Gadna (youth corps)

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Tenth grader in a Gadna camp, 1969

Gadna (Hebrew: גדנ״ע) is an abbreviation for Gedudei No'ar and means youth corps or youth battalions . The name stands for a military education program, through which 13 to 18 year olds Israeli and also foreign youths are to be prepared for military service in the Israeli armed forces (IDF). Gadna reports to the IDF and works with the Ministry of Education and Culture.

history

David Ben-Gurion visits the Gadna camp in Be'er Ora (1957)

Under the impression of the Arab uprising against Jews in what was then Palestine , there were defense efforts among the local Jews from 1936 , in which younger people were now increasingly included. After boys were already involved in paramilitary activities, Arthur Biram introduced the Ḥagam (short for Hinnukh Gufani Murḥav ; extended physical training ) at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa in 1937 . For the boys, field exercises and forms of defensive sport became compulsory, and from then on, male and female students from the Reali-Schule took part in guard duty, looked after the wounded and helped with the work of fire fighters and the auxiliary police. With the help of Jaakow Dori , a Reali graduate and Hagana commander in Haifa, the coeducational Reali school unit - consisting of students and their commanders - was admitted to the Hagana as a separate train. There was a special program for the students, the activities of which were determined in consultation with the school.

After the presentation of the White Paper of 1939 by the British Mandate Administration for Palestine, the Zionist General Council decided at its meeting on June 8, 1939, from the school year 1939/40 "to carry out an extended physical education program in all schools". In many sources this is considered to be the actual hour of birth of the Ḥagam . At the end of 1940, the Hagana High Command decided to set up youth battalions in the form of field units and to prepare young men and women for active service in the field units. The Gadna has been the successor organization to the Ḥagam since 1948 . In June 1949 the Knesset passed a law introducing military service for men and women over the age of 18. Gadna was also enshrined in this law as a pre-military service for students. David Ben-Gurion defined the task of Gadna as follows: "Training for peace and not for war". In fact, however, the war effort was in the foreground, and thousands of Gadna members had already participated in active combat missions during the war of independence .

In 1950 the first Gadna training camp was set up in Be'er Ora . More followed at Nurit on Mount Gilboa , in Sde Boker and in Keẓiot (Ktzi'ot) in the Negev . Since the early 1950s there have apparently been several changes in the program priorities - while maintaining pre-military training. The article in the Jewish Virtual Library names the following as priorities after 1950: looking after newcomers to Israel and giving them Hebrew lessons, introducing them to Israeli life through practicing Israeli songs and games. In addition, Gadna was also active outside of Israel. In 1959 a Gadna delegation traveled to Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia, and in 1961 a first course was organized for young people from Africa and Asia. Gadna instructors were later sent to various countries.

The use inside did not lose its importance. During the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Six Day War of 1967, Gadna youths replaced the staff in the postal system and were deployed in civil defense, in hospitals, in industry and in agriculture. As a result, Gadna mainly worked in the school setting, or, as Shelly Paz put it in The Jerusalem Post : "Until 1990, Gadna concentrated on instilling patriotic values ​​in Israeli youth and encouraging diaspora youth to do aliyah ." This also happened and is happening in different ways. In some schools, Gadna is part of the curriculum, while other schools send their students to a Gadna camp for a week to prepare them for military service, including weapons training. In addition, various branches of the military operate their own Gadna groups, such as the Air Force and the Navy.

In 2007/2008 a realignment of Gadna took place. Instead of conveying patriotic values ​​as usual in the past, the task of counteracting the drafting fatigue of Israeli youth has now come to the fore. In order to achieve this, from the 10th grade onwards, the army has youth instructors inform the students about military service, their possible role there and the recruitment process. If school principals approve, 11th grade students attend a Gadna camp and during their senior year they are prepared to apply to the IDF. However, fewer and fewer high schools are sending their 11th grade to the Gadna camps, which, according to the military, is one reason for the dwindling appeal of military service.

