APRIL 2, 2021Z

'ANOMALOUS' AND ALONE

Unrecognized lone soldiers must manage IDF service without financial or emotional support

2 APRIL 2, 2021

CONTENTS April 2, 2021

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30

SAY WHAT?B Y L I A T C O L L I N S

Lo ha’iparon hachi had bakalmarלא העפרון הכי חד בקלמר

Meaning: Not the brightest/not the sharp-est tool in the shedLiterally: Not the sharpest pencil in the pencil caseExample: No matter how many times I explained it, he still didn’t understand. Lo ha’iparon hachi had bakalmar.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK | RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS

ZEditor: Erica Schachne Literary Editor: Yonah Jeremy BobGraphic Designer: Moran SnirEmail: Mag@Jpost.comBooks: Letters@jpost.comwww.jpost.com >> Magazine

Cover8 Lone and unrecognized

• By EVE YOUNG

6 The murder on the Temple Mount • By YISRAEL MEDAD

12 Twenty years: ‘In Search of Peace’ • By EVE GLOVER

14 ‘Until the very last Jew’ • By PENINA HOROWITZ

16 ‘Israel must continue covert ops in Iran’ • By YONAH JEREMY BOB

19 ‘From sorrow into joy’ • By DAVID GOLINKIN

20 From St. Petersburg manuscripts to the Washington Hagaddah • By HAGAY HACOHEN

22 The Bible as value set • By CARMIT SAPIR VITZ

34 The Haggadah’s messages for corona • By DAVID GEFFEN

41 Election Day implications for women • By TARA KAVALER

Sections4 Letters

24 Arab Press

28 Trending

30 Food

33 Reflections

36 Psychology

37 Observations

38 Books

42 Judaism

44 Games

46 Readers’ Photos

47 Veterans

COVER PHOTO: Sara Klatt/Flash90Photos (from top): Russian Museum of Ethnography; Pascale Perez-Rubin

4 APRIL 2, 2021

KNOCK, KNOCKThank you for “Roof-knock-

ing in the Gaza Strip” (March 26). Nowhere else have I ever found such in-depth and reliable information of this kind.

With Israel incessantly and falsely accused in the media and in international forums of racism, ethnic cleansing, geno-cide, Nazism and every other outrageous evil imaginable, it is refreshing and eye-open-ing to get a well-informed be-hind-the-scenes true view of how the IDF is different from all other armies and to what extremes it goes – when it is forced to respond to rocket barrages and other attacks – to protect civilians on all sides.

I was fascinated to read about the tactical and ethical dilemmas faced by our forces and the surprising solutions it invented and deployed – firsts in the history of warfare – to prevent “collateral damage.” Steps such as:

• Obtaining phone numbers and alerting occupants of buildings where significant numbers of weapons were storehoused in order to give those occupants an opportu-nity to leave – and then exe-cuting the bombing only after they exited, verifying this by drones.

• “Knocking” on rooftops with a minor preliminary strike and then launching the effective second strike only if

and when people evacuated to a safe distance.

I was amazed and proud to learn that important strategic operations were called off if it was determined that innocent people could be hurt, even if our efforts to protect the en-emy worked to our disadvan-tage. Our goal was not to hurt their innocent civilians, but to eliminate the weapons that were harming our innocent residents.

Nowhere was our code of purity of arms more evident to me than when reading this article and it is ironic that the International Criminal Court is initiating an investigation into alleged war crimes against us for our Gaza operation, when in fact it should be rec-ognizing us for unprecedented acts of innovation and restraint to avoid casualties.

One recalls Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, who in 2016 called the IDF the most moral army in the world. Only after reading this article did I realize how right he was.

HARRY BROWN Beit Shemesh

FINE LINERegarding “Behind enemy

lines” (March 26), having never had the honor and privilege to serve in the Israeli army, I was delighted to have the oppor-tunity to “join” reporter Udi Shaham and the IDF in their

operation in the exposed sov-ereign Israeli enclave between the barrier with Lebanon and the actual Blue Line.

I learned much about the precarious situation and the dangers we face in that area and how the IDF approaches the problem and is carefully working toward a solution in that anomalous patch of ter-ritory.

I am grateful to the Magazine for publishing such a fascinat-ing and informative firsthand experience piece; my only problem it with the title. The article goes to great lengths to make it clear that at no point did our troops take even a single step beyond the Blue Line, as that would be a viola-tion of Lebanon’s sovereignty. As the battalion commander said, “We are here to make sure that they don’t violate our sovereignty, so we should respect the rules and they are expected to act the same.”

Yet, oddly, the article’s title falsely broadcasts exactly the opposite, that we went “behind enemy lines” – which could wave a red flag to anti-Israel parties that might read no further than the headline.

Maybe one day we will actually have friendly rela-tions with our neighbor to the north, but until that happens, the wall is essential to the safety of our residents, and I appreciate the work of the IDF – and of the Magazine, which

gives us a ringside seat. ARLENE FAUNCE Bat Yam

LET’S GET SPIRITUALOne of the things I like best

about the Magazine is its spiri-tuality, and this is most appre-ciated by my family at holiday times.

This year our Seder was en-hanced by reading moving selections from the excep-tional articles by Michael Freund (about the Jews in Bergen-Belsen in 1944) and by Rabbi David Wolpe (about the ner tamid, the two meanings of “forever” and the insight that “the religious person is someone who has a pilot light inside that can be kindled over and over into a flame”).

