Sgt. Benjamin Anthony, a 35-year-old oleh from England, is the founder of Our Soldiers Speak – an organization that sends IDF officers and reservists to lecture at English-speaking university campuses; briefs members of Congress, policy think tanks, and law firms; and provides Israel history curricula for yeshiva day schools.
The Jewish Press: At a lecture at the 2013 AIPAC conference you a shared a story that you said significantly shaped your life. What was that story?
Anthony: First let me give you some context. I’m one of seven children born into an Orthodox family in the city of Leeds in the northeast of the United Kingdom. There was no Jewish high school in that city, so my parents bused us to Manchester, which was approximately a two-and-a-half hour drive each way.
On one particular morning in 1994, my three siblings and I disembarked from the train and began walking to school when we noticed we were being followed by a gang of seven men. They taunted us for being Jewish and then, without warning, the ringleader attacked my older sibling Jonathan, breaking his nose and knocking him unconscious. They then continued their assault with one man holding Jonathan up so that another could repeat the beating.
When Jonathan was finally allowed to fall to the ground – where he lay totally motionless – these thugs proceeded to raise bricks and rocks and rain them down upon his head and abdomen. They stomped on him, kicked him, and actually got down on their knees to repeatedly grind his head into the sidewalk.
I didn’t really do anything until I heard the ringleader screaming to his followers not to stop until my brother was dead. It was only upon hearing that and realizing that they had left their homes that morning with the intention of killing a Jew that I threw myself over Jonathan. I was then brutally beaten in a very similar fashion but I didn’t lose consciousness and at the end of the attack I picked myself up, picked Jonathan up in my arms, and carried him to the school gates.
As a result of that attack, Jonathan’s heath deteriorated – he underwent three liver transplants in one week – and for a great many years thereafter he struggled with poor health.
You’ve said this incident influenced your life path. How so?
It demonstrated to me that anti-Semitism wasn’t just a notion, it was a reality; and it transformed me from being a passive supporter of Israel into an individual who was desirous of living in Israel immediately.
I began to focus on moving to Israel and realized my work would be to ensure, in my own small way, that Jewish people always have a place to go where their safety is ensured – and that place of course is Israel.
When did you make aliyah?
Immediately upon graduating from university in 2004. I was 24 years old. I joined the military in 2005, served as a heavy machine gunner until 2007, and established Our Soldiers Speak immediately upon release from the IDF.
What is the purpose of Our Soldiers Speak?
To bring the proud truth of the IDF to the campuses and communities of the English-speaking world without politics, without lobbying, purely by way of expressing the security, military, and diplomatic concerns of Israel.
There are three key branches to our work: Our Soldiers Speak on Campus, Our Soldiers Speak Elite, and our Israel education initiative. Our Soldiers Speak on Campus sends uniformed active specialized officers to commensurate audiences abroad. That means we send IDF lawyers to speak about law at law schools; IDF doctors to medical schools; and IDF high-tech experts to high-tech schools. We’ve reached more than 370 university campuses to date.