Day 9 Israel

We started this day with a lecture from Colonel Bentzi Gruber on IDF ethics. Colonel Gruber is a tank commander with 20,000 men under his command. His presentation was one of the best I have ever seen but unfortunately I can't share many of the videos with others. We saw raw footage of the battlefield from Gaza 1 year ago. Videos of Israelis diverting their rockets ($125,000 each) because a terrorist enters a house; videos of terrorists using children as human shields; videos of the IDF calling people's homes and dropping leaflets hours ahead of a strike; videos of the IDF conducting an ethical war. For comparison: the IDF killed 1 civilian for every 2 terrorists in their campaign in Gaza (they know they were terrorists because Hamas has their member list online!) while the US considered 25 dead civilians acceptable collateral for 1 terrorist in our campaign in Fallujah, Iraq. As a proud American, that is simply unacceptable. Yet, Israel was the subject of an international human rights investigation while no one even mentioned the US.

We then traveled to the Sderot, a city on the Israeli-Gaza border with Colonel Gruber. This town was attacked by rockets just last week and we were going up on an over look of the area! This was scary stuff. On the bus we received specific instructions about what to do in case of attack. If the siren was heard we needed to run to the nearest bomb shelter (approx. one every 200 yards) and if we couldn't make it, fall to the ground and cover our heads. I cannot imagine living everyday of my life like this or growing up as a kid in this kind of fear. While we were there we also had lunch. During lunch someone's car alarm started to go off and everyone twitched and got tense thinking it to be a siren. Nerve-racking stuff.

We then traveled through the Negev Desert, where our air conditioning stopped working. Our bus become a sauna in the 100+ degree weather. After touring a landfill we went through an Israeli settlement in the Negev. These people have vision. They are literally making the desert bloom. Dinner was in Ber Sheeva, a fairly large city in the Negev. After arriving back in Tel-Aviv the night was spent on the beach with friends and a couple of bottles of wine!

Note: Our bus driver, Mo, who I practiced my Arabic on makes an excellent wing man. He was trying to set me up with our Israeli waitress at dinner. Also, the Mediterranean gets crazy at night in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is full of clubs and bars. While Jerusalem is known as the Sacred City, Tel Aviv is known as Sin City. I concur.

Below: A bomb shelter and the desert where our air conditioning stopped working.