Add to this the humor of Herb Keinon (“One messes with the sensitive holiday ro-tation calendar at their own peril”) and the lovely artis-tic vision of Dvora Waysman (“Who says Israel has almost no natural resources? When you see the splendor in the grass of the land’s spring glory, the wildflowers glowing like jewels...”). These and the other Magazine writers enhance our Shabbatot and hagim week after week.

The Jerusalem Post website has its value, but I am grateful that the print edition is still available.

AVI BRONFMAN Jerusalem

Write to: maglet@jpost.comOnly a selection of letters can be published. Priority goes to those that are brief and topical.

Letters may be edited, and must bear the name and address of the writer.

LETTERS

www.jpost.com 7

6 MARCH 26, 2021

COVER

• YAAKOV KATZ

December 2008 was the turning point. After

a year of incessant rocket fire, the Israeli

government decided enough was enough. It

was time to go back into the Gaza Strip and

do everything possible to take down Hamas.

While a ceasefire had been in effect for six months, spo-

radic rocket fire – Kassams and mortars – continued to rain

down on Israel. Nevertheless, the government had initially

preferred quiet. The situation was tenuous but the residents

of the South were, for the first time in years, able to leave

their homes with some measure of safety. The government

wasn’t going to put that at risk so quickly.In November, though, the calculation changed. The

IDF received intelligence that Hamas was digging a ter-

ror tunnel across the border into Israel similar to the one

that had been used two-and-a-half years earlier to kidnap

Gilad Schalit, a soldier in the Armored Corps. Schalit was

still being held by Hamas somewhere in Gaza and the IDF

decided that the “ticking tunnel” – as it was being called –

had to be destroyed.An elite IDF force from the Paratroopers’ Brigade was sent

across the border near the home under which the tunnel

was being dug. In a subsequent firefight, a few Palestinian

gunmen were killed. At one point, a large bomb went off

in the home, bringing down the structure and collapsing

the tunnel.The Hamas response and rocket onslaught was imme-

diate. Dozens of Kassams, Katyushas and mortar shells

pounded the South, reaching as far as Ashdod. A rocket

attack led to an Israeli Air Force bombing and then more

rockets and more airstrikes. By mid-December the truce –

tahdiya in Arabic – had completely fallen apart.

Only a handful of people knew that at the same time

as Israeli diplomats were trying to salvage the ceasefire

with Egyptian assistance, the Shin Bet (Israel Security

Agency) and the IAF were busy building a bank of

Hamas targets – headquarters, arms caches, command

posts, tunnel openings and rocket launchers. Homes,

schools, hospitals, mosques – everything was being

used by Hamas to hide their weapons and everything

was being added to the IDF list.On December 27, at 11:30 a.m., what would become

known as “Operation Cast Lead” was launched with

the bombing of 50 different targets by dozens of IAF

fighter jets and attack helicopters. The planes report-

ed “Alpha Hits,” air force lingo for direct hits on their

targets. Some 30 minutes later, a second wave of 60 jets

and helicopters struck another 60 targets, including

underground rocket launchers – placed inside bunkers

and missile silos – that had been fitted with timers.

In all, more than 170 targets were hit by IAF aircraft

throughout that first day. Palestinians reported more

than 200 Gazans killed and another 800 wounded.

OPERATION CAST LEAD would be remembered as

the first large-scale war in Gaza since Israel’s unilat-

eral withdrawal from the Strip three years earlier. It

would also go down in history for the United Nations

fact-finding mission known as the Goldstone Report

that would be established and accuse Israel of war

crimes and crimes against humanity.Ahead of the operation, Israeli intelligence agencies

knew they had to adapt. Since the withdrawal

from Gaza three years earlier, they no longer had

a physical presence on the ground inside the now

Hamas-controlled territory. While they could use

spies and electronic sensors to identify targets, they

would not be able to know – in real time – what was

happening inside a specific target.What the IDF knew was that Hamas was storing its

weapons in homes, in apartment buildings and under

schools, mosques and hospitals. If a war erupted, Israel

had to find a way to attack the targets while, at the

same time, reducing civilian casualties and collateral

damage.Recognizing the challenge, the Shin Bet did

something new: it created lists of phone numbers be-

longing to the owners of the homes, office buildings

and hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip. It was a Si-

syphean effort never undertaken by another military,

but Israel knew it didn’t have a choice.While collecting the phone numbers was difficult,

their use was supposed to be simple. The IDF knew

that there were basically two categories of targets. The

first were terrorists: Palestinians perpetrating an attack

or in the midst of planning one. Those people were

not going to get called before being attacked. To suc-

cessfully hit them, Israel needed to retain the element

of surprise even if that meant some innocent civilians

would unfortunately be caught in the crosshairs.

The second category included the homes, apart-

ment buildings, offices, mosques and other civilian

buildings where Hamas and Islamic Jihad had stored

their weapons, set up command posts or used as cov-

er to hide a cross-border terror tunnel. These were the

targets that would get phone calls in order to give the

people inside the opportunity to leave.“We identified thousands of targets thanks to our

agents on the ground,” explained Victor Ben-Ami, a

30-year veteran of the Shin Bet, who was involved in

the effort. “We had a list of warehouses, factories and

buildings with the understanding that the enemy had

a tactic it was using to do everything it could to blend

in and hide within civilian infrastructure.”

The intelligence, Ben-Ami recalled, was incredible.

