Nearly 50 American and Canadian military cadets toured Israel and German death camps in Poland this month, in a trip that seeks to buttress the future officers’ awareness of the history and shared values at the core of the U.S.-Israel relationship, the two-week Israel Strategy and Policy tour, which was initiated by the New York-based MirYam Institute in partnership with the U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Virginia Military Institute and the Royal Military College of Canada, presented past and present to the future officers.
The cadets’ trip began with a three-day tour of the Nazi death camps, followed by 12 days spent crisscrossing Israel, taking in the sights and meeting with IDF soldiers and commanders. For the non-Jewish cadets on the tour, the country’s size, diversity, mix of modernity and ancient, and the inseparable integration of the people’s army that is the IDF, came as a revelation.
