Marva, run by the Educational and Youth Corps of the Israel Defence Force and conducted entirely in Hebrew, simulates the basic training of Israeli conscripts for 18-28 year old members of the Diaspora. Dressed in boots and olive fatigues, and obliged to carry an M16 assault rifle at all times, school leavers on gap years do push ups in the dust, perform night marches with laden stretchers, maintain civil defence shelters, fire machine guns at paper figures and simulate military manoeuvres, as well as taking classes in Jewish identity and the history and values of the IDF. Karaoke and dance-offs also feature.

Hmmmm. Sounds a paramilitary training camp to me. The same thing we hear from Pakistan. But these kids are comfortable what they are doing, and no one asks their loyalty to their host countries.

More:

Participants are told on leaving of their responsibility to act as ambassadors for the ‘misunderstood’ IDF. “Israel sees the 70,000 Diaspora kids we host every year as advocates: people who will stand up for Israel when it is under threat and attacked and will challenge bad views, especially on university campuses” the spokesman said. “Most won’t ever emigrate to Israel, but we need to educate them to defend their spiritual homeland by arguing for it.”

Hence the desire to get Jewish teenagers to see the Middle East crisis through the eyes of an IDF recruit. “The decommissioned guns we carried weren’t meant to symbolise weapons – they were there so we could really understand what it felt to be a soldier” says Fitch. “Just by carrying it we were able to empathise more with the IDF.”

And:

srael has always held a policy of ‘Aliyah’ – the birthright of Jews to settle in the Middle East. But Marva demonstrates how some Zionists have inadvertently come to mimic their opponents in defining Israel solely by its militarism. The website of Federation of Zionist Youth, one of the largest and most hard-line organisers of gap years, states “FZY feels that you cannot truly understand Israel and the people living their [sic] if you do not understand the army.” And that, for many Jews, must be rather depressing.

The gun!

A summer camp?

From NewStatesman

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