“We knew what floor the target we were looking for

was located, what color it was, what was there, where

the air-conditioning machine was located and more,”

he explained.But because Israel knew that civilians would be

inside the buildings, the IDF and Shin Bet created a

new operational doctrine. Before attacking, it would

take the extra precaution of contacting the building

owner or occupant.The callers had a standard text they read in Arabic

that went something like this: “How are you? Is

everything okay? This is the Israeli military. We need

to bomb your home and we are making every effort to

minimize casualties. Please make sure that no one is

nearby since in five minutes we will attack.” The line

would then go dead.In every case, an Israeli drone would be hovering

above, watching what was happening in the home

and nearby. Once it saw people running out of the

building, IAF headquarters would give the fighter pilot

or attack helicopter the green light to drop their bomb.

In some cases, the Palestinians claimed Israeli drones

were also used to launch the missiles – although Israel

has never officially confirmed that it has attack drones.

Not everyone in the IDF saw eye-to-eye on this

new tactic. Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch was head of

the International Law Department of the Military

Advocate General (MAG) Unit as Operation Cast Lead

was in the planning stages.Almost every target was brought to her for approval.

In one discussion, one of the other officers around the

table suggested skipping the warning stage and attack-

ing the building even at the cost of killing or wounding

innocent civilians. The building, the officer explained,

had been turned into a military target by Hamas and if

people were inside they too were military targets.

The argument was immediately and vehement-

ly shot down by all the participants. “That was the

definite fringe minority,” she recalled.In discussions with combat units, Sharvit-Baruch

stressed two reasons why this new tactic was critical

for Israel. The first was ethical. Israel, she explained,

does not callously attack civilians when they can be

spared. “It is our moral obligation,” she affirmed.The second reason was of political and diplomatic

significance. “A lot of dead civilians deteriorates the conflict and

creates diplomatic international pressure and contin-

ues the conflict,” she said. “It harms our interests.”

Ben-Ami agreed. “Whether we like it or not, this is who we are and

how we do things,” he explained. “There is no plan

It was a Sisyphean effort never undertaken by another military, but Israel knew it didn’t have a choice

SMOKE RISES from the Gaza Strip following an IDF military strike, August 2014. (Albert Sadikov/Flash90)

IN EVERY case, an Israeli drone would be hovering above, watching what was happening in the home and nearby. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)

Roof knocking in the Gaza StripThe inside story how Israel developed

this innovative, life-saving and controversial military tactic

One recalls Col. Richard Kemp, who called the IDF the most moral army in the world

6 APRIL 2, 2021

MEMORIAL

The murder on the Temple Mount• YISRAEL MEDAD

On April 11, 1947, Asher Itzkowitz, along with his acquaintance – and despite the shared family name no family connection – Yitzchak Itzkowitz, entered the Old City through the Damascus Gate and continued on toward the

Western Wall. For some reason, perhaps first-time disorien-tation, they turned left toward a gate and proceeded toward the Temple Mount. Asher never made it to the Wall and never left the Old City alive.

Whether during the late Ayyubid 1187-1250, or the early Mamluk (1250-1517) period, according to Dr. Hillel Cohen, or from the time of Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders in 1189, a ban was instituted forbidding non-Muslims from entering the compound due to the Islamic tenet that only Islam, rather than Christianity or Judaism, is the true faith carrying on the heritage of Abraham. That ban was extended to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in the form of the infamous 'seventh step.' It is quite possible that despite the presence of Jews visiting the Temple Mount in the previous centuries – notably, Maimonides – that ban was sublimated into later rabbinic prohibitions on entry.

Nicholas Tavelic, Peter of Narbona, Deodatus of Ruticinio and Stephen of Cuneo became the first Franciscan martyrs of the office of the Custody of the Holy Land when, having been in Jerusalem since 1384, they decided to take their charge to spread their faith to the Qadi of the city, who was singularly unimpressed.

On November 11, 1391, they entered the Temple Mound compound, appeared before the Qadi’s gathering and began to preach. They were arrested, refused an option to con-vert to Islam and near the Jaffa Gate on November 14, they were executed, beheaded, their bodies blown up and their remains completely burned. Their ashes were scattered. In June 1970, they were declared Saints in the Vatican Basilica by Pope Paul VI.

In May 1818, Sarah Belzoni disguised herself as a Muslim female and, retaining the services of a 9-year old Muslim

boy in order to facilitate entry, she managed a peek inside the Dome of the Rock. On November 13, 1833, the English architect Frederick Catherwood dressed up as an Egyptian officer and entered the sacred precincts, eventually spend-ing six weeks “investigat[ing] every part of the mosque and its precincts” and made the first complete survey of the Dome of the Rock.

In 1839, following the Tanzimat reforms in the Otto-man administration, non-Muslims were permitted to en-ter Temple Mount if they had obtained the special permit from the governor. In the 1850s, an Italian military engineer named Ermete Pierotti was engaged as architect and engi-neer to the Ottoman authorities in Jerusalem, a position that provided him unrestricted freedom to study the Temple Mount. His 1864 book, Jerusalem Explored, describes his findings.

In March 1855, the Duke of Brabant, the future King Leopold II of Belgium, toured the Temple Mount while club-wielding Sudanese from Darfur guards were locked in their quarters for fear they would attack the infidel. In June that year, Archduke Maximilian, the heir to the Habsburg Empire, also was permitted entry. Moses Montefiore and his wife Judith toured the site on July 26, 1855 including the underground Ancient Al-Aqsa to the Southern Wall – and, apparently also on other occasions. The Palestine Exploration Fund got Charles Warren of the Royal Engineers into the area in 1867 and his diary entry of April 8, 1869 begins, “I visited the Dome of the Rock.”

