Answering Israel's Call

Bradley Bloom '75 was at Yom Kippur services in his hometown, Swampscott, when he first heard that a new war had broken out in the Mideast. He remembers being surprised that the Arab nations had chosen that particular time to attack Israeli-held territories, and thought that Israel would win the war very quickly.

Two days later, it was obvious that Israel was not doing as well as Bloom had expected, and he started thinking about what he could do to help in what appeared to be the start of a protracted Israeli war effort. He went to a rally in Brookline where the speakers called for American volunteers to go to Israel and work in the kibbutzim.

The next day Bloom became the first person in the Boston area to commit himself to a six-month stay in Israel. He has arranged to take off the 1973-74 academic year, and expects to leave within a week. He is the only Harvard student so far who has answered the Israeli call for American volunteers.

Bloom is just the kind of person the Israeli government was looking for. He has been to Israel three times, has taken three semesters of Hebrew here, and has been intensely involved over the last five years with various Boston area Jewish organizations, particularly the militant Jewish Defense League.

Sherut La'am, the local Jewish organization which recruited and selected the Boston area people going to the kibbutzim, turned down quite a few people who wanted to go to Israel, Bloom says. "They didn't want people who all of a sudden got turned on about Israel," he says. "Kibbutz work is boring-six or seven days a week, ten hours a day. Sherut La'am isn't interested in people who want to go hear the bombs falling for a couple of weeks and then come running back."

Bloom agrees fervently with all of Israel's military goals. He says Israel should occupy and establish civilian settlements in the Sinai peninsula; that it should hold the Golan Heights for its strategic value; and that the United States should heavily arm Israel.

"Statements and promises don't have a lot of meaning in the Middle East," he says. "Of course the Arabs still want to push Israel into the sea. They always did, and just because they haven't been saying so in the last couple of years doesn't mean they've changed. They're not capable of a complete turnaround in five years."

The final object of Israel, Bloom says, should be to "bring the war home to the Arabs without too many civilian casualties so that they won't ever make war on Israel again. Also I hope the Syrians will be forced to release the 7000 Jews they are holding in Syria. Life for them is one continual hell-torture and intimidation. The Syrians won't let them return to Israel."

Bloom doesn't feel alone at Harvard in his strong support of Israel. "I'm not surprised that people aren't actually going to Israel," he says. "You really had only two or three days to make a decision, because after that you would lose a lot of tuition money if you went this semester. If it had happened in late summer, there would be many more. There's been a lot of good reaction here, both among Jews and non-Jews-a lot of money's been given."

However, Bloom's old friends from the Jewish defense League haven't been very active in supporting the Israeli war effort; most of them prefer to work through the more established channels of Hillel. The JDL is not an official undergraduate organization at Harvard, and although at times it has been very active it is rather loosely organized now. Bloom left the JDL last year because, he says, "I was spending more time on the JDL than on school."

But he still agrees in general with the JDL's politics and programs, which include training New York children in military tactics and hand-to-hand combat and demonstrating against and occupying the Russian embassy.

"The kids in those camps are from the Lower East Side, and they have to know how to protect themselves. We were working in Boston on protecting elderly Jews in Mattapan and Dorchester who were getting attacked on the street just like the kids in the camps were. The JDL has done a lot to inspire the young Jews in America and to get Russia to let the Soviet Jews emigrate." Defending world Jewry is, for Bloom, a very important and very serious business, especially where Israel is involved. Bloom called Israel "the only country in the world faced with total annihilation if they lose one war."

"The Israeli people probably won't be alive if they lose this war," he said. "You have to remember this when you talk about Israel's military position and where its borders should be. This is warfare, not a government course at Harvard."