. . . an exciting and challenging program and involves basic training, shooting M-16 rifles and various other physical and intellectual activities. -- Israeli army recruiting advertisement in the Australian Jewish News

Sydney, Australia, July 4, 2002

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[Picture and caption supplied by this website]

Australian Jews free to play at war in Israel

By Craig Skehan
Defence Correspondent

THE Federal Government and law enforcement authorities are refusing to stop the recruitment of young Jewish Australians from undergoing military training in Israel.

Australia's Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act states that it is an offence to "recruit another person to serve in any capacity in or with an armed force in a foreign state" or to publish an advertisement for the purpose of any such recruiting.

Friendly, democratic Israeli troops in action

... firing their exciting and challenging M16 rifles at Palestinian children from our website picture archive

An advertisement in the Australian Jewish News offered a "five-day army experience" in Israel.

"It is both an exciting and challenging program and involves basic training, shooting M-16 rifles and various other physical and intellectual activities," it said.

The newspaper has in recent years carried a number of stories about young Australians on tours to Israel, one with a photograph of a group in army uniforms with camouflage paint on their faces.

A journalist with the paper, Bernie Freedman, said last night that such tours were aimed at people who "want to play soldiers - they are not recruiting for the army".

An article in the Australian Jewish News on May 31 referred to 20 Australians from Sydney and Melbourne going to Israel as volunteers to fill a labour shortage arising from the current large call-up of reservists.

One of the Australian volunteers, Zvika Ledder, said his son had already travelled to Israel for military training.

The head of the Palestinian delegation to Australia, Ali Kazak, said he had received a letter from the director of National Investigations for the Australian Federal Police, Tim Morris, which said "there is no evidence to suggest that recruitment of Australian nationals, to serve in or with an armed force in a foreign state, has occurred in Australia".

The man who headed that investigation, federal agent Bob Wynn, said last night that the time being spent with the Israeli army was more along "youth camp lines" than any attempt to recruit young people from overseas "to actually fight".

A senior diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in Canberra, Michael Ronen, said the attack on the visits was "sheer propaganda".

"There is a big difference in learning to fire an M-16 in a friendly democratic country to doing so with a terrorist organisation which kills innocent civilians," he said.