Since 2008 there are only three Gadna camps:

  • Sde Boker, which can accommodate 450 students per week;
  • Joara, near Jokne'am in the Northern District of Israel , which can accommodate 220 students;
  • Tzalmon (also Selamin) near the Carmel , which can accommodate 320 students.

Based on the testimony of the camp commander at Tzalmon, Shelly argues that the program is not limited to physical training such as camping, night walking and the use of weapons; Much of the week was devoted to getting to know the army - its units, combat ethics, the obligation to bring captive soldiers home, and above all the importance of serving in the IDF. The youths wear military uniforms during the week in the camp.

Cooperation programs

The New York-based organization Friends of Israel Scouts Inc. has offered a month-long Israel summer program for teenagers from North America and around the world annually since 1981 as part of its Tzofim Chetz V'Keshet (CVK) program. The young people should be given an insight into the Jewish culture, the Jewish heritage, the language and the Israeli society. A Gadna week is also an integral part of the program. For 2020 the following is announced: training at the Tzalmon Army Base, wearing IDF uniforms, completing training with IDF soldiers, an army night in camouflage clothing and much more. On the organization's website it says:

“Tzofim Chetz V'Keshet offers a bespoke Gadna experience where youngsters are supervised by real IDF commanders and undergo simulated basic training with incredible security and logistics. Our participants always rate this interface to the army as one of the main attractions for joining the CVK. "

The extent to which this pre-military training, which is skilfully geared towards young people's thirst for adventure, is appreciated by the participants is highlighted on the CVK website by many statements, and this is also impressively demonstrated by an official CVK video, which shows sightseeing activities with military exercises alternate. A conclusion from many: “I spent a week at Gadna, where I lived like a real Israeli soldier and like the heroes who risk their lives to protect this great nation of Israel.” Whether peace for Israel is possible other than by force of arms seems not to be discussed in these programs. This is confirmed by an experience report by the young American Isabel Hoffman, who took part in a course at Gadna Camp in Sde Boker in 2019. “I had never been in a situation where I felt really indoctrinated. [..] There was no talk of conflicts, of the nuances and contradictions and the disorder in the work of the army. Everything was presented as shiny and healthy. I couldn't accept that. "

The Marva program , which emerged from Gadna, goes one step further than CVK and offers young Jews from the diaspora the opportunity to experience the IDF up close in a two-month basic training program of the IDF. On the Marva homepage it says:

“Marva is a unique 8-week opportunity to see the beauty and challenges of Israel through the eyes of the IDF.
By hiking through the country, living in field conditions and through lessons and lectures, you will get to know the country's topics from practice. Marva will help you strengthen your relationship with Israel, whether you are traveling as a tourist or a potential new immigrant. It's a group experience like no other.
The program will take place in southern Israel at a Gadna base, but participants will spend a lot of time in various other parts of the country, including Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Galilee. Through hikes, lectures, classes and physical activities, participants take part in real training exercises and live under real army conditions. Hard military-style discipline is enforced in all activities, which makes the experience challenging and satisfying. "

Anyone who decides to serve in the IDF after completing a Marva training or as a general Jew with roots outside Israel will receive support under the Garin Tzabar program . Diaspora Jews and Israelis who do not have parents living in Israel will be looked after by Garin Tzabar upon their arrival in Israel and, through the organization, will be adopted by an Israeli community that will be their home away from home before and during their military service. The program is aimed at Jewish adults between the ages of 18 and 24 (men) or 23 years (women), called Lone Soldiers . 60 kibbutzim take part in their care in Israel.

Gadna criticism

Scientific and political criticism

While the Gadna commander of Tzalmon in 2008 was positively surprised by the way the students turned into soldiers within two minutes of their arrival, the program is controversial among teachers and educationalists and has been criticized as being inappropriately militaristic.

