Sarah Netanyahu Visits West Point Military Academy

As the Prime Minister of Israel makes headlines while in New York, his wife Sarah Netanyahu has taken the opportunity to pay a visit to the first military academy in the United States.   

The West Point Academy received Mrs. Netanyahu at an official ceremony attended by 400 cadets.

Mrs. Netanyahu then met the commander of the military academy in West Point, New York, Lieutenant General Robert Calsen and his wife.

The general told her of his military history, serving as the Chief of the Office of Security Cooperation  in Iraq and before that, serving as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.

While fighting in Iraq, General Caslen obtained many "souvenirs," and presented some of them to Mrs. Netanyahu, including a dish from Saddam Hussein’s private villa. The general also gave the premier’s wife a special album detailing the history of West Point, and inscribed in it a personal dedication.

During the visit, the Chief Army Chaplain gave Mrs. Netanyahu a tour of their new local synagogue which boasts a Torah scroll saved from Germany during the Holocaust.

Having family ties to two Biblical scholars, Sarah Netanyahu told the rabbi about her special connection to Biblical tradition. Her father was the late Shmuel Ben-Artzi, an Israeli writer, poet, and educator.

A very emotional moment occurred for Mrs. Netanyahu while laying a wreath over the grave of Jewish American officer, Mickey Marcus, an Army colonel  who assisted Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and became Israel's first modern general.

Marcus was killed on June 10, 1948 in the Israeli village of Abu Ghosh  by friendly fire, after being mistaken for an enemy infiltrator while returning to his positions at night.

Marcus's grave is the only one in the West Point Cemetery at the United States Military Academy for an American killed fighting under the flag of another country.