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Immigrant Soldier
By Gabe Avner

My Aliyah has been a long and interesting journey which has brought me to where I am today. My name is Gabriel Avner. I believe that your name shapes who you are. You’ll see what I mean as we go along. Everyone has a different name that they call me. I started off as Gabriel and Gabe to my family and friends in the States. It was when I came to Israel that the evolution of my name began.

I’m originally from Silver Spring, Maryland. I grew up in a Conservative Jewish house hold. My parents, to their credit, didn’t try to force on me any particular ideology. What was important to my parents was that I had the tools that I would need in order to be a good human being and a functioning member of the Jewish people. All my life I was provided with a Jewish education. I went to day school as a child and then continued on with supplemental Jewish education when I began attending public school. I was also privileged enough to attend Camp Ramah in New England for the better part of ten years.

It was because of my time at Camp Ramah that my interest in Israel was sparked. It was my junior year of high school in 2002 and I was bored. I wanted to get out and see something new. I didn’t care where it was, but it had to be different from what I had at the time. It’s not that I didn’t like where I was, it was fine. I felt that there had to be something more for me out there. So when my best friends from camp told me that they were going for a semester of high school run by Camp Ramah, I jumped at the opportunity. At the last minute, just weeks before the flight, my friend encouraged me and walked me through the application process. Before I knew it, I was standing at Ben Gurion Airport. This was my first time out of the country but I knew that, so long as I had my friends with me, I would be alright. My experience in Israel during the next four months was the most formative that I had up to that point in my life. We lived through the heaviest period of terror attacks that Israel had known in recent history. I feel that the time of restriction forced upon us to safe guard us shaped my character and strengthened me. It changed my outlook on the world around me and showed me what was truly important in life. The whole time that I was on my trip, I was always the one that said that I would never make Aliyah. Having grown up at camp, I was used to having a great time with my friends all summer and then being prepared for it to end at the close of the summer. This to me was just an extension of that experience. It was in the last week of my program when we had finished with finals and on our last trip to the north that I finally had my revelation. I was standing on the Golan Heights looking over the Kinneret that I thought to myself “Hey, maybe this could work.”

When I returned to the States, I found that I had trouble relating to my friends. I had undergone something that they would never understand. I realized that I had gotten used to Israel. I’m generally a very adaptive type of guy. I had really taken to Israel. With its loud people, unforeseen future and mystic beauty, I was hooked. I knew that I had to come back. As soon as I began my senior year, I registered for another program in Israel. This time it was Young Judaea’s Year Course. Part of the program was volunteering in poor communities. I became an English language teaching assistant. It was hard for my students to pronounce my name so I began going with a shortened Hebrew version, Gabi. From there on I have introduced my self to everyone as Gabi. It just made everything easier and I felt more Israeli. It was early on my trip that I decided that I wanted to make Aliyah. I thought to myself about all the people from around the world that had made this step and were less able than me, then why couldn’t I do it? I believe that a person should live life without regrets. I didn’t want to go through life wondering what might have been had I not made Aliyah. I began the process while I was there and when my program ended, I went home and prepared for my big move.

I was lucky enough to be referred to an organization called Nefesh B’Nefesh. They helped me cut through all the red tape and gave me some financial aid to start my life here. To their credit, my parents were understanding and supportive. For that I thank them to this day. I consulted them throughout my considerations and they advised me as they saw fit. I spent the summer with friends and family saying my good byes. I’m a sushi addict. I can’t count how many times I went for sushi before my flight. My first couple of months were spent learning Hebrew and on Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. This place was simply paradise. It was on the beach between Tel Aviv and Haifa. It was where I met many of my close friends that I have today. As I have mentioned earlier about the importance of friends. When you are away from your family, your friends become family. This is a crucial part of a successful Aliyah, your ability to make friends and build new relationships.

While living kibbutz, I was trying my hardest to get an enlistment date to the army. I can’t say that I wanted to make Aliyah so that I could go to the army but it is impossible to be truly Israeli, especially as a man, without having done the army. So much of the Israeli psyche and experience is based on the army. Everything from slang to life long friends comes from time in the army. The army was against taking me because I have an allergy to peanuts. My allergy has always been a part of my life but it had never really held me back from anything. I fought for three months for the privilege to serve in the army. When I made Aliyah I had flown over with a family friend of my cousins. He had told me that he had joined a group of other young people that were here without their parents who were joining the army and living as a group on Kibbutz Deganya Aleph. I had been looking for the next step after the ulpan. This type of group is called a garin. They lived together before the army and would go into the army together. I loved the area that the Kibbutz was in. It is in the Jordan Valley right on the Kinneret. I felt as though I was coming around full circle. This was the place that I had decided to make a crucial move in my life and I wanted it to be my home for the challenging time that was coming up with the army. Jason told me that there was a spot open in the garin. I spent a weekend on the kibbutz. I met the people and checked out the place. I knew that this was the place that I wanted to be. I went into the army a week later. I joined the guys on the base near Arad.

