Grandma's army

In blog no. 60 I wrote about my grandson who was inducted into the Armoured Corps a short while ago. Last Friday,   the immediate family (including myself) and friends participated in the second ceremony of the Armoured Corps. It is known as the “Beret March”. It begins at 3 a.m., when the   Armoured Corps’ four brigades, with their faces camouflaged with black mud, begin a grueling march in the desert carrying equipment weighing 17 kgs. reaching 32 kgs. when the stretchers are opened and filled with sacks of sand. We visitors joined the exhausted and sweaty boys for the last km. of the march to the places where the ceremony was held, in which they received the black berets particular to the Armoured corps. Every battalion in the IDF is distinguished by a different coloured beret. Prior to the ceremony, the new recruits just finished eight weeks of basic training, followed by six weeks in their particular speciality. After completing this training, the cadets a...

  And to round up my trio on Latrun , Charles Smith, who joined the Senior Residence complex where I live, together with his wife Shirley, sent me the following   short story. One of many among his reminiscences from their 37 years on a moshav (agricultural settlement) overlooking Latrun . “In 1978, after 3 years in Rehovot, our family moved to Moshav Bin Nun, an agricultural village in the beautiful area overlooking the Valley of Ayalon (where Joshua Bin Nun fought and subdued the locals a few thousand years ago), and the Latrun Monastery. Attached is a picture of the view from our farm and another of our vineyard which is relevant to the story below. At that time, whenever any Israeli – from my barber to taxi drivers - heard that we were going to move to that spot, he/she immediately trotted out the quotation from the Bible in Hebrew: “ The Sun stood still at Givon and the Moon in the Valley of Ayalon” - Joshua   [10:12]. This was, o...

LATRUN - II One of the fiercest and most crucial battles of the War of Independence was the fight for the fortress of Latrun , which commands the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This series of engagements is important in its own right, and also because some who fought there went on to become important figures. Two would even rise to the office of prime minister: Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon . The fortress at Latrun, and the nearby Trappist monastery overlook the scenic Ayalon Valley, about 16 kilometers west of Jerusalem Its commanding location along an ancient route gives it great strategic value, making it the site of many battles, going back to biblical times. Here, Joshua prayed for God to make the sun stand still so he could finish defeating the Amorites (Joshua 10:12-13). In 167 BCE the Ayalon Valley was where Judah the Maccabi won an important victory over the Seleucids. The Templars built a fortress there in 1187.   In the late 1930s in Mandatory Pale...

The induction of my grandson Amitai into the Armoured Corps, which took place at Latrun, was particularly moving - since only one week before we were privileged to witness the same ceremony, at the Western Wall , of his triplet brother, Ohad. The third of the triplets, Aviad, is   due to join the IDF later this year. The ceremony began at 3 p.m. when approximately 650 soldiers marched to a rousing tune; the flag was raised, torches were lit in memory of the fallen soldiers of the Corps.,   veteran officers gave inspiring speeches, together the soldiers swore loyalty to the IDF and their country, Bibles and guns were distributed by the commander of the Corps. The ceremony ended with the playing of the national anthem, accompanied by the   large crowd of visiting families and friends. After the national anthem and counting backwards all the soldiers threw their black berets in the air. The Battles of Latrun  were a series of military engagements between ...

King Herod built the Western Wall in 20 BCE during an expansion of the Second Temple. When the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 CE, the support wall survived, which made it the holiest site for the Jewish People ever since. The reason it has been dubbed as the “Wailing Wall” is that, for hundreds of years, people prayed and wept in the small area of the wall that could be seen.   After the 1948 War of Independence, the Eastern portion of Jerusalem was occupied by Jordan. Under Jordanian control Jews were completely expelled from the Old City for 19 years, effectively banning Jewish prayer at the site of the Western Wall. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, Israelis regained control of the whole of Jerusalem. Digging below the ground of the wall, they exposed two more levels. They also cleared the area around the wall, to create the Western Wall Plaza that visitors see today, and which is open to all people. Since Jews have been   mourning their Temple and exile f...

The Gaza envelope   ‎   (“Otef Aza” in Hebrew), refers to the region of  Israel  surrounding the  Gaza Strip , to the depth of a few miles (7 kms.), mostly agricultural settlements such as  Kibbutzim  and  Moshavim . These Confrontation-line Communities compromise of   approximately 55 settlements, with the addition of the small town of Sderot. Since the  Second Intifada , and especially since Israel  withdrew unilaterally from all settlements and bases in Gaza  in 2005, the communities in the area surrounding the Gaza strip have been suffering from incessant  terrorist attacks - such as infiltration attempts,  mortar  shells and  Qassam rockets  . 13 years ago, Israel withdrew from Gaza and transferred the entire coastal territory to the Palestinian Authority. In 2007 Hamas violently seized Gaza from Abbas and the PA and has since initiated or provoked three major conflicts with Israel. For ...

I can’t believe that two years have already passed since our lone soldier granddaughter was recruited into the IDF.   Because of her impressive credentials, Ophir was chosen to join the Operations Room of the Tel-Nof airforce base in the south of Israel. In its 70 years, the Tel-Nof airforce base - which is the air force’s place of origin - has acted as a main factor in both defense and offense. Fighter jets, transport aircraft, attack helicopters, transport helicopters and Remote Control Aerial vehicles have been situated in the airbase. No airforce base has ever been home to such a number of aircraft from various divisions, which together form Tel-Nof’s legacy in the IAF’s history. Every day, aircraft take off from Tel-Nof to perform training, attack, defense, reconnaissance and electronic warfare sorties, among others.  Its personnel have made the place what it is. Our granddaughter was part of a human chain sharing responsibility and transferring it from per...