“The Gadna is part of a whole system that prepares young people for their draft, but more than that, it prepares them for a certain worldview of conflict. The Gadna is also a socialization system. I don't think it's the army's job to raise our children. [..] Today's reality is different from the Israeli reality in the 1950s. The reality of the army invading schools and even kindergartens is unique in Israel. The military level in Israel has unlimited influence over Israeli society. The Winograd Committee [which investigated the Second Lebanon War] pointed out this problem which creates an unhealthy society in which members can shoot and fight very well but are paralyzed when it comes to resolving the conflict by alternative means like one To solve the peace process. "

- Daniel Bar-Tal, Professor of Tel Aviv University's School of Education : quoted from Shelly Paz: Gadna pre-army program tries to restore IDF's appeal (see web links )

A literary criticism

In a contribution for Deutschlandfunk Kultur , Sigrid Löffler writes about David Grossman's 2014 novel in Israel (Germany: 2016):

"" Does a horse come into the bar "is a poignantly sad and cruelly comical novel, behind the lines of which the misery of its hero emerges ever more painfully. This book is David Grossman's riskiest and most innovative narrative adventure to date, always on a knife-edge between farce and tragedy, horror and pity, hellish laughter and hellish pain. And in the short narrative period of an evening comedy show in the province, it bundles all the main themes of the author Grossman as briefly as compellingly - the traumatized family life of Shoah survivors and their children in Israel, in a thoroughly militarized society in a constant state of war, which all feelings of love , Friendship and trust damaged, distorted and distorted. "

- Sigrid Löffler : Look into someone else's hell

This “thoroughly militarized society” comes into play for the first time with Grossmann on page 109; From then on, it runs through the entire second part of the novel and has a connecting point: the Gadna youth camp in Be'er Ora, in which the two protagonists of the story, the stand-up comedian Dovele Grinstein and his former friend, the retired Judge Avischai Lasar, residing in the 1950s. They came to the camp independently of each other and without knowing that the other would be there. Grinstein describes the Gadna training with allusions to the Nazi persecution, and "en passant Grossman lets in here that these military training camps in the Israeli desert were not far from the camps of the Hitler Youth":

“Anyway, there in Beer Ora we get taught everything that a proud Jewish boy should be able to do. Climb up walls in case we have to break out of the ghetto again, crawl for any sewer pipes, and secret codes so that the Nazis don't understand anything and are bitterly disappointed. We also have to jump from a tower into a stretched cloth. Do you still remember? And run like a chameleon on a rope. Then these hikes, at night and during the day, when you sweat like stupid, because you have to run around the whole camp in the terrible heat and then fire five shots with this short moult from the CSSR. You feel like James Bond. "

- David Grossman : Does a horse come into the bar , p. 117

With the same sarcasm he describes the leisure activities, which are linked to the boy scout romance, the evenings around the campfire. The youngest in age and also very thin physically, Grinstein quickly becomes the victim of sadistic games by his comrades, and neither the supervisors nor Avischai Laser, who simply denies him, does not notice him, protect him from them.

The adults in the camp are military and have no psychological empathy for the needs of the young people entrusted to them. Fourteen-year-old Grinstein felt this on the third day of his stay. In the morning he was summoned to the headquarters in the tone of command, he was only told that he had to return home immediately because there was a funeral at four in the afternoon. Condolences are fleetingly expressed to him, but he does not find out who has died. Instead, he is entrusted to a soldier who takes him to Jerusalem in a military pick-up for hours. This surreal journey through the desert stretches for almost eighty pages, and only at the end of it, in the cemetery, does Grinstein find out whose funeral he was taken to.

The complexity of Grossman's book is not limited to its criticism of the “militarized society” of Israel, but it is certainly no coincidence that the peace activist Grossman's Gadna centered on an orgasnation as a symbol for this “militarized society” “Can be viewed.

The eleven year old pianist Danny Barenboim with the conductor Moshe Lustig and the GADNA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (August 1, 1953).

