Sar-El

I'm back from a week of volunteering for the Israeli army, and I absolutely loved it! The IDF is so hardcore. For more details, read on.

On Sunday we packed up our stuff and headed to the bus stop, with no idea where we were going or what to expect. All of a sudden, a bus pulls up with 2 adorably cheerful girls in army uniforms, asking if we were the Sar-El group. These girls were the madrichot for our group. Their role in the army is to work directly with Sar-El volunteer groups, serving as our commanders, leaders, teachers, mothers, friends, etc. Our madrichot, Ruthie and Bar, were responsible for all interaction with the army base, setting us up with uniforms, jobs, rooms and meals, and also for providing educational programming at night and arranging awesome field trips. Basically, they were amazing.

Although it doesn't fit in with the flow of this post, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Ehud. Ehud is a commander in the army, which means he's ranked above Ruthie and Bar, and oversaw everything that we did while at the base. His role in the army is a combat engineer, so his job includes mobility assurance, road breaching, defense and fortifications, counter-mobility of enemy forces, construction and destruction under fire, sabotage, explosives, bomb disposal, counter-NBC and special engineering missions (thanks, Wikipedia).  His job doesn't include being totally hilarious and awesome, or serenading us with Bruno Mars songs on the bus, but he does that too. Ehud is the man.

Ehud, Ruthie, and Bar

I digress. Once Ruthie and Bar came to pick us up, we found out that we were going to work on a base in the very northwestern tip of Israel, right on the Lebanese border. The ride to the base should have been about 3 hours long, but we hit crazy traffic due mostly to the fact that we were driving right by the Carmel forest fire near Haifa. We could literally see the smoke coming from the hills, and Bar was pointing out all of the different planes in the sky from other countries that were sent to help. As we were driving next to the Mediterranean four planes from Turkey flew directly over our van and landed in the sea to gather water to put out the fire. This was definitely not something you see everyday in Israel.

Our base was called Hativa 300. It's a combat base for Nachal, Givatti, and Field Intelligence soldiers. When we first got there, we were a little scared. Seeing dozens of 18-21 year-olds walking around with guns strapped to their backs like it's no big deal can be pretty shocking. Even more shocking were the barracks. Having gone to sleepaway camp for the majority of the summers of my youth, I'm used to "rustic" sleeping arrangements, but our barracks were stark to say the least. And freezing. Because we hadn't received any information about the location of our base prior to the trip, I only packed sandals and one pair of jeans. Luckily we were given uniforms right away, and the army jackets were amazing! So warm. I wanted to keep mine but Ehud wasn't having it.  And, after a day or two of spending all of our free time in the barracks, they began to feel like home.

The girls' room

Our barracks

 Our days consisted of the following:

• 7:30am- breakfast
• 7:50am- flag raising with soldiers
• 8:30am to 11:30am- work at the outpost
• 12pm to 1pm- lunch
• 1:30pm to 4pm- work at the outpost
• 4:30 pm to 6pm- free time
• 6pm to 7pm- dinner
• 7:30pm to 8:30pm- evening activity
• 8:30pm to 11pm- card games and lots of junk food

During the day we helped build an outpost at the Lebanon border. When I say border, I mean the only thing separating us and Lebanon was razor wire, an electric fence, and a 30 foot UN buffer zone. Lebanon is so beautiful; the view from our outpost was breathtaking. Unfortunately I can't post any pictures online because no one from Lebanon can know what the view of their country looks like from the Israeli outpost. Top secret stuff, you understand.

Our only objective while at the outpost was to fill approximately 50 felt-lined wire crates sitting on top of the outpost walls with sandbags. Each crate required upwards of 20 sandbags, and each sandbag weighed somewhere around 50 pounds each, if not more. The sandbags lined the entire bunker, so the guys basically created an assembly line, passing the sandbags through the bunker to Rolan, Daniel, or Boris, who threw the bags up to the girls so we could cut them open and fill the crates. It was hard work, but so much fun. Because the guy's portion was particularly taxing, we took a lot of breaks, where we just goofed off, took a million pictures, and ate the occasional sufganiyah straight from the oven. They also had fresh baked sufganiyot at most of the meals on the base. And I wonder why all I got for Hanukkah was an extra 5 pounds...

Goofing off at the outpost, doing the Jess face

By far the most amazing part of the trip was the field trip that we took on our last day. Ruthie and Bar arranged for us to visit the spot on the Israel/Lebanon border where the Lebanese terrorists first attacked Israeli tanks, marking the starting point of the Israel/Lebanon war in 2006. We were lucky enough to have a soldier named Eleazar there to explain the entire attack. Eleazar's older brother was in the army at the time and was among one of the first troops to invade Lebanon, which is why he was privvy to so much information.  He pointed out that the hills right next to us were where the terrorists dragged the hostages; the mountains right in front of us were where the terrorists had set up underground bunkers; the fence straight ahead was the fence that they jumped to enter Israel and hide out until the tanks approached. None of this was more than 20 feet away from where we were standing. He also told us that 2 kilometers from where we were was one of the towns currently run by Hezbollah, which is inhabited by over 150 known terrorists. While it was all very, very spooky, hearing Eleazar speak was incredibly moving and enlightening. 

The Israel/Lebanon border

Lastly, I'll address some of my concerns listed in a previous post: the food at the base was surprisingly awesome (fresh veggies and fruit, pasta, vegetarian schnitzel, fresh baked rolls and sufganiyot), the showers were the best that I've had in Israel, and the grunt work was such a blast. Unfortunately they didn't let me keep the boots (or the jacket), but you can't win 'em all. Sar-El proved to be a major highlight in this entire Israel experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in gaining some perspective into the IDF. Just make sure you ask for Bar and Ruthie!

Check me out in my uniform. So flattering.

For more pictures, check out my Flickr