In a brightly lit classroom in Gaza, a teacher spells out Hebrew words on a whiteboard, followed attentively by Maher Al-Farra and dozens of other Palestinians hoping to take advantage of an opening up of employment opportunities in Israel.

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Increased demand for the classes at the Nafha languages center follows a new offer of work permits by Israel as it has moved to calm border tensions following Operation Guardian of the Walls against Hamas infrastructure in May 2021.

It now offers 10,000 permits allowing Gaza residents to cross the border to work in Israel – a  new source of income to a region where 64% of the population is estimated to live in poverty and unemployment runs at 50%.

Ahmed Al-Faleet, the center's owner, said the number of people enlisted to learn Hebrew has increased four-fold to reach 160 students per course since Israel began giving work permits in the last quarter of 2021.

Video: Reuters

"These courses allow anyone who gets a permit to read signs, documents written in Hebrew, and communicate with [soldiers] on Israeli checkpoints. If an employer speaks only Hebrew it enables the worker to deal with him," he told Reuters.

Some 2.3 million Gazans live in the narrow coastal strip, largely unable to leave to seek work abroad. Gaza also borders Egypt, which imposes its own restrictions on crossings.

Before the Second Intifada erupted in 2000, some 130,000 Gazans worked in Israel. Palestinians said Israel had in 2005 barred laborers after pulling troops and settlers from Gaza.

No one expects the cautious increase in the number of work permits to end the long-running conflict between Israel and Hamas.

But for the dozens of workers and merchants enrolled in the class at Nafha, the change offers the prospect of earning, in Israel, the equivalent of a week's wages in Gaza.

"I came here today to learn Hebrew so I can handle things at my work inside [Israel] easily," Farra told Reuters.

Head of the IDF's Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, Col. Moshe Tetro, said the new jobs would improve Gaza's economy and "would also serve calm and security stability."

Eassam Daalis, a senior Hamas official, said Israel was eventually expected to offer 30,000 work permits, which economists say could allow workers to earn an average of 500 shekels ($156) a day, equivalent to what some can earn a week working in Gaza.

"Every week I go back home happy to my family with 2,000 shekels [$625]. I also give to my mother and my father," said Jamil Abdallah, 31, from Jabalya in northern Gaza.

Gaza economist Mohammad Abu Jayyab noted that the offer of permits was one of a series of economic steps agreed under a political settlement brokered by Egyptian, Qatari and United Nations negotiators following Operation Guardian of the Walls.

"These are not unilateral Israeli initiatives," he said.

With tensions brewing over clashes between Jewish and Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the situation could change quickly.

Israel has tied the offer of more openness to improved security following May's war and has accused Hamas of investing in building its fighting capabilities rather than resolving the humanitarian problems facing Gaza.

"If the security situation remains stable and calm the state of Israel would open up more and more," said Tetro.

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In honor of the International Arabic Language Day, students from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an application to help Israelis who study Arabic with Madrasa, a social, technological, and community-oriented initiative that advocates for better communication in Israeli society through spoken Arabic courses.

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With over 100,000 registered students, Madrasa promotes language learning through a platform that includes free online courses, extensive activity through digital channels, and various other collaborations.

"During our seven years of operations, we have seen the need for people to practice their speaking proficiency while learning, and heard the same question from students over and over again: 'What about an app?" Gilad Sevitt, founder and director of Madrasa said.

This question led to the collaboration between Madrasa and Technion students – from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science – to create an application that features a voice recognition component that will support tens of thousands of students.

"Working with the students was very effective and helpful," Sevitt said. "They came on board and contributed greatly to our project and we enjoyed working together on both the linguistic and technological levels.

The component will be integrated as soon as possible in the courses alongside all videos, games, and exercises, and will be a kind of conversation bot through which students can practice their proficiency of spoken Arabic."

Technion students created an infrastructure for learners to have conversations with voice recognition components. Such bots "converse" in spoken Arabic and teach students to pronounce words and discuss various topics.

The app will upgrade the students' learning experience, provide alerts, and serve as the basis for other developments, such as mobile games. A trial version of the app will be released in the coming months.

The United Nations' World Arabic Language Day is commemorated annually on December 18, which is the anniversary of a resolution passed by the UN General Assembly making Arabic one of its official working languages.

