At Tel Hashomer, New Jersey fundraisers hear lessons learned from Lebanon war

JERUSALEM, by Gil Hoffman - Israeli paratrooper Eran Perry considered shooting himself to end the pain in his right leg, which had been hit by a missile mistakenly fired from close range by his army comrade at the Hizbullah stronghold of Bint Jbail.

Perry could not be treated with painkillers because the doctor who had them was a few houses away and was pinned down by nonstop Hizbullah gunfire. An army medic saved Perry's life by stopping the bleeding with a primitive tourniquet, and other soldiers risked their lives to carry Perry on a stretcher. They crawled for a mile to an awaiting helicopter that brought them safely to Israel.

Looking back on the experience, Perry told visitors from United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ at Israel's Chaim Sheba Medical Center, that he did not blame the friend whose errant shot pierced his leg, which had to be amputated.

UJC MetroWest executive vice president Max Kleinman, MetroWest Israel Emergency Campaign cochair Gary Aidekman of Madison, and MetroWest Israel Operations director Amir Shacham were inspired by Perry's story when they visited him in the hospital at Tel Hashomer.

Perry said he never lost consciousness and his mind kept racing throughout the painful nine-hour ordeal. He had only two months left of his mandatory three years of service and he was planning a trip to South America and Thailand when it was over. Now he is more determined than ever to make the trip happen. He has been progressing rapidly and he can already walk with a prosthetic leg.

"I'm going to walk again and even run again," Perry said. "I'll wear long pants and nobody will know that I have a prosthetic leg underneath."

"There is no better example of Israel's respect for life and the future than this young man, and there is no better contrast with the culture of hatred and the celebration of death among Israel's enemies," Kleinman said. "This is just one example of the inspiring stories we have heard on this trip."

Kleinman and Aidekman came to Israel on a four-day UJC mission that took them to the hardest-hit areas of Israel's northern region. They took part in briefings with Israeli security experts and meetings with the people most affected by the war. Wherever they went, they were told that lessons were being learned from the war's many successes and its many failures.

"Israel is going through a period of painful self-examination," Kleinman said. "If it results in the country being better equipped to face the challenges of the future, then perhaps it was constructive, but not if it ends up being just self-flagellation. I'm confident it will be the former and not the latter, because the stakes are so high."

Israelis, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down to the lowest-ranking soldiers in the field, are doing the soul searching that Kleinman described. Olmert was expected to form some kind of commission to investigate the war, and several other inquiries have been established to examine different aspects of the fighting in Lebanon and its impact on the Israeli home front.

"We will learn lessons as we always do in any conflict," Perry said. "When we entered Lebanon, we expected the worst, but you can't understand it until you experience it. It was different from fighting in the West Bank, because we were up against more organized enemies, with impressive tactics, who knew how to fight and were not afraid to die. We proved that they can't beat us, but they can definitely cause us damage."

Since Hizbullah started the war by attacking and kidnapping soldiers on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, 119 soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed and 4,262 civilians were treated in hospitals for injuries.

During Hizbullah's month-long bombardment of Israel's civilian population, 6,000 homes were hit, 300,000 residents displaced, and more than a million were forced to live in shelters. Almost a third of Israel's population - over two million people - was directly exposed to the missile threat. Finance Ministry Director-General Yossi Bachar told the UJC mission that the cost of restoring the military to prewar readiness would be $2 billion and the cost of restoring civilian losses in the war would be $1.3 billion.

To date, MetroWest's Israel Emergency Campaign has raised over $3.7 million toward a national goal, set by North America's federation system, of $300 million.

Kleinman said MetroWest's goal is to raise $9 million for refurbishing and air-conditioning bomb shelters, helping the elderly, funding trauma and social workers, and upgrading the conditions of needy Israelis in the North, among other needs.

Aidekman, who wrote a journal about the mission that he shared with friends back home recalled visiting a Haifa apartment building that had been partially destroyed by a Katyusha rocket that came through the roof of the building and continued three floors below. The rocket carried about 80 pounds of explosives and thousands of ball bearings that destroyed the exterior walls of the building and pockmarked two apartment buildings in the area.

"We then visited the shelter in the building that was hit," Aidekman wrote. "The room was smaller than my hotel room in Tel Aviv. It was dark, dank, and dirty. Frankly, I don't know how the dozen or so families in the building could stand being there hours on end."

The mission visited a high school in Kiryat Sh'mona that was in the midst of a clean-up from the effects of three rockets that had hit the school. Several people from the city and the school spoke to the mission and described life in the shelters as 34 days of confinement.

"Immediately upon entering the grounds of the school, we saw twisted window frames and piles of broken glass," Aidekman wrote. "There was no escaping the linkage to the past - Kristallnacht and all the pogroms before."

Aidekman said he was impressed by the "extraordinary" response of Israeli volunteers and nonprofit organizations. He said they responded to the needs of Jewish and Arab Israelis fully and promptly, the same way that the Israeli police and army succeeded in their work despite problems and pressure.

Rather than adopt a town in the North as a new partner as was done in previous conflicts, MetroWest has decided to assist the efforts of its current Israeli partners who have been helping their comrades in the North since the start of the war.

"The concept that we are now exploring is to use our current partnerships to work together to help the North," Shacham said, singling out the cities of Ra'anana and Rishon Letzion and a number of pluralist synagogues, schools, and organizations.

Olmert asked Rishon Letzion Mayor Meir Nitzan and Ra'anana Mayor Nahum Hofree to adopt the northern towns of Kiryat Sh'mona and Carmiel, and the two mayors will bring their supporters in MetroWest into projects to rehabilitate the towns. In one example, business people from Ra'anana and MetroWest will be asked to help their counterparts in Carmiel.

UJC MetroWest has already assisted partners in Ra'anana and Gush Etzion, who hosted hundreds of families from the North during the war. MetroWest volunteers who come to Israel in upcoming months will be sent to help people in the North.

Another idea being explored is for the Nevei Eliyahu community center - which UJC MetroWest built in an underprivileged neighborhood of Rishon Letzion - to assist a similar center in the northern Druze village of Hurfeish. The project would be aimed at helping an underprivileged minority of Israeli citizens who are not Jewish but serve in the Israeli army.

During the visit, Aidekman had dinner with a young Druze man who worked with volunteer organizations and spoke about being a non-Jew who was proud to be living in Israel.

Aidekman ended his journal by noting that the aftermath of the war would affect the residents of the North for years, especially underprivileged Israelis who were unable to leave the region during the hostilities.

"They had to endure this war from start to finish, and I believe they suffered greatly and will continue to suffer," Aidekman wrote. "I'm at the airport as I write this and will board the plane soon. I was not here during the war. I've seen some of the effects but frankly I can only imagine what the people of the North went through. All I could do while here is offer support and an ear."

©2006 New Jersey Jewish News