Weekend in the Golan

After an early departure from Ramla, with Nick and his peers from Ness Zionya, we headed up to the Golan. Our day was spent exploring different areas, and seeing some beautiful waterfalls. Most of the day was spent hiking, without much discussion of what we were seeing.

Above is one of the waterfalls that we saw. I hope to return in the summer for a dip (some decided to swim anyway, and their screams from the cold are still with me even now, as are their grins which stretched from ear to ear once they swam out and stood underneath)

It was here that the most memorable part happened. This bunker, overlooking the Syrian border, is a classic Taglit stop. So, I was surprised when we went down underneath - the trip I lead had missed that portion of the bunker, yes, the bunker itself entirely. Deep below the ground were a series of rooms where soldiers lived during the time they were responsible for the bunker.

It was here that our guide began his personal story of being on patrol to ambush syrians crossing the border. I will do my best to capture his words below.

He begins:

It was part of the duty of each patrol to go out and spend 36 hours on ambush patrol. It begins with getting dressed, because of the danger, 'death pictures' are taken since it's never clear who will return from these trips. This night in particular, the intelligence had warned that the area would be hot.

The patrol left, and it was a perfect night. It wasn't so hot or so cold that it was at all uncomfortable in spite of their heavy bags, the sky was clear and filled with bright beautiful stars.

The patrol arrived to the road where intelligence had told them to wait, and set up their ambush. They lay down to wait for any activity. Time wore on, and accidentally, one by one, including the commanding officers, the entire group fell into a deep sleep underneath the stars.

Suddenly there was screaming, howling, yelling, bleating!

The sounds were definitely not Hebrew, nor Arabic. The entire patrol awoke together, and leapt to their feat, rifles and machine guns raised, fingers on the triggers pointed towards where the terrible noise was coming from, just a few meters from where they lay in ambush.

And there, right in front of them, stood a man getting to know his goat, biblically.

Here the story ended. I apologize for not doing it justice, but if my peers write about it in their blogs as well, I will be sure to link to it, so you can read other renditions.

Back to the bunker: At this point, the room was in chaos, half of our group was trying to understand what exactly was going on, the other half was laughing hysterically or quietly chuckling to themselves. We never did find out what happened to the man and the goat, although, I imagine the soldiers didn't interrupt him and silently disappeared.

Our Guide, Yair, talked about how frightening the experience was then, but looking back, him and his buddies laugh about it now. I am sure there is a lesson to be learned here, although I need to stop laughing about it first.