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During his Christmas break, Cadet Cory Hammock was part of an internship with the Israeli Defense Forces. Here are his observations from his journey to Israel as well as a couple of photos. "My sole and intended purpose was to learn security infrastructure of Israel and IDF tactics on military operations in urban terrain. I studied organizations such as Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood under the Islamic Jihad in order to, one day, combat the terror that these organizations deliver throughout the Middle East and the world. Learning how this nation had repeatedly defended their own borders and interior land was also a primary point of interest that I wanted to see first hand. What I received out of this was far more. I took tours all over the country. From a tactical point of view, with so many outbreaks of war from the birth of this nation in 1948 until the current war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli tactics have had to change drastically to fight different categories of combat. After I saw the land, from the Sea of Galilee in the Golan Heights to the north to the Sinai Desert in the south, it finally dawned on me as to why this nation remained as having one of the strongest militaries and global defense measures in the world--because of the land that provided strategic placement for their soldiers. I was with the Kafir Brigade approximately 40 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip. The brigade serves as a light infantry division with a task that is concentrated in anti-terror. My time here was spent training in the largest MOUT site that I have ever seen (a mock Arab town). I rotated through platoons that were being evaluated on their performance for a given scenario, equivalent to how we would be evaluated on a STX lane. After my training in MOUT, I was introduced to Krav Maga (Israeli hand-to-hand combat). I started by learning the basic hits, holds, and escapes and finished by fighting three soldiers and my instructor. This really completed the last piece of the 'puzzle' that I came searching for. I departed the country exactly nine days before the Gaza invasion occurred. Eighteen days after my departure, the same brigade that I had the opportunity to train with (Kafir Brigade), deployed to Gaza in the effort against Hamas. This experience will echo in my life throughout my military and government service to the United States.
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