"You're a role model. I'm proud of you," Lt. Col. Amit Tzuman, commander of the IDF's Havat Hashomer base, said as he approached Lior Workia at a ceremony marking the end of his basic training.
Havat Hashomer was established in 1980 by then-IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan to offer troubled soldiers a protective environment that would allow them to adjust to army life. According to Lt. Col. Tzuman, 1,000-1,500 recruits arrive each year, only 15% of whom go on to combat service.
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It took Workia seven months of ups and downs to reach this point. He had to have an arrest record expunged. He began basic training but was sent to army prison after going AWOL for 20 days. He started basic training again and proceeded to 10 weeks of combat training at Havat Hashomer. He was determined to be a combat soldier in the Golani Brigade.
Two and a half weeks ago, Workia, 19, began the specialized Golani training at the brigade's home base at Regavim, in the Negev. This Sunday, he began a three-day trial, the results of which will determine whether he would be assigned to Golani, an elite reconnaissance unit, or the elite Egoz Unit, which specializes in counter-guerrilla warfare
"I still can't believe I achieved the goal I set for myself. It wasn't easy, but it was clear to me I wouldn't let a temporary fall or a moment of stupidity in my teens to wreck my military service," Workia says.
Q: You've made history – you're the only one to go on to combat service after two rounds of basic training at Havat Hashomer.
"Anyone who misses more than two weeks of basic training has to repeat it. To get into combat, you need to be a really outstanding soldier, without any disciplinary actions or behavior problems. It's really easy to break down and give up... But I think the second basic training was a gift that helped me fulfill my dream.
"I hope that everyone who reads the article will understand that they can't let others close doors or limit their dreams. I'm proof that anything is possible."
Workia began his Golani training just as the IDF announced that soldiers would not be given leave from base due to the coronavirus epidemic. He was lucky enough to spend the previous weekend at home, and was able to prepare his parents for the fact that he'd be away for a month, at least.
"My mom told me I'm strong and I'll get through this period. The truth is, I've been through so much that a few weeks away from home won't break me … I'm just waiting for this all to be over, so I can go home, hug my mom, and eat the breakfast she always makes me when I'm on leave: injera, which is Ethiopian bread from special flour [teff], with a spicy scrambled egg."
Workia, whose given name is Birhano ("full of light") was born in 2001 in Gonder, Ethiopia. He is the youngest son of Mulu, who works as a cleaner at the Rabin Medical Center, and Ayelo, who is retired. He has eight brothers and sisters.
In January 2005, the family made aliyah and lived at first in an immigrant absorption center in Mevasseret Zion. It wasn't easy for them to adjust. Workia's parents, who did not speak Hebrew, had trouble finding employment.
"My dad didn't work at all. My mom worked as a cleaner, and my older brother, Melamed, worked as a security guard at the mall," he says.
"I was in nursery school at the absorption center. I learned Hebrew really fast," he recalls.
After two years in the absorption center, the family bought a house in Petach Tikva. Workia started elementary school. In September 2011, just before he started the fourth grade, the school was shut down after parents protested that all but one of the school's 280 pupils were of Ethiopian descent.
"I remember that as a kid, I thought it was weird that there were only Ethiopian students. At that age, you don't understand segregation between black and white. Only after my parents started protesting, and we kids joined them, did I get it. I understood. There were people who were standing opposite, shouting 'Blacks, go back to Ethiopia.' These words penetrate deep into your soul and stay there. My parents had dreamed of coming to Israel for years. And in the end, we weren't welcomed in Israel."
"I was nine at the time, and my mom said something I've always remembered: 'When people make fun of you for being Ethiopian, or shout insults at you, smile and keep going.' I have to say, that's not easy, but I try not to curse anyone who attacks me."
Workia then moved to a religious elementary school, although unlike his parents he is not religious, and two years later to a boarding school. He says he didn't fit it.
Q: Were you a problem student?
"I wasn't disruptive during lessons, I just didn't study. I would sit in class and the only thing that interested me was soccer. My dream was to play professionally."
