February 22 - Today kicked off with a briefing from the US Military Attaches from the US Embassy.  Lt. Col Pete Larsen and Lt. Col John Cappello from the US Air Force and Major Paloma Beausoleil, US Army gave us a declassified overview of US policy and the work they are doing with the IDF.  This mission is especially critical now and these men and women are doing a fantastic job making sure US interests are represented and protected. 

I presented them with a Massachusetts flag that flew over the State House which they are going to hang at the embassy.  Despite being a die hard Yankees/Giants fan, Col. Cappello assured me this would happenJ.

We then traveled north toward Haifa, stopping to inspect the ruins at Caesarea.  Here once stood a small Phoenician village in the 3^rd century BC.  In 22 BC, Herod the Great set about building a great city in honor of the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (hence the name).  Pontius Pilate resided here when not in Jerusalem.  Herod built a port here (very amazing), a hippodrome and an amphitheatre.  Eventually the city was taken by Arabs and then retaken by the Crusaders who held it off and on for almost 1000 years until being defeated by Mamluk sultan Beybars in 1261 AD. 

Later on we made our way to the village of Avihayil to the Beit Hagdudim Museum which is dedicated to Jewish Volunteers to the British Armed Forces during WW I and WW II.  This museum was established in 1961 by the veterans of the Jewish Legions.  These legions were made up of Jewish volunteers from the diaspora and from Palestine who were encouraged to fight for the British Army in both conflicts despite their own issues with the British government.  In the First World War, their interest were driven by wanting to help expel the Turks from Palestine as a way to establishing a Jewish home state and in World War II it was to defeat the Nazis.  You can see here a recruitment poster for the Legions.

This service was critical to the establishment of Israel as it helped provide many Jewish settlers with professional military experience which they later used in their war if independence in 1948. 

From here it was on to the port city of Haifa where we passed by the beautiful Baha’I Gardens.  The gardens ring the Shrine of the Bab which is a great holy place for members of the Baha’I faith, an independent religion that was established in Persia in the 19^th Century.  The views from the gardens on Haifa are incredible.

Haifa is also home to the  IDF Junior Command Preparatory School.
 The IDF junior command preparatory school is a high school military boarding academy that functions a feeder system for officers in the IDF.  We met some of the very patriotic and dedicated students who undergo a very competitive process in order to attend (out of 1000 applications only 65 are chosen).  The young men and women here are both excited and realistic about their future careers.  There is a memorial room with all of the graduates who have died in service over the past 50 years.  Many over the past 10 years.  We deeply hope this is not a fate that awaits any of them.