever-faithful friend and driver Efi was waiting to meet us in the arrivals area at Ben Gurion Airport.  He whisked us away to the Maxim Hotel in Tel Aviv.  Located on Hayarkon Street, the main thoroughfare traveling north-south along the Mediterranean coast, the hotel gave us a great view of the beach and the sea.

          After naps and showers, we were a hungry crew when we ventured out of the hotel for dinner.  The hotel clerk recommended a restaurant along the beach named London.  We were glad we followed his recommendation.  We were seated outside right along the beach and enjoyed our favorite meals (David:  schnitzel; me:  fried mousht (St. Peter’s Fish)) as we watched the red ball of the sun sink into the Mediterranean.

          At this point, our stress was gone; thoughts of final exams and federal prosecutors were a distant memory.  And to top off the evening, we wandered over to our favorite ice cream shop (Iceberg on Ben Yehuda Street).  Iceberg is probably the only ice cream store in the world that sells sugar-free halvah ice cream, and it was delicious! 

Friday, May 13

          We began our day at a restaurant called the Bistro de Carmel, an outdoor covered restaurant adjacent to the Carmel Winery in Zichron Yaakav.  Our cousins Ziv and Ayelet had had a baby boy (named Aviv) a month ago.  Apparently, in Israel it has become popular not to have a party on the day of a bris (circumcision) for a baby boy.  Instead, only immediate family members attend the bris and a party for a broader group of family and friends is held a month later.  We were lucky to be in Israel on the day of this party and so we were pleased to accept their invitation.

          Ziv’s sister Sigal and her husband Ofer currently live in San Diego.  We were seated across from Ofer’s parents, and discussed Ofer and Sigal’s baby girl Noya, who had just reached her first birthday.  I learned that Ofer’s father was from the same area of southeastern Poland as my father and, like my Uncle Irving and Meyer, had survived the war in Russian labor camps in Siberia before traveling to Tashkent (and eventually to Israel).

          Nir drove us from the party back to his parents’ home in Pardes Chana, when we admired his new front yard, now completely covered with square ceramic tiles.  Last summer David and I had helped Nir prepare the front yard for this make-over by collecting the stones ringing the grass yard and moving away the tops of two Roman columns.  The stones and Roman columns were now neatly placed along the perimeter of the yard.

          Nir dropped us off at 3:00 in Hadera at the home of Meir and Tova Meiner, where we joined everyone else there for a traditional Friday afternoon nap.  We awoke refreshed and sat with Meir and Tova for a while.  One of the topics we discussed was Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and dragged back to the Gaza Strip where he has been held in captivity for 4 years.  According to Meir, Shalit’s parents and brother are very mild-mannered and apolitical people.  But as the period of captivity dragged on without progress in the negotiations over his release, his family decided to play a more activist role.  His brother and sister-in-law moved out of their home in the Galilee to live in a tent outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem office.  Last week at the official Israeli Memorial Day commemoration at which famous Israelis speak in honor of those lost in defending the country, Shalit’s brother broke into the ceremony carrying a sign saying:  “I don’t want my brother to be another soldier lost in defending the country.”  While the police whisked him away and the t.v. cameras did not show his break into the commemoration, the news media immediately picked it up. 

         This evening before Shabbat dinner, the Meiner’s daughter Tali suggested that David accompany Tali and her friend Liora to an assembly held outside the Ralli Art Museum in Caesarea on the only road Prime Minister Netanyahu can take to drive to his home in that town.  These assemblies have been taking place on Friday evenings for the past two years, in order to keep the issue of Shalit’s release in the forefront of the Prime Minister’s thinking.

          An hour later, David, Tali and Liora returned to report back that about 30 people had attended this peaceful assembly, but Netanyahu never showed up.  Instead a song was sung in Gilad’s honor, several speeches were given, and the assembled group conducted a short Kabbalat Shabbat Friday evening service in Gilad’s honor.  There was no security around the crowd, which dispersed peacefully at the end of the Kaballat Shabbat service.  I was glad that David had the opportunity to support the Shalit family’s efforts to speed up negotiations over their son’s release.

 Saturday, May 14 

         Today was a day to relax and visit with relatives.  We got up for a late 9:00 breakfast, after which my Sar-El t-shirt provoked one of the hotel guests in the lobby to approach me.  “Are you a Sar-El volunteer?” a man with graying hair asked.  “Yes”, I responded, “I’m Mark Werner and this is my son David.”

         Marc was a 70-year old retired U.S. marine lieutenant colonel with a gruff but friendly personality.  A San Diego resident, he was in Israel to start his third Sar-El stint.  He explained that he had been motivated to start volunteering after having read a book about Sar-El written by another volunteer.  I told him I had authored that book.  He offered that he had since passed it on to one of his childhood friends who was also motivated to volunteer and in fact he planned to see this evening for dinner.  I am gratified to hear whenever my book spurs people to volunteer for Sar-El, because my purpose in writing it was to do just that. 

         After breakfast, David went back to our room to watch t.v. and so I decided to take a walk.  The weather was cool, windy, and overcast as I headed south along the Tel Aviv promenade which rims the city’s beautiful Mediterranean beach front.  The wide concrete promenade was populated by 3 distinct categories of people:  runners, brisk walkers, and couples out for a casual Shabbat morning stroll.  I picked up bits of conversation in Hebrew, Russian, and English, with the third being in a distinct minority.  Heading towards Jaffa in the distance, I watched as the wind kicked up angry waves.  A break between two lines of breakwaters, built to protect the beaches, seemed to funnel the sea’s waves to greater heights as they approached the beach.  This had attracted dozens of surfers who bobbed up and down in the angry water, waiting to catch a wave.

          As I walked further south, I passed the burned out wreckage of the Dolphinarium, a teenage disco which had been destroyed by a Palestinian suicide bomber during the terrorism of the Second Intifada.  It had been a crowded Saturday night and over twenty teenagers had been killed.  The government had apparently decided to leave the burned out structure “as is” as a memorial to the murdered teenagers.

          As I approached Jaffa in the distance, I passed a structure on Hayarkon Street (the street which parallels the beachfront) which seemed out of place.  I estimated it was an old building of Turkish construction, based on its yellowed plaster walls and exterior archways.  A sign in front of the building explained that it was called “Etzel House”.  It was a museum dedicated to the Etzel fighting unit which had used it as a staging area from which they had launched the successful attack in 1948 to take the city of Jaffa.  An old homemade cannon manufactured from a metal pipe and mounted on wheels stood outside Etzel House as a testament to the makeshift arms Etzel used in its conquest of the then-Arab city.

          Jaffa was situated on a high promontory which jutted into the Mediterranean.  Its skyline was defined by two old towers.  One bore a crescent at its peak and was of Turkish construction.  The other bore a cross at the top of a centuries-older church.  I turned around to head back north towards Tel Aviv at the point where the promenade reached the first streets of Jaffa. 

         The winds from the Mediterranean suddenly blew ominous dark clouds over the coastline.  I was caught in a rain shower out in the open, got soaked, and finally found shelter under an overhang in front of the wrecked Dolphinarium.  Once the rain abated, I retraced my steps along the promenade.  Just before reaching the Maxim Hotel, I saw a sign along the promenade for a bar/restaurant called “Mike’s Place”.  I recalled serving with a British volunteer who was a teacher in a high school in London.  She had remarked that one of the Muslim students in her school had been the suicide bomber who blew up Mike’s Place early during the Palestinian violence of the Second Intifada. 

         My relaxing walk had taken an hour and spanned about 4 miles.  I rejoined David, and we met our cousins Ruchama and Michael for lunch on the beach at Café Mitzada.  Later in the day we joined other cousins Menachem, Bracha, Itay and Liat for an excellent dinner in Hertzliya Heights at a restaurant called Sebastian, where David enjoyed the best schnitzel in Tel Aviv.

 Sunday, May 15

          As I expected, the Sar-El assembly area in the arrivals hall at Ben Gurion Airport was crowded.  Pamela Lazarus was giving the group of over 100 volunteers instructions prior to dispatching them to their base assignments.  I met volunteers I had served with previously:  Sylvia from London was on her 14^th stint; Reggie from Long Island was on her 5^th.  And Jenny Goldstone (head of the UK branch of Sar-El) was acting as Pamela’s assistant.  At one point, Pamela announced a Sar-El engagement -- a young man from Texas and a young woman from Hungary who planned to go on a Sar-El stint decided to get engaged yesterday. 

         A contingent of 9 volunteers, including David and me, boarded a bus already loaded with volunteers headed for other bases in the Tel Aviv area.  The bus dropped us off at the base at around 11:00 a.m.  The base was very familiar to me, having served there on my first Sar-El stint in 2002.

          Our group of 9 volunteers was a very heterogeneous bunch.  David and I bunked with Ken, a native North Carolinian (from Gastonia) currently living in Amsterdam who had served on that base many times including last month.  A couple named Suzanne and Marty were from New City in Rockland County, New York -- Suzanne was on her 15^th stint and Marty was on his 3^rd stint.  They were about to celebrate their 52^nd wedding anniversary.  The other 4 were young people, including Yerena from Finland who was a tall thin woman in her twenties with orange hair and striking tattoos on her arms.  A young London prosecutor named Julian was a member of our group, as was a young political activist from Boston named Scott.  Rounding out the team of 9 was Jennifer, a realtor from Houston in her early thirties who was considering law school.  The last 3 were newcomers to Sar-El. 