When he finished the eighth grade, his older brother suggested that Workia join the youth soccer team affiliated with Hapoel Hod Hasharon. He did, and flourished there, becoming an outstanding player. Several professional teams began scouting him.
At the end of 10th grade, he signed with Maccabi Petah Tikva, which he calls "a dream come true."
But at age 17, when he was still at his peak, he was injured and had to stop training for six months, hoping to return. When the team replaced him, he became depressed.
"All my life, I never had anything other than soccer, and it was taken away from me all of a sudden."
He found himself with time on his hands, and he started going out with friends. When they offered him a drink, he drank. Before that, he had never touched alcohol. He hid it from his parents, both because he was embarrassed and because he knew they would be disappointed.
"My whole life, my parents tried to keep me away from the neighborhood. They knew nothing good would come out of there. When I'd go out, they didn't know I was hanging around problem guys."
Drinking became his escape. One night changed the course of his life. He and some friends were stopped by police while drunk, and tried to run away.
"While we were running, one of my friends fell down, and a cop caught him and put him in handcuffs. I saw my friend lying on the grass, trying to get up, and the cop wasn't letting him. I tried to convince the cop to let him go, and he told me, 'This isn't a negotiation.'
"Without thinking, I picked up an empty bottle that was on the ground and threw it at the cop, then ran away. Luckily, the bottle didn't hurt him. I hid between the buildings for two hours, until I saw no one was around, then I left. But there were detectives there and they caught me right away."
Workia found himself being brought into a police station, handcuffed. He was frightened. It turned out that a robbery had been committed in the area while he was out with his friends, apparently by Ethiopian kids. The police opened a file on charges of assaulting a police officer and attempted robbery.
"Being arrested made me re-think things. I gradually stopped hanging out with those guys, and I stopped drinking. I tried to get back on my team as a relief player, but it was frustrating… The team doctor told me it would be very difficult for me to start playing again after such a long break. That was the moment when I realized that what little hope I had of fulfilling my [soccer] dream had just blown up in my face. After a few days, I decided to start again and find a new mission in life. That was when I started dreaming of being a combat soldier … and not just any combat soldier, Golani."
One obstacle stood in his way – his criminal file. Workia met with an IDF evaluator a few times to prove that his slip-up had been a single mishap, but it didn't help. He turned to Shmuel Taka, a youth leader who worked at the community center in his neighborhood, and asked him for help.
On Aug. 26, 2019, Workia arrived, excited, at the IDF's main induction center at Tel Hashomer. Although no one had told him he would be drafted into a combat unit, that was the only possibility as far as he was concerned.
However, he was sent to basic training at the Havat Hashomer base in the Galilee. "I can't tell you how disappointed I was. I expected to hear 'Golani,' or even another combat infantry unity. But I didn't know much about Havat Hashomer. Before I left the base, I called Shmuel, and he told me that 'problem' soldiers, who had gotten into trouble and had no future, were sent to Havat Hashomer. Today, I know that's not accurate at all."
He was about to refuse to get on the bus to the base, but Taka counseled him that it would be unwise to begin his service on the wrong foot.
Once at Havat Hashomer, Workia says he was "shocked" to discover that all the officers were women.
"Today, I realize that's smart, because they really serve a motherly role, calming and accepting, but they know how to set boundaries when they need to. It's also easier to avoid conflict, because – between us – who will hit a woman?"
Workia says that when he got to know his fellow recruits, he realized that they "weren't thugs with criminal records, just guys who hadn't been lucky. They came from broken homes, or had fallen through the cracks, and this was their chance to get back in line and change the course of their lives.
"At night, I'd lie in bed and tell myself that I couldn't let the stigmas affect me, that I needed to focus on my goal of finishing basic training and getting to a combat unit."
In the early days of basic training, Workia found himself missing home and realizing that none of the soldiers in his team were as determined as himself.
"Most of the guys who arrive at Havat Hashomer aren't headed for combat service … they just want to finish basic [training]. I realized that if I didn't take charge, I'd be in trouble. I talked to my guys and told them I wasn't asking them to excel, just that they not hold me back."
