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Students in Israel:
Terror amid Tolerance

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Just behind the front lines

By AUDREY PARENTE | News-Journal Staff Writer

A home-schooled 18-year-old, who recently spent three weeks working with Israeli Defense Forces, said the experience has motivated him to "get serious about life."

David Black volunteered for Sar-El, a non-political, non-profit organization formed 20 years ago to help alleviate manpower shortages in the Israeli military.

Black, son of Norman and Susan Black, plans to attend Daytona Beach Community College and eventually major in political science. He said he learned about the volunteer opportunity from a Jewish Federation representative seated near him at a Pat Buchanan town hall meeting in Daytona Beach in April.

"I am not Jewish but I am a Christian and our church encourages us to pray for the peace of Israel," Black said. "After being over there and seeing how things are, I understand something has to happen. At this point, I would side with Israel, but I believe there should be a Palestinian state. And I believe there should be new leadership. I really think there should be a Palestine, but there is plenty of room in Saudi Arabia.

Before he left for Israel on June 9, Black said he saw himself "on some military base, working on tanks like a gun-toting Israeli soldier." He "was very excited and enthusiastic" about the opportunity but, "It all went away when I realized I was almost 7,000 miles away from home," he said.

The trek began with an application to Volunteers for Israel, headquartered in New York, with an office in Fort Lauderdale. The volunteer organization is associated with Sar-El, the parent organization in Israel.

Bernie Needelman, program head at the New York office, said one of the missions is to get American Jews and others interested in understanding what the situation is in Israel.

Emma Lobel of Fort Lauderdale, co-president of Volunteers for Israel's Southeast Region, said the purpose of the program is "to relieve need for reservists to do work necessary on the miltary base, particularly when the other men are being called up on active duty."

After Black's application, which required an interview with a local rabbi, was accepted, he paid $1,200 for a round-trip ticket to Israel and packed his bags.

At first, Black's mother was apprehensive about the trip.

"It was a dangerous area and he was going alone but, once I got all the information on Sar-El, I was fine."

Black said he was searched and detained for more than an hour-and-a-half before his departure from JFK Airport in New York.

"I was not scared but only nervous I would miss the flight," he said. "The whole time, they were strict, stern and very serious but they were kind about it."

He spent 20 minutes of that time in stocking feet while authorities examined his steel-toed boots.

"They totally unpacked all of my clothes, opened boxes of granola bars and stuck a little stick in them. Anything I had, they totally spread out and gave me sort of an interrogation," Black said. "'Why are you going? Why don't you speak any Hebrew?' And when I told them I was going to an army base, they asked me for all kinds of ID and phone numbers."

When Black arrived in Israel after a nine-hour flight, defense force soldiers escorted him and seven others from the United States and other countries to "Mazarp, the main medical base for all of the Israeli defense forces."

He met up with 55 volunteers from around the world who were issued uniforms and put to work.

"My first duty was very odd," he said. "They had me trimming weeds with a pair of old medical scissors. I was a little discouraged because I thought I was there to aid the army and they had me cutting grass."

Then they put him to work filling medical backpacks.

"They would line up rows of 200 backpacks on tables and give me a huge box of morphine, gauze, syringe needles and stuff — all kinds of pills and tubes and oxygen breathers. They said put one in each," he said. "It got a little tedious but, when you realize what you are doing and get to know the people you work for, I really wouldn't call it boring at all."

He ate kosher meals with the regular soldiers and was sent to a lecture on Zionism, a crash course in Hebrew and a discussion on whether there should be a Palestine in Israel. He made friends with the other volunteers. On the weekends, he hailed a taxi and, on his own, visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

"We live very selfishly in America. We have so much and we are a very lazy people. They live over there with very little and all the violence, but they continue," he said. "I learned not to be so selfish with my time and wanting things. I feel I have learned to be more satisfied with simpler things and to be happy."

He said the rest of the summer would not be business as usual.

"Instead of spending my summer just surfing and hanging out, it made me want to work harder for my future and kind of get serious about life."

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