TRUE HEART

A few months ago, my friend's son was doing his reserve duty on the Israeli Egyptian border. He wrote a letter about his experiences there, and I first came across the letter in a blog post by Judy Lash Balint in her Jerusalemdiariesblogspot. With no end in sight to the anti IDF propaganda flying around cyberspace I wanted to share his letter as well and convey the true heart of the Israeli soldier.

My name is Aron Adler. I am 25 years old, was born in Brooklyn NY, and raised in Efrat Israel. Though very busy, I don’t view my life as unusual. Most of the time, I am just another Israeli citizen. During the day I work as a paramedic in Magen David Adom, Israel’s national EMS service. At night, I’m in my first year of law school. I got married this October and am starting a new chapter of life together with my wonderful wife Shulamit.

15-20 days out of every year, I'm called up to the Israeli army to do my reserve duty. I serve as a paramedic in an IDF paratrooper unit. My squad is made up of others like me; people living normal lives who step up to serve whenever responsibility calls. The oldest in my squad is 58, a father of four girls and grandfather of two; there are two bankers, one engineer, a holistic healer, and my 24 year old commander who is still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Most of the year we are just normal people living our lives, but for 15-20 days each year we are soldiers on the front lines preparing for a war that we hope we never have to fight.

This year, our reserve unit was stationed on the border between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip in an area called “Kerem Shalom.”  Above and beyond the “typical” things for which we train – war, terrorism, border infiltration, etc., this year we were confronted by a new challenge. 

Several years ago, a trend started of African refugees crossing the Egyptian border from Sinai into Israel to seek asylum from the atrocities in Darfur.  What started out as a small number of men, women and children fleeing from the machetes of the Janjaweed and violent fundamentalists to seek a better life elsewhere, turned into an organized industry of human trafficking.  In return for huge sums of money, sometimes entire life savings paid to Bedouin “guides,” these refugees are promised to be transported from Sudan, Eritrea, and other African countries through Egypt and the Sinai desert, into the safe haven of Israel.

We increasingly hear horror stories of the atrocities these refugees suffer on their way to freedom.  They are subject to, and victims of extortion, rape, murder, and even organ theft, their bodies left to rot in the desert. Then, if lucky, after surviving this gruesome experience whose prize is freedom, when only a barbed wire fence separates them from Israel and their goal, they must go through the final death run and try to evade the bullets of the Egyptian soldiers stationed along the border. Egypt’s soldiers are ordered to shoot to kill anyone trying to cross the border OUT of Egypt and into Israel. It’s an almost nightly event.

For those who finally get across the border, the first people they encounter are Israeli soldiers, people like me and those in my unit, who are tasked with a primary mission of defending the lives of the Israeli people. On one side of the border soldiers shoot to kill.  On the other side, they know they will be treated with more respect than in any of the countries they crossed to get to this point.

The region where it all happens is highly sensitive and risky from a security point of view, an area stricken with terror at every turn.  It’s just a few miles south of the place where Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. And yet the Israeli soldiers who are confronted with these refugees do it not with rifles aimed at them, but with a helping hand and an open heart. The refugees are taken to a nearby IDF base, given clean clothes, a hot drink, food and medical attention. They are finally safe.

Even though I live in Israel and am aware through media reports of the events that take place on the Egyptian border, I never understood the intensity and complexity of the scenario until I experienced it myself.

In the course of the past few nights, I have witnessed much.  At 9:00 PM last night, the first reports came in of gunfire heard from the Egyptian border. Minutes later, IDF scouts spotted small groups of people trying to get across the fence. In the period of about one hour, we picked up 13 men - cold, barefoot, dehydrated - some wearing nothing except underpants. Their bodies were covered with lacerations and other wounds.  We gathered them in a room, gave them blankets, tea and treated their wounds. I don’t speak a word of their language, but the look on their faces said it all and reminded me once again why I am so proud to be a Jew and an Israeli.  Sadly, it was later determined that the gunshots we heard were deadly, killing three others fleeing for their lives.

During the 350 days a year when I am not on active duty, when I am just another man trying to get by, the people tasked with doing this amazing job, this amazing deed, the people witnessing these events, are mostly young Israeli soldiers just out of high school, serving their compulsory time in the IDF, some only 18 years old.

The refugees flooding into Israel are a heavy burden on our small country.  More than 100,000 refugees have fled this way, and hundreds more cross the border every month. The social, economic, and humanitarian issues created by this influx of refugees are immense. There are serious security consequences for Israel as well. This influx of African refugees poses a crisis for Israel. Israel has yet to come up with the solutions required to deal with this crisis effectively, balancing its’ sensitive social, economic, and security issues, at the same time striving to care for the refugees.

I don’t have the answers to these complex problems which desperately need to be resolved. I’m not writing these words with the intention of taking a political position or a tactical stand on the issue.

I am writing to tell you and the entire world what’s really happening down here on the Egyptian/Israeli border. And to tell you that despite all the serious problems created by this national crisis, these refugees have no reason to fear us. Because they know, as the entire world needs to know, that Israel has not shut its eyes to their suffering and pain. Israel has not looked the other way. The State of Israel has put politics aside to take the ethical and humane path as it has so often done before, in every instance of human suffering and natural disasters around the globe. We Jews know only too well about suffering and pain. The Jewish people have been there. We have been the refugees and the persecuted so many times, over thousands of years, all over the world.