THE 56-YEAR-OLD Yosef Assa, like Asher Itzkowitz, erred while walking to his study session at an Old City beit midrash on Wednesday, January 29, 1873. Being blind, he perhaps missed a turn and entered the Temple Mount. As reported in HaLevanon on February 5, his body was found the next day, seemingly tossed over the ramparts into the valley below. Ob-viously, unauthorized entry was an extreme danger. In the few years prior to World War One and just after, matters were more relaxed. We know that Tel Aviv’s Herzliya school pupils toured the site during Passover 1912, as did Rahel Yannait

ASHER NEVER left the Old City alive. Pictured: His gravestone. (Courtesy Yisrael Medad)

(1908) Berl Katznelson (1918) and Uri Tzvi Greenberg (1924).Asher Itzkowitz – most probably born in Ivanovice in the

Máramaros district of northeast Hungary in 1927, although another source has his birthplace as Drohobycz – was taken to Auschwitz during the war. His parents, from whom he was sepa-rated, did not survive the Holocaust but a sister did. Making his way to Budapest, he joined a Dror Zionist youth group despite being religiously observant, boarded the Yagur clandestine immigration ship and was sent to a Cyprus detention camp. He arrived in Israel in late 1946. He settled in Jerusalem and worked at a carpentry shop.

On Shvi’i shel Pesach (the last day of Passover), April 11, 1947, he walked from the Beit Yisrael neighborhood with his friend Yitzhak, 36, to the Western Wall. Becoming perhaps disoriented in the alleyways unfamiliar to them, they walked down David Street and missed the right-hand turn to the Western Wall. They approached the Chain Gate at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon. The presence of non-Muslims incensed the crowds. They were set upon by more than 30 rowdies. They were beaten with heavy sticks called nabbot, metal rods, stoned and stabbed. The newspaper reports were contradictory as to what happened next.

The first information was that they had unwittingly entered the Temple Mount. Such an act would have been cause for such violence. Indeed, as reported in this paper on December 16, 2020, over 70 years later, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, a Palestinian Authority appointee, de-clared there is “no place for non-Muslims in any way in this mosque, whether through schools, churches or other places of worship.” Some records note that the Moslem holiday of Nebi Mussa, always a heightened time of potential violence since 1920, also fell on that day.

The Palestine Government press office had issued a press release that was broadcast over the official Mandate’s Voice of Jerusalem radio that the murderous assault indeed took place inside the compound. Subsequent items appearing in the press related that they were attacked outside. Yitzchak was saved by an Arab policeman, a corporal, who dragged him into the courtyard who then closed the gate on the mob. Asher was left outside to be fin-ished off. Suffering severe loss of blood and critical head injuries, Asher died. The Hatzofeh newspaper indicates the corporal, who was on duty inside the sacred compound, at the police station on the north side of the raised platform, found them inside the gate when he rushed over in response to the shouting.

ASHER’S FUNERAL service was conducted Saturday night in the courtyard of the Bikur Cholim Hospital and was addressed by Rabbis Aryeh Levin and Zalman Brizel. From there, his bier was carried through Mea She’arim until the police intervened and insisted it be placed in a van. Shouting and shoving then en-sued. Eventually, the procession made its way to the Mount of Olives where Itzkowitz was buried. If you seek out his grave, you will find a barely recognizable plot with the text illegible.

The “Situation Committee” of Jerusalem’s Jewish Community Council decried the murder and demanded that the perpe-trators be brought to justice. At the same time, they called for restraint on the part of Jews, as on the Shabbat, two Arab ice cream vendors along Agrippas Street were beaten moderately by a crowd. The previous week, in a retaliation against the British Palestine Police for the murder of Moshe Cohen on April 7, the Lechi underground had shot the 20-year old constable Basil Forth, who had been in the city but a week, killing him.

Most papers did not carry the story of the murder of Itzkowitz on their front pages. By the following Monday, it disappeared from the pages of the Yishuv’s press. The Communist organ Kol Ha’Am devoted but seven lines to the incident. Other news, of the escape of Geula Cohen and the forthcoming hanging of Dov Gruner and his legal battle, was more prominent.

There is no memorial plaque near where Itzkowitz was murdered. He lies in a forsaken nearly unmarked grave. He has no progeny. He is a forgotten martyr.

THE FIRST information was

that they had unwittingly entered the Temple Mount.

Advance registration at

9862Open to men and women | Zoom link will be senton the day of the event | The program will be recorded

REDEEMING THE FUTUREREMEMBERING THE PAST

Marty Herskovitz, Rabbanit Malke Bina,Blu Greenberg, Rabbi Dani Segal,

Dr Yosefa WrubleFinding a voice for

Holocaust remembrance via poetry

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg andTanya Whitein Conversation:

When Theology Meets the Unspeakable

Thursday, April 8 at 8 p.m.

Reflections on Rememberingthe Holocaust

THE REPORT on Itzkowitz’s murder in ‘The Palestine Post,’ April 13, 1947. (The National Library Newspaper Collection)

www.jpost.com 98 APRIL 2, 2021

COVER

Lone and unrecognized

‘Anomalous’ lone soldiers complete IDF service without financial or emotional support

• EVE YOUNG

A difficult moment Yaniv Aharoni remembers from his mandatory IDF service is when he was told he would be released a week early due to a technical-ity. Any other soldier would have been ecstatic, as it is very common for those serving in the IDF

to count the months, days and then minutes until their dis-charge. But Aharoni was an unrecognized lone soldier, and

his housing was completely dependent on his service in the IDF.

