Graduates of Ono’s Program for People on the Autistic Spectrum Fulfill Critical Missions in Israel’s Iron Swords War
Israel’s Channel 12 News aired a special segment and published an accompanying article highlighting the graduates of Ono Academic College’s “Seeing Far” Program and their contributions to the Iron Swords War.
The “Seeing Far” Program, founded by Mossad veterans, trains people with autism to acquire the skills needed to join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and use their particular talents to carry out critical missions.
There are about 150 soldiers currently serving in the IDF through Ono’s “Ro’im Rachok” program. The program works with the army to place autistic people in sensitive military positions in order to utilize their particular sets of skills that provide them with comparative advantages. While many autistic teenagers are exempt from military service, Ono’s “Ro’im Rachok” allows them to sign up as volunteers. The program has recruited more than 300 soldiers into the IDF who serve in 27 different units. Some of these soldiers’ preliminary training takes place on Ono’s campus before they begin their service, like the electronics training course, which takes four months.
In the Channel 12 segment, one of the program’s graduates describes a highlight of his service in the Iron Swords War, saying, “I managed to discover tunnel shafts near a large hospital in the Gaza Strip.”
Another graduate notes how the army didn’t want to recruit him but he insisted on serving the country anyway. A third describes how his neural makeup allows him to notice militarily-important details that others miss. In fact, the segment opens with a description by one of the graduates, who now works in the IDF’s 9900 Visual Intelligence Division, of how he identified an Iranian-built landing strip in Lebanon for launching military unmanned vehicles at Israel. The scene cuts to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant giving a news conference in which he described how the landing strip was discovered and later destroyed, showing video from the mission.
The program’s founder summarizes, “These are the best soldiers I’ve ever had.”
To watch the segment and read the full article, click here: https://www.mako.co.il/news-military/2024_q1/Article-5f121dae87ddd81027.htm
