Young Israeli skaters get a reprieve from the horrors back home

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This article was published 21/01/2024 (628 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

War brought chaos to their lives and forced them to grow up quickly, but a group of Israeli teens had the chance to be kids again — far from home.

The 12 players, ranging in age from 14 to 18, comprising the Maccabi Metula hockey club in Northern Israel visited Winnipeg last week. The trip was earmarked by daily sessions at the Hockey For All Centre, where True North donated ice time for the group to practise together for the first time in months.

“It’s a breath of fresh air,” said 18-year-old Maxim Dashanov, who plays defence. “It lifted all of our spirits and it took our mind off things because in Israel it’s always serious, you can’t really have fun — you feel guilty when you’re having fun — because people are dying out there for you to be able to have fun, which is a hard thing to process when you’re my age.”

Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian military have battled since a Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. The war has reportedly claimed more than 25,000 lives, while thousands, including every player on Maccabi Metula, have been displaced from their home.

The horror from that day remains fresh in their minds.

“Scary,” said Roy Lustig, 17. “I was so scared because we live next to the border from Lebanon. Oh my God, my heart sank to the bottom because I thought they were going to kill us. Like, that’s it, we’re going to get bombed, we need to evacuate immediately. Just scary.”

Lustig was with her two sisters when she evacuated to the Kinneret area. Dashanov lived in Kiryat Shmona, about 10 minutes from the Lebanese border. He was by himself when the war began.

“It was a (ball) of emotions,” said Dashanov. “I remember waking up to go to work and I get a message that there was some security conflict on the Gaza Strip and that we should stay home. I turned on the news and saw ‘War in Israel’ and I’m like, ‘Whoa.’

“That’s the first time in my lifetime that anything like that has happened and I’m like, ‘What do I do now?’ My parents weren’t home, they were abroad.”

Perhaps the hardest part, Dashanov noted, is that their lives have been put on hold. That includes important daily tasks like school and extracurriculars such as hockey. The hockey rink in Metula has been converted to an army base.

“Hockey is my escape outlet so, emotionally, it’s been hard because, basically, right now my day-to-day is just sit around, watch the news and get depressed because I have nothing to do, like I’m stuck — I’m not at my house, I can’t do anything. It’s hard,” he said.

In two months, Dashanov will enlist in the army, the beginning of a mandatory three-year fulfilment for any able-bodied person born in Israel, once they graduate high school.

Liv Sharabi, Lustig’s cousin, will also enlist in two months, joining her father and her sister, who is currently in combat on the border of Egypt. Sharabi, a defenceman, has been playing hockey for 15 years and dreamed of playing professionally. Those dreams will have wait at least a few years, though.

“So, you really need to think about that, that you cannot really play,” said Sharabi, 18. “You need to think, ‘Now I play, but then I need to go to the army, and then after the army, only then can I think about what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’”

It’s the second year in a row that Winnipeg hosted a hockey team from a war-torn country. The Ukrainian men’s under-25 national hockey team visited the Manitoba capital on the last stop of its Hockey Can’t Stop Tour to play an exhibition game against the University of Manitoba Bisons squad at Canada Life Centre last February.

The Ukrainian squad toured Canada — with stops at the universities of Saskatchewan, Calgary and Alberta — in a two-week reprieve from their life of chaos.

Maccabi Canada, a non-profit that serves the country’s Jewish community, raised enough money to organize this year’s visit. It also co-ordinated a trip to Vancouver last week for 12 younger Israeli hockey players, ranging from nine to 11 years old.

The Israeli teens had a busy schedule when they weren’t at the rink. The group paid a visit to the Rady JCC Fitness Centre, where they read to Jewish youth in the early learning centre and orchestrated a puppet show. They also went to The Forks, where they skated outdoors, something they can’t do in their Middle Eastern country. Another stop was at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights where they learned about Indigenous culture.

This group is always happiest on the ice together, though.

“This is what they love, this is their life,” said Ariela Segal, the team manager. “They don’t care about school, they don’t care about nothing. Just give them ice all the time, this is what they want.”

Segal was emotional while showing a video of the group singing together and embracing one another on the car ride to practice on Friday — enjoying the time they had and unsure when they’d get that moment again.

“It’s bringing them back together, It’s bringing the smiles back to their faces, it’s bringing them back to life,” Segal said. “They became children again, not soldiers.

“It’s the best thing they can have.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

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