The war against Hamas rekindles memories for the writer as a young Israeli soldier stationed in the Gaza Strip in 1959.

By Lennie Lurie

Israel partnering with Britain and France in the 1956 Sinai Campaign, was fought to put an end to terror incursions into Israel and to remove the Egyptian blockade of Eilat. It marked the final transformation of the IDF into a professional army capable of large-scale operations and Israel gained a breathing space of about ten years. 

It was during this “breathing space” that in January 1959, after matriculating in Cape Town, I volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Nahal Parachute Brigade for 15 months. The South African Zionist Federation had previously arranged this unique course with the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

A group of 21 young South Africans, including one woman, began the tough and grueling IDF basic training course which, after almost 4 months, had me proudly wearing the IDF infantry badge on my beret and the Nahal insignia on my uniform.

This was followed by our group as part of my Nahal military service working on Kibbutz Urim in Israel’s south for six months. One of around a dozen small communities in the area along the Gaza periphery – most of them were established in the 1940s – Urim is located only 6 miles from the Gaza border. Many of the founding members of Kibbutz Urim were Holocaust survivors who arrived from Europe following World War II.

I then volunteered for the six-month IDF Advanced Training course which included parachuting.

Towards the end of this Advanced Training period, we undertook an exercise called ‘The Lines’, whereby at dawn a single soldier was positioned about 500 meters from a trench where he had to crawl to. The trench overlooked a camp of the Canadian United Nations Emergency Forces (UNEF) in the Gaza Strip. The soldier’s task was to monitor all vehicles entering and departing the camp which could determine the most optimum time to attack Egyptian forces in Gaza – should the need ever arise. At sunset, the solitary soldier would crawl back to an arranged spot and taken back to base.

It was a cold and wet winter and crouching in a trench with 20cms of water in it for 11 hours was extremely uncomfortable. All my observations and recordings needed to be compared and correlated to ensure their accuracy.
On my third morning in that trench, I found a plastic bag, which, to my amazement, contained three packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes and three cans of English beer with this handwritten message: 

 “You poor bastard! We see you in your position every day. Maybe these cigarettes and beers will make you feel better?”

It was signed:

“Canadian UNEF Soldiers

P.S. If you can, get us a bottle of Israeli wine...”

I was shocked to realise that my presence was known to the Canadians but that evening I bought two bottles of Israeli wine at the army canteen which I left in my “spying” trench the following morning. I included a note which, for some inexplicable reason, I wrote in a different handwriting style to my own that read:

 “Thanks for the cigarettes and beer. Enjoy the wine”.

The following morning, I noted that the wine bottles had gone.

A few days later I was transferred to ambush duties. Shortly thereafter, early one morning, our entire company was ordered to line up on the parade ground.  We suspected that some emergency had arisen. One by one, every soldier was called into a hut for a few minutes emerging afterwards to stand elsewhere from the group.

Finally, it was my turn to enter the hut and I found myself facing three offices.

“Lurie, are you a spy? What is the meaning of this coded message?” the colonel demanded, showing me my handwritten note:

 “Thanks for the cigarettes and beer. Enjoy the wine.’

I was petrified with shock. How on earth did my note get into the IDF’s hands?

I then showed him a letter I was writing to my family which I had in my shirt pocket, pointing out the complete differences in handwriting styles.

The officers went into a huddle scrutinizing my letter. Finally, they allowed me to leave which I managed on wobbly legs. I rejoined the other soldiers on the parade ground forever wondering whether the IDF had ever managed to catch their ‘spy’!

EPILOGUE

Kibbutz Urim, situated between Kibbutz Re’im – the music festival site of one of the Hamas terrorists’ worst massacre of Israelis on that fateful Shabbat and Simchat Torah of the 7th October, 2023 – and the town of Ofakim, where groups of Hamas terrorists rampaged and held resident’s hostage in their homes for hours, somehow was spared from death and destruction. 

While some three thousand Hamas terrorists carried out the worst terror attack the State of Israel has ever seen, none of them had managed to infiltrate Kibbutz Urim. Hunkered down in a communal bomb shelter, the kibbutz members heard rockets flying overhead and rounds of gunfire, while being updated on what was happening all around them by friends from nearby communities.

“We had a few close calls,” a kibbutz member remarked, “A number of terrorists were killed on the road leading to our kibbutz, and four more were captured right outside our back gate. It was a total roller coaster. The story was unfolding around us throughout the day. The terrorists literally skipped over us, they went to Kibbutz Re’im, they went to Ofakim, it’s a complete miracle they missed us out. We can count more miracles here on Kibbutz Urim than tragedies here!”   Kibbutz Urim is far enough away to have been spared over the years rounds of mortar fire from the Gaza Strip and close enough so that larger rockets fired by the militant groups there pass right overhead.

The kibbutz members stayed inside the shelter for more than 24 hours.

One member of Kibbutz Urim, who was spending the weekend on kibbutz Be’eri, is now missing, most likely among the hostages in Gaza!

About the writer:

A B.Sc. graduate in Economics and Geology from the University of Cape Town (UCT), Lennie may be the only volunteer from abroad who was granted permission to leave his group on kibbutz during the 1967 Six Day War to rejoin his paratroop brigade that he had served with years before following his matriculation in Cape Town. In Israel, Lennie has worked as an Export Manager for some of the country’s major food manufacturers and chemical companies as well as an independent consultant in Export Marketing guiding many small Israeli businesses to sell their products and services in the world-wide market. As a result of a work accident in 1995, Lennie made a career change and became an independent English teacher working mainly with hi-tech companies and associated with universities and colleges in the north of Israel.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).