Grandma's army

GUSH KATIF – II Gush Katif – 10 years old Since Gush Katif was planned as a strategic buffer between Israel and Egypt, people were given incentives to join and were offered a small house (not yet built) and a greenhouse. Ganei Tal , which Simcha (my first-born) and her husband, Gideon , decided to join, was the second moshav to be built there. Since the houses had not yet been built the other members, who were all married and lived elsewhere, had to leave their families in their homes at the beginning and lived together as bachelors in one building, in order to be able to start work in their greenhouses. Simcha and Gideon, who were newly-weds, started their married life living in an old caravan and turned it into a home - although Gideon was so tall that his feet stuck out of the “bedroom” window! Their next “home” was an old bus from the time of the British mandate which Gideon shlepped from the Tel-Aviv old ...

Jews and their Israelite ancestors have lived in Gaza since Biblical times. A historic Jewish community existed in  Gaza City  prior to its expulsion by the British, for safety reasons, during the infamous 1929 riots by the city's Arabs. Land for the village of  Kfar Darom  was purchased in the 1930s and settled in 1946. It was evacuated following an Egyptian siege in the  1948 Arab-Israeli War . Gush Katif began in 1968, when  Yigal Allon  presented an initiative for the founding of two  paramilitary settlements in the center of the Gaza Strip. He viewed the breaking of the continuity between the northern and southern Arab settlements as vital to Israel's security in the area, which had been captured the previous year in the 1967  Six-Day War . In 1970, Kfar Darom was re-established as the first of many Israeli agricultural villages in the area. Allon's idea was ultimately designed with five key areas slated for Israeli presenc...

Azriel’s son, Meir, who is serving in the IDF at the present time, is the youngest son of his five children and the fourth in line to serve in the army. His oldest son, Yair, is still in the airforce and youngest sister is due to do her army service in a year’s time. Meir (whom we all call “Memi”) will tell you in approximately his own words (originally in Hebrew) how he feels as a soldier in the IDF. " I joined the Israeli Defense Forces a year and eight months ago. Recently I completed a course  in a special commando unit in the Golani regiment.  I chose to serve in this particular unit when I was first recruited. In order to be accepted I had to go through a series of tough exercises and challenges, accompanied by a very strict selection process. I opted to serve in Golani since it was the same regiment in which my father served many years ago My joining the  IDF was motivated by the wish to contribute as much as possible to the good of my country. Also, in...

For the last two thousand years at least, since the Jewish People had no homeland and were subject to the whims of their host countries, they were not allowed to own land and were very restricted in their livelihoods.  They only started working on the land again when the first pioneers emigrated to Israel in  1882 which was known at the time as Palestine, a name given to the area by the Romans. The original names, from bible times, were Judea and Samaria. Which brings me back to the moshav in the Negev where I spent 40 years of my life. All our children helped out on the moshav from a very early age and learned the value of hard work, developing a strong “work ethos”.  What is most surprising however is that,  somehow, my oldest son Azriel “inherited” love of the land. He knew he wanted to be a farmer from a very early age and, in order to study agriculture he went to the U.S., after his army duty, in order to make enough money to attend the Faculty of Agri...