         We were assigned 2 madrichot.  Michele was a diminutive blonde with green eyes and a big smile, who recognized me immediately.  She had been the madricha at Machane Ishai for a Spanish group the same time David and I were there last summer.  When I mentioned Machane Ishai, she made a face and responded:  “Please don’t mention the name of this base again.  That was an awful experience.  The food was so bad that I lost 5 kilos unintentionally.”  Michele was 20 and was a senior madricha, with only 4 months of army duty remaining.  Her partner Sharon was new to Sar-El, ours being only her second Sar-El group.  Both women were from the Tel Aviv suburbs, but Michele’s English was much better because her family had lived in Boise, Idaho for a while when her father (a Hewlett-Packard employee) had been transferred there temporarily.  She had also lived in Ohio and Kansas as her father’s job moved their family around the U.S.  And that experience, I believe, had made her very adaptable and resourceful -- two traits which are essential in a good madricha.

          The base looked the same as it had in 2002.  The mess hall was in the same place, as were the volunteers’ bunks and the main laboratory testing building.  The warehouse just across from the volunteers’ bunks where I had toiled for 3 weeks sorting uniforms and boots was still there.  And the skyline of the base was still characterized by tall magnificent Eucalyptus trees shedding their bark. 

          Yet a lot had changed.  The warehouse I had worked in was shuttered and no longer in use; and the kerosene vat in front of it in which Elena had taught me how to take apart and clean M-16 rifles and Uzi submachine guns was gone.  The uniforms were now stored in a much larger and more organized warehouse attached to the main laboratory testing building.  As promised by the base commander as I was leaving the base in 2002, he had installed new, better bathrooms and a clothes washing machine.  The old Turkish barracks across from the mess hall was still there, sporting its rounded guard tower with multiple gun ports.  The most striking change was evidenced in the mess hall.  Although it was still in the same building, it had been remodeled with new tables, lighting, etc. and was quite nice.  Also, it was now air-conditioned and had no flies.  And the lunchtime fare was delicious!  We had David’s favorite (schnitzel) with freshly baked bread.  There were cookies, cake and even fresh fruit available.  David was especially impressed with how much better the food was here than at Machane Ishai (last year’s base).

         The room we took with Ken was the same room he had recently bunked in on his last stint.  The room offered 3 beds, plus a small metal chest of shelves for each occupant -- no more living out of our suitcases slid under our beds as we had the past 2 years!   

         After lunch we picked up our uniforms and headed to our work assignments.  David and I were assigned to the antennae warehouse where several soldiers were already busy taking apart broken antennas used on radio backpacks.  With a bit of instruction, David and I were able to join in the effort.  It was air-conditioned and we were able to sit while working -- what an improvement over packing kitbags in a sweltering warehouse in the desert at Machane Ishai! 

         A soldier named Aharon seemed to direct the work flow.  At 3:00, Aharon and another soldier had to go elsewhere, leaving David and I to continue the work, which we did at top speed. 

         The one remaining soldier in our work area was the epitome of a “jobnik”, the Hebrew slang for a slouch of a soldier.  Sporting orange payes (sidelocks) and a kippah, he was clearly a young haredi (extreme Orthodox Jew).  A few minutes after Aharon and his companion left, this soldier (let’s call him “Sly Yaakov”) came up to us and asked us to join him for the afternoon mincha service in the base’s synagogue.  We declined and he left us by ourselves in the antennae warehouse.  Thirty minutes later he returned to find us making significant progress on the piles of broken antennas we were taking apart.  Sly Yaakov’s job was to wash the outside of a pile of long rubber hoses.  He stopped what we were doing and told us that we needed to switch to washing the hoses.  “Come”, he said.  “All 3 of us need to work on this together.”  We obliged and, as soon as David and I started, Sly Yaakov put down his work and moved to a corner of the room to sit and read a newspaper.  He stayed there until a sergeant walked into the room and yelled at him to get back to work.  He did, and at that point David and I returned to antennae deconstruction. 

          As the sole soldier in the warehouse, Sly Yaakov was responsible for locking it up at the end of the workday.  But he couldn’t lock up while we were there.  So at 4:00, he sidled up to us and said:  “It’s 4:00.  Time to close up.”  We looked at him blankly and responded:  “It’s not the end of the workday and we’re not tired.”  Defeated, he retreated to washing rubber pipes.  Thirty minutes later, he repeated his request, but this time invoked his officer as the authority for a 4:30 ending time.  We still weren’t tired, but did not want to argue with him, so we closed up and left for our bunks.         

         Back at the volunteers’ bunk area, I ran into Michele and commented that the last madricha I had at this base (Avigail in 2002) had been attacked by a masked Palestinian in Ramle and had had her rifle taken away by the attacker.  She responded:  “A similar thing just happened 3 weeks ago in Jaffa near the Sar-El offices.  An Israeli officer sitting at a Jaffa café was attacked by a masked Palestinian terrorist who tried to seize the officer’s rifle.  When the officer resisted, he was stabbed 3 times and lost the rifle.” 

          After dinner we had our first evening activity, designed for each of us to get to know the others.  At the end of the activity, Michele announced that today (May 15) the Palestinians were commemorating Naqba Day, or Catastrophe Day, representing the date of the creation of the state of Israel.  Tensions were high because of this commemoration.  This morning at 10:00, a Palestinian truck driver intentionally drove into a crowd of people in south Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring 17 others.  Also, as part of Naqba Day, the Syrian government arranged for crowds of Palestinians living in Syria to mass on the Israeli border.  The crowds tried to cross into Israel, and Israeli troops killed 4 members of the crowd.  Similar clashes occurred along the Gaza-Israel border and in the West Bank city of Ramallah, spurring more violence.  We listened to the BBC report of these events and, as usual, it was slanted against Israel.  The way the BBC reported the news, it sounded like Israeli troops were indiscriminately shooting Palestinian civilians.  But I knew that demonstrations in places like Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip tend not to be spontaneous and are instead orchestrated by Syria, Fatah and Hamas.  And Israeli troops do not shoot to kill unless they are under direct attack or are defending the border from encroachers. 

         At the end of the evening, I looked forward to my bed.  I had obtained a second thin mattress as well as a piece of plywood and hoped for a firm sleeping surface.  I had learned this technique on my last stint at the base and was putting that lesson to good use.  I silently thanked my previous bunkmates from the base -- Herb, Michael and Don -- for teaching me this valuable lesson. 

Monday, May 16

          My reconfigured bed made for a good night’s sleep.  But by 4:00 in the morning sleep was no longer possible.  The army had issued us only a cover sheet (no blankets) and the nighttime temperature dropped into the 40’s.  Even with the bunk door shut all night, the cool air gradually seeped in under the door.  By 4:00, I was shivering too much to try to remain asleep under that thin sheet.  Instead, David and I headed for the shower room which, although unheated, had hot water in the showers.  We will definitely ask for blankets today.   

         After breakfast and flag raising with the soldiers, Michele gave us the news.   Israeli news reported that yesterday’s Palestinian violence along the Syrian border had been orchestrated by the Syrian government in an attempt to distract people’s attention from the anti-government protests going on in Syria as part of the Arab spring uprisings.  One of the Israeli soldiers seriously injured by the Palestinian rock throwing was an Israeli commander who had to be hospitalized.  George Mitchell announced his resignation as the U.S.’s Middle East envoy.  And Israel agreed to transfer $300 million in tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, based upon the PA’s assurances that none of the funds would be funneled to Hamas which is a terrorist organization. 

         Lunch today was excellent, including fish, the fried eggplant I love to eat, and fresh fruit.  As usual, I ate too much.  I am unlikely to lose any weight on this stint. 

         Walking back from lunch with Suzanne and Marty, I asked her what had motivated her to volunteer for Sar-El 15 times.  She replied that she had taken a family trip to Israel in 1983 and had been impressed with how much the country had accomplished despite being surrounded by so many enemy states.  She decided that she needed to do something more for Israel which was more personal than simply writing a check.  She started volunteering, and even brought her son with her on one of her Sar-El stints.  Her commitment to Israel and consistent volunteering reminded me very much of Marian Richman, with whom I’ve twice served as a volunteer on an Israeli navy base.

          After lunch, David and I returned to the antennae warehouse, where we continued to take apart and sort the parts of the radio backpack antennas.  I think that the soldier who gave us this task assumed it would take us several days to complete it.  But we finished the job by 3:00 this afternoon and no one seemed to find us any further work, despite our waiting in the main laboratory testing building for about an hour for another assignment.  While we waited, we watched several of the volunteers do their tasks.  Scott and Jennifer took apart and repaired small speakers which are embedded in the tank helmet headsets.  Ken checked and repaired the headsets and microphones used by the tank crewmen.  Ken had done this task on several previous stints at the base, so the assignment sergeant (Shalom) trusted him with this important job.

          After Shalom dismissed us without any further work assignments, Julian and I went for a run.  He had just completed a half marathon several weeks previously and was gracious enough to run at my slow pace.  The air was cool and the exercise was refreshing after sitting in the antennae warehouse and working with my hands all day.  And the shower afterwards felt magnificent.  This was the first time that the showers had shower heads since I started volunteering with David in 2009. 

          After dinner, two additional volunteers joined us.  The previous night we had been joined by Lisa from Reading, PA, Marc from Delanco, N.J., and Al from Wellington, FL.  This evening, Julian (a second Julian) from Toronto and Bob from Atlanta arrived at our bunks. 

         Also, after dinner Marc and Al reported that they had spotted several uniformed American soldiers.  They chatted with the soldiers whom they learned were aerial photography soldiers on an exchange program with the Israeli army.  The American soldiers were curious to meet American volunteers on an Israeli military base. 

         It was good to telephone home this evening.  Our daughter Rachel started graduate school today, seeking a Master’s degree in Accounting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  I was eager to hear the details of her first day of classes from Arlene.   