Aharoni found himself begging the administration on his base not to release him early, and beseeching the staff at the Beit Chayal (IDF off-base housing for soldiers) to let him stay for a few days, but no one could help and Aharoni ended up sleeping in his car for the first few nights after his release.

“I was so helpless,” said Aharoni, remembering the mo-ment.

Lone soldiers are those serving in the IDF without a sup-portive family framework. There are two kinds of lone soldiers in Israel: “typical” lone soldiers, whose parents have passed away or do not live in Israel, and what are referred to in the IDF as “anomalous” lone soldiers, Israelis from complicated family backgrounds that have left them without support. Almost half of the approximately 6,300 lone soldiers in the IDF fall into the second category.

Some of these soldiers come from observant homes that don’t accept them once they stop being observant, some have abusive parents, or parents who struggle with mental illness. All come from homes that cannot provide them with financial or emotional support.

Soldiers who fit into this category are not always awarded official lone-soldier status by the IDF and thus do not qualify for those benefits. Some submit a request many times before it is finally accepted.

If Aharoni had been recognized as a lone soldier when he was released in 2018, he would have benefited from a three-month adjustment period during which he could have kept his army housing and would have been eligible for numerous housing grants for released lone soldiers. He also would have received extra financial support over the course of his service, preparing him for the adjustment to civilian life – but Aharoni’s requests to be recognized as a lone soldier were denied multiple times.

Aharoni’s father was regularly violent towards his mother, and he thinks that one reason his father kicked him out during the second year of his mandatory service was for him defending his mother. Aharoni says he could not return home; his family broke off contact and he received no financial support from them, but was still not awarded lone-soldier status.

That meant Aharoni did not receive tens of thousands of shekels worth of financial support from the army, was not eligible for multiple programs for lone soldiers (run both by the IDF and by various nonprofit organizations) and was not guaranteed lone soldier “errand days” or special leave to work. For Aharoni and many others like him, this created an almost impossible situation.

Because soldiers in mandatory service make a salary far below the minimum wage (for the highest-paid soldiers in mandatory service, the salary is approximately 30% of the country’s average monthly minimum wage) and are allowed to work only with permission from the army and in the hours outside their service, these soldiers often must eke out a life with next to no money and no time to take care of the most basic things.

HAREL LEVI (who asked his real name not be used) found himself in this situation toward the end of his first year of service. He had submitted a request for recognition as a lone soldier soon after his draft, and received the status for one year. When the year was up and Levi resubmitted the request, it was denied.

Levi doesn’t know why; the IDF never gave him a clear an-swer he could understand. According to Levi, nothing had changed in his life since his first request was accepted.

He was forced to try to support himself on his regular IDF salary – approximately NIS 1,600 per month. He paid NIS 1,300 for rent and food, and was left with NIS 300 monthly for everything else. He vividly remembers trying to buy a sand-

wich on his way to base and having his card declined. He

checked his account and realized he had a balance of NIS 3.65.

“You can’t forget that,” recounts Levi. “Living hand to mouth and what the army gives you

is socks and tank tops.”Levi left his parents’ home permanently at around age 16.

When he was younger, he would often leave for days or even a month at a time to get away from what he describes as a home that was “impossible to live in.” A strained financial situation, violence and a bad relationship between his parents forced him out and motivated him to request lone-soldier status when he was drafted.

Levi sums up the experience of being released from the army in 2019 as an unrecognized lone soldier, saying he felt like the IDF “takes you, breaks all of your bones, breaks you and then sends you on your way and tells you to stand on your own feet and fix yourself.”

Recognized lone soldiers are invited to join multiple mentorship programs after their service to assist them with the transition into civilian life. These programs help them find jobs, apartments and furniture, apply for schools and scholar-ships, and more. Unrecognized lone soldiers are generally not eligible for any of these programs.

Levi says he “doesn’t have words to describe” his treatment in the army when submitting requests for continued recognition as a lone soldier. From some officers and officials, Levi felt utter contempt. They “knew I was in distress and didn’t do anything,” Levi insists. At one point in the process, he request-ed a meeting with the officer in charge of approving or denying his request.

“The officer called me a liar to my face. He told me I was lying [in my request] and that I am in contact with my parents.”

Menachem Estryk, who was recognized as a lone soldier during his third year of service after multiple denied requests, also recalls being accused of lying while seeking recognition. Es-tryk was out of food in his off-base apartment. His commander agreed to bring him something to eat from base, and Estryk

asked him to bring hot food for Shabbat. Estryk thinks this re-quest was what prompted his commander’s commander to call and tell him that if he wanted food for Shabbat, he could stay on base and that the reason he would not be recognized as a lone soldier was because he was a liar.

Aharoni notes of the process of requesting recognition: “I felt like I was under a magnifying glass and something was wrong with me. They examined me so much and I felt accused [by them]. [I felt that] they were asking not out of a desire to help but a desire to judge me. I felt criticized.”

IRIS ZILKA, a social worker who works with youth with no family support, explained that soldiers often remember the challenges and suspicions they faced when requesting lone-sol-dier status despite the more material challenges their situation creates.

‘You can’t forget that: living hand to mouth and what the army gives you is socks’

YANIV AHARONI: Impossible situation. (Courtesy Yaniv Aharoni)

IDF SOLDIERS stop for lunch at the renovated compound of ‘The Lone Oak Tree,’ around a 700-year-old tree in Alon Shvut. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

(Left) PREPARING FOOD in Makom housing for youth lacking family support. (Makom)

AHARONI HAS an emotional reunion with his little brother. (Courtesy Yaniv Aharoni)

(Top left) IDF BERET with Infantry insignia and red combat background; once completing the ‘masa kumta’ (beret march), the soldier receives a unit-color beret. (Michael Botstein)

www.jpost.com 1110 APRIL 2, 2021

“It is hard enough to tell yourself you are alone in the world,” says Zilka. “They need to tell many people time after time that they cannot live at home. It is very hard.”

