FIDF Staff Mission. Day 4.
We woke up early today because we had to depart by 7:30!
Today was special day, as we had to wear our FIDF polos. These are large polos made of, you guessed it, polyester, which is perfect for the southern Israeli heat. Needless to say, none of us were thrilled. But man did we look chic. I got a quick coffee at the Vista lounge and opted to take a few pastries to go, because can’t waste a breakfast, right?
Sharon from the Israel office joined us today on our drive down south. She was talking about all of the things we saw on the way down, such as the security fence/wall/whatever you want to call it. She was talking about how the terrorism from the West Bank is often “lone wolf.” She described how the motivation to become a terrorist can be so small. She relayed a story of an Arab family who drove up to a checkpoint. There were two parents and a teenage daughter. The car was stopped by soldiers at the checkpoint and the parents got out of the car. The soldiers asked the daughter to step out as well but she refused. After multiple asks, a soldier went into the back seat. She proceeded to stab him twice. He was fine, and she was arrested. When they asked her why she did this when she knew it would just result in her going to prison, her answer was surprising. She said that she was betrothed to an older man who she did not want to marry, so instead, she decided that spending a couple of years in Israeli prison was a better option, and her family would get payments because she attacked a soldier, and by the time she would get out of prison odds are the older man would marry someone else. A win-win!
We arrived at a Paratrooper training base in the south and were greeted by two female soldiers whose job it was to teach new Olim how to be soldiers. They told us how they need to teach them things that may be second nature to Israelis, like how to sleep outside, how to light a fire, how to hold a gun, etc. We met with the base commander who explained that every eight months there is a new group of recruits and they have 8 months to be turned into warriors. A big challenge during this war is to train them faster. They are sending these units to Gaza where you have experienced commanders fighting with newbies, which isn’t bad because the newbies are in tip top shape. Gaza is very different from wars they have fought and wars they will be fighting soon (Lebanon). For example, the rescues are a lot “easier” because Gaza is so close and so small. Also, he said they can send soldiers hot pizza in Gaza. There are about 800 soldiers on the base at a time, including 50-60 lone soldiers, but they said they are all one big family and it doesn’t matter where you come from. Something notable about the base – it was EXTREMELY clean. The commander said if people aren’t training, they are cleaning. We even saw guys just sweeping the streets.
Four weeks of the training is spent in simulators. We went into the simulator building and it had a fake Gaza apartment and a shooting simulator, which we got to try. The technology wasn’t working well, but we still got to shoot the guns. It was so cool because it’s a regular M4, just fitted with a computer. So we had to put in the magazines, do all the stuff, and shoot a target. They are so heavy! At the end we got to hear from a group of soldiers, which was nice.
From there we went to the Nova Festival site. There really aren’t words to describe it. What was notable was the JNF bomb shelter there, where I’m sure many people tried to run for safety but were killed nonetheless.
The next stop was the Gaza Brigade, which had been attacked on October 7th. We heard from two guys, Itai and Ben.
Itai is a nurse and on October 7th he said he wasn’t on base but was receiving calls from soldiers on the base who had been injured. He said there were 157 air evacuations by helicopter and 91 ground evacuations. By 5pm he said they evacuated critical patients in their area. He spoke about the base and said since the start of the war they have had a lot of medical professionals on staff, like a dentist 24/7, so if there is a soldier in Gaza with a tooth problem he can quickly come out to this base, get it fixed, and go back in.
Ben has as more classified job but he is in “tunnel defense.” His job was to defend the border against tunnels coming into Israel. He said that on October 7th there were no infiltrations from underground tunnels. When terrorists were interviewed post October 7 they said they didn’t bother with tunnel infiltrations because they knew the defense network was too good. So he was very proud of that. Now he finds tunnels in Gaza. “Every day new tunnels.” There is a lot of good technology, but we still can’t see underground. He said to blow up tunnels they use a liquid explosive but he couldn’t get much more detailed.
We walked around and found a gym that had been sponsored by FIDF. We walked in and saw that it was completely destroyed. Bullet holes, explosions, donor plaques shattered. You could see names on the floor of donors. It was jarring.
From there we went to Nachal Oz, a base that was taken over by terrorists on Oct 7 and is less than 500 meters from Gaza. We were led by a French reservist around the base. The terrorists came in, and many soldiers were killed and kidnapped. We saw the command center where the women had been watching the border and were doing their jobs until the last minute when they were murdered. The room is completely burned. You can smell the death. These are the women that were sounding the alarms saying there was activity on the border long before October 7th. We also went into the bomb shelter where people ran to and they were killed and kidnapped. We said a kaddish there.
The next stop was a base in Ashkelon where they do Souldier Recharge. We met with AFIS representatives – the Association for Israeli Soldiers. They are the ones we work with to get our donations out. Its like a triangle between FIDF, the IDF, and AFIS. The IDF lists their priorities, we give the money to AFIS, and they give it to the IDF. We discussed how we take care of the really big things and the really small things. One example – one of the things we do is Souldier Recharge where soldiers get 24 hours to come out of Gaza, have a hot meal, sleep, be seen by a mental health professional, and have a hot shower. The IDF requested money for flip flops and at first I think we said that’s so random, but then they explained that a soldier comes to take his first hot shower in weeks, and after he comes out you can’t make him put his boots back on! So it’s the small things that make a huge difference. Of course there are the big things we bought, like 79 ambulances and DNA identification machine – normally you could identify 2 bodies every 12 hours but now they can do 12 bodies in an hour. The blood warmer and fridge is huge because they can actually give blood to soldiers on the battlefield and save lives! Anyway, it was all good to hear.
We went back to Tel Aviv and had a group dinner at Meatos, which very good.
We are exhausted.