         After David and Ken were asleep and I was settling into bed with lights out, I heard a distant boom like a clap of thunder.  About 30 seconds later, I heard another one.  Within a minute or two, the PA system on the base came alive for the first time since we’d been here.  The announcer barked out a series of orders and then went silent.  I checked my alarm clock -- it was 10:30.  Curious as to what was going on, I stepped outside our bunk and chatted with a few other volunteers who were equally curious.  In the middle of our compound a unit of soldiers in battle gear was being inspected by their officer.  Apparently, the announcement dealt with a night time security drill.  Satisfied there was nothing more to it, I returned to our bunk and settled in for the night.  At a certain point, I heard the security detail’s boots tramping past our door and orders ringing out from the officer.  Then I settled back into bed.

          A few minutes later, I heard the thunder-like booms again, sounding very far away.  And then I heard a series of pops, sounding like fire crackers.  Was it only thunder and fire crackers?  Or something more serious?

          I stepped out of the bunk for a second time.  Yerena and Jennifer had been sitting at the picnic table in our compound.  They confirmed that I hadn’t been imagining the sounds I thought I’d heard.  They also were curious if something was going on.  But after a few minutes I returned to my bunk.  Once in bed, I heard the sound of jets flying above us. 

         I concluded it probably had been a combination of thunder and fire crackers.  But only in Israel would there be a concern that something more was afoot.  Satisfied that if there were, Michele would fill us in when she gave us the news in the morning, I went back to bed. 

 Tuesday, May 17 

         Sharon gave us the news after flag raising.  Prime Minister Netanyahu had given a speech in which he had announced that he was willing to compromise on territory issues to negotiate a two state solution with the Palestinians.  The Palestinians were unhappy that he had not made enough concessions to them in his speech.  Also, in the Palestinians’ attempt to cross the border from Syria into Israel, apparently one Syrian got through and reached Tel Aviv before being apprehended by Israeli police.  The mother of the Arab truck driver who had plowed into a crowd of Israelis claimed that her son’s erratic driving was due to a blown tire, not an attempt to kill people (despite his prior criminal record).  And last night had been the holiday of Lag B’Omer, where Israelis traditionally light bonfires.  Sometimes kids throw aerosol cans or firecrackers into the bonfires.  That may explain the popping noises I heard last night.

          We returned to our antennae warehouse.  Over the previous two days we had taken apart all of the broken antennas for the radio back packs.  We had inspected and sorted the usable parts, tossing the broken ones.  Today, Aharon taught us how to use these parts to build new antennas.  Each antenna consisted of 7 one foot-long metal rods of different sizes connected together.  Each rod had a wide and a narrow end.  We inserted an elastic string through 6 of the 7 rods, and tied off each end with a different knot.  The reason we didn’t use the 7^th (and smallest) sized rod is that the base had run out of that size.  Bob from Atlanta joined us for this work, and with three sets of hands, the work went very fast.

          The other volunteers continued to test batteries, repair tank crew headsets, and take apart, clean and rebuilt radio bases.  We took a quick break at 10:30 to assemble at the flag pole for a short ceremony to receive our dark blue Sar-El epaulettes (along with the traditional punch on the back from our madrichot).

          By day’s end, we had put together about 200 antennae.  Sly Yaakov had been in and out of our warehouse throughout the day, but did not try to divert us from the work Aharon had assigned to us.  I had mentioned to Aharon yesterday that Sly Yaakov had asked us on Sunday to stop doing the work Aharon assigned us in order to help Sly Yaakov to wash hoses.  Aharon was not happy to hear this and said he would tell Sly Yaakov not to divert the volunteers from projects he has assigned to us.

         Aharon was the soldier in charge of the antennae warehouse.  He had 7 soldiers under him to handle the warehouse and surrounding area.  Aharon told us in the morning that 3 of his soldiers were out sick, so he especially needed the volunteers since he would only have 4 soldiers today.  Sly Yaakov was one of them.  He seemed to do almost no work, taking coffee breaks and sitting on his cell phone most of the day.  Therefore, Aharon was actually down to only 3 soldiers. 

         At the end of the day, with Aharon nowhere in sight, Sly Yaakov informed us that there would be an inspection of the base soon and so we needed to clean the warehouse.  This was probably Sly Yaakov’s job, but we didn’t mind cleaning up.  After cleaning the warehouse, he asked us to move the antennas from the warehouse floor to a covered area outside.  We obliged and in the process discovered that some of the antennas we had completed were not tied together tightly enough.  So we stayed late to quality inspect our work product and retie those that needed it.  This seemed to annoy Sly Yaakov because Aharon had left him in charge of closing up the warehouse.  Our staying late to retie some of the antennas meant he had to stay with us.  Sly Yaakov had made it very clear on our first day in the warehouse that he thought the workday should end at 4:00 so he could go home earlier than the other soldiers on the base.

          I continue to marvel at how good the food is on this base.  David was in seventh heaven to eat chicken nuggets for lunch.  And they served chocolate cookies for dessert at dinner.  The base has its own bakery, so there is excellent freshly-based bread every lunchtime.  This is not a place to lose weight.

          At lunchtime, David made a great discovery.  We happened to sit with two soldiers, Kobi and Nitzan.  Kobi was a “lone soldier”, meaning he had moved to Israel without his family and joined the army.  He was originally from South Florida.  I asked Kobi if his parents had visited him from the U.S., and his answer was:  “No.  They don’t think I’ll last here, so they expect me to come home soon.”  I could tell by his tone that he intended to prove his parents wrong.  Kobi’s Hebrew was very elementary and so he had been assigned to the base adjacent to ours (Pikud Ha-Oref, or Homeland Security) where he and other soldiers who needed Hebrew instruction was being tutored.

          His tutor was the young woman who joined us – Nitzan.  Nitzan was a native Israeli who lived not far from the base.  Her English was excellent because her mother was an American who made aliyah from Brooklyn before Nitzan was born.  And although she had only been in the army for 6 months, she was older than the other new soldiers because she had elected to volunteer for a year of national service work after high school and before her military service. 

          The great discovery David made was that Nitzan was, in certain respects, a female version of David.  She mentioned that she liked languages and David remarked that he did too.  And so a friendly “duel” commenced in front of an amazed and entertained group of volunteers around the lunch table.  Nitzan and David obviously both spoke English.  So she started conversing with David in Hebrew.  He responded in Hebrew, showing his fluency in that language.  She continued the conversation across the table, this time switching to French.  Again, David responded in French, a language he had mastered in high school.  Feeling challenged, Nitzan switched the conversation to Arabic.  David smiled and responded in Arabic, a language he had learned “for fun” the summer before law school.  Smiling back, Nitzan thought surely she had him now -- she switched to Japanese.  David enthusiastically responded in Japanese, which is his strongest foreign language after Hebrew.

          All this time, the others at the table had been silent, watching this “duel” of languages in amazement.  Finally the two “combatants” called it a friendly draw.  David’s Japanese was stronger than Nitzan’s, plus he knew some Yiddish (which she didn’t).  On the other hand, Nitzan spoke 11 languages in total, including Russian and Mandarin Chinese.  Finally, the two of them lapsed into a long Japanese conversation, at the end of which she recited the lyrics to her favorite Japanese song and David sang the melody back to her.

          And David discovered that Nitzan loved Japanese animé (cartoons).  That led to a lively discussion in Japanese of the merits of certain anime, which I could not follow.  The two of them were excited to find a fellow animé lover.  David and Nitzan talked at the lunch table until the mess hall had completely emptied out, and we were almost late for the afternoon’s work schedule.  David was delighted to have discovered someone who shared his interests in Japanese.  It put him in such a good frame of mind that he was humming loudly the rest of the afternoon. 

          During a break in the afternoon, I chatted with one of our volunteers, named Al, from Florida.  He mentioned he lived in Wellington and I responded that my father-in-law also lived in Wellington.  It turns out that they both live in the same golf community.  Small world! 

Wednesday, May 18

          Today was our last full workday of the week.  Michele’s news after flag raising was minimal.  Uzi Arad, the Minister of National Security, was forced to resign due to his having leaked sensitive information.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.N. was planning actions against Syria for killing its citizens who had demonstrated for more freedom.  And we were given our Sar-El identification cards.  The temperature today was predicted to be 65°, but it turned out to be in the 80’s.

          Work today in the antennae warehouse was more varied.  While Bob continued to assemble antennas for the radio backpacks, David and I were given a variety of jobs.  The primary one was putting together the wiring which would be inserted into the base of tank antennas.  It required a lot of hand strength to take apart and then screw together a small mechanism.  By midday, David had finished ¾ of this work.  I was assigned to bend and then bind together into groups of seven the metal rods which we had culled out as defective the first two days we had been on the base. 

         Before leaving the mess hall, we stopped to chat with the table of American aerial photography soldiers who were visiting Israel on an exchange program.  The senior member of the team was from Atlanta.  And I was delighted to make the acquaintance of a soldier who made his home in Garner, North Carolina.  I explained to the American soldiers a bit about what Sar-El volunteers did on the base, and they politely listened.  Mostly, they were happy to chat with other Americans in Israel.

          Our meeting at 1:00 was with Tiran, the Sar-El military commander for the past 8 years.  He gave us his standard lecture I had heard before, adding in the history of Israel’s willingness to have two states -- one Jewish and one Arab -- existing side-by-side in what had been until 1948 the British Mandate of Palestine.  And he recited the many times that the Arabs had rejected that two state solution, despite Israeli concessions. 

         When we returned to the antennae warehouse, we were not allowed to go back to our morning assignments.  Tomorrow morning the base would undergo an inspection by an outside high level officer, so the afternoon was reserved for clean-up.  We swept, washed, and squeegeed the floor of the warehouse.  Then we helped the soldiers clean and organize the area outside the warehouse.  Once all the cleaning was done, we returned to our bunks because we were not permitted to do “regular” work prior to tomorrow’s inspection.  David was in a good mood all afternoon, humming loudly.

