The other Jewish veterans honored at Ammunition Hill

It was quiet at Ammunition Hill in northern Jerusalem on a recent weekday morning, its calm stretch of green lawns and olive trees punctuated by cement bunkers and stone trenches. The military post was built by the British, then used by the Jordanians and captured by Israeli paratroopers in one of the fiercest battles of the 1967 Six Day War.

Now it hosts emotional ceremonies for paratroopers, forms the basis of lesson plans in heroism and moral values for new army recruits, and is used as an educational tool for high school students who roam the hill using GPS and laser guns to engage them in strategic thinking.

More recently, Ammunition Hill added another element: a wall of honor commemorating Jewish soldiers worldwide who defended their home countries.

The hill, which has operated as a historic site since 1975, nearly closed two years ago due to lack of funds. It was saved by a last-minute government bailout and is now undergoing a slow renovation and upgrading courtesy of the Jewish National Fund.

Part of the ongoing renovation includes the wall, a smooth expanse of raw cement currently featuring 265 plaques of Jewish soldiers, hailing from Russia, the US and Israel, each name telling a different piece of Jewish history. There are another 10 plaques waiting to be hung as the site marks the American Veterans Day on Tuesday, November 11.

“Jews always fought for the countries where they lived,” said Yoel Rosby, the JNF’s liaison to Ammunition Hill, who was guiding visitors prior to Veterans Day.

Ammunition Hill, which nearly closed several years ago, is being slowly renovated and updated by the Jewish National Fund, which is now partnered with the historic site (Jessica Steinberg/Times of Israel)

The wall hints at their stories. There are three plaques in Cyrillic script, one stacked on top of another. Just below, plaques for the Fleisher and Kivitz brothers, all sons of the same mother, take up five spots, while those of Arthur and Aaron Blank, a grandfather and grandson, represent their active duty in the US Navy and IDF. Roslyn Schute, one of the few women on the wall, was killed in 2009 by a roadside bomb during her tour in Afghanistan.

There are veterans who fought for Israel, too: Ariel Sharon, Avigdor Kahalani, Orde Wingate and Micky Marcus; Shimon “Katcha” Cahaner, the deputy battalion commander who fought on the hill and is spearheading its renovation effort, and Ehud Goldwasser, a reservist abducted and killed by Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terror group, in 2006.

It costs $5,000 to have a veteran’s name placed on the wall. Some veterans pay for their own plaques, while others are placed on the wall posthumously by family, friends or admirers.

Ike Taffel, a Vietnam veteran who grew up near Atlantic City, New Jersey, paid for his own plaque after seeing the wall on his second trip to Israel.

The 67-year-old from Boca Raton, Florida, the son of two Holocaust survivors, was a helicopter gunner in Vietnam who wanted to enlist in the army from the time he was small.

Ike Taffel visits an IDF unit on each of his visits, following his first, initial visit to Israel several years ago (Courtesy Ike Taffel)

“I saw a lot of combat,” he said. “When you’re young, you absorb it better than when you are older.”

He made it through Vietnam and then went to college and worked on Wall Street selling municipal bonds. It was after he retired early that he took his second trip to Israel. The tour, which was with JNF, included a stop at Ammunition Hill, where he identified closely with what he called “a brutal battle.”

“I listened intently to what the guide told us,” said Taffel. “I saw a lot of that stuff in Vietnam, nothing new there. But these were Jewish soldiers doing it, which I hadn’t thought about.”

Later on in the tour, when Taffel saw the names on the wall, he said to the tour guide, “What’s this?”

He noticed several familiar names on the wall, including the Jewish police captain from his hometown police department who’d fought in World War II, and the son of Israelis from a neighboring Florida town who was killed in Afghanistan. The wall felt familiar.

Now Taffel visits Israel several times a year, having made contact during that trip with a cousin he had never met before. He spends one day on each trip with an army unit, often sending them any equipment they need once he’s back in the US. On his upcoming visit taking place this week, he’ll be visiting an Iron Dome unit.

The connection between the generations of fighters is the idea behind the wall, said Alon Wald, who takes care of marketing efforts at the Hill. He’s also the son of Rami Wald, a paratrooper who was killed during the June 1967 battle, when Alon was just eleven months old.

“We’re teaching kids to be leaders like these guys,” he said. “There are lessons to be learned.”