A Passion for Israel: Adventures of a Sar-El Volunteer

Werner’s second memoir of his experiences volunteering as logistical backup for soldiers on Israeli military bases (after Army Fatigues) will have limited appeal even for fervent supporters of the Jewish state. Werner is repetitive and treats political and diplomatic events simply, relaying his experience in the form of lightly edited diary entries covering 2006 through 2019. Growing up in New Jersey, he was raised as a Zionist and joined the Volunteer for Israel organization in 2002 as part of a program to “perform routine logistical and maintenance work” on military bases. Traveling to Israel just after the Second Lebanon War, Werner and his colleagues worked to make sure military-issued bags for combat reserve units were properly supplied. Time and again, Werner notes that the volunteers were able to get their tasks done much more quickly than their supervisors expected, leaving them with plenty of downtime, a regular feature of the program that rapidly becomes dull. His superficial treatment of issues challenging Israel, such as his touting of Israeli Arabs’ democratic freedoms while ignoring voter suppression and the debate surrounding integration of Arab Knesset members into government, make it unlikely that this will serve his intended goal of rebutting the BDS movement. Readers hoping for a nuanced first-person account of Israel’s strengths and weaknesses will be disappointed. (June)