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Alaa Slalha, the coordinator for minority rehabilitation in the Department of Families and Commemoration, discusses the critical work helping fallen soldiers’ loved ones.
By Yaakov Lappin, JNS
As Israel marks Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, a Defense Ministry department has been working year-round to provide critical support for members of minority groups who have lost loved ones.
Alaa Slalha, the national coordinator for minority rehabilitation in the ministry’s Department of Families and Commemoration, told JNS ahead of Memorial Day that embracing Arabic-speaking bereaved families with support is a critical mission that both assists the families and builds national resilience.
Slalha, who previously served in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, has been working in the Defense Ministry for 18 years, spending much of that time as a social worker and rehabilitation staffer in the department’s Tiberius District and working with families from the Arabic-speaking sector. Slalha, a member of Israel’s Druze community, took up his current position some six months ago.
“We have a very diverse population that includes Druze and Circassians, who are subject to a mandatory military draft, and volunteers from the Bedouin, Muslim and Christian communities,” he said.
“We view the provision of exemplary service to these families as well as creating an accessible service as being of the utmost importance,” Slalha said. “Of course, language is something that is very important. When working with the bereaved families it is essential to be familiar with aspects such as culture, language and customs. This very much helps to bring people together.”
The Department for Families and Commemoration sends social work students—both Jews and members of Arabic-speaking groups, to bereaved families from a range of Arabic-speaking backgrounds—as part of furthering the goal of diverse communities, united by grief, becoming familiar with one another culturally.
The department also works with the Yad Labanim organization that commemorates fallen soldiers and cares for their families, and with officers from the Israel Defense Forces who support bereaved families.
“The Defense Ministry wants to provide, first and foremost, an exemplary and equitable service for all families. We see that it is important to have the service adapted to the population and not to try and adapt the population to the service, because ultimately the soldiers who went into battle fought side-by-side [regardless of their background],” said Slalha.
“We want to serve their families in the same way whether they are Druze, Jews, Bedouin, Christian or Circassian,” he said.
New families recently “adopted” by the department include relatives of Christian Arab Israel Police officer Amir Khoury, who was shot dead while taking on an armed Palestinian terrorist in Bnei Brak on March 29, 2022. Slalha has personally cared for Khoury’s family.
“A family going through such a crisis—losing its son—can be crushed. It has to be embraced with support,” Slalha explained.
An Israeli Druze Border Police officer, Yazan Falah, was killed in a Hadera terrorist attack on March 27, 2022, while Bedouin Israel Border Police officer Asil Suaed was killed in a Feb. 13, 2023, stabbing terror attack at the Shuafat checkpoint.
All of their families are now under the care of Slalha’s department.
Holidays are especially difficult for bereaved families, he said, as they serve as painful reminders that their loved one is missing.
To help them cope, bereaved families from Haifa and Tiberius recently met, enabling a connection that mutually strengthens them, said Slalha.
“They don’t even need to speak. As soon as they’re together, they’re already making connections. This is a very important activity for us in the department,” he said.
Aryeh Mualem, head of the Department of Families and Commemoration, issues greetings to minority families on their holidays such as the Druze pilgrimage festival of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu’ayb (April 25-28) and the Druze and Muslim Eid al-Fitr celebrations, which took place this past weekend, Slalha said this is no trivial gesture. “It is very important for the families, because ultimately, it’s the human, personal connection. We try to do this in the most sensitive way possible.”
Joint cooking programs for Bedouin families, and a workshop on religious identity for Druze families, are other examples of programs held to support the bereaved.
Meetings bringing together Druze, Jewish and Bedouin bereaved families have also been held, creating powerful and moving connections.
Groups of families also organize living-room coffee meetings to come together.
While the Israeli people focus its attention on fallen soldiers during Memorial Day, for such families, every day is filled with painful challenges, Slalha said.
“They are all accompanied by their loss, and we see it as we accompany them all year around,” he added. “It’s the same pain.”
The department sends commemoration workers in its northern district—members of the Druze and Bedouin communities, to work in Jewish military cemeteries.
“It is a debt we feel towards these families whose whole world has crumbled,” said Slalha.
The post Israel’s defense ministry supports Arabic-speaking bereaved families, boosting national resilience appeared first on World Israel News.
