Noam Shapira was only 10 months into his mandatory three-year military service in the Israel Defense Forces in January 1995 when his world changed, he told a small group of students and faculty at Marquette University on Monday during a two-day visit to Milwaukee.
He was guarding an ammunition base and set to go home for the weekend when he received a call from a friend, another soldier whose father was sick. The friend wanted Shapira to cover his guard duties for the weekend at another army base. Shapira agreed.
The two friends were to meet on Sunday morning at the nearby Beit Lid junction in central Israel, leaving Shapira time to stop at his home in Petach Tikva before continuing to the other base.
After waiting for his friend for approximately a half-hour, Shapira returned to his base. As soon as he sat down on his bed, he heard what sounded like an explosion. He assumed a fire had broken out from overheated ammunition and ran to the base’s gate to help. Someone drove by in a jeep and told him to get in; there was a problem at Beit Lid.
The scene Shapira encountered was worlds apart from the junction he had left only minutes before. “There were about 60 people lying on the ground. There was the smell of gunpowder in the air,” Shapira explained. And the blood. It was everywhere.
A Palestinian terrorist had blown himself up, and once the rescue workers arrived, a second terrorist exploded a second bomb. Twenty-two people were killed; 59 wounded.
When people hear about a terrorist attack, “the sights and sounds and smells tend to fade away,” explained Shapira. “Either they get used to it or they forget.” But for people who have experienced the horror first-hand, the sensory memories “stay with them as a scar for eternity.”
Still today, almost seven years later, “when I drive by [Beit Lid], I can hear the screams of the wounded people,” he said.
Shapira, 27, was in Milwaukee as part of a 12-day tour of the Midwest with two other young Israelis — Limor Zukerman, 22, and Yael Weiss, 26, — representatives of a new private initiative called Israel at Heart.
It was founded by New York businessman Joey Low, who decided to do something about Israel’s negative portrayal in the media. He chose young people as ambassadors and arranged for them to come to the United States to put a personal face on the Israeli crisis.
There are currently 48 “young ambassadors” traveling in groups of three to communities throughout the United States and telling their stories to high school and college students. Unlike representatives of other organizations or the foreign ministry, these Israelis represent only themselves.
Their goal is to share their stories and explain “how they struggle to carry on normal lives in abnormal times,” according to the organization’s website, www.israelathe art.com.
The Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest and the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations supported the local visit, which included speaking engagements at Homestead High School, Marquette University High School and the Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee, which also sponsored the lunch meeting.
Chosen out of a large pool of applicants, the 48 representatives spent two days at a training seminar with Low and others, including a public speaking expert. They were told how, not what, to say, explained Weiss.
“Everybody has a story,” she said. “Practically every [Israeli] has lost someone. But we keep on because that’s our way.”
“I felt so helpless that I wanted to do something,” Zukerman said. After the initial meeting, she said to herself, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to tell people about the country I love.”
Like Weiss and Shapira, Zukerman is convinced of the importance of her activism: “I think every Jew represents Israel all the time, whether they want to or not.”
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