This is the kind of stories that were typical of Israel in the past.
A Jewish boy flees with his family from a hostile country, arrives in Israel, and when he grows up - enlists in the army to fight in the country from which he fled.
It turns out that even today there are such stories in the IDF. Major M. was 3 years old when he fled with his father and older brother from Khomeiniist Iran.
He arrived in Israel by no means, in danger of death, and went through difficult ropes of absorption until he enlisted in the army.
There, in Modiin, he found his vocation: first as a Persian language professional in Unit 8200, and for 17 years as the person responsible for training the next generation of intelligence personnel, with an emphasis on Persian language studies for the purpose of gathering intelligence on Iran.
The country from which he fled still plays a key role in his life and the lives of his family.
In the role he took on, he sees a double mission: to help Israel fight its main enemy, and also the kind of stories that were typical of Israel in the past: a Jewish boy flees with his family and helps the Iranian people escape the clutches of the predatory regime in Tehran.
"We understand who Iran is. We know what her intentions are. For me, we are saving Iran, and trying to bring it back to what it once was. I would love to come back and visit it, but it is no longer my country. The house is Israel."
M. was born in 1985 in Iran.
The youngest son of a Jewish family, after a sister and brother who are older than him.
His father, N., played a key role in a political security body under the Shah's regime in the country.
After the Khomeini revolution he went underground and began working in the medical services.
"Then they persecuted everyone who served in the security political bodies," says M.
"Those who were caught were hanged on the streets of the city."
"Knocked on the door in the middle of the night"
The family tried to live a normal life, but found the changes too difficult for her.
"We were not even allowed to sing, and if we were to sing - then only certain songs. In the Jewish schools there were children who started to convert to Islam. What kept us there was the family that lived in Iran, so we stayed.
"My father talked all these years about immigrating to Israel. He was broken when my brother came back from school and showed him what they had learned: Surot (chapters, ch. 11) of the Koran.
He heard it and said 'Enough.
I can not take it anymore.
"I will not allow all our Jewish heritage, and everything we raised the children on, to be abolished now."
But M.'s mother did not want to immigrate, so as not to break away from her family.
In the end, and after quite a few arguments, the parents decided to divorce.
"My father told her that if she wanted her to stay, but he did not intend to let his children waste time in Iran. In retrospect he was right of course."
M.'s parents divorced.
The mother took the property, and the father - the children.
"Think about it: a 35-year-old man, with three children, alone. It's crazy. And not going to the embassy, arranging a visa and getting on a plane. This escape had to be arranged, and you did not know when it would happen. You were told to be ready in a certain time frame, And take only what you can carry with you. "
M.'s grandparents decided to join the journey.
The grandfather lingered to try to get rid of as much property as possible so as not to start life in Israel empty-handed, and the grandmother went out with her son and grandchildren.
The person who led the smuggling operation was a "terrorist organization" as defined by M., who found an easy way to make money by smuggling Jews through Iran's long borders.
"On Saturday night, in the middle of the night, they knocked on our door, identified themselves, and told us to leave immediately. We got on trucks with other people, Jews, and set off."
What did you take?
"Not much. My big sister took some souvenirs from mom, some clothes, some jewelry, and money my dad arranged in advance. For me they took a toy, and that's it."
"For me they took a toy, and that's it."
With his sister and brother, Photo: From the family album
The trucks led them to the eastern border.
Arriving at the border, the driver decided to drop them off, claiming that they were too noisy and could endanger his life.
"We were scared and started running on foot, in the deserts. My grandmother who was already quite old, my father who took me on his shoulders, and my brothers. I remember I told him a lie to me, and he replied: 'Put your hands on my body, and that's how you will warm up.'
"It was complete darkness, and at one point all the souvenirs my sister took from our mother fell into the abyss. All this time they pushed us to keep moving fast, fearing the Iranian border guard would come and stop us. When we stopped to eat, and someone lit a fire, the smoke exposed us, From the women.that the men would advance in one lane as a diversion, and the women in another lane.The Iranians chased the men, and started firing, and my father was wounded in the head.
"The smugglers took advantage of the fact that the men left, and ordered all the women to kneel on the ground. This is the most traumatic experience I can remember. All the women on their knees, and they go and ask every woman what she has, and what she gives them. And if she did not give them money or jewelry Boom, they shot her in the head. We were among the last, and all the money was with my father, who was in the second group with the men. When they got to my grandmother, she started pulling her hair and shouting that she had small children with her. Then one wealthy woman, To the US, she saw I was there, a little boy, and paid for us.
