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For the Brave, Age Is No Barrier to Army Service

(Times of Israel) Debra Kamin - Maj. Amotz Greenberg, one of the first IDF soldiers to fall during Operation Protective Edge, did not have to be in combat. The married father of three - killed Saturday by Hamas gunmen who emerged from a tunnel - was 45, well past the age of mandatory reserve service in the IDF. But many choose, as Greenberg did, to continue to voluntarily serve. Y., 38, who was given an exemption when his infantry unit was disbanded, chose to join a new unit. "I'll continue to serve as long as I can physically handle it," he says. "It's a tremendous privilege. If you look at the history of the Jewish people, with all the anti-Semitism and pogroms and expulsions and eventually the Holocaust, what those Jews wouldn't have done to have an army that protects them. And we have the amazing fortune of living in a time period when that army exists. So why, as a Jew, would you not want to serve?"
2014-07-25 00:00:00
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