The unit was the 50th Airborne Battalion of the Nachal Brigade. This brigade has a history of being the destination for many new olim and volunteers. I spent the next seven and a half months training and learning about myself. I got into the shape of my life. I was able to accomplish things that I never thought possible. It was through the help of my friends and my pride that I made it through this trying time. I would not allow myself to fail. While in training I always had to be very careful about making sure that I didn’t come in contact with any peanuts. The most popular snack food in the army is a peanut flavored crunch snack called Bamba. Everyone seemed to always have around. In the army it’s natural that everyone will drink from shared bottles or canteens. If somebody wanted to drink from my bottle, I would have to ask him if he had eaten Bamba. This earned me the nickname Bamba. It followed me the entirety of my service. It was my name on the radio and everybody seemed to call me it. To earn my green Nachal beret, we have to complete a fifty kilometer march including carrying a stretcher at the end. I am proud to say that I did this march from start to finish along with every other march that led up to it. At the ceremony marking the end of my basic training on a beautiful spring day, my family came to be with me for the occasion. I felt so proud of what I had accomplished and even prouder that my family was there to see me. My dad had been to Israel the year before to visit me but this was my mom and brother’s first time here. I had given them a reason to come and see our home.

After completion of training, I began what is called kav. Kav, means line in Hebrew. This is the area in which a unit is responsible for. We would be stationed in a section of the country for a number of months at a time with the mission of protecting the residents of the area. This included guarding settlements, patrolling the area in armored jeeps, working at checkpoints and arresting wanted men. A lot of this time was also spent patrolling along the security fence.

My service was pretty much the same until we moved to the north along the Lebanese border. We had never had too much excitement. The Palestinian terrorist groups that we were used to dealing with in the territories had not been of too much concern. All of a sudden we were up against the Hezbollah. They had bases facing ours not more than fifty feet away from us. This was a well organized-heavily financed force unlike the terror cells that we were used to confronting. All was quiet, with the exception of one day of shooting in the middle up until the summer. I remember the morning that the fighting began. I had been sleeping. I was woken up and was told to get dressed quickly and get to the shelter room. They told me that a border patrol had been attacked and that two of our soldiers were missing. I had been trained as the driver of an armored vehicle that was supposed to be used in the event of fighting along the border. Our mission was to enter Lebanon and destroy the Hezbollah base there. I sat there for five hours waiting to go in. The order never came. Our mortar team must have fired something close to a hundred and fifty mortars onto the Hezbollah. I then spent the next week in the field along with a tank team. Every day we would go up and shoot at our targets. It was a lot of sitting around and waiting to hear what was happening. I spoke with my parents as often as I could. I was restricted as to what I could tell them about where I was. All that I could say was that I was alright. The northern border is known as a quiet and uneventful kav.

All of a sudden I was in the middle of a war. Nothing that I had encountered up until that point had ever been something that I would consider to be so dangerous. I could only imagine what kind of hell my family must have been going through. After a week and a half of waiting around we were replaced by a unit of reservists. We then moved from our base and prepared for invasion. I entered Lebanon a total of three times. We walked through mine fields while carrying weights of up to eighty pounds of gear. During the war, we must have walked over forty miles. In the villages we were constantly under fire from mortars and missiles. I can’t say that I feared for myself during the war. My sergeant and officer cared for us like we were their children. My faith that they would keep us safe helped me through. The one time that I felt panicked was when while trying to enter a house by blowing open the gate. A number of the members of my unit were hit by shrapnel. They had tried hitting it with a grenade shot from a launcher. The grenade hit a pile of rocks and the fragments from the rocks hit my friends. Both the company commander and the second in command were hit along with three others. As we carried them inside I realized that this was probably the scariest moment of my life. To carry your wounded friends and feeling helpless is one of the worst feelings that you can have. We were lucky enough to have a doctor with us who quickly attended to the wounded. We later evacuated the wounded to be taken back to Israel. Thankfully survived and all but one later returned to service.

