JNS/Dec. 27, 2024
In the summer of 2005, thousands of religious Zionist youth took to the streets of Israel to protest against the disengagement—the evacuation of more than 9,000 Israeli residents from the Gaza Strip. The media often called them “orange youth.” One of Israel’s most up-and-coming actors today, Yadin Gellman, counts himself among them.
While he did not protest inside Gaza, he and his friends, all around bar-mitzvah age, donned orange rubber bracelets—the color of the Gush Katif municipal flag—representing the movement against the pullout from the 17 communities in the Gush Katif bloc in southern Gaza, four additional towns in the Strip’s north and two villages in northern Samaria.
Gellman did go back into Gaza years later—as an IDF soldier during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014.
“When you suddenly see the beach and you see the nicest, what could be the most beautiful part of Israel, and you see what it turned into with all the tunnels and the ammunition warehouses in Gaza, that’s when you think: They missed the point,” Gellman told JNS in an interview at a trendy café in Tel Aviv on Dec. 17.
Eighteen years later, many Israelis believe that those “orange youth” have been vindicated.
Read the rest here: https://www.jns.org/from-orange-youth-to-idf-warrior-in-reality-and-film/