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A small group of Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, a city of political, religious, and cultural divisions, is trying to bridge a Hebrew-Arabic language gap through learning modeled on speed dating.

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About 20 students meet weekly at a 19th-century villa and sitting together, Jew facing Arab, they practice each other's language, guided by cards spelling out simple scenarios that prompt dialogue.

When a whistle sounds every 20 minutes, participants rotate with new partners across tables arranged under colorful murals.

The encounters – quick and cordial, if sometimes awkward – help the Palestinians to improve the Hebrew required for dealing with Israeli authorities and the Jews to deepen their grasp of Arabic.

Most Palestinians in Jerusalem live in its eastern sector, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Only basic Hebrew is studied in east Jerusalem schools, making it difficult for Palestinians to achieve advanced proficiency.

"And it's the same for Israelis – if they do study Arabic, it's an Arabic you can't use," said Maya Giz, a Hebrew teacher, referring to the classical, and not commonly spoken, version of the language.

Giz, who initiated the project in 2019 with Sahar Mukhemar, a Palestinian sports instructor and a former student of hers, says the language exercises are a "crossing of a mental border" between the two peoples.

She said Palestinians and Israelis taking part in the program share "the same embarrassment of talking and... [can] break this barrier of fear together."

Jamila Khouri, a Palestinian, said learning Hebrew could help her and others "merge well in the community and find a job opportunity in a good field."

Jewish participant Eli Benita said the language learning spoke volumes about coexistence in a city where tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sometimes spill over into violence.

"I see that this is the only way to reach some kind of a peaceful routine of life here in this region we live in," he said.

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Dozens of sets of the Four Species – etrog, palm, myrtle, and willow – traditionally used for prayers during the festival of Sukkot have recently been transferred to the few Jews still living in Arab countries like Syria and Iraq.

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The Yad L'Achim organization took care to organize the shipments, which were transferred in a secret operation.

Amir, the Yad L'Achim official responsible for overseeing the organization's operations, explained this week that the Four Species sets were in transit to "various countries."

Video: Yad L'Achim/Yahaduton

According to the outreach group, sets have also been supplied to Jewish women who married Arab Israeli men in Israel, and their children.

In recent years, Yad L'Achim has been working to bring Jews living in Arab countries and Arabic-speaking Jews elsewhere in the world closer together. Arabic-speaking Jews in Palestinian refugee camps, whose mothers are Jewish, have also reportedly reached out to the group and asked for help strengthening their Jewish identities.

Yad L'Achim offers them information about Judaism and support in the form of Torah lessons by telephone and shipments of items for Jewish holidays.

Increased outreach to Arabic-speaking Jews has led to a corresponding rise in demand for Jewish information in Arabic, such as guidance on various issues of Jewish law. In response, Yad L'Achim has begun cooperating with the YouTube channel Yahduton, which has produced dozens of outreach videos on Jewish subjects.

As part of the initiatives, actors who speak Arabic have been recruited to help make a video titled "How Do You Build a Sukkah?" The video is expected to reach Arabic-speaking Jews and make the holiday more accessible for them.

"There are dozens more Jewish outreach videos on the horizon," Yad L'Achim promised. "It excites us every time to discover the strong desire among Jews who reach out to us from places we never imagined."

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Islamist Ra'am party leader Mansour Abbas came under criticism for Arabic-language remarks he made ahead of a vote on a new coalition, Sunday.

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Speaking outside the Knesset, Abbas said he would work "to reclaim the lands that were expropriated from our people. This is a national cause of the first degree."

Islamist Ra'am party leader Mansour Abbas rejected criticism of the new government headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister-designate and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid from right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, as well as the Joint Arab List.

Speaking briefly in Hebrew, Abbas said it was time for the new Israeli government and the opposition to advance "dialogue between Jews and Arabs so that we understand each other and do not see each other as enemies."

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"We belong to different religions and communities, but there is something that connects all Israelis, it is our citizenship," he said, calling to strengthen dialogue between Jews, Arabs

Abbas, who made history as the leader of the first Arab party to serve in a coalition government, expressed hope "ties between the Jewish and Arab communities" would strengthen.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Driven by pride in their language and heritage, a growing network of volunteers is helping expand Arabic language content on Wikipedia, raising the number of articles above 1 million.

