PURIM MISSION 23 EFRAT, SDEROT, AND KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ Visiting the “settlement” of Efrat, which is located 20 minutes outside Jerusalem, and Sderot, on the Gaza border, was truly a life-changing experience. These are beautiful, bustling towns of some 10,000 and 20,000 people, respectively, with modern buildings and homes with bomb shelters. Sderot has two bomb shelters on every street because the city gets only a 15-second warning when rockets are fired from Gaza. We were impressed by the residents’ bravery, their faith in G-d, and their joy in Torah. As our bus drove into Sderot, Rabbi David Fendel—who serves both the city and a yeshiva where students spend half the year learning Torah and half serving in the military—greeted us with dance and song. We followed as he led a parade of dancing, singing yeshiva boys, accompanied by a horn-blaring, Purim-decorated truck. The most lasting impression occurred at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a five-minute drive from Sderot and a half-mile and three fields (under which Hamas could be digging tunnels) from Gaza. We stood at the wire fence separating the kibbutz from the fields and could hear a truck we saw moving along the border road in Gaza. The brave kibbutz families are protected by a group of trained men and women volunteer From left: Jeff Daube, Rubin Margules, Dr. Alan Mazurek, and Howard Katzoff with IDF soldiers commandos, called Yatar Israel. This ATV (allterrain vehicle) unit patrols the area and reacts quickly to capture terrorists in areas that security vehicles cannot reach, such as narrow alleys and dirt roads in the hills and fields. Many of these volunteers work day jobs, then patrol at night, leaving only a couple of hours for sleep. “My wife and children live here. Of course, I am going to be a Yatar volunteer to protect them,” one commando said. “Why do we live here? Because this is our home, and Israel needs us.” BUILDING THE BORDER FENCE Thanks to the ZOA mission, we came to realize how deeply biased the media is and how naive Western thinking is. The misconceptions include Israel’s border barrier. In fact, only five percent of it is a cement wall; the rest is a wire fence with 24-hour video monitoring and electronic touch sensors. Dan Tirza, the retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who planned the 451-mile-long fence, told us that plotting the route was one of his biggest responsibilities. He explained that he zigzagged it in order to try and keep Arab houses and agricultural land together. After witnessing the unbelievable bravery of our people in Israel, who are risking their lives to keep Israel safe and strong, we realized that those
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