We are all a family here at the Bnei Zion pre-military academy. During their time at this special program, students join alumni and our team of instructors to form an embracing extended family.
The preparatory program was named after Ben-Zion Haddad, who was killed in action serving in the Israel Defense Forces. The program has helped hundreds of young men and women stand on their feet, readying them to serve in the various military units. Some of them, including both men and women, even became pilots. In fact, about half of the alumni served or serve as officers in special units and otherwise.
After they are discharged, our students continue on to study in the different universities and engage in social activism that was formed in the year of the program, in the framework of the different activities with the elderly, in impoverished neighborhoods and in helping at-risk youth.
The program functions under the ethos of being truly responsible for one another in a manner that we would love to see spread to all of Israeli society. Religious and secular girls and boys from all over the country study together. The program is headed by founder Lt. Col. (res.) Yuval Kahan, a moral man and a true educator.
I have been an instructor in the program for ten years. Despite this, I have learned much more from the students and the team than I have taught. The students who traveled on Thursday to the Arava Desert should have been my students for bible studies next year. I will no longer have the honor of finding out how they would have interpreted the book of Samuel, or what they would have said about Joseph and his brothers.
On this difficult day, we ask for strength and to reinforce one another. We must honor and cherish this special program and the language, the learning, the social work, the passion and the responsibility that is imprinted there.
Bnei Zion is one of 54 pre-military leadership academies spread across the country. Let's not hasten to judge this unique enterprise we call leadership programs. They are among the most important projects undertaken for the Jewish people. I do not know the details of the trip that ended in tragedy. There will be time for inquiries and conclusions needed, but just wait a moment.
Now is the time for us to mourn the light in the world that was forever swept away and lost in Nachal Tzafit on that terrible Thursday.
