In The Golan With A Band Of Brothers
by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer
After about two hours of driving northward, we finally emerged from Highway 90 at the shores of a fog-blanketed Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, where a few rays of sunlight poked through the clouds and reflected off the waters on a chilly January morning.
Positively unique adventures in the Golan Heights
Only two hours before, my boyfriend Lior had started up his mother’s Volvo as two of his closest friends piled into the backseat for the ride from Ra’anana to the mountainous region of Ramat HaGolan. Roni and I would be the only women with the four men — Lior and his army friends Raz and Zvika, with another army buddy, Eyal, driving separately. They were a band of brothers on a tour of their old army bases and we were along for the ride. The journey seemed possible only in Israel, where the personal and the political are so seamlessly braided.
I closed my eyes for the next 20 minutes as we lumbered along the small northern roads and tagged behind Eyal, who led the group through the Golan Heights in his European-sized Federal Express truck. Suddenly, Lior jolted me awake — we had arrived at a military base, where their friend Yuval was serving a few weeks of army reserve time. Though Yuval had served with them in the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005, the Gaza conflict had prompted a precautionary draft up north as well. Continue reading…
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