See also

  • Amos Meller was a co-founder of the Gadna Youth Military Orchestra , which was part of the Gadna and also performed as the National Youth Orchestra of Israel. Daniel Barenboim was a member of the Gadna Orchestra when he was eleven.
  • Zvi Hendel , Israeli politician and former Gadna instructor.
  • Miri Regev is an Israeli officer and Likud politician. She joined the IDF in 1983, served as an educator in the Gadna, looked after disadvantaged young people and prepared them for admission to the IDF and was a department commander in the Gadna base.
  • International Bible Quiz

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Jewish Virtual Library: Gadna (see web links )
  2. ↑ a b Dganit bonuses Davidi: Haganah , in: Jewish Women's Archive
  3. ^ Ahron Bregman, Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947 , Routledge (2002)
  4. ↑ Gadna pre-army program tries to restore IDF's appeal (see web links )
  5. ↑ The website "Encyclopedia.com: BE'ER ORAH" (see web links ) names the year 1950, the page "Jewish Virtual Library: Gadna" (see web links ) the year 1951.
  6. ↑ For Nurit see: en: Nurit
  7. ↑ For Keziot and his story see: en: Ktzi'ot Prison
  8. ↑ a b c d e Gadna pre-army program tries to restore IDF's appeal (see web links )
  9. ↑ See en: Selamin
  10. ↑ Tzofim Chetz V'Keshet: Program Details . "Tzofim Chetz V'Keshet offers a tailor-made Gadna experience, where teens are supervised by real IDF commanders and undergo a mock basic training experience, with incredible safety and logistics. Our participants constantly rank this interface with the army as one of the main draws to joining CVK. "
  11. ↑ a b CVK: HIGHLIGHTS & TESTIMONIALS
  12. ↑ Official Video-Summer Program Israel
  13. ↑ Isabel Hoffman about Gadna on JEWISH WOMEN, AMPLIFIED , December 20, 2019. “I had never been in a situation before where I felt like I was really being indoctrinated. [..] There was no talk of conflict, of the nuance and contradictions and messiness of the work of the army. Everything was presented as shiny and wholesome. I couldn't accept that. "
  14. ↑ See also the article in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: Marva
  15. ↑ Join the Ultimate Israel Experience! . "Marva is a unique 8 weeks opportunity to experience the beauty and challenges of Israel through the eyes of the IDF.
    Through hiking the land, living in field conditions and going through lessons and lectures, you will learn hands-on the issues of the country. Marva will help you strengthen your ties to Israel, whether you're a tourist or a potential new immigrant. It is a group experience like no other.
    The program is based in the south of Israel on a Gadna base, but participants will spend considerable time in various other parts of the country, including Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Galilee and more. Through hikes, lectures, lessons and physical activities, participants partake in real-life training exercises and live in actual army conditions. Hard military-style discipline is enforced in all activities, making this experience challenging and satisfactory. "
  16. ↑ About Garin Tzabar . There is also an article about Garin Tzabar in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: Garin Tzabar
  17. ↑ Or Kashti: New IDF Gadna Youth Program Criticized as Overly Militaristic (see web links )
  18. ↑ "The Gadna is part of an entire system that prepares the youth for their enlistment, but more than that, it prepares them for a certain worldview of conflict. The Gadna is also a socialization system. I think it is not the place of the army to educate our children, "Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University's School of Education told the Post. "Today's reality is different from the Israeli reality in the '50s. The reality of the army entering schools, and even kindergartens, is unique to Israel. The military echelon in Israel has unlimited influence on Israeli society. The Winograd Committee [that investigated the Second Lebanon War] pointed to this problem, which creates an unhealthy society [in which] members know very well how to shoot and fight but are paralyzed when it comes to solving the conflict through alternative means such as a peace process, "Bar-Tal said.
  19. ↑ See: en: Daniel Bar-Tal
  20. ↑ Sigrid Löffler: View into someone else's hell , February 1, 2016
  21. ↑ Petra Lohrmann: David Grossman - A horse comes into the bar
  22. ^ About Aviva Bowling, Cantorial Soloist
  23. ^ Jewish Music Research Center
  24. ^ Knesset Members: Miri Regev