The Gesher Association celebrated last week a decade of activities in a special ceremony.
For the past decade, Gesher has operated the IDF Officer Cadets Jewish Identity Training program, which seeks to strengthen the Jewish and Zionist identity of Israeli soldiers in the belief that this will promote motivation and help the IDF be a force for unity. The sessions are filled with intense workshops, seminars, presentations, role-playing activities, and tours of Jewish and Zionist sites.
Every year about 6,500 cadets take part in the Gesher program, and a total of about 40,000 have participated over the last decade.
“Every soldier who is going to be an officer in the IDF goes through the Gesher seminar,” explained Gesher Executive Director Ilan Galdor.
“The Gesher seminar deals not only with how to be an officer, it deals more with the way,” he added. “Through the seminar we understand that we all share the same heritage, the same present, and even more important, the same future.”
The ceremony was attended by Minister for Strategic Affairs and former IDF COS Moshe Ya’alon and the IDF’s chief education officer Major General Elazar Stern.
Both Ya’alon and Stern addressed the social protests currently going on in Israel, and Ya’alon said, “Regardless of the motives and the political forces behind the social protest, I say it is very important. An enormous gap between rich and poor has been created. There are men who come to the army driving their own car and in contrast, there are those who come home to an empty refrigerator. We were able to establish a state and now we have to establish a model society. I hope we can build one.”