Every morning, Workia took charge of cleaning his barracks with little help. Quickly, his team members and the officers spotted that he was a good soldier. But he knew he would have to stand before several committees and an IDF psychiatrist before he could make it to a combat unit. His police file continued to irk him.
"Every time I went home on leave, I'd go to the police station to see if they'd closed it. Then I'd go talk to the neighborhood youth to see if they would help me close it."
Eventually, his platoon commander asked him to produce a document stating he had no criminal record.
"When I went home that weekend, I went to the police station. The same officer who saw me come in every Friday was there. He smiled at me and took a blank piece of paper out of the drawer. It took me a second to understand, then I grabbed his head and asked, 'That's it? They closed my file? I don't have a criminal record? I can do combat service? Are you sure? He smiled and said yes."
But then, after six weeks of basic training and just as it seemed that everything was about to work out, he got into trouble again. Every so often, his fellow soldiers would laugh at him for being black. He would usually laugh with them, and it would stop. But one day, they kept it up, even though he asked them to stop. He says he felt "trampled."
"That day, we had a lesson about [Theodor] Herzl with the commander. When she read an article that included the phrase 'the women of Kush [the biblical term for Ethiopia, and also a derogatory term],' I asked her to change it to 'dark-skinned women.' She didn't know that this came right on my hurt feeling from the morning, and didn't pay any attention. When I saw she wasn't taking any notice, I cursed under my breath. She heard and asked me to leave."
He immediately packed his bag and left the base. When he got to the bus stop, he called his mother, who had already heard about the incident from his commander. She convinced him to go back. He was on the base an hour later, and the company commander informed him that because he'd gone AWOL, he could not enlist in a combat unit.
"I saw red. I told myself that if they don't see how badly I'm being treated, and allow racism, I was done with the IDF. I wrote an upset letter to my commander and explained what had happened. I took my bag and headed for home. My commander called my mom again and asked her to try and stop me. Mom tried to understand why I was so hurt, but I couldn't explain. In the end she told me to come home and we'd talk."
"Mom was telling me all the time that if I didn't go back, I was letting them win."
After 20 days of being AWOL, Workia decided to go back. He was tried and sentenced to five days in an IDF detention facility. He was also informed that he would have to repeat basic training. But prison gave him time to think, and he arrived at the conclusion that he was lucky to have been given a second chance.
A second round of basic meant learning how to use a weapon that he'd already learned how to use and going on marches he had already marched. But he knew that he was coming in stronger, both physically and mentally. "This time I wouldn't let anything screw things up," he says.
Workia was told that at the end of the second 10 weeks of basic he would appear before the various committees that would determine if he was fit for combat service. If he passed, he would go for another two months' training with a combat platoon in preparation for infantry training.
"I was appointed assistant to the sergeant and started showing the officers who I really was. When new recruits arrived, I'd take them aside for a talk and tell them not to let anyone tell them what they could or couldn't do."
This time, the committees and the psychiatrist all approved him for combat service. The base commander told him, "You're a true leader. You're being moved to the combat platoon."
"I couldn't stop smiling," he says.
Tzuman said, "Our faith in people is strong. Without it, we couldn't succeed, and this message gets through to the recruits. Until Lior Workia, there was never any soldier who managed to survive a total of seven months of basic training and finally make it to combat service, which make me very proud of him.
"Lior became a role model, for us as well as for the recruits. He exemplifies willpower and determination to achieve goals. I'm sure that everyone could learn from what he's been through, whether they're a new recruit or an officer. When a soldier says he's having trouble, we send him to talk to Lior."
Last Friday, less than a week before Passover eve, Workia finished two and a half weeks of pre-training at the Golani home base.
"All the recruits who were with me were just starting their service, and I already have seven months seniority, so it was all easy for me," he says with a smile.
Now his great hope is to be assigned to the Egoz Unit, which is part of the commando brigade.
"If I make it, I'll have to do a full year of training. But I'm not worried. I know what 'hard' means. After that, I want to go to squadron leaders school, and then to officers training. So it looks like I'll be spending a few more years in the army," he says.
