First Born Gone...not just for Israel

When I was in college computers were rare, especially for doing research. Oh we had a bank of computers but they were for learning about computers and programming language. There was no Internet…hard to believe that we cannot get by today without the Internet; that monstrous library of unending rivers of information constantly streaming into our daily lives. What do we do with it?

At some point in the very early nineties I finally got rid of my antiquated DOS computer and upgraded to Windows and the Internet…what a world of difference! A Brave New World had come into my life. A researcher’s dream! And that’s my introduction. Without realizing it I became a researcher.

I began collecting information at such a rate that the computers at the time did not have enough storage space on the hard drives…so it was then that the old floppy disks started collecting in corners of my desk, inside draws, shoe boxes, and places unknown…but I did have the information! Every piece of stored information, whether it be a one line quote or a multi-page document was read prior to moving the cursor over the ‘save’ icon and pressing ‘Enter’ (Before the icons it was ‘Crl-S’ which I still find myself using).

So I have a wealth of information. What do I do with it? Somewhere on these electronic storage devices I have the beginning pages of three or four, maybe even more, books. Books that may never be written…but maybe someday! Speaking of books, I still read them you know. There’s still ‘stuff’ out there that you cannot find on the Internet. And the ‘stuff’ can be very informative and even alarming when you find a tid-bit of information that connects the dots from one obscure publication to another.

Where am I going with all this? I sometimes wonder myself. But in any event I was attempting to backtrack over these tomes of scattered information desks found throughout my sloppy storage bins despite even more sloppy cataloging when I completely forgot what it was I was searching for…don’t be concerned, your day will come if it already hasn't. It is so easily to become distracted by something you read a long time ago only to find that it has new meaning…and there you go, off in a different direction!

I came across the article below and thought about it for a moment. When did I retrieve this? How long has it been out there on the Internet? Is it still out there? Is the story still current in today’s world? And with that last question I stopped and decided to do a search…I Googled it! A simple cut and paste of the first twelve words into Google and voila! There it was, still there!

Is the story still current in today’s world? You bet, not only for the mothers and fathers of Israel, but for all mothers and fathers of the Western World. A first born gone…gone off to defend the homeland will be with us a long time…but I pray not.

Written in 2001, this story should move everyone…even Liberals! - Norman E. Hooben, SP-Phd

Sending Our Son To The I.D.F. by David Bedein

Emotions run high as one Israeli family sends their first-born son off to the army.

On the evenings before a young man goes into the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, neither he nor his parents sleep much.

The soon-to-be IDF inductee parties with his friends. The parents also do not sleep -- out of worry, fear and apprehension.

This week, on Monday, we accompanied our first-born son, Noam, to the IDF army recruitment center in Jerusalem, where he was inducted into an IDF combat unit, with three months of basic training lying ahead of him.

Noam, 19, was named after a soldier, Noam Yehuda, who was born in Philadelphia, grew up in Safed, and was killed by a PLO missile at the age of 19 during the Lebanon War in 1982.

Arafat and his terrorists had set up a worldwide terrorist organization from his base in Lebanon, responsible for the murders of hundreds of Jews and Israelis throughout the world.

The irony is that 19 years later, the enemy is the same.

The irony is that for our own Noam, 19 years later, the enemy is the same. An enemy who had duped the world to such an extent that he received the Nobel Peace Prize! An enemy who was invited by the Israeli government to return from exile in Tunis, given arms by the IDF, and who turned the tables to set up cities of refuge for his "troops" to again launch attacks against Israelis.

A few nights ago, we watched the evening news with Noam. Thousands of Arab rioters were shooting guns wildly in the air, as they ran through the streets precariously toting the teetering body of yet another shahid ("holy martyr"), a title given to terrorists who blow up themselves along with innocent Israeli civilians for the "Glory of Palestine."

Noam's comment: "Well, wish me luck! I'm going to be in a war."

YEAR OF REFLECTION

When you take your son on that proverbial ride to the draft induction point, his entire life flashes in front of you.

All those special moments are quashed into those 25 minutes of negotiating Jerusalem rush hour traffic. His moment of birth. His Bris Milah. His first steps. His first day of school. His performance in the local singing group and how he "cut" his first cassette. His bar mitzvah. His going off to yeshiva. His summer of work with Downs Syndrome children. And his resounding Shabbat meal send-off with his friends, when they sang at the top of their lungs from Psalms to punk rock.

Watching our son joke with friends while waiting to be called to get on the bus, our hearts swelled with pride at this wholesome, fine son of ours who was eager to serve his country despite the gruesome predicament the country is in right now.

Unlike most Israelis, Noam holds an American passport. He could easily skip the country without too much difficulty and attend university in the U.S. However, he chose to stay and serve.

Going to all these funerals has made me aware of how I must protect the people of Israel.

This past year has been one of reflection for Noam. He was glad to have made the decision not to go straight into the army following graduation from high school. Instead he chose a yeshiva preparation program, with a curriculum that readies yeshiva students for army service through deep philosophical discussions, along with physical education to prepare him for rigorous army training.

It has also been a year of funerals. Too many funerals. After returning from the funeral of our daughter's 20-year-old youth counselor, who had been shot dead in a drive-by shooting, Noam declared: "Now I know why I am going into the army. Going to all these funerals has made me aware of how I must protect the people of Israel."

After a few minutes wait at the induction center, Noam's name was called out. The time had come to part. We hand over to the IDF a wholesome, happy, wonderful son. Noam stretched out his arms and held each of us in a tight embrace. The lump in our throats choked back the words we had each planned to say. All we could manage was: "Stay safe, and may God be with you."

Please God, we pray, return our dear son to us unharmed, safe and sound.