"A lot of people who fled Iran disappeared on the way, and no one knows what happened to them. But this woman saved us. When we met my father, he returned the money to her. I remember he arrived, with a bandage and blood after he was wounded. We reached the eastern border, and entered "We went to dance houses, and from there we continued to a hostel in another city. We did not leave, because if they caught you there was a fear that they would send you back to Iran, and whoever returned to Iran would die."
M.'s family waited at the hostel for about two months.
"My grandmother started kidney stones, and my father decided that was enough. He caught the person in charge of sending the groups and told him that if we did not go out now, he would break his arm. It only worked there with combos, people paid money to be first in line, So my father had to make a mess so they could send us. "
At the beginning of 1988, the family left the neighboring country for Europe, and from there to Israel.
"When we landed in Israel, they took my father to a side room, for questioning, because of his past in the security services. I lost my shoes on the plane, so I ran around the airport barefoot. Meanwhile my uncles waited outside, until my father was released. I guess they followed him for a while. "Certainly in the country, until they realized he was not an Iranian agent."
Four people in a room
M.'s family was sent to an absorption center.
His father insisted that they come to Ashdod, because his brothers lived there.
"I did not know a word of Hebrew then. My father knew a little, because he studied Torah in Iran, but apart from him no one spoke Hebrew. We lived in one small room, four people. Even my son now has a bigger room. And yet, for me it was Happy period. "
Did not miss mom? Still, a 3-year-old boy, alone, in a foreign land.
"My sister, who was 12 at the time, served as my mother for everything, and I also had my grandmother in a shell, so I did not feel lacking."
M.'s grandmother lived in the absorption center until his grandfather immigrated to Israel, a few months late, and moved with her to another absorption center in Ashdod.
The burden of keeping the house fell on his sister.
"She would cook, clean, and my father worked casual jobs in factories, night shifts. My sister would watch over us, make us food, iron Dad's clothes for work."
A 12-year-old girl.
"Yes. In a foreign country, with all the difficulties of adaptation. It also took me years to feel at home here. I think I did not adapt to Israel until the age of 18, when I enlisted in the army."
He remembers a lonely childhood.
Because of the language, the culture, the identity.
"I was a polite child, a good student, but I had no friends except one child, an Ethiopian, with whom I would hang out. It was not an easy time. I was harassed, beaten, I was an innocent and foreign child. An easy target."
His father insisted that the family preserve Persian culture.
"Everything around us was Persian. We saw Persian movies, we ate Persian food. My sister got married at 18, as in Persia. I also make sure to preserve the Persian in my house. Although my wife is Israeli, with my children, who are completely Israeli, I speak only Persian. I think "It is not true that they will lose their cultural identity, and besides, it is important to learn more languages. It will open them up cognitively. And Persian is a beautiful and rich language. In any case, they will learn English in school, so they will learn Persian now."
One day, while at the absorption center, his father came across a family he knew on the street, who had come from Iran.
"They were sitting on the street, crying. He approached them and asked what had happened. They replied that they had arrived in trucks, dropped off on the street, and had no idea what to do. My father took them to the absorption center offices and arranged a room for them.
"One of the girls in this family, Esther, who was 19-18 at the time, started coming to our house to help us with the housework. She and my dad fell in love, but he told her he was 35, with three children, and that he was not for her. Let her look for someone else. She insisted, even though her mother fought it and even tried to lock her in the house and forbade her to come to us.
"When that did not help, Esther's brother was sent to quarrel with my father. He started a mess - all in Persian, on the street - and called the police. The police started interrogating everyone who was there, then said to Esther's mother: 'Your daughter is already 18. She can decide Living alone with whoever she wants, wherever she wants. "Her mother told her:" If you move in with him, we will deprive you of the family, completely sever ties with you and you will no longer be our daughter "- and that is what happened. Esther decided to leave "The family to live with my father and with us. They got married and had two children, who are my brothers."
M with his father.
"When we landed in Israel, they interrogated him," Photo: From the family album
M. grew up in Ashdod.
When he reached the age of enlistment, he asked to serve in Unit 8200 where his brother also served before him.
He took a course, and later served as a listener in Persian, his mother tongue.
He only dealt with the Iranian arena, which was beginning to heat up.
"It was in 2005-2004, and we understood that there was an acute gap in the nuclear field that needed to be closed, so they began to devote resources to the Iranian issue.
