|
Top IDF Colonels Visit their Boys Town Jerusalem Alma Mater:
JEWISH VALUES GUIDE OUR ACTIONS
Left to right: Lt. Col. Yishai Malka, Col. Ben-Tzvi Elyassi, and Lt. Col. Nir Golkin meet today's Boys Town Jerusalem students.
|
Following their intensive involvement in advising Israel’s search-and-rescue team dispatched to Haiti, three top-ranking IDF colonels in the Home Front Command came “home” to a different command—their high school alma mater, Boys Town Jerusalem. For Col. Ben-Tzvi Elyassi, Lt. Col. Yishai Malka, and Lt. Colonel Nir Golkin, the visit to Boys Town was an opportunity to recall the inspiration they first received there, as well as to meet today’s generation of students.
“It was here at Boys Town that our rabbis instilled us with the supreme value of the sanctity of human life,” said Col. Elyassi, who today heads the Israeli Army’s Search & Rescue Doctrine and Development department. “For over 20 years, I’ve had the merit to save the lives of men, women and children in terrible disasters in Israel and the world. I’m proud that the IDF is guided by the mandate to value human life, and grateful that I can carry out what I learned in these classrooms.”
Lt. Col. Yishai Malka, a classmate of Col. Elyassi in the Class of 1982, recalled how his teachers and rabbis had cared passionately for their students, crediting them with the technical and ethical education that spurred his climb in the ranks of the Home Front Command. Malka, who heads the IDF Rescue Corps Training School, has devoted decades to rescuing and protecting civilians in Israel and the world. “My unit and others went on alert almost the second the earthquake rocked Haiti. I remained with the rescue team till they flew from Israel, preparing and briefing them for their work. Like Col. Elyassi, we kept in constant Internet and phone contact with the team, advising them from our vantage point in Israel.”
Lt. Col. Nir Golkin heads the Home Front Command’s department of development for Israel’s world-class rescue equipment, under the direct command of Col. Elyassi. For the young engineer, Boys Town is a family affair: his father was a BTJ graduate who later taught at the school. “My assignment is to search the world for the finest equipment to locate and rescue disaster victims,” he told the students. “Some we develop here in Israel. Whatever I do, I carry the fundamental values I learned in Boys Town, especially derech eretz, acting with consideration and kindness towards others.”
Col. Elyassi recounted events from the IDF rescue mission he led to Turkey following the catastrophic 1999 earthquake. “We began the grueling work of searching the rubble of a building housing 40 families. Originally we worked together with other international rescue teams, but by the fifth day without finding survivors, we found ourselves virtually alone. Our work was arduous: we wore heavy clothes in the incessant rain, under constant risk of electrocution from the machinery lifting the twisted metal beams. Finally, at 4 A.M. we reached a woman who had remained alive for108 hours, thanks to being wedged in a small space with an air pocket and drinking rainwater that trickled in. Unfortunately she had sustained serious injuries that forced us to opt for a very dangerous, intricate operation to release her. Once we pulled her alive from the rubble, we rushed her to the Israeli medical team who stabilized her condition. I doubt if any other rescue team would have made the decision to embark on such a difficult procedure to save this woman, but the Israeli unit did not think twice. The Jewish value of the sanctity of human life guides our every action.”
Click here to make a donation and provide the resources to turn young boys from limited backgrounds into young men with limitless futures.
|