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Launched in 2003, Arabic Wikipedia has seen growth accelerate in recent years, with the number of articles more than doubling since 2015 thanks to enthusiastic volunteers across the Arab world.

"We are volunteers for the love of the Arabic language, for the love of our culture, for the love of our countries for the love of knowledge in general," said Emna Mizouni, a contributor from Tunisia who also runs an association working on heritage.

In 2020, more than 15,000 people made about 1.6 million edits to the online encyclopedia's Arabic content, creating more than 77,000 new entries. Registered users grew by 44% to 136,000.

"They are helping each other to create more knowledge," said Jack Rabah, a regional manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports writers and editors with software, project funding and partnerships that help boost content.

Arabic was the 10th most-viewed language on Wikipedia for COVID-19 related content, though critics say the site lacks coverage of science and technology in Arabic – a lacuna  some volunteers say they are working to remedy.

Anass Sedrati, a 31-year-old Moroccan telecoms engineer working and studying in Sweden, spends nearly two hours daily writing new articles, translating and coordinating with other volunteers.

"There are people who may not have had an opportunity, for example, to finish their schooling and to buy books," he said.

"We can consider this as an attempt to provide knowledge to those who have not had the same opportunities as us."

The 1 million articles in Arabic are just a fraction of the nearly 55 million across different languages on Wikipedia. Volunteers say there is room for more growth.

"The Arab world can write more, and we must have an article on everything that exists and "We have an ancient civilization, we have writers, we have poets, we have creative people in all fields."

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Editor-in-chief of the independent Saudi news site Elaph, Mahmood al-Awadi, announced on his personal Twitter account on Thursday that he has been hired to manage a new online Israeli Arabic-language platform.

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Awadi didn't name the site, but according to associates of the senior Emirati journalist, the site's name is Midar Net, which is a news content platform focusing primarily on business, economic and financial news.

Awadi, who is in his 40s, was born in the United Arab Emirates and is considered one of the more prominent journalists in the Gulf region. Elaph is one of the most popular Arabic-language new sites in the world and has hundreds of millions of readers.

Awadi's close friend and colleague at Elaph these past few years, Israeli journalist Majdi Halabi, told Israel Hayom that Awadi was among the most influential journalists in the Arab media.

"Mahmood is a prominent journalist and veteran media figure, a good friend and a great believer in peace and partnership with Israel," said Halabi.

"That he agreed to serve as editor-in-chief of an Israeli site isn't surprising to those who know him well. I wish him tremendous success in his new position and am certain that the internet platform he is now in charge of will succeed just as he succeeded with Elaph, which he turned into a leading site not just in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but the entire media world," added Halabi.

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Peace through literature? For the first time, an Israeli novel has been translated for the Moroccan market.

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The acclaimed "A Girl in a Blue Shirt" by Gabriel Bensimhon, has been translated into literary Arabic for a Moroccan publisher, the Casablanca-based La Croisée des Chemins. The Arabic translation is already being sold on Amazon.

Originally published in Hebrew in 2013 by Yedioth Books, "A Girl in a Blue Shirt" tells the story of Yonatan Marciano, a teen who writes a diary about his family's arrival in Israel from Morocco. In Israel, Yonatan falls in love with Nurit, a native-born Israel who is in love with a man who survived the Holocaust. The novel takes place in the lower city of Haifa, an area known for social and ethnic clashes in the 1950s and 60s.

Bensimhon, an author, playwright, and professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University's School of Film and Television, was born in Sefrou, Morocco, in 1938. He and his family made aliyah in 1947 on the ship Yehuda Halevi, the first illegal immigrant ship to embark from North Africa.

Speaking to Israel Hayom, Bensimhon says that the novel was translated into Arabic by Professor Muhammad al-Madlawi of Mohammed V University in Rabat, who has already translated some of Bensimhon's short stories for various Moroccan platforms.

"Prose writing isn't so common in Morocco itself, and it seems like it's easier to write prose about life in Morocco when you're outside it, like I do," he observes.

He adds that the book has been translated into literary Arabic, which is read in all Arabic countries, and that there has been interest in it in Abu Dhabi.

"In the UAE there are also readers who are looking for Jewish-Arab topics, and I hope that the book being published in Morocco will help the peace process between Israel and Arab states take off," he says.

