By Volpe Boykin

Guest columnist

Since the State of Israel is constantly in the news, including anti-Israel/Jewish protests in Virginia, I think it may be informative for others to know my recent experiences there. 

For personal reasons and after taking the time to learn the truth about the situation and also knowing that Israel has always been the front line against radical Islamic terrorism, I decided to volunteer with SAR-EL, the Israel Defense Force civilian volunteer program. I recently returned home. 

I arrived in Israel with volunteers from all over the world, all fantastic people, some Jewish and some not, many motivated by the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of innocents by Hamas. Volunteers were put under the charge of young I.D.F. female soldiers and taken to a military base, where we were assigned, given uniforms with shoulder insignia that identified us as volunteers and put on a military schedule with military rules and taken to the tent that would be our home. 

Our task was to do logistics work, freeing soldiers up for more important service. Volunteers refurbished used emergency medical kits from the battlefield and prepared new ones, cleaned weapons, and packaged food and other items that went directly to the battlefields in northern Israel and the Gaza Strip, along with any other task required. 

I served at one base near Tel Aviv, then at a forward supply base in the Negev Desert a few miles from the Gaza Strip. Never before have I worked harder, been hotter or felt like I was really accomplishing something important, like I did there. 

Photographs were not allowed of most things on base. I can say that there are missile shelters all over much of Israel, especially the military bases. Some were modern and some just concrete pipes to run into. The Iron Dome is an impressive-looking system that makes you feel fairly safe. 

Most of the missile attacks from Gaza have finally ceased. They continue in northern Israel, with dozens of villages being hit by Hezbollah daily to the point of being uninhabitable.

I went with a survivor of the Oct. 7 massacre to the site of the Nova music festival and saw memorials to the murdered young people and signs of their deaths. He told me details of how he and his friends barely escaped. In the background a 105mm cannon fired into Gaza at Hamas. I found that poetic justice as I later walked into a missile shelter where three of his friends were murdered while begging for their lives, the blood stains still on the floor. 

Then I saw the 388 shot and blown-up vehicles, including ambulances, of people who were murdered just for being Jews. I saw where babies were murdered and beheaded, rapes took place and people burned alive.

More than there is space to describe here, along with bringing tears to my eyes many times, it told me I was right to be where I was and in what I was doing. When I hear criticism of Israel, I think of what the United States would have done under similar circumstances and how we responded after 9/11.

The situation was explained by one soldier like this: If you have a neighbor who one day allows a terrorist to move into his house and this terrorist daily shoots into your house, how long would it be before you stopped caring about the neighbor and, because you had nowhere else to go, would accept the neighbor being killed if that’s what it took to kill the terrorist before he killed you?

Some may say I am wrong for helping Israel, but they have not seen what I have seen and been where I have been. Many Israelis now feel alone because of the antisemitism they see, and even the soldiers thank you for helping. 

There was an incident in a store where a young boy asked why as an American I was there. I replied “to help the IDF and Israel.” He hugged me and said, “We love you.” 

I will be returning to SAR-EL and Israel in the not-so-distant future and am proud to help the Jewish people and the Jewish state survive.