Zilka has worked in the field since 2005 and is the founder of Makom – a nonprofit that aids youth with no family support, providing them with guidance and housing. Her job often includes helping new soldiers become recognized as lone soldiers.

Lone soldiers fighting for recognition are pained by the thought that “they don’t see me, they don’t under-stand me or the situation I am in,” says Zilka. Soldiers might feel the IDF sees them as attempting to game the system.

Zilka has worked with multiple soldiers whose re-quests for lone-soldier status were denied despite having grown up in welfare housing frameworks after being re-moved from their parents’ homes by court order.

“Sometimes they are removed against their or their parents’ wishes,” notes Zilka.

“To do your service when they don’t believe you

and think you are lying and making things up, when you need to prove your reality, even though welfare has already determined that you can’t live at home and pays for you to live in a welfare framework,” is ex-tremely difficult, asserts Zilka.

There are a number of ways parents can make it dif-ficult for their child to be recognized as a lone soldier. Sometimes parents are not honest with the IDF; this can be because they are embarrassed to reveal their in-ability to support their child.

“Part of the complication is that [in the recognition process] the IDF asks parents if they want their child to live at home, but just because parents want them to live at home, doesn’t mean they can,” the social worker says.

Estryk’s parents lied to the IDF outright. He thinks they told the IDF they approved of his service and that he could live at home – despite this being untrue – because they wanted him to be in a difficult situation that they hoped would pressure him to leave the IDF and return home to a religious lifestyle.

Another way parents can complicate their child’s recognition process is by being in contact with them. There is no official rule that states lone soldiers must not have contact with their parents. Despite this, such

contact, no matter how limited, seems to be a deter-mining factor in whether or not a soldier will receive lone-soldier status in some cases. There also seems to be a gap between official regulations and how army “Tash” NCOs, those who are responsible for soldiers’ service conditions and submit lone-soldier status re-quests, understand what kind of contact is allowed.

Anomalous lone soldiers “are not allowed to have any relationship whatsoever with their parents in order to be [recognized as] lone soldiers,” says Stav Donni (who asked that her real name not be used). Donni is a former Tash NCO who worked on a base for combat soldiers and finished her mandatory service in 2019.

“There are so many examples out there. The second [the IDF] hears you talked to your mom two weeks ago or your dad, then they don’t care about the fact that you don’t get money from them or that you haven’t lived with them for years,” Donni continues.

Not permitting soldiers to contact their parents isn’t logical, according to Donni.

“You only have one set of parents so it makes sense if they are willing to talk to you, on the phone, even if they can’t support you, even if they don’t give you that unconditional love, that you’re still going to be in touch with them. You still want them in your life in whatever way they can be.”

Zilka says she has also encountered instances where contact with parents seems to be a qualifier for lone-soldier status.

“In practice we see that officers are taking [the soldiers’] phones and asking when they spoke to their parents,” adds Zilka, who agrees with Donni that this situation does not make much sense.

Zilka explains why contact with parents can be vi-tal for soldiers. In more troubled families, “parents are often dealing with a lot,” says Zilka, “and the child often takes responsibility for a lot of the things that, in a more functional family, the parents would do.”

Zilka mentions numerous reasons young people who are wholly unsupported by their parents may maintain contact with them; often they feel a sense of responsibility toward younger siblings, or act as go-betweens for their parents and outside factors. Sometimes they are helping parents pay bills.

“This isn’t a total cut of ties. But in a meaningful way, it isn’t that these soldiers can be supported by

their families. Quite the opposite.”

THE IDF says that in the past few years the criteria for being recognized as a lone soldier have been expanded and every request is examined carefully in its own right in as sensitive a manner as possible.

“In some cases, soldiers who would not have been given lone-sol-dier status [in the past] are being given the status today,” Maj. Na-talie Chen, head of the IDF’s lone soldier department, tells the Magazine.

“My officers know to evaluate every case for itself,” Chen explains. “We are not robots. There are people taking care of people [in my department] and we act sensitively.”

Her department is in charge of approving or denying all requests, and does extensive research on every case, including contacting soldiers’ families and those who know them well, Chen adds. A soldier who is not eligible for lone-soldier status will get a person-alized solution, whether that includes sleeping arrangements or financial grants, according to the IDF.

Chen notes that her department works with nonprofits and welfare organizations to perfect their response for every population and to learn how to better identify lone soldiers. Chen confirms that a soldier can receive lone-soldier status even if they have con-tact with their parents.

“I don’t doubt that if children grew up in a boarding school [or welfare housing], they are lone soldiers. I will give them recognition as lone soldiers until the end of their service,” says Chen, who em-phasized that the IDF is shifting from an old policy of granting anomalous lone soldiers temporary status and working to grant them the status for the duration of their service.

They are also no longer referred to as “anomalous,” according to Chen. Although the official order regarding lone soldiers still refers to them this way, the IDF now calls them “lone soldiers with no familial support.”

The IDF adds, “The Lone Soldier Center was founded in March 2020 to serve lone soldiers 24/7 out of recognition of this popula-tion’s unique needs. The center accompanies soldiers from before they draft and until a few months after they are released.

