Montreal Muslim News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 05:48:03 +0200
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Montreal Muslim News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Tourists can sign up for a stint in the Israeli Army to make Jihad against Palestinians - get reduced airfare and free accommodation for their "adventure"
Uniformed vacations
Tourists sign up for a stint in the Israeli Army for a unique experience not offered anywhere else Plan offers travellers perks such as reduced airfare and free accommodation, writes Harold Levy
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1123063926626&call_pageid=968867506610&col=969048867196&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
Toronto Star - August 6, 2005
SOMEWHERE IN ISRAEL The jagged steel barrier lifts to let the van approach. A soldier armed with an M15 rifle warily checks me over and scans my papers carefully. She steps into a guardhouse and picks up a phone.
I sit motionless behind the driver as one minute goes by ... then two ... then three.... The wait is excruciating.
Suddenly the soldier is back at the car window. "Shalom," she says warmly, a smile on her face. "Welcome to the Israeli army."
My vacation has begun.
I never dreamed that some day I would have the opportunity to spend a vacation working on an army base.
Here I was, a 63-year-old Canadian whose only military experience was exploring historic Fort York in Toronto (for a reception), who had started to develop a (carefully hidden) paunch, and who struggled to do a dozen push-ups.
Then I heard about Sar-El.
It's a unique program created by the Israeli army that uses civilians from all over the world Jews and non-Jews alike to do work which would otherwise have to be done by full-time soldiers or reservists.
It's also a huge travel bargain which is loaded with perks such as reduced El Al round-trip airfare to Tel Aviv, free room and board and clothing (uniforms complete with Sar-El epaulettes and rugged army jackets) and more.
There are also free army-escorted guided tours to different parts of the country; evening programs, including lectures on the Israeli army, politics and culture; free accommodation in soldiers' hostels on weekends; and discounts in many restaurants and hotels throughout the country. Most of all, there is the opportunity to spend a few weeks, or longer, seeing what happens on an army-base first-hand, and to talk around the clock with the young Israeli soldiers about their country and their dreams.
"Sar-El is truly unique," Pamela Lazarus, the program's co-ordinator, tells me. "There is no other program in any country in the world like Sar-El in which people can volunteer for an army. "Look at the price," Lazarus says, referring to the $80 application fee, reduced airfare and incidental expenses. "There is nothing like it."
Chicago-born Lazarus volunteered for Sar-El nine times before becoming its Tel Aviv-based co-ordinator.
My adventure started at Tel Aviv airport earlier this year when I and several other Sar-El volunteers including Margit Diamond, from Pittsburgh, the oldest participant at 77 were picked up by a soldier and driven in a van to a base "somewhere in central Israel." (The Israeli army discourages publication of the locations of its bases).
Once I cleared the front gates I was taken to my barracks where I met my roommates, Steve Garten, a Reform rabbi from Ottawa; Jim Cihak, a Christian from Toledo, Ohio, who had come on Sar-El with his wife Marge; and Sidney, a true Southerner from North Carolina, who would greet us every morning with an enthusiastic "How you all?"
The barracks was basic: six double bunks, cupboards and drawers, standard military issue sheets and blankets, and bare-bones bathroom facilities.
I noticed with glee that Steve had hung up a massive Canadian flag over a window overlooking the central parade grounds. To my amazement, the army brass never asked us to take it down.
Over the next three weeks, I got to know the 20 Sar-El volunteers on the base, including people from Norway, South Africa, England, Australia, Canada and the U.S. and Ravit, 20, who was born in Bonn, Germany, and Veronica, 18, from Belarus, the two soldiers responsible for our group. In some ways it was like summer camp, except for the fact that we were on a military base ... in a country under round-the-clock military and terrorist threat ... where the campers averaged about 55 years in age ... and the counsellors, young enough to be some of our children, carried M15 rifles.
The next morning, after a typical army breakfast consisting of a gritty hot cereal, hard-boiled eggs, a variety of salads, humus and bots Israeli coffee which appropriately translates as "mud" I picked up my uniform and was driven to the factory where I would spend most of my working time helping to recondition fire extinguishers for placement on tanks.
Over the next few weeks, I would share stories through a mixture of English, French and a bit of Hebrew, and drink lots of delicious Turkish coffee with civilian army employees including Rachamin, originally from Iran; Avraham, whose family had come to Israel from Turkey; Ravi, whose background was Syrian; and Moshe, our supervisor, who came from Uzbekistan.
Under their watchful eyes, I learned how to take a fire extinguisher apart, see if it could be saved, put it together again and conduct a variety of tests, including immersing it in water, to make sure it was in working order.
On my very first days, as I struggled to do a very basic task while the civilian workers looked on with amusement, one of them asked me in his best English: "What do you do for a living?"
"I am a journalist," I replied
"Ah, that explains it," he said, a twinkle in his eyes.
As the sweat rolled down my face, my muscles began aching from lugging dozens of extinguishers from one end of the factory to the other.
All of us had to get used to things like being jolted out of deep slumber by shrill alarms or the sound of gunfire from an evening exercise, or wearing the same sweat-drenched uniform for days on end or enduring repetitious meals, mopping floors or washing countless dishes.
But our discomfort was far outweighed by the opportunity to participate in a slice of life far beyond our ordinary existence, and the knowledge that most soldiers we talked to other than the ones who thought we were crazy for volunteering to do this work thanked us for helping out.
As Nahshon Afik, a reservist I met by chance while driving to Eilat, put it: "These things give us hope."
Sar-El, which is a Hebrew acronym meaning "service for Israel," was founded in 1993 by General Aharon Davidi, former head of the Israel Defence Force's paratroopers and infantry corps, who came up with a brilliant idea for dealing with an agriculture disaster in the north of the country caused when most of the area's farmers were called up for reserve duty to deal with a military crisis.
Davidi's idea was to send emissaries to the United States to recruit volunteers to work on the crops until the farmers could return.
The idea worked so well about 650 volunteers responded to the plea for help that Davidi decided to create a permanent program to bring volunteers from all over the world to do civilian work wherever it was needed in the army at any particular time.
"It is good for the country and it is good for them," he told our group during one of the evening sessions.
To date, more than 85,000 volunteers from about 30 countries have participated in the program. Davidi said Sar-El fits well into the Israeli army because the army not only defends the country but acts as an important socializing institution by helping absorb immigrants from all over the world into the Israeli way of life.
Lazarus cautions that Sar-El is not for everyone, including those with medical problems (there is a lot of walking) and those allergic to dust.
Lazarus says people have to be prepared to abide by Sar-El rules which include no carrying guns, no driving military vehicles (you can stand beside that tank but don't drive it), no visits to Jordan or Egypt while in the program (Israel is extremely concerned about possible seizure of its soldiers) and, for the many non-Jews who participate in the program, no proselytizing.
Lazarus says that while some of the non-Jews taking advantage of the program are fundamentalist Christians, "the majority are just regular Christians who like Israel and want to come," she says.
"Our relationship with them is very good."
Davidi says it does not matter whether the participants are Jews or non-Jews because, "what matters is the heart ... what you feel is what you are."
Louise Hall, 23, of Portsmouth, England, the youngest member of the group, says the Sar-El representative in London showed her slides and talked to her for a long time.
"That's because they don't want people coming here expecting to find the Hilton."
"It was a real insight into army life as opposed to going on a nice comfortable tour," Hall said. "We learned something new every day."
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Harold Levy is a reporter at the Star.
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