Remeberance

Today marks the 14th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin death. For those that don’t know, Rabin was leaving a parade, when Yigal Amir shot Rabin and killed him.
In honor to remember his death, the armed forces do a demonstration and invite schools from around the area (11th and 12th graders) to see them. This gives the kids a chance to see some units and ask them questions. (This is similar to what we did: http://cayalbodedstory.blogspot.com/2009/09/practice-makes-perfect.html)

The day started off hearing the story of a soldier, who fought in the Yom Kippur war. From there, we went to a mountain to over look the battle field and even see into Syria. It was a very beautiful site and if there weren’t burned out tanks and old guns, you wouldn’t believe that there had been a war.

From there we went to hear one of Israel’s deputies who also fought in the war. Again, the talk overlooked a mountain into Syria.
The day went pretty much the same with breaks here and there but most of the time it was a history lesson, looking out into the mountains and seeing the beautiful landscape. The conclusion to the day however, was the highlight. We went to an army base where tanks and infantry were doing a combined training excursive. The training started out with artillery fire and then out of nowhere, 3 huge tanks come up and start driving and shooting. (real shells with explosions and sound) then the machines guns went off and all of a sudden we see 8 soldiers coming out of the tanks and running into ditches set up to look like a Syrian battle field. During the whole excursive, we got to hear the orders given to the soldiers inside the tanks and hear what they said. At one point a tank says that they have been hit and a huge explosion happens. Of course this was then followed by more tanks shooting and the soldiers coming out. At the end of the excursive, the soldiers got out of the tanks and we got to talk to them. It was a lot of fun and makes me really looking forward to the army.