Today, when African refugees flood our borders in search of freedom and better lives, and some for fear of their lives, it is particularly noteworthy how Israel deals with them, despite the enormous strain it puts on our country on so many levels.

Our young and thriving Jewish people and country, built from the ashes of the Holocaust, do not turn their backs on humanity. Though I already knew that, this week I once again experienced it firsthand.  I am overwhelmed with emotion and immensely proud to be a member of this nation.

With love of Israel,

Aron Adler writing from the Israel/Gaza/Egyptian border.

Whispers OF WAR

A disparate title to say the least. War does not come in a whisper, it seethes in a raging cauldron, rumbling to the fore until it at last pervades the earth with thunderous blows.

The Arabs have never tiptoed around their intention to murder all the Jews and wipe Israel off the map. That people and governments on this earth choose to feign ignorance to this fact can only be due to a perverse ambivalence, a pathetic disposition toward acquiescence and, of course, classic hatred of Jews.

Yet, there are whispers that war in the Middle East may come this summer, if not sooner.The waters are being tested, literally in the Strait of Hormuz with allied warships playing chicken with the Iranian regime in order to secure the passage rights of oil tankers, and at the same time, Iran's proxies of Hammas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are ever poised to wage what they hope will be a war of annihilation against Israel. Now with the Muslem Brotherhood and the Salafists at the helm of power in Egypt, the deluge of heavy-duty arms pouring into Gaza is not even worth a headline in any newspaper. And Hezbollah has been rearming to the teeth under the "watchful" eyes of the UN peacekeeping forces. At the same time, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is being pressured by the U.S. and the European quartet to further curtail building on our own land and come up with more "confidence building measures" for our foes who are interested in anything but peace.
It's almost funny. Almost.


In reality though, we in Israel do not need to heed the whispers of war. We are always in a state of war.

In marking the International Holocaust Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu correctly pointed out that lessons have not been learned, as there is a disconnect on the part of the world powers between Iran's nuclear weapons program aimed at Israel and the Nazi's war against the Jews.
In the end, we Jews have only ourselves to rely on. And on God.

My friends and I all have kids in the army. In fact, it is fair to say, that everyone in Israel is closely connected with someone serving in the army, whether it be a dear friend or relative. No one is untouched, and the whispers of war resound with an unambiguous and decisive clamor. That we are all in this together is a stance that resonates throughout the land. For us, there are no slush piles of statistics. Each of our soldiers owns a face and countless hearts as well. This brings to mind a piece I had written during the last war in Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead back in 2009. It was based on a true event.

We were five friends, five mothers all in one row, standing in shul, side by side in prayer. We came together as we do every Shabbat, to pray with the community, and afterwards to catch up with each other's lives after another busy week. It's pretty much routine, only this past Shabbat, marking the second full week of fighting in Gaza, we had much more to pray for, and something else made it not so routine at all.


Five Friends - three of us having children either in Gaza or at a nearby base preparing to go in, and the other two with boys scheduled to enter the army in just several weeks. As we listened to the chazan (cantor) repeat the Shmoneh Esrei, we stare blindly at the windows of the shul in front of us. One friend has her house in view, the last one in the cul de sac directly across the street from the shul, when we all witness the slow-moving army jeep inching towards her front door.


Suddenly we are no longer staring blindly. Our friend gasps deeply, her eyes widen in trepidation and the rest of us stand paralyzed, not daring to breathe. Her son informed her before Shabbat that he would be going into Gaza. 


For a few long moments we lose sight of the army jeep as it passes the width of our window. Where is it? Is it parking? Is that it? There was no other house at the end of the street. Our friend measures her options in her mind - does she run out to seek the army personnel or just...wait until they find her?


Why run out? As long as she doesn't hear the dreaded news, all is fine. Her son is alive and well. Cherish those last moments of ignorant bliss.


Several seconds pass, and we see the army jeep turn around at the end of the cul de sac, making its way to leave the block. Perhaps a routine security round?
It drives down the street, past the windows of our shul, vanishing from our sight. Our friend cries tears of relief into her prayer book, and we hold her, each of us blessing this moment of reprieve.

As mothers, we know that today it is up to our boys' generation to safeguard our land. As it has been throughout the generations, it is our people's destiny to fight and to struggle for the preservation of our existence until such a time as our swords will be set aside for plowshares. Only that time is not yet here and, until then, we will do what needs to be done.


In reverence for our young fighters, respect for our wounded, and in deference to our dead, one can only hope that our government will not succumb to a peace deal that relies on false promises and on the dubious good graces of international forces. Let lessons of our past be learned; our security can only be entrusted to ourselves and to God.


We pray to God to watch over us, to give wisdom and courage to our leaders, to protect our soldiers and to heal our wounded. We pray that God brings safely home all of our boys. We pray that all of God's angels in the realm above, their golden-winged likeness safely sealed in our imagination, serve nobly as our relentless guardians. 

Yet, on the ground, on the front lines and in the trenches, ever is the sense that our angels wear green.