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Photo: Sivan Farj
Ceremony for lone soldiers.
Photo: Sivan Farj

Lone soldiers receive surprise visit by their mothers

Adopt-a-Battalion funds mothers' trips to Israel for special ceremony marking 10 years of the project, in which major corporations from all over the world adopt combat units.

Twenty lone soldiers were surprised to discover on Tuesday night that their mothers had been flown to Israel for a special reunion with their sons and daughters.

 

 

The emotional reunions occurred at a ceremony held at IDF headquarters to mark 10 years of the Adopt a Battalion project.

 

Ceremony held for lone soldiers. (Photo: Sivan Farj) (Photo: Sivan Farj)
Ceremony held for lone soldiers. (Photo: Sivan Farj)

 

The project, created by the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers (AWIS) in cooperation with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), funded the flights of the soldiers' mothers who came from 10 different nations: the United States, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, India, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

 

Zundel, a lone soldier from Mexico, was very surprised to see his mother and could not hide his excitement: "I'm deeply moved and cannot believe this is happening to me," he said. "I think about my mother and family in faraway Mexico a lot and miss them."

 

Among those who participated in the ceremony were the president of Adopt a Battalion, Avi Fischer, and the chairman of the AWIS, Avigdor Kahalani. Israeli TV presenter Miki Haimovich and her husband Eli Aildis hosted the event.

 

Lone soldiers serving in combat positions attended the ceremony, including those serving in the air force and the Golani, Nachal, Kfir, paratroopers and intelligence brigades.

 

The program also has major business corporations sponsor 184 female combat units and border police units, with Friends of the IDF (FIDF) being one of the sponsors.

 

Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gadi Eizenkot also participated in the event and said that it was "the IDF's duty as a national and egalitarian army to act in accordance with the principles and values that honor the people who serve in the IDF."

 

Avigdor Kahalani said: "In a matter of years the amount of bodies that have requested to adopt an IDF combat unit has increased."

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.13.15, 23:30
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