Bensimhon also says that a high-ranking Jewish advisor to King Mohammed VI, André Azoulay, has been involved in the formation of literary ties between Israel and Morocco, which follow the recent normalization of relations between Rabat and Jerusalem.

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Blue and White MK Michal Cotler-Wunsch has submitted a bill to the Knesset requiring mandatory Arabic-language studies in Jewish schools.

Learning both spoken and written Arabic would allow Jewish Israeli students to understand and communicate with their Arab neighbors in Israel and the region, helping to bridge existing cultural and language gaps, Cotler-Wunsch said.

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"Always and especially with the potential paradigm shift taking place in the Middle East—away from rejectionism and toward normalization based on a recognition that enables negotiation, and ultimately, peace—it is imperative our children be able to communicate and engage with Arabs in Israel and [our] neighbors in the region," she said. "I am hopeful that this will provide the path forward to mutual recognition, enhanced conversation, coexistence, and sustainable peace with additional peoples and countries in our region and beyond."

Cotler-Wunsch announced her plans to propose the legislation during an online conference on Nov. 30 titled "Transforming trauma: How Jewish voices from Iran and Arab lands can be a bridge for peace." The event brought together a group of activists who each shared their experiences and thoughts on how to further the cause of Jewish refugees and their descendants, and work towards normalization with Arab and Muslim countries.

At the conference, she posited that the Abraham Accords were an opportunity to "challenge the paradigm from rejectionism to normalization." She said the 'Three Nos' of the 1967 Khartoum Resolution, the fourth Arab League summit held following Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, could be changed to 'Three Yeses' – yes to recognition of Israel, yes to negotiations with Israel, and yes to peace with Israel.

Arabic studies, according to Cotler-Wunsch, can help Israel's citizens become "a bridge for peace and education." She emphasized that the shared Abrahamic values that bind us are an opportunity for "power of moderation from all religions … call[ing] out radical voices and expos[ing] double standards that other countries enable."

Radicalism, she said, "ultimately encourages a culture of terror regimes."

As an international lawyer and human-rights activist, Cotler-Wunsch added there was "tremendous opportunity" to "utilize the language of rights," not only by teaching Arabic in Israeli schools, but also by "fighting for hearts and minds using legal mechanisms, technology, and digital platforms."

'Educate the public on our history and heritage'

Others at the online event also mentioned language as one of the ways Israelis and Mizrahi Jews can blaze a path toward sustainable peace in the region.

Ellie Cohanim, deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism at the US State Department, related seeing a "historic opportunity" in the Abraham Accords and normalization of ties with several Arab countries, likening it to "cousins being reunited after a forced exile."

"It is something many of us imagined only possible for our children and grandchildren," said Cohanim, adding that Mizrahi and Persian Jews "can play a particularly special role, as we have a cultural understanding, the language, food, warmth of personality—and we understand each other."

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Sarah Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, also referred to "Arabic outreach" as vital to spreading awareness and advocating for Jewish refugees and their descendants and educating the public "on our history and heritage."

Reflecting on the 850,000 Jews that were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands and Iran—a collective exile that has had personal, national, and international implications—Cotler-Wunsch maintained that remembrance was a prospective imperative, as opposed to a retrospective imperative.

"We create and give voice to the manifestations of the challenges that this historic moment presented and its opportunities, bringing us back to our shared ancestral homeland," she said.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Command Sgt. Maj. V. serves as an Arabic instructor in the IDF's Intelligence Corps. She is responsible for teaching Arab culture and mentality as well as the Arabic language to intelligence personnel, for whom the knowledge is vital.

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According to what her comrades in her unit say, V. has become something of a legend, not only because she is admired as a teacher or because she spent a long time in an operational unit, but mostly because of her personal story. Her family was one of the last Jewish families in Iraq and finally made aliyah after years of living in fear.

Israel Hayom meets with V. on an IDF base in central Israel. She arrives in uniform and as we sit down, she takes me through her incredible story, step by step.

V. was born to a Jewish family in Iraq. At the time, Iraq's Jewish community was a shell of its former glory and only a few thousand out of a community that once numbered 120,000 remained in the country.