“The center reaches out to accompany soldiers in a complete and sensitive way and is a source of information and help for the soldiers and their families on a number of topics and in a number of languages.”

The writer was a lone soldier in the Air Force.For more information on the IDF Lone Soldier Center:

Dial 1111, extension 2; or go to www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=133784595223937&ref=content_filter

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COVER

A YOUNG woman moves into Makom housing.(Makom)

EAGER YOUTH come to Israel to join the IDF. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

A LONE soldier in training. (Eve Young)

SOCIAL WORKER Iris Zilka, founder of Makom. (Courtesy Iris Zilka)

www.jpost.com 1312 APRIL 2, 2021

COEXISTENCE

A peaceful visionThe Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Moriah Films celebrates 20th anniversary of ‘In Search of Peace,’ and more than 20 years of diplomacy with Arab leaders

• EVE GLOVER

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder, CEO and president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, touchingly remembers the rabbi training him for his bar mitzvah pinching his cheek and saying

in a whisper, “Moshela, it’s your bar mitzvah. I want you to remember how many hundreds of thousands of young boys were murdered in the Holocaust, so when you say your haftarah, say it loud, as if you were saying it for them as well.”

In 1980, Rabbi Hier founded Moriah Films, the film division of the Center, which produces documenta-ries that show the profound struggle of Jewish people throughout history. It is named after Mount Moriah, where Abraham, the first Jew, was tested by God. Hier is the only rabbi who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the recipient of two Academy Awards. Celebrities donate their time to narrate the documentaries, which have large or-chestral scores and animated visuals like feature films.

He exclaims, “When we tell the story of the Jewish people in all the films that we’ve done, we need to say it loud, with courage, because we paid the supreme price.”

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Moriah Films’ documentary In Search of Peace. Hier co-pro-duced and co-wrote the film with director Richard Trank, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and principal writer/director and executive producer of Moriah Films. The script is based on material written by the late Sir Martin Gilbert, a Jewish British histori-an and author. Narrated by Michael Douglas, In Search of Peace documents the tumultuous history of Israel from when it was established as a Jewish state in 1948 through the Six Day War of 1967.

Trank notes, “We made In Search of Peace as a sequel of sorts to our film The Long Way Home, which won the Oscar in 1998. The Long Way Home was about the strug-gle of the survivors of the Shoah to make new lives for themselves. So many people thought, ‘May 8, 1945, they opened the gates to the camps and everybody was fine.’ They don’t realize what people went through. And then we discovered how little people knew about Israel’s history as well, which is why we then made In Search of Peace and the films The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers and its sequel, The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers.”

Israel’s War of Independence, the Suez crisis and the Mossad capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann are shown through footage and stills licensed from The Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Jerusalem Cinema-theque’s Israel Film Archive, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other national and private archives. Trank describes how he uses footage that has never been seen before.

“At the Spielberg archives, they had outtakes from all the various newsreel services, and that stuff is really fascinating, because it’s the stuff that basically winds up on the cutting room floor. But somebody collect-ed that, and it enabled us to be able to show things

that people ordinarily weren’t used to seeing. So we’ve done that with all of our films. I don’t want people see-ing the same thing over and over again.”

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS of political heroes and people who struggled to survive this period of time in Israel are interwoven throughout the storyline. The triumphs and disappointments of Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister, are highlighted throughout the film. One of her most celebrated mo-ments was in January 1948, when she singlehanded-ly raised $50 million dollars from American Jewish leaders for the Israeli Army by pleading, “What are Jews in the United States thinking? Are you with us, or are you not? Do you consider it your problem, or do you consider it that because these Jews have come into Israel, that they are our Jews and you have noth-ing to do with them anymore? That’s all that I am asking you tonight.”

Trank describes the process of finding the right story.

“I look at all these historical texts, and the rabbi is like an archaeologist in a way. He looks to find stories that are very amazing and emotional. Oftentimes people don’t know them, so it helps bring color to the black and white.”

Rabbi Hier adds, “The soul should participate in the watching, not just the brain.”

One of the most heartbreaking but inspirational stories Rabbi Hier found was told to him by former Israeli prime minister adviser Yehuda Avner. Esther Callingold, Avner’s sister-in-law, was a young British schoolteacher who immigrated to Israel in 1946 out of her love for the country and strong belief in Zion-ism that stemmed from her Orthodox Jewish family values. A little over a year after obtaining a position as an English teacher at the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, Callingold became a Hagana soldier deeply committed to fighting for her homeland. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, she was defending The Jewish Quarter as the Arab Legion’s artillery dec-

imated the Old City’s most sacred synagogues and historical buildings.

Callingold was critically injured and taken to a hospital, where she lay in horrific pain because they had run out of morphine. A patient next to her offered her a cigarette, which she refused because it was Shabbat. At just 22 years old, she knew she was about to die, and penned a passionate plea to her parents.

“I’m writing to beg you that whatever happens to me, take it in the spirit I want. We had a difficult fight, I have tasted hell, but it has been worthwhile because I’m convinced the end will see a Jewish state and all of our longings. I have lived my life fully, and very sweet it has been to be in our land. I hope one day you will all come and enjoy the fruits for which we have been fighting. Be happy and remember me only in happiness.”

ANOTHER COURAGEOUS hero who was willing to risk her life for Israel was Shula Cohen. Born in Jerusalem in 1917, Cohen moved to Beirut, where she started a family after marrying a wealthy Jewish-Leba-nese merchant when she was just 16 years old. Cohen became prominent in the Jewish community and gained access to inside intelligence information from Lebanese officials about war preparations being made against Israel. On the precipice of the 1948 War of Independence, she started working with the Mossad to give them information and smuggle persecuted Jews from Arab countries to Israel. She sent her own very young children to Israel first, telling them she would meet them in two weeks.

