Arriving in Israel
I arrived in Israel in the afternoon. My uncle picked me up from the airport and took me to his house for tea and a bite to eat. While eating, a bomb was flying over Tel Aviv from Gaza and we had to all flee to the building’s basement bomb shelter. “Welcome to Israel, we’re at war, get used to fleeing to bomb shelters!!” seemed to be the welcoming committee motto. The neighbors were very friendly in the bomb shelters, as they were used to hanging out together during rocket fire (which was too frequent).
My uncle dropped me off at my best friend’s house where I would stay for the next week. I gratefully accepted her couch and took a long nap. The following day, I followed her into her work at the local health clinic where she was very busy treating patients as an acupuncturist. She was writing notes when Keren called me (from AWB) and asked if I wanted to go to Ashkelon the next day. “But I wanted to spend the day with you tomorrow,” my friend said wide-eyed. Quickly realizing that volunteering was more important, she said, “Go, I’ll see you when you come back.” So I woke up the next day and went to Ashkelon base. The base is so large and there were so many volunteers, we all spread out to two different buildings. The first building, was for haircuts, beard trims, pedicures (mostly nail clippings), brief stretchy-like massages on the floor, and the second building (where we were) was the acupuncturists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and more massage therapists. The Soldiers had been in Gaza for 75 days straight waking up on October 7th at 6:30am to screaming commanders, “GET UP, GO GO GO! This is not a drill!” that they had none of the normal everyday conveniences like nail clippers, chapstick, cell phones, beard trimmers, so they didn’t even think of coming to us for a while, as they had grooming priorities. After a while of waiting, I went to the first building and had to recruit soldiers to come out to the second building to get pampered by us. My hebrew was super-basic at this point, so it was a struggle, but I managed to move some soldiers to the second building.
I spoke with one guy that had family in America, so his English was pretty good. “When did you make Aliyah?” I didn’t. “What do you mean? What are you doing here?” I’m volunteering. “Volunteering with what?” He had been in Gaza for 75 days without his cell phone, he had no idea that this tiny war in Gaza became a global discussion. People were coming from all over the world to volunteer. The antisemitism and protests around the world and especially in colleges was so blatant! He had no idea. I decided it wasn’t my job to tell him and just let him know I was there for him to give him an acupuncture treatment and to have a chat with him.
I wandered around the base and found men cleaning and oiling their M-16 rifles, generally bonding and happy to be out of Gaza after so long and eating regular food. Friends of IDF (FIDF) was providing excellent food for them and playful activities to entertain them.
After the day of volunteering was over, a group of us went to the cafeteria and ate. The food was good, but not great, prepared blandly and with a lot of oil. “It’s good enough to be free!” said one of my fellow volunteers. We went out to hang in the sun together (we had been in a building all day) and had to run to the bomb shelter twice due to the bombing from Gaza.
Later, I went with my best friend to a party and met a soldier that told me many stories and showed me many videos of his service in Gaza. His team would go into homes to try to find weapons, hostages, etc, and most of the time, while it was true his team found massive hoarding of weapons and cash, they were surprised to find weird items like caches of condoms and blow-up sex dolls in homes! He shared many photos and videos with me. Months later, one of his friends was blown up in an IED and he was wrecked and had to leave the service from PTSD.