The Iraqi Ba'ath regime persecuted the Jews who remained and saw them as spies. A few were even hanged to death on suspicion of espionage. The authorities' behavior convinced the Jews that it was time to leave – including V.'s family. But then the ax fell.

"Saddam Hussein's regime announced that my father was a spy for Israel and he was trying to flee the country. Of course, it was a lie, but while my parents and I were at the airport and the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service, detained us for questioning, my brother and grandmother managed to make it onto the plane. My brother was seven years old. My parents and I didn't see him again for 24 years."

So V., who was four at the time, and her family were labeled as traitors in a hostile nation where only a tiny Jewish community remained.

"My father was put in prison and subjected to horrible torture. For years, he was in and out of prison. My mother would fast twice a week for him. But my father wasn't the only one who suffered from the brutality of Saddam's regime. My brother, who was only five, was also taken for questioning and abused, which left him disabled."

Even when her father was released from prison, the harassment didn't stop.

"The Mukhabarat never stopped following us, following our daily lives. My father started to work as a treasurer for the Jewish community because it was the only thing he could do. His bank account had been frozen and no one would hire him."

The family decided not to forgo their Jewish identity, but for their own safety, they chose to hide it as much as possible. One of V.'s first childhood memories was drawing shapes on a piece of paper. One was a Star of David. Her family panicked and made her promise never to do it again.

V.'s first encounter with the Hebrew language was also scary.

"I remember one time I was sitting at home with my dad and he was looking for something to listen to on the radio. Suddenly, we heard a broadcast in a language I couldn't identify and sounded very strange to me. My dad looked at me in total silence and changed the station."

"I noticed what station it was and he saw me looking. And he whispered, 'Don't you dare to look for it later. That's Hebrew. It's illegal. If they catch us, we're done for."

V. falls silent.

"You have to understand. We didn't show anyone that we were Jews. We weren't taught the language, the religion, or the customs. From age four I knew what I could say to those around me and what I couldn't. I knew we were Jewish, but I didn't really understand what that meant at that age. I only knew I wasn't a regular kid."

Leading a double life from such a young age came at a price, which was declaring loyalty to the regime. When she started elementary school, V. was recruited for the scouts, the youth movement of the Saddam regime.

Unlike youth movements in Israel, the Iraqi scouts was actual military training. V. was given a uniform, a gun, and a hefty dose of Ba'ath party propaganda.

Israel was always the enemy. "I realized that I had to prove that I was more loyal to Iraq than anyone else. That I was the most Iraqi anyone could be," V. says.

Her school studies only increased her exposure to the propaganda of the regime and put V. into a permanent dilemma.

"The brainwashing was absolute. In school, in the media, the message was always the same. If there is a situation of war or danger, our loyalty was first and foremost to Saddam and the regime. I was confused between my identity at home and the one I adopted when I was with friends at school and in the youth movement."

When V. reached high school, things only got more complicated.

"I finished elementary school without any of my childhood friends knowing I was Jewish. When I got to junior high and high school I encountered difficulties being accepted because of the lessons in religion. It was the first time I talked with my mom about religion. I asked her to stop hiding so I could show myself for who I was. She scolded me and once again there was the threat and the stories about what my father had been put through."

But this time, V. would not be deterred from revealing her true identity to her friends. She was sick of hiding.

"In the end, I decided to tell my friends I was Jewish. I prepared myself for the worst, for anti-Semitism and even violence. There was no violence, but there were anti-Semitic questions… even the blood libel about Passover matzah was brought up. I needed to explain that I was a Jew, not a monster, but in the end it went fine and made me stronger."

Although her high school friends accepted her, V. began to realize that she had no future in Iraq. The family was living in constant fear that the regime would discover that her brother was living in Israel and that her father would be taken in for interrogation again. V. secretly started to dream of making aliyah to Israel, and some Jewish girlfriends helped her.

"From a young age, I had two Jewish friends and we'd play a game that had real meaning," she says.

"We invented all sorts of written codes so in case one of us left Iraq, we could communicate freely in letters. Innocent lines like, 'What's the trendy color there now?' or 'When can you start studying in Holland?' became codes for getting visas to leave Iraq and make aliyah. That funny game eventually helped us a lot at the moment of truth."

