MOTHER OF MICA LEVIT, WHO TOOK HER OWN LIFE, CALLS FOR MORE LONE SOLDIER SUPPORT
Jerusalem Post Israel News
BY ANNA AHRONHEIM
MAY 20, 2019
But the annual State Comptroller report has found major deficiencies in how the military deals with lone soldiers whose needs the IDF has not fully examined.
When Michaela (Mica) Levit joined the Israeli military in November of 2017, her parents knew she was going to be a fighter, but last week she was found dead outside her base in central Israel.
“We knew she wasn’t going to go anywhere else in the army,” her mother Orit Levit told The Jerusalem Post. “She told us she wasn’t going to Israel to be a secretary, she wanted to be a fighter. We knew that if she was going, she wouldn’t do anything else.”
Levit described her daughter as “full of life, positive and happy,” as someone who was always encouraging and supporting her friends in times of need and the life of the party and “glue of the group” during the happier moments.
“She loved everyone, she never had bad word to say... She was so good to her family, never wanted us to worry, to disappoint us. She was an angel.”
What happened “wasn’t anything we expected of her,” Orit said.
“I never felt she was isolated in Israel, she had the support of extended family. She had so many invitations and she told me 'Mum, sometimes I feel bad that I want to stay home on the weekends.’”
And it wasn’t only family, Orit said. “A lot of her friends are sending condolences and [saying] that their hearts are broken and that they will never meet another person like her... She had a community.”
Orit’s middle child, Mica, moved to Israel in June 2017 and settled at Kibbutz Kinneret, where she took ulpan classes before joining the IDF through the Garin Tzabar program in November, drafting into the mixed Caracal combat battalion. She had just moved to an apartment with other lone soldiers in Hadera and was going through the army’s team leader training course (Course Makim) when she took her life.
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This is what a "Lone Soldier" is
LONE SOLDIERSA “lone soldier” is a soldier in the IDF with no family in Israel to support him or her: a new immigrant, a volunteer from abroad, an orphan or an individual from a broken home.
Every day tens of thousands of soldiers are defending the State of Israel and its citizens. These soldiers regularly spend weekends and holidays at home where their parents provide for all of their needs: food, laundry, and even a hug. Challenges for a lone soldier arise when he or she leaves base. While Israeli-born lone soldiers have their families to return home to, lone soldiers are left to fend for themselves while on leave from the army. This can be once a month, or every weekend, depending on where they serve and what part of training they are in. For more than 7,000 lone soldiers, there is no immediate family in Israel to support them. Though highly motivated and proud to serve, when on leave, many of them struggle with basic needs that a family would solve.