          After dinner, our evening activity consisted of a lesson on Israeli geography.  Then we watched a short YouTube video/song entitled “Only Israel” which Marc had brought.  The theme of the video is that only Israel gets criticized for defending itself.  When other countries defend their citizens from attack, this is expected but Israel attracts international condemnation when it does so. 

Thursday, May 19

          Every base I’ve been on seems to have a different toilet paper etiquette.  On this base, when the soldiers clean the bathrooms every morning, they place a roll of toilet paper in each stall.  The paper is gone within an hour or two and no one bothers to replace it.  Instead, the soldiers bring their own roll.  They are not selfish with their toilet paper -- a soldier in the bunk opposite to ours showed me he had a giant bag of about 2 dozen rolls in his room and offered I can take some whenever I like.  It’s just that toilet paper is perceived as a personal item, not a public one.  And so the volunteers quickly learned to carry their own.

          It was misty and cool this morning as we walked to breakfast.  And that has been the case every day since we arrived.  The weather has been remarkably cool for this time of year, and no one is complaining about that.

          Michele’s news was brief again.  Vadim Leiterman, a colonel in the IDF, had been expelled from Russia on accusations of spying, which the Israeli government denied.  President Obama announced that he would put in place personal sanctions against the bank accounts of Syrian President Bashir Al Assad and 6 high-ranking Syrian government officials.  This was in response to Syrian’s continued killing of its freedom protesters.  And a 13-year old American wrote in his Facebook that President Obama should be wary of suicide bombers.  The FBI took him in for questioning in light of concerns arising from Al Qaeda threats against Obama. 

         Since there would be an inspection of the base this morning, the soldiers were kept at flag raising for longer than usual and so we couldn’t go straight to our work places.  While we waited, I asked Michele about her parents’ background.  She had blonde hair, green eyes, and a fair complexion, making her stand out among the Israeli soldiers who typically had darker features.  She explained that her father was born in Buffalo, New York and his family made aliyah when he was a child.  Her mother’s family came to Israel from Hungary.  This explained why she didn’t look like the “typical” Israeli.

         We finally were allowed into our work places, but at first were not permitted to get to work for fear of dirtying up the place.  But after a few minutes, Aharon received an order that we could get to work but only on items which did not make a mess.  So David and I limited ourselves to putting together the tank antennae bases and Bob simply cut lengths of the elastic bands which held together the radio backpack antennas.  We would have set out our component parts to build the radio backpack antennas, but Aharon deemed that to be too messy.

          The soldiers were nervous and did absolutely nothing while waiting for the inspecting general to arrive at our warehouse.  Periodically, they would gather at the entrance of the warehouse to stare across the way to the main electronics lab building where most of the communications repair work was conducted and where the general started his inspection.  Not surprisingly, Aharon received periodic phone calls to tell him of the general’s progress through the lab building.

          Finally, the general and an entourage of the base’s senior officers appeared at the doorway.  This general was the deputy commander of the branch of the IDF which includes all the communications bases.  It was clear that he had two interests in entering the warehouse.  First, he approached red-headed Sly Yaakov.  The general was interested in how this haredi Jew was faring in the army, since not many such Jews served in the IDF and the government wanted to increase their numbers in the army.  In a friendly tone, the general asked Sly Yaakov what work he was doing.  Sly Yaakov gestured to a radio on the counter behind him and explained that he was fixing it.  Actually, he hadn’t come close to the radio that past week – it was another soldier’s responsibility but no one corrected him.  Sneaky Yaakov uttered his responses in a low mumbled voice, in the same sloppy way that he shuffled around in his boots without picking up his feet.  But the general was satisfied.  He made a couple of humorous comments for the benefit of the base officers behind him and the warehouse soldiers in front of him.  They all laughed nervously, including Sneaky Yaakov. 

         Then the general turned to Bob, David and me who had been standing “at ease” on the other side of the warehouse.  He asked us where we were from and how we liked volunteering.  We gave him our hometowns and told him it was a privilege to work on the base.  Then I told him that Aharon was an excellent manager of the warehouse and we enjoyed working with him and his soldiers.  The general nodded to Aharon whom he had not previously acknowledged.  Finally, I told him that David was my son, that he was on his 3^rd stint and I was on my 10^th.

          The general’s eyes lit up when he heard of the father-son combination.  “Very nice!” he said.  “We very much appreciate that you drop your daily lives in the U.S., pay to come here, and work very hard.  I thank you on behalf of my country.”  Then he asked me what work we were doing.  Gesturing at the bases for tank antennas, I picked one up and explained how we were assembling them.  I also mentioned that we were putting together antennas for the radio backpacks.  He listened patiently and thanked us again for volunteering.  Then he turned around and walked out the door with his entourage in tow.  Only about twenty minutes had elapsed since he had entered the warehouse.

          As soon as the general was out the door, Aharon and his soldiers gave a collective sigh of relief.  The tension that had been palpable in the room was replaced by a feeling of elation that the inspection was over and nothing had gone wrong.  Aharon clapped his hands and exclaimed to his soldiers and to us:  “OK.  Now we can relax and get back to work.  We survived.”  There was a big smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye as he high-fived me in thanks for complimenting him to the general.

          We all went back to work until 11:00, at which time we had to return to our bunks.  We changed into our civilian clothes and then swept, washed and squeegeed clean the floors of our bunks and the moadon.  Once finished, we trooped to the mess hall, feeling out of place in our “civvies”. 

          David had been looking forward to lunch because Nitzan had promised to sit with him.  He had been humming all morning.  David saved a chair for her at our table and gazed around the mess hall throughout lunch.  But she never showed up.  David was clearly disappointed as we ended our first week on the base.

          From our base, the volunteers were driven by car into Ramle and dropped off at the Ramle Central Bus Station.  From there, Efi drove us north to Nir’s house in Pardes Chana to spend the weekend.  During the hour-plus ride, I asked David what his preference was for a work assignment next week.  He and I both agreed that we would prefer not to be rotated to a new assignment.  We liked Aharon.  He gave us our work, was clear in his instructions, and even though he understood no English and my Hebrew was elementary, he was very patient in answering my questions.  And he left us alone to our tasks.

          Another reason that we preferred to stay in the antennae warehouse was that the alternative was to move to a job in the main electronics lab building.  A senior base officer was housed there, but the place was clearly run by one of his senior sergeants named Shalom.  Shalom was a frenetic individual with an unpredictable personality.  He was constantly being called by the soldiers and usually had a line of people following him around to ask him questions.  He frequently turned to people on that line gesturing impatiently with his thumb and four fingers, meaning “Rega” or “wait a minute”.  Harried all day, he would sometimes answer the questions and sometime simply explode at the questioner with fast shouting I could not understand.  You never knew which Shalom you would get when you approached him.  The officer housed in the building once confided to Ken that:  “Only God can help Shalom,” meaning that the officer had given up trying to curb Shalom’s outbursts.  Everything in the warehouse seemed to depend on Shalom because he micromanaged all of the soldiers’ projects.  But he was unpredictable.

         David and I did not want to deal with Shalom, even though he seemed to be very respectful in interacting with the volunteers.  Jennifer was one of the volunteers who worked at his direction and at one point she good-naturedly slapped him on the back.  Not being Jewish, she didn’t realize that Shalom’s kippah meant he was a religious Jew who was not allowed to come into contact with a woman.  He shrank from her touch and was upset by the incident, but did not visibly get angry at her.

         Aharon was a low-ranking soldier with only two “dargot”, or stripes, on his sleeve, meaning he had completed only two years of army service.  He was under Shalom’s command but we could see that Aharon also avoided interacting with Shalom.  The only time that Aharon dealt with Shalom was when Shalom crossed the 50 yards from the main lab building to the antennae warehouse to bark out instructions to Aharon.  Aharon generally avoided the main lab building.

          Our  arrival at our cousin Nir’s house at 3:30 involved getting one of his neighbors to open up his house.  Nir and his mother D’vorah had to take his father David for medical tests and they did not come home until 8:00.  So David showered and read his book.  I added to my travel journal.  And at 7:00 p.m., we both watched President Obama’s foreign policy speech on the Middle East.  He primarily dwelt on the U.S.’s support for what had become known as the “Arab Spring” -- popular uprisings in support of freedom and democracy in Middle Eastern and North African countries governed by dictatorships.  The President also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by urging the two sides to sit down at the negotiation table in order to reach a two-state solution.  He emphasized that the Palestinians need to abandon the notion of de-legitimizing Israel and of trying to destroy her, and instead should recognize her right to exist.  Concurrently, he stressed that the status quo of Israeli occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank was an untenable situation.  He urged both sides to recognize that a solution built around the 1967 borders with agreed-upon land swaps was the only possible solution.  Due to their difficulty, the President did not propose a solution to the other two remaining issues of the conflict -- Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem – except to say that the two parties needed to negotiate an agreement on these two as well.

          Once Nir and his parents returned home, he took us all out to our favorite local restaurant -- Machane Shmonim.  This is an all-you-can-east Arab restaurant near his home which is the closest thing you can find in Pardes Chana to a fast-food restaurant.  Upon being seated, we were served 14 appetizers plus delicious hummus and pita while we considered what to order for a main course.  By the end of the meal, we had gained a few pounds.  And to top it off, while David, D’vorah and I had dessert in the restaurant, Nir and David walked to the gas station next door to buy David’s favorite ice cream bars -- Magnum -- to top off the evening.