Surprisingly, the memory sparks a need for V. to explain that while the Iraq of her childhood was a tough and frightening place, it was not hell on earth.

"It's important for me to say that alongside all the difficult things I experienced in my childhood, there were plenty of opportunities for me to develop as an individual," she says.

"I studied in schools for the upper 10%, both in elementary and high school. I got the best education the country had to offer. I was also involved in youth activities and sports. I learned to swim … from a very young age. I took part in competitions and even won second place in the youth championships."

As V. was dreaming and planning about how she would take her family and move to Israel, life went on and brought the challenges that face every teenager who wants to go onto higher education. But then the country went crazy.

V. was forced to write her matriculation exams during the Gulf War, while Iraq was paralyzed by shortages and being bombed daily.

"Saddam decided that life would go on as usual, despite the bombing. I had to find time and strength to study, even when there was no electricity or water and a serious shortage of food. The Americans were bombing at night only, and in the day I had to take care to find my family food and water. So I found myself studying by candlelight, with the booms from the American bombs in the background."

But the bombing wasn't the only distraction. During the war, the regime started to crumble and soldiers would break into homes, rob them, arrest people suspected of espionage, and abuse anyone whose loyalty could be doubted. Many women were raped and there was fear everywhere.

"But the Gulf War also gave me moments of pride," V. says.

"I remember hearing my neighbors looking for radio stations to get true reports, not the regime's lies, about what was happening at the front. The station they were looking for was Israel Radio's Arabic broadcasts. Of course, it was illegal, but people were curious to know what was happening and that was the only way to get updates."

"I had a lot of friends from Lebanon, Yemen, and Morocco and I learned their various dialects so I could show respect for them and speak their language"

Despite the shortages, the bombing, and the constant fear of being robbed or raped, V. did well on her exams and was accepted to medical school.

"Like all the Iraqi Jews, I went on to learn a profession. The university was in one of the Shiite quarters of the city and I got to know people I had never met before.

"There were a lot of Palestinian students who had gotten scholarships from the Saddam regime. They weren't noted for their sympathy toward Israel or Jews. I had a lot of friends from Lebanon, Yemen, and Morocco and I learned their various dialects so I could show respect for them and speak their language. That was how I discovered a love for studying languages."

However, the move to a different human landscape came at a price. "When they realized I was Jewish, the questions started again. This time, there was also anti-Semitism. There was a group that was planning to lynch me – to kidnap me and sell me as a sex slave," she says, still horrified.

Luckily for V., some friends who heard the group of would-be abductors talking rushed to warn her. She was forced to be careful while on campus.

"I couldn't tell my parents because they'd have forced me to drop out," she says.

After the Gulf War was over, Iraq became much less safe. V. found that she needed to be on her guard not only at university, as a Jew, but also on the streets, as a woman.

"While riding the bus home from university, a group of young guys, mostly from families that had ties to the regime, would be in cars, looking for women on the street and forcing them into their cars. Once, one of those gangs started following me after I got off the bus. They followed me home and I couldn't let them know where I lived, so I hid behind the gate and prayed they hadn't seen me. I walked around with a knife, not that it would have helped, but it helped me feel safer."

As V. was finishing her studies, the situation in Iraq continued to get worse. The combination of terrorism and the regime and total anarchy on the streets convinced her it was time to fulfill her old dream and leave.

That required her to face off against her father, who was still afraid of the regime, but V. had an ace up her sleeve. While she was still a student, intelligence officials contacted her and tried to enlist her as an agent.

"I told my dad we had a week to get out. That people were already following me and if we didn't leave, we would never be rid of them." Her father, shocked, broke down and preparations got underway.

V. reached out to her childhood friends using the same code they had developed as girls. In addition to exit permits from Iraq, she arranged visas to a third country. The regime threw up obstacles at every turn, but V. was determined and completed all the necessary procedures.

After years of hiding and fear, the family got on an old beater bus, headed for the border. Other than $200, a few family photos, and V.'s parents' ketubah, they were carrying only a few small suitcases into an unclear future.

When they reached the border crossing, all the old nightmares came back. The men and the women were separated, and V. was questioned at length by an officer who had an interest in her that went beyond his professional duties.

"I told him I was on my way to meet my fiancé, and it kind of cooled him down," she says.

