JERUSALEM — Over the past 2-1/2 years, more than 25,000 Israelis have stepped forward to join the fight against terrorism by volunteering for the Israeli Civil Guard. Motivated by a desire to help their country and a concern for the safety of Israeli schoolchildren, these volunteers have joined with the national police force to help maintain the now-constant watch for terror attacks.
The Civil Guard is responsible for internal security and is composed of civilian volunteers from all sectors of the population who devote a minimum of 12 to 16 hours a month, and frequently more, to protecting their neighborhoods from terrorist activity.
While every school now has a guard posted at the entrance, many children still travel to and from school on foot and without armed escort. In order to increase protection for these children and during afternoon youth activities, the Jewish Agency for Israel is helping recruit, train and equip new volunteers with an $8 million grant to the Civil Guard. The recent Israel Emergency Campaigns held by federations nationwide have provided funding.
Yael Bar-Shov emigrated from America 20 years ago and began volunteering for the Civil Guard 15 years ago. Today, at age 49, she serves as the commander of the tourist police volunteers in Jerusalem’s Old City, as a sharpshooter in a sniper unit, and as the organization’s English spokesperson.
The Civilian Guard was established in 1974, following an attack that took the lives of 21 schoolchildren and five adults in the northern Israeli town of Ma’alot. “They walked right in and took the school from under our noses,” Bar-Shov said. “We realized then that we needed to participate in our own security.”
Israel has only one police department serving the entire country. But with little income from tourism and the severe economic pressures of the security crisis, government allocations to the police “are very strained,” Bar-Shov said. At the same time, there has been a much greater need to provide protection to schoolchildren. As a result, she said, “the Civil Guard has come to play a greater role in the security of Israel than at any other time since its inception.”
Today, some 75,000 volunteers regularly assist police on patrols, as guards at public events and with numerous other jobs. Volunteers are empowered to act as police in every capacity except they cannot make arrests.
“Worldwide, there is no equivalent to what we do because it is a rare police department that will take in citizens and work with them the way we do. They are fully integrated into the daily operations of the police, yet no one is paid. They face the same dangers,” she said.
David Baumgarten has been a Civil Guard volunteer for the past five years. At age 62, Baumgarten is retired from a career that led him to work many years in the United States. When he returned to Israel in the 1990s, he just wanted to help his country. He is now a commander overseeing recruitment in the Jerusalem district and volunteers up to 100 hours each month. Out on a morning patrol along the Haas Promenade, a popular spot for strolling in Jerusalem’s East Talpiot neighborhood, Baumgarten said the Civil Guard presence is very important.
“This was a place that Israelis and Arabs would still come to,” he said, “even on Shabbat.” After three attacks in the last two years — one shooting and two stabbings — there is barely a car. “Our presence here is extremely important for those who continue to come,” he said.