 Friday, May 20 – Saturday, May 21

          David Elzner’s medical test results were very concerning.  His doctor called first thing Friday morning to insist he be checked into a hospital because his hemoglobin level was dangerously low.  David had complained last night of feeling weak, and he had trouble walking into and out of the restaurant.  Nir and D’vorah took David Elzner to the hospital early Friday morning and we didn’t see them for the rest of the weekend.  The exception was that Nir came back to his home late Friday night to sleep and to bring some clothes and food for his mother.  Apparently, the hospital permitted family members to sleep in a room adjacent to a patient.

          Because of David’s hospitalization, it was a somber weekend.  We were offered weekend accommodations by the Meiner’s in nearby Hadera, but Nir insisted we make use of his house for the weekend and we obliged.  His across-the-street neighbors had us over for Friday night dinner, and Nir took us grocery shopping on Saturday morning before returning to his father’s side at the hospital in Petach Tikvah.  David and I had the run of the Elzner home for the weekend, and we spent the time reading and watching t.v.

          Before Nir left on Saturday morning, he gave me a special present, which had some historical significance.  My father had been a member of a large and successful Jewish resistance unit in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.  His unit had inflicted significant damage on the German army and, more importantly, had saved a lot of Jews.  By the end of the war, his fighting force of 400 men and women had sheltered an additional group of 400 Jewish non-combatants.  I had edited my father’s wartime memoirs, which were published by Columbia University Press under the title “Fighting Back”.  In 2005, Yad Vashem published “Fighting Back” in Hebrew.  The same year, Israel issued a stamp to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.  It chose the picture on the cover of my father’s book to place on the stamp.  Last year, Nir had acquired for me the original artist’s rendition of the book cover, which had been submitted to the Israel Postal Service to make the stamp.   

         This weekend, Nir gave me a velvet-covered portfolio.  Copies of this portfolio had been given by the Israeli government to the members of my father’s fighting unit in 2005.  It contained a copy of the stamp depicting my father’s book cover, along with statements from then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then-Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky.  Had my father been alive in 2005 and living in Israel, he would have received one of these unique portfolios.  This was as important to me as the artist’s rendition of my father’s book cover which Nir had given me last year.  I am constantly impressed by Nir’s ability to acquire unique artifacts.

          On Saturday afternoon, while David took the traditional Shabbat nap, I went for a walk around Pardes Chana.  The weather was gorgeous – warm and sunny – and so I wandered around Nir’s neighborhood for about 4 miles.  At one point, I came across an old weathered sign across the top of the entrance to an unpaved road.  It was titled:

Israeli Farmers Federation Association

Secondary Agricultural School

Jacob Rothschild

Pardes Chana

         Here was an artifact from the establishment of the Jewish agricultural settlement in Pardes Chana in the 1880’s.  It mirrored the establishment of the Jewish agricultural settlement in my hometown of Vineland, New Jersey in the 1880’s by one of Rothschild’s French philanthropic peers, Baron de Hirsch.  Having received a college scholarship from the Jewish Agricultural Society in my hometown, I felt a connection to the Israeli Farmers Federation Association as a parallel organization.

          After my walk, I wandered around the outside of Nir’s house.  I spotted the tops of the two marble Roman columns which Nir and I had struggled to move out of his front yard last year in preparation for the paving over of his front yard.  Both had been returned to the front yard after it had been paved.  I also located the rusty homemade cannon on the side of the house, which Nir’s grandfather had constructed out of a pipe for use during the Israeli War of Independence.  Walking further around the house, I identified macadamia nuts, lemons, cherries, grapes and figs starting to grow on vines, trees and bushes.  The Elzners have placed wind chimes around their home and, on a breezy day like today, musical chimes made a relaxing sound all day.

          While we were in Nir’s car shopping for groceries this morning, the radio news reported on a meeting of British Jewry.  Apparently, pro-Israel British Jewry had decided to follow the model exemplified in the U.S. by the American-Israel Public Action Committee.  In light of efforts by British academia and media to de-legitimize Israel and challenge her right to exist, pro-Israel British Jews had decided to train its members in public advocacy in support of Israel.  Previously, they had adhered to a more low-key and behind-the-scenes approach for supporting Israel.

          I was curious to hear how Saturday’s meeting went between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.  I was especially curious given Obama’s Thursday Middle East speech and Netanyahu’s immediate rejection of Obama’s proposal that the 1967 lines with certain land swaps, be the border of a new Palestinian state.

          Arlene filled me in over the phone.  The two leaders’ meeting was longer than scheduled.  Afterwards they held a joint press conference.  Obama reiterated the U.S.’s support for Israel and recognition of her need for secure borders, while acknowledging that even good friends can occasionally disagree.  Netanyahu, in his usual blunt Israeli style, made 3 points clear at the press conference.  First, the 1967 lines cannot form the basis for a two-state solution because those lines are indefensible, leaving Israel only 9 miles wide at certain points.   Second, there can be no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees who left Israel in 1948 if Israel is to remain a Jewish homeland.  More Jews were exiled from North African and Middle Eastern countries in 1948 than there were Palestinians who followed their leaders’ urging to leave Israel in 1948.  Israel has assimilated those North African and Middle Eastern Jews; the new Palestinian state and neighboring Arab countries should assimilate the Palestinian refugees.  And third, Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction, just as Al Qaeda is committed to America’s destruction.  So just as the U.S. would not negotiate with Al Qaeda, Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government which included Hamas.  The new Fatah/Hamas Palestinian unity government which had just been formed had refused the U.S. and the Quartet’s calls to recognize the State of Israel and renounce the use of violence.  The Palestinians have to decide whether they want statehood enough to renounce Hamas’ call for the destruction of Israel.  While I normally am not a Netanyahu supporter, I agree with all 3 of his points.

 Sunday, May 22

         Transportation back to the base was surprisingly efficient.  At 10:00 we were driven from the Ramle Central Bus Station to the base and by 10:30 David and I had donned our fatigues and walked to the antennae warehouse.  Aharon greeted us with a big smile and pat on the back and immediately put us to work. 

          Our project was outside the warehouse, but in the shade.  Together with Aharon and another soldier, we took apart old tank antennas in preparation for their repair and then painting.  We finished just in time for lunch.

          Our afternoon work was varied.  Now that Aharon knew us and trusted both our thoroughness and our understanding of his instructions (he spoke no English), he had us taking apart and sorting broken antennas, and organizing electrical cables.

          Sneaky Yaakov greeted us after lunch with a “Happy Lag B’Omer”.  He was on his cell phone constantly, getting little work done, unless Aharon stood over him.  At one point in the afternoon when Aharon wasn’t in the warehouse, he directed Bob to join him on whatever his project was, saying:  “Come, let’s do this together.”  Once Bob got the hang of the work, Sneaky Yaakov simply left Bob to the task and walked into the adjacent office to sit and read the newspaper, again talking on his cell phone.

          Gradually, I realized why Aharon gave Sneaky Yaakov so much slack.  It was apparent from the questions directed at Sneaky Yaakov by the inspecting general last week that it was very important to the army that a haredi Jew like Sneaky Yaakov was successful in the military.  Few haredi Jews serve in the army, which is trying to attract more of them.  So the army was bending over backwards toward Sneaky Yaakov and he was taking full advantage of the situation.

          We, on the other hand, did not have to bend over backwards towards him.  We were a bit annoyed with his very blatant laziness and his repeated efforts to get the volunteers to do his work so he could read his newspapers.  David was able to identify the radio station which was blaring within and outside the warehouse as a religious rock station -- certainly not the soldiers’ preference but it was Sneaky Yaakov’s choice.  At a point when our madrichot came in to check on us (as they did every morning and every afternoon), we asked and they confirmed that we’d been listening to a religious rock station.  Sneaky Yaakov was out of the warehouse at the time and so we asked the madrichot to change it to a “regular” station the other warehouse soldiers would like (just to bother Sneaky Yaakov).  They immediately changed it to the “Soldiers’ Station” -- 98.8 FM -- which played popular Israeli rock music mixed with occasional American oldies tunes.  Sneaky Yaakov did not change it back. 

         David got along well with all of the volunteers, but especially well with the older volunteers such as Bob, Marty and Al.  They appreciated David’s wit and his stories, and so were a willing audience.  And David is very good at explaining his stories in an entertaining way, so his banter was their entertainment.

          Returning from dinner, we saw the same line of cats we see after every meal, greeting the volunteers and soldiers about 50 yards ahead of the bunks.  They were all half-grown and thin, living under our bunks.  After every meal they sallied forth in the hope that some of the soldiers or volunteers had brought them something from the mess hall.  Usually, someone did. And that simply reinforced the line of begging cats who greeted us outside our bunks after every meal.

Monday, May 23

          I had gone running with Julian after work yesterday and had sweated up the t-shirt I wore.  I hung it outside our bunk on a clothesline to dry and checked on it just after dinner.  It was just about dry, but I left it there and forgot to take it in last night.  This morning I checked on it and it was soaked with the night’s dew.  Even in this dry desert weather, the dew is heavy. 

         Mosquitoes are a problem on this base, and the mosquitoes here are big.  Ken sleeps under a mosquito net to avoid them, and we try to keep our bunk door closed as much as possible to keep out these pests.  Sometimes, we do a mosquito check just before lights out at night.  But last night we missed one.  It buzzed David and me for most of the night even though we kept ourselves completely under the sheets.  At 3:00 a.m. and still awake, I turned on the lights, hunted it down and splatted him on the wall just over my head with a Newsweek magazine.  Those Newsweeks have many uses.

