As a Chayal Boded many years ago and an ex Washingtonian. thank you Ethan Schwartz

ISnt this treason, these children joining a foreign army ? If these people fight for a foreign army, must not they lose their birth countries nationality. think about it, what if some of these jews were from IRAN or something, one of israels so called enemie and these jews were fighting for israel.

Most countries have laws set up that it is ILLEGAL to serve in a foreign army, HOWEVER, since Israel has a mandatory military requirement for ALL citizens, then it is allowed. I have friends from all over the world in the army and they fly home once in their service even. I am dual American Israeli. Its not a problem. Havent heard of Jews coming from Iran.... but there are countries in the Middle East, like Yemen, where if you make aliyah, you are stripped of their citizenship and those people usually want it that way! :) Hope that helps "treason"

They are Jews, who are proud to defend Israel, not a mercenary.

When the Syrians Muslims fighting in Iraq hold Iraqi citizenship, then they won't be mercenaries--until they do, they'll be mercenaries. Is that simple enough for you?

I did not receive a free trip to Israel. I had to pay for my own ticket.

"I can't say that I came here for Zionist or even Jewish reasons," said the paratrooper sitting next to me on Seder night last Monday. "I got into so much trouble back home, all I wanted to do was party. Running away from the police was what made me fit enough for combat service. I thought that coming here and doing army would help me get my shit together." IDF is just a collection of violent individuals http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160512.html

I think treason is defined as actively fighting (militarily) against one's own country in order to assist an opposing regime to damage one's own country or else enabling others to actively fight against one's own country. In the case of an American citizen joining the IDF, this would not fit the parameters of treasonous activity. Many Americans joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War fighting against the forces of Generalissimo Franco who, eventually, won. This war preceded WWII. These volunteers were not considered participants in treasonous activity. A question I would ask is if it was considered treasonous, for instance, to fight in the French underground against the Nazis and Vichy government of France during WWII. Of course, we in the West consider these warriors to be heros. Had the Nazis won, I suppose they would have been tried, if captured alive, for treasonous activity. This is the kind of scenario played out whenever an individual or group internally aggresses against any government in power. So is that all there is to it, the meaning of treasonable activity.

And neither would you if you understood the concept of wages. Look it up in the dictionary. As for Leah, neither did my parents get a free ticket to Israel when I served. So what?

Against your own country. That's why, in WW II, flyers who went to Canada and volunteered for the RCAF before Pearl Harbor were not considered traitors, but those ethnic Germans who went back to the "old country" to fight for Germany were. The question of resistance groups is less clear, but remember that you're talking about resistance groups in countries conquered and occupied by the Nazis, who installed puppet governments. These weren't the legitimate, elected governments of those countries. That makes it patriotism, not treason.

Jonathan Pollard, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, Mordechai Venunu, Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, Ehud Yatom, Klaus Fuchs, William Perl, Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, Aleksander Fetlisov, David Greenglass, Ruth Greenglass, Max Elitcher, Theodore Hall, Robert Oppenheimer,

isn't a blow to Obama's policy in the Middle East, but rather boosting it. It hastens Obama's policy of disengagement from the Middle East conflicts in Iraq & Afghanistan.

This article is about a human related issue. Motivated Jews want to serve their 'true' home and make great human sacrifices in the process; not being able to see their family. Just thought I'd spell it our for all those stupid commentators who can't get their heads out of the Jewish having no rights to survival syndrome. I hope many of those parents do decide to stay in Israel. Kol Hakoved to the organizers, the parents for coming and of course our brave soldiers, in the most moral army in the world. For the bad mouthers, I hope you choke on your own puke filled words!