[wvns] British children train to fight in Israel
How each year scores of British teenagers go to the Middle East to
learn about soldiering and defending Israel
The British children who train to fight in Israel
Matthew Holehouse
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/sept2007/children_fight.html
In 2001 shocking reports surfaced from Gaza of summer schools being
organised by Islamic Jihad, which were teaching Palestinian
adolescents to become suicide bombers. The Israeli government
denounced the camps as evidence that a new generation was being
brought up to hate and to kill.
What went unreported was that at a purpose-built barracks in the Negev
desert, every summer hundreds of Jewish teenagers from Europe, Mexico
and America pay to spend nine weeks saluting, marching, firing guns
and otherwise pretending to be soldiers.
Marva, run by the Educational and Youth Corps of the Israel Defence
Force and conducted entirely in Hebrew, simulates the basic training
of Israeli conscripts for 18-28 year old members of the Diaspora.
Dressed in boots and olive fatigues, and obliged to carry an M16
assault rifle at all times, school leavers on gap years do push ups in
the dust, perform night marches with laden stretchers, maintain civil
defence shelters, fire machine guns at paper figures and simulate
military manoeuvres, as well as taking classes in Jewish identity and
the history and values of the IDF. Karaoke and dance-offs also feature.
With the security situation improving, increasing numbers of British
Jews, through youth groups such as RSY Netzer and Federation of
Zionist Youth, are signing up to one of the four 120-strong sessions
held every year. One half are girls, and large numbers come from
public schools in Manchester and North London.
Blogs written by participants revel in the camouflage-induced
machismo. "By the end of the first week we were beginning to look like
soldiers" writes American Joseph Fisher. "Strict discipline is
enforced by our mefakdim (commanders). There is a great atmosphere of
camaraderie."
Participants deny that the course was overtly anti-Palestinian. "I
never heard that sort of comment from an official source – although
there were some very right wing individuals taking part," says Mark
Fitch, a Manchester student who took the course last year. "There was
a lot of debate about the IDF, and whilst obviously by going on Marva
they implicitly endorsed the army, a lot of people said that they were
torn about using guns and running about."
Since the start of the Second Intifada some aspects of the course have
been reconsidered. Sessions on house-to-house fighting have been
dropped, as have re-enactments of the Battle of Ammunition Hill, one
of the bloodiest engagements of the Six Day War, has been cut.
"They're very aware of looking politically correct," says Fitch. "When
discussing the Middle East they really do try to present both sides of
the story and the overriding message is of striving for peace.
Most recently, British 16 and 17 year olds have been able to take part
in Gadna, the week-long course taken by Israeli schoolchildren in
preparation for military service and which has recently come under
fire for becoming increasingly militaristic. "Shooting an M16 gun…
physically lying on the land of Israel, learning how to defend it,
gave me an immense sense of pride" writes a breathless Aimee Riese, a
London schoolgirl and recent participant, in the Jewish Chronicle.
And this, really, is the objective.
The IDF website states that Marva seeks to "strengthen the bond
between the Jewish people and their land". Goelman, somewhat naïvely,
writes of the pride he felt in being mistaken for a genuine conscript
by grateful elderly Israelis. Others are more sceptical. "It's just
playing toy soldiers," says Isi Genn Bash, a British student who spent
her gap year on a kibbutz. "They make no actual contribution to the
IDF. It's really just very silly."
A spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Israel, a state organisation
that coordinates Jewish settlement and Diaspora gap year programmes,
agreed. "It's not an easy programme, but it doesn't come close to
being in the army – we certainly don't see these British kids as
soldiers."
Participants are told on leaving of their responsibility to act as
ambassadors for the 'misunderstood' IDF. "Israel sees the 70,000
Diaspora kids we host every year as advocates: people who will stand
up for Israel when it is under threat and attacked and will challenge
bad views, especially on university campuses" the spokesman said.
"Most won't ever emigrate to Israel, but we need to educate them to
defend their spiritual homeland by arguing for it."
Hence the desire to get Jewish teenagers to see the Middle East crisis
through the eyes of an IDF recruit. "The decommissioned guns we
carried weren't meant to symbolise weapons – they were there so we
could really understand what it felt to be a soldier" says Fitch.
"Just by carrying it we were able to empathise more with the IDF."
Whilst some participants sign up as prospective Israeli citizens in
order to sample the three-year military service, or because a relative
had served in the IDF, for most it is essentially a holiday. "There's
an implicit aim to associate a fun experience with the Israeli army"
says Micah Smith, a Rabbi's son who spent a gap year in Israel but
decided against the Marva programme. "It definitely glorifies the army
[and] the supposedly exciting life of a soldier."
Participants are encouraged to take photographs, with images of
themselves smeared in camo paint, straddling tanks and toting rifles
appearing on Facebook. One video hosted on YouTube shows the teenagers
pretending to raid a toilet block with M16s whilst another has a young
girl crouching behind a machine gun that leaps in her hands. And these
kids, in olive fatigues with thick glossy hair and ubiquitous aviator
sunglasses, look sharp. "Fifty per cent of going on Israel tour is
about getting laid" one participant tells me.
Israel has always held a policy of 'Aliyah' – the birthright of Jews
to settle in the Middle East. But Marva demonstrates how some Zionists
have inadvertently come to mimic their opponents in defining Israel
solely by its militarism. The website of Federation of Zionist Youth,
one of the largest and most hard-line organisers of gap years, states
"FZY feels that you cannot truly understand Israel and the people
living their [sic] if you do not understand the army." And that, for
many Jews, must be rather depressing.
There's not much to be won in games of moral equivalence and
assertions as to which side's indiscriminate attacks on civilians are
the more reprehensible. But ask yourself this question: If these were
British Muslim 19 year-olds firing machine guns and running assault
courses in Pakistan or Yemen, would we not have them all arrested at
the airport?
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