"I was in a department that deals with the Iranian nuclear program and their conventional and unconventional weapons. It was one of the most significant periods in my life. I was involved in projects that I wish I could tell about, things that until my recruitment I was sure existed only in movies."
After two and a half years on the operational side, M. insisted on going out for training.
"The course I took after the recruitment was not good, and I wanted to go back, take all the mistakes they made with us, and do differently. Better. Even then I realized that intelligence is important, but the core is the way you train people."
M. recently received the Chief of the Armed Forces Award for a project of smart classrooms that was included in the training system in Modi'in. "The classrooms are no longer suitable for the current period.
We have created a new training environment, we have introduced multimedia and technologies and we have also changed the way we learn to one that gives a completely different experience, which is fun to learn. "
For many years, M. was responsible for training Persian speakers in the intelligence system, and in providing the professional tools for intelligence work.
On the way, he became an officer and did a degree, but decided to stay in training, which for him is the key to ensuring Israel's qualitative advantage in the future.
You came with a Persian from home. How hard is it today to take an 18-year-old Israeli child and teach him Persian?
"Even today there are quite a few young people who come and know Persian from home. And those who do not - we have developed methodologies that will allow them to convey this. We do not just teach language from the book. We learn culture, tradition, even Persian holidays. We make them fall in love with the profession, and language ".
"Mother was a stranger"
M. Married to Chan, father of Aviv (4) and Shaked (a year and a half), lives in Beer Yaakov.
His mother remarried in Iran, and she had other children.
The connection with her was not maintained after the family immigrated to Israel.
"Once we called her at the number of our house. I remember it like it was yesterday, I was maybe 7, we were sitting on the bed waiting to talk to her. Someone answered the phone, and we said to her, 'Mom, how are you?' Then she said, ' "You are confused, this is not the number, this is not the house," and she hung up. "
Was that her?
"We think so. We think she was afraid it would betray her, and she did not want to take the risk."
Finally, after most of her family emigrated from Iran, M.'s mother also decided to emigrate to another country.
She tried to contact her children, but M., who was 18 at the time, refused to talk to her.
"I was very hurt by her. My brothers talked to her, but I did not want to. At the age of 24, when I was a little older, I came home from the army one day. My brother was about to get married, and my father said to me: 'Listen, your mother came here to visit. Go to her. '
"I came to her with my brothers. My sister came in, they hugged and cried. My brother came in, same thing. I came in only with a smile because I had no real feeling for her. For me she was a stranger. She has not seen me since age 3, and next time "She sees me in uniform. Today we are much closer. We have stayed in touch ever since, even though she has not seen my children, her grandchildren. Now we are trying to persuade her to immigrate to Israel."
Are there many more Jews left in Iran?
"Not much. I understand, it has been reduced to several hundred families. But there is a lack of knowledge on this issue: the regime in Iran has a problem with the State of Israel, not with the Jews. The Jews there live in a closed community, which continues to live as usual. "Knesset. As long as they do not speak out against the regime and act against it, they are fine."
His view of Iran is much different from that of the average Israeli.
While we see it in black and white, he sees it in shades.
"As we talk about the first and second Israel, there is also the first and second Iran," he says.
"Young people want to live differently. They are very active on social media. You see a lot of very rich people doing parties and living a completely Western life, and there are the poorer ones."
Do you believe there will ever be another Iran?
"never say never'".
Still, an extreme, oppressive regime. It does not look on the horizon.
"History has shown that such things can happen. Take the Arab Spring, Mubarak. Did anyone think it could fall? There is evolution here. Things are changing. The world is changing. It can happen in Iran too. I have no doubt that this is the dream of all Jews who came from Iran - to return There to visit.
"I would very much like to come to Iran. To see the place where I was born. It is an amazing country, with breathtaking nature and scenery. But still, when I ask my father if he would do it all again - immigrating to Israel alone, with nothing, with three "Little children - he answers me: 'Unequivocally, yes.' Israel is our home."
It probably hurts him to see Iran today.
"It hurts him that the country he loves, that he grew up in, has gone crazy. The extremist regime, the insane inflation, the drugged young people. He would like to see Iran differently."
Do your trainees know your life story?
"When my mother visited Israel for the last time, I brought her to a meeting with the campers. I told them my life story, and they were in the market, with tears in their eyes. Then I met her. It was in Jerusalem, and she saw the Western Wall, and the soldiers sitting and singing country songs. "Israel on Saturday night, in uniform. And she said to me: 'This is the best thing that ever happened to me, to see you like this. I'm sorry I did not come with you. I was wrong.'"
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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