Another part of the war was not knowing what was going on with your friends. I had friends in other units that were also in Lebanon. We would hear on the radio the names of those killed but it was still stressful. I had this one time as we were walking towards a village that showed me how funny life can be. We were sitting on the side of the path while another unit was passing us. I knew that I had a friend in that unit but the chances of finding a single person in the dark out of a unit comprised of six hundred or so people is slim to none. All of a sudden, I think that I recognized a passing figure in the dark. I took the chance and called out my friend’s name, “Hey Jonah!” and I heard back a “Hey Gabi”. The relief of knowing that your friends are OK is overwhelming. They say how small the world is and I believe it to be true. A number of days later we received the orders to return towards Israel. The day before a cease fire had been declared and we were waiting for them to tell us that we were no longer needed there. The original estimations for the war called for a conflict of eight to thirteen weeks. Our part was finished in only four. I can not begin to explain the emotions that passed through us as we crossed over the border to the busses that had come to pick us up. That was it, we had gone through our war. I still talk with my friends about it all the time. It’s always something that somebody brings up. People will ask me about it and I’ll tell them a story or two. It was a challenge in my life that I thank God that I survived.

We remained in the north for another month. We continued to cross over into Lebanon to destroy what remained from the Hezbollah bases. In the late fall we moved to Hebron. This was to be my last stint in the army. Hebron was similar to the other kavs that I had been on except that it was filled with patrols inside the city as well as arrests every night. I remember there was this one house that we were at three times in one week to arrest members of the family. For as interesting as Hebron was, I’m glad that it’s over.

It was in this time that I left Kibbutz Deganya and moved to Jerusalem. Just about all of my friends had left the kibbutz and it was time for me to leave as well. The kibbutz is a great place when you have friends there but when you’re all alone then you have a feeling of being trapped. I had never had to rent an apartment on my own before. I moved in with a friend of mine from Year Course and a friend of hers from back home. Both of them are in the army. All of a sudden there are bills to pay and you have to worry about everything on your own. I was smart enough to make the move while still in the army so I had help with the move from the kibbutz.

So this is where I am today. I live right near to the King David hotel. I am out of the army for about two weeks now. This is the scary part. Even during the war I knew that I was being taken care of by the army. I didn't have to worry about paying for rent or other bills. I knew that I would have my meals prepared for me. I had something to do. I was employed. Now I have all of these things to worry about. I need to look for work and make my own decisions. I need to choose a direction for my life. Most Israelis when they are released from the army go on a long trip out of the country. They have the luxury of having their parents home to leave their belongings and to return to when they run out of money. As a lone soldier I have to cover all of these things on my own. It's tough finding a challenging job. All that I'm trained to do is guard and go on missions. If I had been a jobnik then I would have been trained in a trade such as computers or mechanics. The army tries to take care of you while you are in the service but when you finish they have nothing more to offer you, you need to make it on your own.

Gabe Avner: Immigrant Soldier
By Avi Hein

For most American kids, graduating from high school means going to work or going to university.

Yet while Gabe Avner’s friends were partying hard in college, he was serving his county in places like Hebron and Lebanon.

Gabriel Avner, 22, was raised in the Washington, DC suburbs but immigrated to Israel at age 19. Like his native Israeli peers, Avner had to serve in the Israeli military—the Israeli Defense Forces. Unlike his Israeli peers, Avner had to fight to get into the IDF. Due to his peanut allergy, initially the military did not want to enlist him.

According to Avner: “There are two very different perspectives on the required service in the army. You have the regular Israeli view that this is three years of suffering when [you] could be doing anything else. Then you have the other view that other people did this before me so now it’s my time. For people that come from outside of Israel, we have a different perspective on this. We came here out of ideology and actually want to be in the army.”

In addition to the difference in views between native and immigrant soldiers, there are also differences in responsibilities. While all soldiers undergo the same training, native-born soldiers can return to their parents for food, laundry, and bills while on leave. Immigrant soldiers, like Avner, do not have the luxury of returning to their parents—who may live thousands of miles away. According to Avner, “We on the other hand have to take care of all the things that these kids do not such as bills, laundry, food and other basic things that somebody that lives at home doesn't even think of.”

Despite these difficulties, the army provides some important benefits. Beyond ulpan (intensive Hebrew lessons), the very socialization process of the army forced Avner to learn Hebrew. “You have to learn Hebrew or you won’t succeed,” he said. More important than Hebrew, however, are the connections and roots the army facilitated. According to Avner, friends made during the army “are friendships and connections that will last a life time. Your friends in the army are the people that help you through the hard times and push you to continue on.”