This Passover I was honored and privileged to participate in a most unusual Seder – an olive green seder. I was, once again, with the men and women of my IDF Palmar unit on the front lines fighting for our freedom on this holiday of freedom.

I have been privileged to be serving in a very special IDF unit consisting of physicians, paramedics, combat medics and combat troops for the past three calendar years. Every single person in my unit is a volunteer as it is a reserve unit.  Our mission is to provide rapid medical response, stabilization and evacuation for our soldiers, our heroes. Everyone in my unit has come selflessly and voluntarily from all over Israel and indeed, all over the globe. They come from all levels of society, with various religious, and political beliefs. We are united by the desire to provide the best possible medical services to our brothers and sisters in uniform.

At our olive-green army seder we had soldiers from Brussels to Addis Ababa, from Metula to Eilat, Ashkenazim, Mizrahi and other, religiously observant and secular, yet we all came together as family.

Unlike my seder meals growing up in the Diaspora that seemed to be interminably long before we actually arrived at the important part – the meal, this one flowed and was a lot of fun. Unlike our seder meals in the Diaspora the participants actually understood the words they were saying!

There is something deeply symbolic about celebrating this festival in the IDF.  Freedom, as we all know, is not free. Ever since our exile from our land we remembered, in the words of Yoni Netanyahu that:

The idea of freedom remained, that hope persisted, that the flame of liberty continued to burn through the observance of this ancient festival, [this is a] testimony of the striving for freedom and idea of freedom in Israel. In this search through our past we come upon other periods-of tranquillity and liberty, when we were the people of the land as well as the people of the book.

Yoni reminded us that Israel is the hub around which the Jewish world revolves. He also taught us as Jews that if we want to get anything done for our own benefit, we can only rely on ourselves. It is not enough to yearn, pray and hope as the “People of the Book,” but rather Judaism’s natural state is also as the “People of the Land.”

The miracle of our return to our land was not brought about passively, but by the actions of the pioneering youngsters, who reclaimed our land one tree at a time, revived our language one Hebrew word at a time, and continue to reclaim our Jewish honor and pride through defending our Jewish homeland and indeed our Jewish brothers and sisters world-wide, and if necessary, are prepared to give those very lives to defend the hope (Hatikvah) of two thousand years, “to be a free people in our land.” This Passover, even with all the Iran war-time unusual restrictions, let us remember that we are free thanks to the men and women in olive-green.

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The above contains an extract from my latest book “Heroes of PALMAR, How One IDF unit Revolutionised Combat Medicine in Gaza” (Gefen:2026).  Available on Amazon.com or Gefen.com.

Tuvia Book has a doctorate in education and is the author and illustrator of the internationally acclaimed Israel education curriculum; “For the Sake of Zion; A Curriculum of Israel Studies” (Fifth edition, Koren), “Jewish Journeys, The Second Temple Period to the Bar Kokhba Revolt, 536 BCE-136 CE,” (Koren), “Moral Dilemmas of the Modern Israeli Soldier” (Rama) and “Jewish Journeys, The First Temple Period, 1000 -586 BCE” (Koren).


Dr. Book is a licensed tour guide and has been working in the field of Jewish education, both formal and informal, for many years. Tuvia has lectured throughout North America, Australia, Europe, and South Africa.


Dr Book has served in reserves (Milluim) in the IDF in the current “Swords of Iron” war since October 2023 in a medical combat search and rescue unit (Palmar) and is the recipient of a prestigious IDF battalion award for his outstanding contribution to the unit. He has been featured on “Call me Back” and Times of Israel’s “What Matters Now” podcasts.