Fighting back sadness, she bravely discloses, “Inside of myself, my heart was torn in pieces because I know I am lying to them, and they don’t know that I make them the pioneers of the aliyah so that everybody will see that I sent the first two of myself, so that I can take others and send them to Israel.”

In 1960, Cohen was arrested by Lebanese authorities and convicted without a trial of high treason. She was originally sentenced to death by hanging, but this was appealed after authorities discovered she was a mother to seven children. She was severely tortured and spent two years in solitary confinement. After the Six Day War of 1967, Cohen’s devoted nephews are shown praying for her at the Western Wall. Miraculously, their prayers were answered and they were reunited with her and the rest of her family when she was re-leased in a prisoner of war exchange with Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews came to the Old City

to see the Western Wall after the Six Day War ended. It was a celebration of coming home to a land only dreamt about for generations of Jewish people who struggled immeasurably to get there. But in Israel, victory often comes with a tragic price: 759 Israeli soldiers were killed in battle, and more than 2,300 were wounded. On the Arab side, over 30,000 troops died, and many more were injured.

Rabbi Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have been developing relation-ships with Arab leaders for over two decades. Rabbi Hier explains, “When the leaders come, we have special events for them. They’re friends of ours, we’re friends to them.”

Rabbi Cooper tells of how the 2007 Bali Holocaust Conference, which the Center co-sponsored, broke many barriers that existed between the Arab and Jewish worlds. “People from Israel came, and it was the first and only time a Holocaust survivor spoke in a Muslim country. His speech was broadcast globally and translated into Arabic in real time... the relation-ships from that continue to this day.”

RABBI HIER speaks fondly about how he and King Hamad of Bahrain are both fans of Frank Sinatra, who was a huge supporter of Israel and The Simon Wiesenthal Center. He humorously states, “I can say, without any fear of being contradicted, the king of Bahrain knows more of Sinatra’s songs than I do!”

In February 2017, after visiting the Center and the Museum of Tolerance, King Hamad invited Rabbis Hier and Cooper to his palace, where he announced there should be no Arab boycott against Israel, and that Bahrainis were free to visit there whenever they want. Rabbi Hier took King Hamad’s hand and recit-ed the blessing for royalty in Hebrew. The king told government leaders, “That was the first time someone came to me not to ask for something, but to give me a blessing.”

King Hamad signed The Bahrain Declaration on Religious Tolerance at the meeting, and then he and the Arab diplomats in attendance stood for “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem.

Rabbi Hier describes visiting King Hussein of Jordan when the monarch had eye surgery in Los Angeles in 1996.

“There he was. He had bandages, and he took out his wallet, and in his wallet he had a membership card to the Museum of Tolerance, which he insisted

on having.... How many of our members carry their membership card with them? I don’t know, but the king did.”

Another supporter of the Center is Mohammed Al-abbar, a very successful Arab businessman, who had kosher meals provided for Rabbi Hier when he stayed at his Dubai hotel, the Burj Khalifa.

Rabbi Hier explains, “There was a synagogue there. We made our own minyan [prayer quorum] in the Burj Khalifa... since the hotel is so large, people would get lost, so every time we went to the lobby, there was an Arab holding a sign ‘Shacharit morning services, this way.’ This was years before there was establishment of any relations between the Gulf states and the State of Israel.”

Rabbi Hier tells how, in 2019, he went with an Israeli ambassador to a synagogue in Manama, Bahrain, that had not held a prayer service since 1948. “We prayed there, and at the end of the prayer service, all of the people were gathered, there were some Arabs, and mainly there were some reporters, and we danced to ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’”

The 20th anniversary of In Search of Peace coin-cides with more than 20 years of interfaith outreach work the Simon Wiesenthal Center has done to help bridge the divide between Jews and Arabs. Moriah’s debut film, Genocide, narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor, premiered in 1982 and was the first documentary about the Holocaust to win an Oscar and the first film about the Holocaust to be translated into Farsi and streamed into Iran. It was also subtitled in Arabic and broadcast in Egypt. Today, because of the Abraham Accords, plans are underway to subti-tle In Search of Peace and the rest of Moriah’s 15 films into Arabic. Through watching documentaries like In Search of Peace, people in Arab countries can soon see the struggle of Jewish immigrants who came to Israel in a different light, and from a more personal perspective.

In a similar way, the friendships Rabbis Hier and Cooper have developed over the years with leaders in the UAE, Bahrain and other Arab countries have helped pave the way for more peaceful relations in the Middle East, like the peace that’s hoped for in the Abraham Accords.

According to Rabbi Cooper, “If you find people who are decent people, you find ways to build the cultural gap... If you’re open, you can get in the door.”

For more information: www.moriahfilms.com

ACTOR MICHAEL DOUGLAS and Richard Trank, writer/director and executive producer for Moriah Films during the narration of ‘In Search of Peace,’ 2000.

KING HAMAD bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain at the Al-Sakhir Palace with Hier and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Simon Wiesenthal Center associate dean, 2017. (Photos: Simon Wiesenthal Center)

KING HUSSEIN and Queen Noor of Jordan with Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance’s Holocaust Section, on a 1995 tour.

ACTOR GEORGE CLOONEY, narrator of ‘Never Stop Dreaming, The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres,’ coming this year as a Netflix original documentary, with Hier and Trank, 2018.