We heard from four young members of the IDF, two men and two women, one of whom was amongst the observers who were watching the Gaza border. Her friends were either killed or taken alive into captivity (and these included the extraordinary Agam Berger).
They are part of the IDF Press Corps whose job it is to communicate with the world's politicians, media and groups like ours and explain the IDF's actions. Not an easy thing to do on any count.
We the travelled to the nearby Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. This is a pretty impressive museum with some seriously cool features including lifesize Israeli innovators explaining how they and their partners created technology we use such as the Flash/Pen Drive (Dov Moran) and Waze (Uri Levene). Many of these are graduates of The Technion.
We watched a video in a recreation of Peres' study and even tried a VR Headset which suggested future innovations.
Some other features made this a very interesting visit.
Our coach then took us to the offices of the IAI (Israel Aircraft Industries) where we had lunch and had a presentation by a former high ranking IDF officer who presented a history of the organisation. We then visited some hangers, the first of which stores UAVs. What a privilege it was to view these.
Another coach trip to the beautiful villa of one of our leaders and after some much sought downtime, we met with a middle-aged reservist who explained the challenges of trying to balance his home and professional life with the hundreds of days he has been spending in Gaza on numerous tours of duty. It was another very difficult conversation.
The evening ended with some light relief courtesy of a singer who serenaded us with Israeli songs.
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