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“Together, we will stand as brothers and guarantee our independence from generation to generation,” the prime minister said.
By JNS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Tuesday for all citizens to “unite and stand as brothers,” speaking in an address at the main state ceremony marking Memorial Day.
“This year, more than ever, on the Memorial Day for the brave of our nation, we will remember that we are brothers: Jews, Druze, Muslims, Bedouin, Christians and Circassians,” said Netanyahu at Memorial Hall atop Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
“Brothers in service, brothers in arms, brothers in blood. This is the true spirit of our people. Together, we will stand as brothers and guarantee our independence from generation to generation. Together we will stand as brothers, and we will bow our heads in endless tribute to the heroism of the fallen,” added the premier.
Netanyahu noted the imperative of retrieving Hamas captives Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed into the Gaza Strip of their own volition in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Both Mengistu and al-Sayed suffer from mental illness.
The prime minister also called to recover the bodies being held by Hamas of two IDF soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, who were killed in action during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014.
Memorial Day began on Monday night as a one-minute siren sounded across the country. Commemorations are taking place at 52 military cemeteries and memorial sites on Tuesday.
“The siren that pierced the silence right now, making its way from one end of the land to the next, rattles our souls and makes way for remembrance, which overwhelms us with silence,” said President Isaac HerzogI in his speech at the Western Wall memorial ceremony.
“I ask myself, I ask us: What other country in the world has such a special sound? It is the sound of pain and of hope, of grief and of pride. It is the sound of the State of Israel. A sound that calls on us to pause for a moment, to lock in the sanctity, to remember and to connect—together,” the president continued.
Fifty-nine Israeli soldiers fell in the line of duty in the past year, and an additional 86 disabled veterans died due to their condition. Overall, 24,213 soldiers have lost their lives in service to the nation since 1860 and there have been 4,255 victims of Arab terror since 1851.
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Rafael’s engineers say the home front may never need to hear another warning siren once their new laser system is ready – maybe even by next year.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A leading Israeli defense company is putting the finishing touches on a new system that will cause incoming rockets to explode long before they reach the country’s border, and it may be ready as soon as next year, Calcalist reported Tuesday.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ R&D department says the company has almost completed the “Light Shield” (‘Magen Ohr’ in Hebrew), a laser that will intercept airborne threats ranging from mortar bombs, rockets and drones to anti-tank missiles.
“We are currently at a peak stage in the full development of the system,” said its chief engineer, Dr. Yohai, who has been working on the project for the past 17 years in conjunction with the Defense Ministry’s weapons development department.
The system has just successfully undergone a major test, Yohai said, and he expects that in “one of the future confrontations” with Hamas, his team will put Light Shield to use in the field. “
We’ll then take the data home and study it,” he said, in order to develop it even further. But “this system learns,” he added. “Like the Iron Dome, it improves itself all the time.”
The heart of the system is its laser targeter, which looks like a large camera lens. When an enemy launch is detected, it gives off an invisible beam that “cooks” the rocket with 100 kilowatts of heat concentrated into a beam the diameter of a 10-shekel coin. The threat is neutralized almost instantaneously, as it literally works at the speed of light.
If the system works as planned, it could spell an end to the phenomenon of men, women and children racing to a shelter when a warning siren sounds – because there may be no need for such a siren.
“Why should the man from Sderot have to wake up in the middle of the night to run to the protected area if we already intercepted the threats long before they crossed the border?” said Maj. Hananel, one of the leaders of the R&D team from the defense ministry side. “There will be quiet. For us, this is a complete negation of the enemy’s capabilities.”
Its cost is also a major factor in the steady backing it has received from the defense ministry, the major said, noting that each Tamir interceptor of the Iron Dome costs about $50,000, and sometimes two are launched to ensure that a rocket shot by Hamas or Hizbollah will not hit a populated area.
The enemy, he said, keeps launching such rockets, even though most are intercepted, for two main reasons.
“He understands that he is still rushing us to shelters, disrupting our daily routine and occasionally also hitting us…[and] understands that for every such cheap and simple rocket, we launch a super-advanced interceptor missile that costs a fortune.”
