Growing up in Kafr Yasif, a mixed Christian-Muslim Arab town in northern Israel, Samur Geris never imagined himself serving in the Israel Defense Forces. It was only when his best friend, a member of the Druze minority in the town, began his enrollment during their last year of high school, that the thought even crossed his mind.
At the time, Arab enlistment in the army, even Christian Arab, was almost unheard of, but Geris said to himself: “If I want to be considered an equal in society, I first have to behave as such.”