Students in Years 12 and 13 had the rare privilege of an audience with Aviv Kochavi, the former General Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces in conversation with Dr. Gad Yishayahu, a visiting scholar at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge. As we find ourselves in a time of confused information and facts about the conflict in Israel, and the atrocities carried out by Hamas against Israelis, Aviv Kochavi explained how the IDF operates and makes decisions.

Taking questions from our students, it was clear that the IDF is an army that weighs up every difficult decision in order to maintain its moral code and integrity according to the rules of the Torah and humanity, despite what the general media would have you believe. He gave several examples of decisions he had to make in his role in the past to illustrate this point. Overall, students and staff left inspired and had a clearer view of the facts on the ground.