"We were the last Jews to make aliyah from Iraq and it was really exciting for everyone. It turned out they had been waiting for us, and we didn't know it"

But that wasn't the end.

"I was brought into an interrogation room for women, where three female officers from the Iraqi intelligence service questioned me. I had my parents' ketubah, and if they'd found it, it would have been the end. Jews were synonymous with spies in the eyes of the Iraqi intelligence. Luckily, they let me undress myself and didn't check [my clothes]."

Exhausted and knees trembling, V. left the border crossing station. She and her mother boarded a bus that was to take them across the border, but slowly she realized that her father and brother were still at the border station. The driver wanted to close the door and leave ("Let them catch the next bus," he spat at V.).

"I pictured a repeat of the separation from my brother. Without thinking, I put my foot on the brakes and told the driver, 'You aren't moving until my dad and brother get here.'"

A few minutes later the men left the border station and the family crossed the Iraqi border into freedom.

The family's arrival at the third country didn't guarantee anything. An influx of refugees was forcing the government to insist on short-term visas and deport many of the new arrivals back to Iraq, even those who entered legally. V. and her family were worried and prepared themselves for the worst. They were in a foreign country, without anything to call their own.

"I contacted my friend who helped us leave Iraq. I told her we had no money and were afraid they would deport us and we had no idea how to get to Israel. She told me not to worry, not about money and not about making it to Israel. She said we should enjoy our 'vacation' and she would take care of everything."

A few days later, the friend contacted V. and told her to come to a certain hotel, but explained nothing.

"The man waiting for us was an Israeli, who took us into Israel. I couldn't believe it was such a short trip. It felt like I was on a different planet."

Thus, after two decades of suffering, hiding, and fear, V. found herself in an immigrant absorption center in Mevaseret Zion, outside Jerusalem. Suddenly, she realized that her family's arrival in Israel had been an unusual event.

"The people at the absorption center seemed really excited," she remembers, also moved.

"I didn't understand why – we were just civilians who had arrived from Iraq. It was really lucky I spoke English, so I could talk with everyone there. I turned out we were sort of famous. We were the last Jews to make aliyah from Iraq and it was really exciting for everyone. It turned out they had been waiting for us, and we didn't know it."

V. jumped right in the deep end. She started studying Hebrew even before her formal ulpan classes began, and after a few weeks in ulpan asked her teacher to move her to a more advanced group. She was told it would take her at least three months before she'd be able to speak Hebrew, but V. could speak fluently in less than two.

Not long after, she received a phone call from the IDF's Intelligence Corps, and it frightened her. In Iraq, calls from the intelligence services were not good things, and the painful memories of her father and brother were burned into her consciousness.

"They calmed me down. They told me they wanted to offer me a job." That was how V. found herself teaching Arabic as a civilian employee of the IDF while also working to get her Iraqi university degree recognized in Israel.

After some hesitation, V. decided that the army was the place for her. Not only would she continue to work for the army, she would enlist as a soldier and serve in an operational unit.

After some time with that unit, V. returned to the Intelligence Corps, this time as an NCO. When she speaks about her army service, she seems to be speaking from a deep sense of commitment and pride.

"It makes me happy that I can give the soldiers knowledge of the [Arabic] language as a key to their service," she says. "The soldiers listen to me, they're spellbound, by my personal story as well as the language, the different dialects, the nuances and the culture the language expresses. I'm happy to tell them where I come from, because it's a story that's relevant for them."

Even after many years in Israel, V.'s memories from Iraq still define her sense of mission.

"Because I grew up in a country that treats its people with brutality, especially – but not only – Jews, I understand the importance of our country. I discovered that what I took with me, both in terms of the mentality and my familiarity with the Arab world, is worth a lot. I discovered that I can contribute and offer something that very few other people in Israel can. I am guided by a sense of obligation. I must pass my knowledge onto the soldiers."

If one reads between the lines, it's also possible to sense a smidgen of love for the country, the culture, and the food of her childhood.

"There is something about the essence of Iraq that never leaves me," V. admits. "The wide river, the water, the desert, the alleyways and childhood games, the food. I especially remember the Iraqi grilled fish, the 'samak masgouf,' a river fish that's prepared over an open fire. In spite of everything I went through, I won't forget Iraq. It's still in my blood."

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