Israeli teens to share stories

By Javier C. Hernandez

Mercury News (Posted on Thu, Aug. 03, 2006)

The echoes of annihilation shattered Avia Levy's adolescence.

In her hometown of Yesod Hamaala, sprightly songs of morning birds are drowned out by the symphonic boom of nearby bombing. Latent explosives sit planted in gardens where irises and honeysuckle use to run rampant. A constant drizzle of Hezbollah rockets falls across the region, inching ever closer to Avia's humble two-story home.

The carefree immortality of youth has left this bubbly 17-year-old Israeli forever.

"Life isn't normal anymore,'' Avia said. "You have to change everything you do.''

On Wednesday, Avia set foot on safer ground at the San Francisco International Airport, 7,000 miles away from the ravaged land where she was raised. Over the next week, she, along with 17 other students from Israel, will join a group of local Jewish student leaders to share the diaries of their war-torn lives.

The Bay Area students had initially planned to journey to the Middle East to meet with the students, but the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel caused the trip to be postponed.

So the leaders of the Diller Teen Fellows - sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation - and its Israeli counterpart, the Manhigut Esreh, decided to bring a bit of Israel to the Bay Area. Over the next week, the students will live together and participate in several community events.

On Wednesday, the airport's Delta terminal resembled a rowdy family reunion, complete with beaded necklaces and a gold crown. Security officials had trouble clearing out the horde of American and Israeli students as they embraced, slapped one another high fives and joined in songs of Shalom.

"I'm ecstatic. It's an amazing feeling to have our friends from Israel come here,'' said Andy Garon, 17.

The students first met during an earlier trip to the United States in April and have communicated via e-mail and cell phone text messages over the past few months.

Ilan Vitemberg, the coordinator of the Diller program and a native of Megiddo, Israel, said he hopes the Israelis will articulate a voice that is rarely heard in the United States.

"This puts a human face on the situation in Israel,'' Vitemberg said. "I hope the students feel empowered to make a difference and know that they matter.''

Israeli student Ron Rayn was forced to evacuate his hometown of Mettula shortly after the violence in the Middle East broke out. At 16, he has already met the grim face of mortality that most teenagers are never forced to confront.

Ron's house was hit by a Hezbollah missile this year when he was the only one home. He was so accustomed to the sounds of war that he said he didn't even notice the broken windows until his mother returned.

He said that today, his abandoned town resembles a "ghost city.''

"Everything is closed; there's no life in it,'' he said. "You hear loud noises and bombing everywhere.''

Rayn's mission in the United States is to educate Americans on the realities of the conflict, and he said hopes to hear how Americans feel about the violence.

"We just want to share what we feel and what [Americans] feel,'' he said. "I hope Americans can see what we see, not what CNN shows.''

As the Israeli students presented their Bay Area counterparts with test tubes filled with earth from Israel, Susan Hamlin, a parent of a 17-year-old Diller fellow, looked on with a smile.

"I hope that the world that they inherit will be as compassionate as I see they are,'' she said.

Hamlin said her son, Seth, was ready to risk a trip to Israel, despite the escalating violence.

"He was convinced nothing would happen to him,'' she said. "Intellectually, he understood why he couldn't go, but in his heart, he wanted to be there.''

When Avia and her Israeli peers return to Israel next week for the final days of summer break, they will go back to a life of fear.

But on Wednesday, such concerns were secondary. With her bright-red luggage in hand and jean bottoms rolled up, she was loquacious, ready for a week's worth of work in sunny California. Come next week, she will once again reside in perilous territory.

"I don't get a vacation this year,'' she said, her braces twinkling in the twilight of Baggage Claim 17.