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Summer Camp Teaches U.S. Teens To Fight Israeli Style
By Chris Hedges
Jewish-American teenagers can sign up for an eight-week training
course run by the Israel Defense Forces where they fire weapons, live
in military barracks and saunter around in an Israeli military
uniform. Tools
If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for
a spell in a fundamentalist "madrassa," or religious school, Homeland
Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But
if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from
Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel
Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army
uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.
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Learn To Shoot The M-16
The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was
launched in Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish
and between the ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military
barracks in the Negev desert and saunter around in an Israeli military
uniform saluting and taking long hikes with military packs. The Youth
and Education Corps of the Israel Defense Forces run four 120-strong
training sessions a year.
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Be With 'Real Men'
"Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into
army life: wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning
the programs and lessons integral to the program," the Let Israelis
Show You Israel Web site reads. "The program includes military content
such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting
ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as:
Zionism, Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel.
All of this is taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks."
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Get To Know Israel
"The participants finish the program after completing a short,
intensive, exhilarating military experience that allows them to taste
Israel in a way that they never could before -- as part of the Israel
Defense Forces," the site reads. "They leave the program with a
feeling of belonging and a strong connection to Israel, and many
return to Israel to continue the connection that was created in the
framework of the Marva course."
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Will I Measure Up?
There are, of course, gushing testimonials about the program.
"I spent the first few days of Marva doubting my decision, wondering
why I had come, wondering if there was any way out. With all of the
running, yelling orders, discipline and Hebrew, I felt horribly out of
place, writes Canadian David Roth of his summer. It was a completely
different world from the one I was used to. All that changed, though,
by the end of the first week. We had our first ‘Masa’ (Hike). It was
very hard, but at the end, we all knew, our M16s were waiting for us
at the ‘tekes’ (Ceremony). We got through the 8 kilometers and had our
‘tekes’ and got our guns. It felt amazing, and from that point on
Marva was incredible.
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Will I Find A Special Guy
It can be awfully lonely in the Negev, and no doubt Lt Dan will
council young Irving. Long walks in the still night air, a little
Ecstasy, and it's 'Love Time'.
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A Real Live Training Center
Young Jews can learn to handle explosives. Then they can blow up
American trains, just like they did in Madrid.
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A Chance To Participate
Go to a checkpoint and strap some 70 yr old Arab to a jeep.
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The Camaraderie - 'Guns And Guys'
You can bet that Sgt Penski, and Corporal Heimel, will take some
confused young 17 yr old under their wing.
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Will These Little Psychos Turn On Americans
The argument in favor of
camps in Israel, as opposed to camps in
Pakistan, is that these young men and women are not going to come back and
use what they have learned to harm Americans. They are not terrorists.
Muslims, however, have not cornered the market on terrorism and violence.
Radical Jews have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Israel and
the United States.
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Ex-American Criminals Love Israel
I discovered an American in Israel in 1989 named Robert Manning. A
huge, burly man, Manning was living in the West Bank Jewish settlement
of Kiyrat Arba. When I found him he was carrying a pistol, a large
knife strapped to his leg and an M-16 assault rifle. He was part of a
Jewish terrorist group called Committee for Protection and Safety of
the Highways that set up ad hoc roadblocks and pulled Palestinians
from cars to beat and often shoot them. He was a follower of Meir
Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, who was implicated in
terrorist attacks in the United States and Israel. Manning served as a
reservist in the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.
Manning was wanted in California for murder. He had been charged in a
1980 mail-bomb killing as part of his involvement in the Jewish
Defense League. The bomb was intended for the owner of a local
computer firm, but the package holding the device was opened by the
firm’s secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, who was killed instantly by the
blast.
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Manning, full of bluster and a bitter racism toward Arabs, used as his
pseudonym the name of the FBI agent in charge of his case, a bit of humor
that backfired on him by confirming my suspicion of his identify. I
obtained the picture from his California driver’s license and showed it to
his neighbors at Kiyrat Arba. They identified him from the photo. I wrote
an article affirming that Manning, heavily armed and an active member of
the Israeli army, was living in a Jewish settlement. The Israeli
government, until that moment, said it had no information about his
location. He was extradited in 1993 and sentenced the next year to life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 30 years. He is in a
maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
If Muslims Did This We Would Bomb Their Camps
Those who go through the Marva summer program are indoctrinated as
thoroughly as Muslims who go overseas and are told they are part of a
greater jihad for Islam. The results, given Israel’s close alliance with
the United States, may not be negative for those in power in the United
States, but it may be very negative for those Americans defined as the
enemy, especially Muslims, should we suffer another 9/11. The program
inculcates hatred and a belief in the efficacy of violence to solve the
problems in the Middle East. It identifies Israel with militarism. It
feeds the idea that a Jew born in Brooklyn has a birthright to settle in
Israel that is denied to an American of Palestinian descent.
Jerusalem, The Stolen City, Is Gorgeous
Jerusalem, aside from being one of the most beautiful cities in the world,
is one of the most literate, creative and intellectual. Do these young men
and women really know the best of Israel by spending eight weeks playing
soldier and glorifying the military? Is the cause of Israel advanced by
mirroring the twisted militarism of Islamic fundamentalists?
A Yiddish Blackwater
Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have
produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The
danger of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a
mind-set of us and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide
that leads to conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great
Israeli institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli
human rights organization B’Tselem to Peace Now. A summer working for
them, rather than wearing an army uniform, unleashing bursts of automatic
fire in the desert and singing Israeli patriotic songs, might actually
help.
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