Cliona Campbell, a 19 year old Irish student who volunteered to help in the Israeli Defense Force says that she returned home after two months in Israel to a hate campaign, organized by anti-Israel elements in Ireland who saw her story written up in a local newspaper.
A resident of Cork in Ireland, Campbell volunteered several months ago for a program coordinated by Sar-El, which sends volunteers to work on IDF bases or in nursing homes, helping out with routine activities such as maintenance, packing 'kitbags', working in the kitchen, gardening, etc. Participants also take tours of the country, and learn about Israeli and Jewish life.
Campbell, who is not Jewish, said she joined Sar-el because she was “captivated by the Jewish people - a nation which has endured hatred, persecution and genocide, and yet still retains an unyielding will to survive, unifying them in an unbreakable kinship.” In an article in the Cork Evening Echo which was reprinted on the Sar-el site, Campbell said she decided to volunteer for the IDF because she, “had watched the injustice during Operation Cast Lead, where after eight years of incessant rockets, Israel cried enough and was villainized for the deaths caused by terrorists who used their own people as human shields, hiding cowardly in densely populated civilian areas.”
During her two months in the IDF, Campbell said she made some wonderful friends, and came to a real appreciation of Israeli society. 'I gazed at the myriad of faces surrounding me.” she wrote. “Moroccans, Russians, Yemenites, Ethiopians- a cacophony of races and origins, all sporting the same khaki green uniform, all calling each other ‘achi’- ‘my brother'.”
But her sense of joy and wonder were not to last. Even before she returned home, Campbell told the website Irishcentral.com, she was receiving abusive e-mails, warning her to “keep her head down” after word spread about her article. “I came back after two months and wrote a piece on my experiences,” she told the site. “Now I am getting hate mail and being targeted.
She has been called a “terrorist,” she said, and some of her harassers say, “they don't even see me as Irish anymore.”
4 comments:
A young lady with conviction and honor. Her country mates should be ashamed.
No good deed goes unpunished. Your reward is in heaven lassy!
wahhh! who cares? she took a picture. people get offended way too easily
I agree with the first post.
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