          For breakfast, David especially relishes chocolate milk (called “Shoco” and packaged in plastic bags) mixed with cornflakes.  Today, they had this combination available, so he was a happy volunteer.  I settled for cottage cheese, sardines, scrambled eggs, and cut-up tomatoes.  Other than the volunteers, few people show up for breakfast.  The soldiers who are on the base overnight in our compound generally forsake breakfast for a cup of coffee from the coffee machine and cigarettes. 

         I raised the flag at flag raising, and then the volunteers retreated to the back of the parade ground for the base commander to talk with his assembled soldiers in front of the flag pole.  We formed our traditional “chet” (a “U” shape with the madrichot at the open end of the “U”) to receive the news from Sharon.  She reported that a volcanic eruption in Iceland had interrupted European airline flights.  Iran had arrested 30 people on charges of spying for the CIA in search of Iran’s nuclear facilities.  British forces have fully withdrawn from Iraq.  And lastly, Sharon asked David to summarize President Obama’s Middle East speech and his subsequent meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, which he did. 

         Every base has a rhythm.  And by today, we were in that rhythm.  David, Bob and I arrived at the antennae warehouse and immediately got to work where we had left off yesterday -- taking apart, sorting and storing parts of broken radio backpack antennas.  At 11:30, we had a meeting of the volunteers to hear from Harel, a young man who was the commander of all of the Sar-El madrichot.  He explained why taking on his current job made him feel like he was “closing a circle” in dealing with people who want to help Israel.  His paternal grandfather had come from Poland to Israel before WWII and had captained a ship (the Sima) which took part in the Clandestine Aliyah which brought Holocaust survivors to British-held Palestine before the State was declared in 1948.  His grandfather fought with the Haganah in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.  Later, he was sent to Algeria to help Algeria’s Jews immigrate to Israel, and later he did the same for the Jews of Uruguay.  Harel’s father had been a shaliach in Toronto and Los Angeles, encouraging immigration to Israel.  Harel’s maternal grandfather had been a fighter in Menachem Begin’s Etzel before 1948, and had later helped to found the city of B’nai Brak. 

         With such a background on both sides of his family, Harel felt that he was continuing his family’s tradition of helping people who support Israel.  A very patriotic Jew, he said he put a lot of effort into his job with Sar-El because he regarded it as a mission for him and not simply a job.   In closing, Harel acknowledged that Israel has a big problem in that it has not done as good a job in the public relations arena as have the Arabs.  As a result, media coverage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been slanted against Israel.  Therefore Harel asked that the volunteers be ambassadors for Israel when they return to their home countries. 

         Our afternoon task centered on a problem which I had never previously considered.  An armored tank is an enormous hunk of metal in which 4 crewmen sit.  What if there were a sudden power surge from the tank’s battery or a bolt of lightning hit the tank?  All of the people in the tank would be instantly electrocuted unless the electricity were directed into the ground by a grounding device.

          This afternoon we built such grounding devices for tanks.  We started by pulling long yellow plastic tubing over a 7-foot long metal rod.  Then on one end of the rod we attached a 7-foot strip of woven metallic material made of fine wires.   We pulled the rod out, in effect moving the yellow plastic tubing over the metallic strip.  Once the metallic strip was within the plastic tubing, we fastened metal fixtures on both ends, clamping them to the metallic strips.  The last step involved 3-foot iron spikes, each of which weighed about 30 pounds.  We used a heat gun on the tubing to shrink it onto the metallic strips (David liked that job).  Finally, we fastened one of the metal fixtures to the top of each spike and wound it around the spike, tying it at the other end.  It took us all afternoon to complete the 17 rods Aharon had asked for.  By the end of the day, we felt we had put in a good day’s work as our arms and hands were sore from handling the heavy metal spikes.

          Walking to dinner this evening with David and me, Sharon commented that she had traveled to Germany when she was in the 11^th grade.  She explained this was part of a student exchange with German high school students.  She had stayed in the home of a German student her age.  The Israeli students, together with the German students with whom they were staying, took a tour of the Dachau concentration camp.  I asked Sharon how she felt visiting Dachau.  “We study the Holocaust in school and see the pictures of the camps, but I was so emotional visiting Dachau that I cannot express it.  It helps to reinforce in me the reason why there must be a Jewish homeland in Israel,”  she replied.  Sharon’s grandfather had been thrown into the Buchenwald concentration camp in the late 1930s.  But because he had been injured fighting in the German army in WWI, they let him out and he took his entire family to British-held Palestine in 1938.  Her grandfather’s experience in Buchenwald made her trip to Dachau that much more personal to her.

          I asked Sharon how the German high schoolers had reacted to the tour of Dachau.  “They had studied the Holocaust in their school”, she replied.  “It is required of all German students to study the Holocaust.  Nonetheless, they were awkward and embarrassed to walk through Dachau.  One of the German high schoolers had a grandfather who had been a Nazi.  Once we learned that we couldn’t talk to her or even look at her.” 

         I credit Michele and Sharon for putting on an educational activity every evening we’ve been on the base.  On many other bases, the madrichot organized an activity every other evening.  But Michele and Sharon are very conscientious about using every evening on base to create a positive educational experience for all of the volunteers.  We’ve had evenings focused on subjects such as Israeli history, Israeli geography, and Hebrew numbers. 

         Tonight’s activity was more somber and impactful.  Michele and Sharon spoke about the 7 Israeli soldiers who are currently missing in action and are possibly captives.  They told the story of each of the seven.  The first of the seven were 3 Israeli soldiers (Yehuda Katz, Zack Baumer, and Zvi Feldman) who were all captured on June 11, 1982 in the Battle of Sultan Yaakov during the First Lebanon War.  The fourth soldier is Ron Arad, the navigator of an F-4 Phantom jet shot down over Lebanon in October 1986.  The fifth is a soldier who disappeared while on guard duty on an outpost on the Lebanese border in August 1997, and presumably was kidnapped.  The sixth was a Druze soldier named Majdi Halaby who disappeared on May 24, 2005.  And the seventh soldier was Gilad Shalit who was captured in a Hamas ambush along the Gaza border on June 25, 2006 in which 2 Israeli soldiers were killed.  During the weekend before last, David had participated in a Kabbalat Shabbat prayer session in honor of Gilad Shalit in Caesarea on the road leading to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s home.

          A tent has been set up outside of Netanyahu’s Jerusalem office by supporters of Gilad Shalit to bring pressure on Netanyahu to negotiate a prisoner swap for him.  But across the street is a second tent put up by families of victims of Palestinian terrorists who oppose releasing those terrorists as a swap for Israeli soldiers.  There is a big controversy in Israel as to whether to release terrorists who have “blood on their hands” in order to obtain the release of Israeli soldiers.  While there have been a few prisoner swaps in the past, they have required the release of hundreds of terrorists just to get back the body of Israeli soldiers and thousands of terrorists to obtain the release of a live Israeli soldier.  Hamas is currently demanding the release of over 1,500 Palestinian terrorists just for Gilad Shalit.  So the issue of whether to engage in additional prisoner swaps is both complicated and subject to great debate within Israeli society.

Tuesday, May 24

          I’m still having trouble sleeping, so I gave up at about 4:30 a.m. and took a shower in the deserted bathroom.  It was chilly outside and the air was heavy with cold dew which made me feel like I was walking back from the shower to my bunk through a mist.  The sun had not yet started to rise. 

         Before breakfast, David tried the hot chocolate from the nearby vending machine for the first time.  The hot chocolate was sweet and good.  It also resulted in David’s being wired at breakfast, talking non-stop. 

         David raised the flag in front of the assembled soldiers and volunteers.  Afterwards, Sharon gave us the news.  An El Al flight from Israel to Newark, New Jersey had to turn back when it was discovered to have had serious mechanical problems.  Benny Gans was given a 35-day prison term for going AWOL from the IDF, but it turned out that he was a corporal rather than the Israeli Chief of Staff who bears the same name.  And President Obama was traveling to Europe to try to garner support from other world leaders for his Middle East peace plan. 

         We were standing in our “chet” formation at the end of the news when Shalom approached us and had a long conversation with our madrichot.  They translated his instructions.  In light of re-construction today of certain rooms in the main laboratory testing building, the volunteers working in that building would be given new work assignments.  The teams working outside the main laboratory testing building on battery testing, painting and antennae repair would remain the same.

          We trekked to our antennae warehouse and immediately went to work.  Aharon greeted us warmly but warned:  “Today will be a balagan (“a mess”) because many soldiers from the main laboratory testing building will be temporarily assigned to the antennae warehouse.  It will be noisy and crowded and hard to work here.” 

         For the first hour of work, we saw no balagan.  But at about 9:30, a swarm of soldiers from the main laboratory testing building descended on our warehouse.  They turned up the radio to blasting status, and started moving furniture in the warehouse.  We continued to work in our corner of the warehouse making radio backpack antennas, all the while dodging chairs and tables being moved in and out of the warehouse. 

         Just after lunch, our madrichot arranged for us to receive a tour of the Home Front Command’s emergency broadcast studio for use in the event of an attack.  Ma’ayan, the soldier in charge of the studio, explained that in an emergency the studio broadcasts on Channel 33 (normally an unused channel) to the entire Israeli civilian population.  As an example, Ma’ayan played an old broadcast warning of a rocket attack which had been broadcast as a practice exercise. 

         I took a break in the middle of our afternoon work to meet with Israel Geva, the civilian head of Sar-El, who wanted to thank me for giving him a Hebrew copy of my father’s book “Fighting Back:  A Memoir of Jewish Resistance in World War II”.  While we sit together, Israel told me of his only experience in North Carolina.  In 1983, the U.S. had had two of its jet fighters shot down over Lebanon.  At the time, Israel had already developed drones to take the place of piloted military planes.  The loss of the two fighter jets caused the U.S. military to ask to see Israel’s drone technology.  Israel Geva led a team which brought the drones to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to display their capabilities.  This demonstration persuaded the U.S. military to adopt the drone technology, which it now employs in many theaters of war (e.g., Afghanistan) to avoid imperiling the lives of American pilots.   