Thus, he said, “The enemy is waging an economic war with us.”
“The initial benefit of Magen Ohr is in the dramatic improvement in our position in [this] war,” he explained, because a laser “is simply light,” and the main cost of use is just the electric bill for the generators it needs to work.
Light Shield cannot replace the Iron Dome anti-missile system, however, because it is not a perfect product. Stormy weather, fog and sandstorms are examples of factors that limit its function for now. The engineers also refused to divulge to Calcalist exactly how often it could work within a specific amount of time.
Still, the system will be an extraordinarily valuable addition to the defensive screen that Israel has built around itself, and for Maj. Hananel, the goal is clear.
“I want us to reach a situation that we cause the enemy to completely despair,” he said. “To understand that we have laser targeters deployed wherever necessary, that [he] shoots what he wants at us but everything is intercepted and explodes on him all the time, almost at the moment of the launch itself, long before it reaches Israeli territory and threatens someone or something here.”
The post Enemy rockets soon to be ‘cooked’ long before reaching Israel appeared first on World Israel News.
Here are a few examples of how the relationship is mutually beneficial.
By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, The Ettinger Report
The U.S. does not give foreign aid to Israel — the U.S. makes an annual investment in Israel, giving American taxpayers a return of several hundred percent.
While Israel is a grateful recipient of U.S. military systems, it also serves as a battle-tested, cost-effective laboratory for the U.S. defense and aerospace industries, (employing 3.5 million Americans). This enhances U.S. performance on the battlefield and the U.S. economy, national security and homeland security.
Here are a few examples.
In defense: The Israeli Air Force flies the U.S.’s Lockheed-Martin’s F-16 and F-35 combat aircraft, providing both Lockheed-Martin and the U.S. Air Force with invaluable information on operations, maintenance and repairs, which is then used to manufacture a multitude of upgrades for next-generation aircraft. Just the F-16 itself has been improved by several hundred Israeli-driven upgrades, sparing Lockheed-Martin 10-20 years of research and developments, which amounts to billions of dollars.
Israel is the Triple-A store for Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, G.D., Northrop Grumman, and many other U.S. defense and aerospace companies. This enhances the image of these companies abroad and multiplies their export markets, because other countries assume that if Israel — with its unique national security challenges — uses these companies’ products, they must be of high quality.
The U.S. is also trained by Israeli experts in neutralizing car bombs, suicide bombers and IEDs, and U.S. combat pilots benefit greatly from joint maneuvers with their highly experienced Israeli counterparts.
In intelligence: According to a former head of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Gen. George Keegan, the U.S. would have to establish five CIAs to procure the intelligence provided by Israel (the CIA’s annual budget is around $15 billion).
According to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, (Chairman of the Senate Appropriations and Intelligence Committees), the scope of Israeli intelligence shared with the U.S. exceeded that provided by all NATO countries combined. Israeli intelligence helped foil sinister plots against the U.S., secured airliners and airports and provided vital data on advanced Soviet/Russian military systems.
Israel is a unique force multiplier for the U.S., helping to extend America’s strategic reach, so it can secure vulnerable pro-U.S. Arab oil-producing regimes and deter wars and terrorism. With Israel’s help, the U.S. can do this without deploying additional troops, which is not the case with countries like Japan and South Korea, in addition to 100,000 US troops in Europe.
Gen. Alexander Haig, who served as NATO’s Supreme Commander and U.S. Secretary of State, and Adm. Elmo Zumwalt assessed that “Israel is the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, which does not require American soldiers on board, cannot be sunk and is deployed in a most critical region – between Europe, Asia and Africa – sparing the U.S. the need to manufacture, deploy and maintain a few more real aircraft carriers and additional ground divisions, which would cost the U.S. taxpayer some $15 billion annually.”
In tech: More than 200 top American high-tech companies — such as Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Google and Facebook — have established R&D centers in Israel. They use Israel’s brainpower to increase production, exports and employment. They realize that Israel is a critical partner in sustaining their edge over China, Russia, Europe and Japan in the development and manufacture of tech.
The U.S.-Israel strategic relationship constitutes a classic case of a mutually- beneficial two-way street; one that enhances the economies and defense of both countries and benefits Israeli and American taxpayers alike.
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