Backed in the
IDF OFFICER Itay Erenlib was 23 when he was ordered to lead a group of paratroopers on a raid on a West Bank property thought to be a bomb factory.
His sniffer dog failed to detect a home-made bomb detonated by a terrorist who watched the carnage from afar.
Erenlib was the most severely injured of his 35-strong division, losing both legs. For a time, doctors feared he would die.
“I was more dead than alive,” he recalls. “My parents thought they were going to lose their child. I felt pain in my legs, my hands, my stomach — but I just wanted to know if my soldiers were OK. I kept asking the doctors how they were.”
After two months in intensive care, Erenlib started to recover. But his IDF career was over. Then Beit Halochem came into his life.
Literally meaning House of Warriors, the organisation’s four centres — a fifth is on the way — have supported more than 50,000 wounded Israeli veterans. It experiences a surge in demand after major conflicts.
The centres offer physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and counselling and a range of classes and social activities.
It was at the Beit Halochem centre in Tel Aviv that Erenlib first picked up a tennis racket.
Now, aged 31, he is one the top disability players in the world, representing Israel in wheelchair tennis at the Rio Paralympics last summer.
Talking on a coach bound for a ceremony at the Jerusalem residence of President Reuven Rivlin, he reflects that for those in his situation, “the easy thing to do is sit back and think: ‘I’m disabled. I’m going to stay at home and sit in my chair. But my mentality is different. I think: ‘If you can climb a mountain, so can I.’
“I competed in the Paralympics because Beit Halochem gave me the opportunity to play sports. If you believe in yourself, you can make the impossible possible.” His sentiments are echoed by Eilatborn Einat Malka, a 38-year-old single mother-of-three. Twenty years ago, she was enlisted by the IDF to train male soldiers in martial arts. “I showed them I don’t just have pretty eyes,” she laughs.
During one session, she twisted her right-ankle and developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic condition triggered by an accident.
For years she refused amputation, sleeping with one leg off the bed, unable to bear the water or cotton sheets touching her skin. Eventually, she accepted medical advice and, with the support of an artificial foot, is able to run again.
As well as assisting veterans who have competed internationally, she has used her experience to train and encourage Beit Halochem service users.
Men and women who were injured, or captured and tortured, during the Yom Kippur War and other distant conflicts still use the organisation’s centres.
The son of Auschwitz survivors, Amnon Sharon, 69, is a well-liked character at Beit Halochem Tel Aviv. Tall and broad, his handshake is painfully firm. Beit Halochem has brought out the sensitive artist in him.
His story is best told through the sculptures staff have encouraged him to create.
One particularly harrowing piece represents “me, tied up inside a car tyre. That is blood down my legs. That is a blindfold. That is what they did to me.”
Another shows his Syrian captor with a gun. Another depicts him lying, barechested and tied down, in his cell.
He was taken as a prisoner of war after being ambushed in the Golan Heights during the 1973 conflict. He was beaten regularly, sleep-deprived and stripped of clothes in cold conditions.
After his release, he struggled for years with flashbacks. But art has helped him cope. Part of the increasing demand on Beit Halochem services is recognition of mental health needs that were formerly overlooked.
Golf has been an invaluable outlet
If you believe in yourself, you can make the impossible possible’