Very busy day today. Started first thing this AM with a briefing from representatives of TZEVET. This is an organization of Israeli veterans that was started at the end of the Fifties as Israeli Defense Forces began to retire and realized they shared a common military and professional background and faced similar challenges and difficulties in the transition to civilian life. The aims of TZEVET association is to locating places of employment for veterans, promote mutual assistance programs and to aid needy members, to encourage and develop voluntary, social, and cultural activities, and to maintain the members' links with security affairs in general.  Retired General Baruch Levy, Chairman of Tzevet gave an overview of their programs, especially for the over 50,000 wounded veterans in Israel.  One of the issues Israel has right now is that it is starting to relize the scope of the problem of having so many veterans of their wars since 1948 aging and needing many services and resources.  We will look o share some of our info with them over the coming months.

Next we heard from Lt. Col. Reuven Ben-Shalom who is the US Military liasion for the IDF with a briefing on Israeli security issues at the present and how they are responding to threats.  The bottom line is that this country is on a constant war footing on all borders, as well as the many domestic issues they are having with the West Bank and Gaza.  Col Ben Shalom was born in California but has deep roots in Malden MA as well.  I presented both of these fine gentlemen with Massachusetts flags that flew over the State House. 

We then went to tour the old Jaffa Railroad Station which was built by the turks when the area was under their control during WWI.  It is now a tourist spot with shops and cafes.

We later traveled to Independence Hall.  Originally the Dizengoff House, it is best known as the site of the signing of Israel's Declaration of Independence. It is located on the historic Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv.  It stands on the site where sixty-six families gathered on April 11, 1909 to conduct a lottery for plots of land in a new Jewish neighborhood, to be known as Ahuzat Bayit. Meir and Zina Dizengoff acquired plot number 43, on which they built their home. Meir Dizengoff served as the head of the new neighborhood council. In 1910, at a general meeting, the residents of Ahuzat Bayit, inspired by Theodor Herzl's book Altneuland (English: Old-New Land), unanimously decided to rename their neighborhood Tel Aviv. As the neighborhood grew and became a city, Dizengoff became the first mayor of the city of Tel Aviv.  After his death, it was converted to an art musuem and it was here that the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, made the proclamation of Israeli independence in 1948.

From here we went to a full briefing and walk through of the Israel The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center which is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC) , an NGO dedicated to the memory of the fallen of the Israeli Intelligence Community.  This group works to focus on issues concerning intelligence and terrorism. Via its website and e-mail bulletins it reports on various issues and can be located at www.intelligence.org.il//  There is also a memorial here to all those Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agents who were killed in the line of duty.  From an intelligence perspective, even the little we were cleared to see and hear proves that these guys are very good when it comes to intelligence and counterterrorism.  Also saw a copy of a Torah that was smuggled from Syria that is over 150 years old.

One of over 50 old Torah's smuggled out of Syria

We start tomorrow at 7:30  am with a briefing by the US military attache from our Embassy.