         On his way out, Israel ran into Julian, our volunteer from London.  He asked Julian how he had heard of Sar-El.  Despite being very active in Jewish organizations in England, Julian had never heard of Sar-El until he read a newspaper article about a Sar-El volunteer from Ireland.  This woman was not Jewish but had written a very positive editorial about her experience in Sar-El.  The newspaper article Julian had read described how the woman was mistreated as a result of her editorial by Irish people who were virulently anti-Israel.  The persecution of this woman in Ireland for being openly pro-Israel was what caught Julian’s eye and caused him to look more closely into Sar-El and eventually volunteer. 

         During our afternoon work stint, more and more volunteers were sent to our antennae warehouse.  These were the volunteers who had previously been assigned to the main laboratory testing building.  David took on the role of trainer to instruct the volunteers who were new to our warehouse.  David was good at patiently teaching how to construct the radio backpack antennas and in short order we had 8 volunteers (instead of our original 3) doing the work, all the while trying not to bump into each other or into the Israeli soldiers who continued to move shelves and tables in and out of the warehouse.  By the end of the day we were tired but proud of the high volume of work we had produced.

          Following our evening activity (a game of Jeopardy based on Israeli topics, which our team won by a landslide), we all went to bed early, tired from a long day’s work.

Wednesday, May 25 

         David was sick with a sore throat, to the point he couldn’t talk this morning.  Al gave him some throat lozenges and Ken gave him some Israeli cold pills whose ingredients sounded like Robitussin.  By the end of the day, David was feeling better, which was good because today was the day of our trip to Masada and the Dead Sea.

          Sharon gave us the news this morning at our moadon (since we were in our civilian clothes for our trip, we could not go to flag raising).  Netanyahu gave a speech to Congress in which he said that Israel would not go back to the 1967 lines and that Jerusalem would not be divided.  He received a standing ovation from Congress.  But the Palestinians rejected Netanyahu’s position, saying it made peace impossible.  Tel Aviv had increased its enlistment rate of new soldiers.  And finally, Prince William and his bride returned from their honeymoon and met with Barack and Michele Obama in England. 

         Our bus left at 9:00 for Masada, having already picked up Czech Sar-El volunteers from a nearby base.  Accompanying us were 2 armed female soldiers from the base, as well as a soldier guide named Liat.

          The bus drove us southeast past many acres of cultivated fields of grapes, dates, sunflowers and oranges.  Gradually, the topography became dryer and more desert-like, and in the distance loomed the hills of the Judean Desert.  Approaching and beyond Arad, the only things we saw in this desolate environment were an occasional Bedouin encampment along a dry river bed, one or two small Arab villages, and small flocks of grazing sheep, goats and even some camels.  The camels were of two types.  One type seemed to be wild and loose, wandering over the hills.  The other type were domesticated camels which had one leg tethered to a long rope to ensure they did not wander off while grazing.

          Arad is a major city on the edge of the Judean Desert.  The apartment buildings of the city have breathtaking views of the surrounding desert hills and wadis.  While driving through Arad we spotted several posted banners calling for the release of Gilad Shalit.  After Arad the road narrowed so that, although it had a white line down the middle, the entire width of the road was equivalent to a single wide lane in North Carolina.  As the narrow road twisted and turned and the bus continued to speed through this torturous path in the hills, one of the two female guard soldiers nervously exclaimed:  “He’s going to kill us!”.  She got out of her seat and sat on the floor, unable to bear to look out the bus windows.  I realized why Israeli buses all have handles built into the backs of the seats as we all held on for dear life as the bus lurched from side to side at what seemed like an unreasonably high speed.

          But the bus driver knew her stuff.  She deposited us and the Czech volunteers at the base of Masada and at 10:30 we started our climb up the “short path” to the top of this cliff-like fortress overlooking the Dead Sea.  At the top of the cliff we walked through the fortress which Herod built about 2000 years ago.  This fortress was made famous as the last stronghold of the Jews when they revolted against Roman rule for the second time in 70 A.D.  After the Romans conquered Jerusalem to crush the rebellion, they sent 18,000 soldiers to take the final group of 960 rebels who retreated to the mountain fortress of Masada.  After holding off the Roman legions for three years, the rebels finally realized that their walls had been breached and capture was inevitable.  So they agreed to a mass suicide just before the final Roman attack.  This suicide was documented by the Roman historian Josephus Flavius, who had been a general in the Jewish rebellion but then had betrayed his people to fight for the Romans.  The fall of Masada to the Romans marked the end of the independent Jewish state for 1,900 years, until the creation of Israel in 1948.  Israeli soldiers are now sworn into service at the top of Masada with the oath:  “Masada will not fall again”.

          Liat, our soldier guide, related the story of the last days of Masada’s defenders while we stood in the fortress’s ancient synagogue, admiring the breathtaking views of the Dead Sea and the surrounding mountains.  She also told us why Herod had originally built this fortress.  He was a paranoid personality.  He had been appointed as governor of Judea by the Romans, but never felt accepted by the Jews even though the woman he married (Miriam) was a descendant of the Hasmonean line of leaders which had freed Israel from the Greek ruler Antiochus about 160 years earlier.  Suspicious that everyone was trying to murder him, he proceeded to suffocate his wife, kill his children, and then murder everyone else in the Hasmonean line of royalty to avoid potential competitors.  While he was a great builder, having built the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the great port of Caesarea, he was hated by the Jewish people.

          From Masada, we drove to the Dead Sea for a swim.  Many of us took the occasion to experience the salty sea (33% salt vs. 11% salt in the ocean).  David and I passed on swimming, having previously swam in the Dead Sea.  Instead, we enjoyed falafel at a local eatery.

          Returning from the Dead Sea to the base was a long bus ride.  During that time, I had a chance to chat with Jennifer to find out what had motivated her to volunteer with Sar-El.  A 34-year old single Christian woman from Houston, she had grown up among Jews, having attended a small private secular school which was mostly Jewish.  Also, she was very affected by learning that one of her Jewish friend’s grandmother had died in the Holocaust.  Jennifer was an activist by nature, having spent time volunteering in Egypt to teach English.  So when she heard from a friend in England about the Sar-El program, she was anxious to try it.  She had previously spoken with me about a CNN program we had both watched about a year ago.  It highlighted that Palestinian parents are willing to see their kids become suicide bombers to kill Jews.  She could not understand how parents could support this action.  I explained that there will not be peace in the Middle East until Arab mothers care more about their children than they care about killing Jews.  To illustrate this point, I told her the story, told to me by Sar-El’s founder General Aharon Davidi, about the Muslim conquest of Iran.  After the Muslims had swept through North Africa and the Middle East in the 7^th and 8^th centuries, their conquest was blocked by the Zoroastrians who ruled Persia (present day Iran).  The Muslim general sent an ultimatum to the Zoroastrian general demanding that the latter surrender, saying:  “You value life, but we value death.  So we will inevitably overwhelm you.”  The Muslim army did just that, wiping out the Zoroastrians.  The moral of this story is that, as long as militant Muslims value death instead of their own lives, peace with them is impossible. 

         I also had a chance to hear more from Julian (from London) about his reasons for volunteering.  In addition to the abuse he had read about an Irish woman suffering for writing a pro-Israel article regarding her Sar-El stint, Julian described other motivations.  He had recently helped to form a “UK Lawyers for Israel” group of about 50-60 British lawyers.  They had decided that simply writing a check in support of Israel was not enough and that they wanted to be more active in opposing anti-Israel efforts.  And apparently, they had had some success.  For example, their lawyers had written complaints about a judge who had given a very anti-Israel speech and as a result the judge was reprimanded.  Similarly, they had written complaints to the U.K.’s Advertising Board about a travel ad which referred to Palestine as a country and as a result the ad was pulled.  Volunteering with Sar-El was a logical extension for Julian of his decision to take a more activist role in supporting Israel than merely writing a check.  And when he returned home he planned to speak to the Board of Deputies (the UK’s equivalent to the Jewish Federation in the U.S.) to recommend Sar-El.

          Riding back from the Dead Sea, we were a tired group.  Along the way, David took a number of pictures of the picturesque gorges carved out by the rivers which clearly had formerly flowed into the Dead Sea from all sides, when the Dead Sea was many times larger than it is today.  Some of the dry river beds were at the bottom of deep gorges carved out of the surrounding rock over thousands of years.  It reminded me of the Colorado River gorge at the base of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, except there was no water at the bottom of these gorges.

          Thirty minutes from Ramle, the bus driver pulled into a gas station to refill her tank.  When pulling out of the station, I noticed a small sign at the edge of the property:  “Bor Bitachon” or “bomb hole”.  This was a reminder of the height of the violence of the Palestinian violence of the Second Intifada, when every commercial establishment needed to have  bomb disposal hole in the event a suspicious package was discovered.

          We arrived late at the base for dinner (6:30) and joined the contingent of U.S. aerial photography soldiers there for a dinner of shakshukah (cooked eggs in tomato sauce).  In bidding them farewell, I learned that they were also leaving Israel at the end of the week.  But instead of returning home, they would be heading to Germany.

         For our evening activity, our madrichot thanked the 5 volunteers who would be leaving the base after 2 weeks and turning home tomorrow (Al, Jennifer, Lisa, David and me).  They gave each of us a set of personalized Israel dog tags, a Sar-El button, a shoulder patch worn by soldiers of the Home Front Command (our neighboring base of Pikud Ha-Oref), a contact list of our volunteer team, a certificate of appreciation, a group picture, and a Sar-El t-shirt.

          The departing volunteers each made a few remarks.  I thanked the madrichot and pointed out to the volunteers that our madrichot had been especially conscientious in planning an educational activity for every evening.  Most madrichot don’t go so far.  Then we gave presents to Michele and Sharon – gift certificates to a clothing store and two picture frames in which Carl had hand-carved their names in Hebrew. 

         Julian from Toronto also addressed the group.  He acknowledged that he had arrived at the base late and yet had been received by everyone as a full member of the team.  He thanked us all for our friendship.  Julian had some sort of physical disability – his hands constantly shook – yet he did all the work to which he was assigned even when it required fine eye-hand coordination such as in our antennae warehouse.  And so we appreciated the extra effort he had to make to volunteer with us and therefore, of course, treated him as part of the group.

       Finally, we all sang Happy Birthday to Marty – his 72^nd birthday would be on Friday.  I complimented the 3 septuagenarians of our volunteer team – Al (71), Marty (72),and Bob (77).  All three of them had done the same work as the younger volunteers and that was admirable.  I only hope I am in as good shape as they are when I reach my 70s.  I especially appreciated Bob who, at first blush, came across as a gruff cynical fellow.  But once we got to know him, we all liked him.  And he was very patient working side-by-side with David in the antennae warehouse, listening to David’s stories and showing a sincere interest in David’s opinions and plans for the future.  In fact, David’s closing remarks were to pass control of the antennae warehouse to Bob, as the only member of our 3-person work team who would remain for the 3^rd week.

Thursday, May 26

          Flag raising was longer and more formal today.  A new higher officer presided over the ceremony.  Instead of the usual 60-second perfunctory process, he barked out “Amod Noach” (at ease) and “Amod Dom” (attention) several times.  And in the process he marched from right to left in front of the assembled soldiers and volunteers twice, each time meeting another officer on our left – the two of them saluting each other.  Scott concluded the ceremony by smartly raising the Israeli flag while wearing one of the soldiers’ green berets.

          We formed into our 3-sided chet and Michele gave us the news.  Egypt announced that next week it would open the gate between the Egyptian town of Rafiyah and the Gaza Strip.  The Egyptians claimed that by enabling the free flow of commerce with Gaza, this will help establish a Palestinian state.  (I think it will simply make it easier for Hamas to ship more missiles into Gaza to fire into Israeli.)  Hassan Nasrallah, head of the terrorist organization Hezbullah in Southern Lebanon, gave a speech on the celebration of the 11^th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon.  He stated that Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress killed any chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  Finally, the recent volcanic activity in Iceland was causing hundreds of flights over Northern Europe to be cancelled. 

          Today would be a short work day ending in late morning.  The five of us who were finishing our stint had to stop at 10:00 in order to turn in our uniforms, sheets and blankets.  The other volunteers had to stop working at 11:00 in order to change into civilian clothes and clean our bunks. 

         As a result, everyone was anxious to get as much work done as possible in the short time we had.  Our antennae warehouse had been reconfigured the day before, with the addition of 2 new tables seating six people.  Our volunteers who had been fixing radio bases in the main laboratory testing building now occupied those six seats.

          On our side (the antennae side), David, Bob and I were joined by Al, Marty, Julian (British) and Julian (Canadian).  Aharon set up a long manufacturing assembly line which started with the tank antennae bases David and I had previously completed.  Each man on the line installed another piece on that base and passed it on to the next person.  Aharon had brought in 2 shopping carts full of equipment to be attached to the bases and I was determined to finish the lot of them before David, Al and I had to leave at 10:00.

          We worked at a feverish pitch without stopping for water breaks.  To the soldiers’ dismay, we put Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on the radio – classical music with a beat that urged one to work faster.  After the first half hour, we were making considerable progress towards our goal when Shalom popped into our warehouse and “stole” away Al, Julian (British) and Julian (Canadian) for work outside our warehouse.  When Aharon returned to his warehouse to find that half of the volunteers on his assembly line had been taken away he was upset, but Shalom was his superior officer and so Aharon was helpless to do anything about it.

          Even with the loss of the 3 volunteers, Aharon was not to be deterred.  He took the place of one of them on the assembly line and we redoubled our efforts.  And a couple of the other volunteers who had been fixing radio bases moved over to our assembly line to help.  As the 10:00 hour approached, we were feverishly working so hard that we were sweating despite the cold air conditioning in the warehouse.  As the 10:00 hour hit, we finished the job and celebrated.

          As part of the celebration, I awarded Aharon a pin bearing the U.S. and Israeli flags as a token of our appreciation for his allowing us to work in his warehouse.  Aharon was moved by the symbolic gift, which I pinned on his army shirt.  In Hebrew (which David translated) he expressed his appreciation for all of the hard work the volunteers had performed in his warehouse.  He said that the work we completed in just 2 weeks was the equivalent of 8 months of work without volunteers.  His few soldiers clearly were not as motivated as we were.

          And then we were finished (and spent).  We changed into our “civvies” and turned in our uniforms, sheets and blankets.  Our final lunch on the base felt like the base was expressing its appreciation.  The mess hall crew allowed the volunteers to enter the mess hall before the crowd of the soldiers.  And they served schnitzel (David’s favorite) and apple strudel (my favorite).  I was shocked to see apple strudel in an Israeli army mess hall, but this base has had the best food of any base on which I have volunteered. 

          Over lunch, Michele mentioned that she had been receiving consistent reports from the base officers that our group of volunteers had been extraordinarily hard-working and productive, which isn’t the case for all groups.  Then I asked her what groups were the most difficult for the madrichot to handle.  At first, she gave the usual diplomatic response that they can handle all groups equally well.  With some prodding on my part (I already knew the real answer) she conceded that each madricha dreads being assigned to a group of French teenagers.  The reason is that their parents send them to Sar-El, treating it like this is summer camp.  So the youngsters treat it the same way, being shocked upon arrival to learn that they are expected to work.  In many cases, they simply don’t do the work and “act out” as if they are in summer camp.  Michele gave one example she had personally had to deal with.  The French youngsters have an 11:00 curfew and lights-out policy.  Once, two French teenagers were found missing from their bunks.  A base-wide search was instituted.  The two teenagers were finally discovered at the front gate.  They had persuaded the guards to give them their helmets and guns and go back to their bunks to sleep, leaving the base entrance “guarded” by 2 French teenagers.  Due to antics like this one, it is not uncommon for French teenagers to be expelled from Sar-El and sent home.

          After lunch the 15 of us said our goodbyes to each other and to our terrific madrichas and then a car began to ferry small groups of us to the Ramle Central Bus Station.  David, Sharon and I were the last 3 to be driven from the base.  While waiting for our ride, Sharon sought my advice about the difficult situation she was facing.  She was in a very serious relationship with a young soldier whom she loved very much.  He was born in Israel but had been raised in Holland by his Dutch mother.  At age 18, he had decided to move back to Israel and enlist in the army as a “lone soldier”.  He was an excellent soldier, being selected for the Israeli paratroopers.  After completing basic training as a paratrooper, he applied for and was accepted into a very elite paratrooper unit called Seret Matcall.  The training for this elite unit was long and physically exhausting.  Most importantly from Sharon’s perspective, this new training was so demanding on his time that he was only given leave one day a month.  And in between he was not allowed more than a short phone call once a week, which he often used to talk with his Dutch mother.  Sharon was finding a “one-day-a-month” boyfriend difficult to get used to and instead wanted to spend more time with him.  It was like trying to keep up a long-distance relationship. 

         Sharon was at her wits end.  She felt her boyfriend was a very good person and she loved him very much, but was questioning how she could maintain the relationship.  I remembered that I had heard a saying once that soldiers accepted into Seret Matcall often lose their girlfriends because of the extreme time demands the army places on them.  The saying for Seret Matcall soldiers goes something like:  “Your gun becomes your girlfriend and your sergeant becomes your mother”.

          I didn’t relate this saying to Sharon.  Instead, I counseled her that, if the soldier is as good a person as she felt he was and if she loved him as much as she expressed to me, then he was worth waiting for.  Long distance relationships can test whether a relationship is strong.  I told her the story of when my wife and I were temporarily separated, due to our jobs, into living in Chicago and Philadelphia.  Being in a long-distance relationship is hard but if both people “pass the test” it makes the relationship that much stronger.  I also counseled that spending the short time they had together or on the phone complaining to him about the situation (as apparently she had started doing) would simply turn him off (as apparently this was how he was reacting).  He has no control over his schedule and is committed to his unit.  So he would interpret her complaints in the negative as her way of urging him to drop out of his elite unit.  I recommended that she drop the complaints and instead use their communications to be more comforting and supportive of his difficult training regimen.  That would earn her his appreciation and strengthen their relationship.  And in any event, there would be a finite end to his training for Seret Matcall, after which they would be able to see more of each other. 

         I felt like I was being asked for fatherly advice from this 19-year old woman, and wondered why she was not asking these things of her own father.  It was only at the end of the conversation when she thanked me for my advice that she mentioned that her parents were divorced and she lived with her mother.  It was only then that I understood why she had broached this topic with me. 

*          *          * 

         Sitting with David on my El Al flight from Ben Gurion Airport to New York, I thought back on the team of volunteers which had assembled at the base.  We had been a mixture of personalities and that diversity had seemed to mesh well because we enjoyed each other’s company.  We were all there because we cared for Israel and wanted to show our support.  And so we worked hard and appreciated the camaraderie which naturally develops in such a circumstance.  I will think back fondly about my experience with the base 2011 team and hope to stay in touch with them.  Perhaps I will see some of them on a future Sar-El stint.