NEWSBYJERRY WHITE

Jerry White is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr White is the founding director Survivor Corps, an international nonprofit organization that helps war victims recover and rebuild their lives.

This week, Israelis are starting to wake up to the nightmare of landmines.  Last Saturday, as Israeli families headed to the Golan Heights to play in the fresh snow, one family's fun turned into a tragedy when a mine exploded, mangling a boy's foot, injuring his siblings, and causing Israelis and people around the world to ask not only whether the minefield was properly fenced, but why hundreds of thousands of mines are still buried throughout the Holy Land?

Twenty-six years ago, I, too, thought it was all a bad dream when I woke up in a hospital bed after losing a leg to a mine on a beautiful hillside in northern Israel.

In 1984, as a young student from Boston, I had come for a year of Jewish studies at Hebrew University, but while hiking up north with a couple friends, I ended up stepping on a landmine.  The Israeli amputees from the Lebanon war who later shared my room at Tel Hashomer Hospital used to joke, "Welcome to our landmine clearance team."  Unfortunately, twenty-six years later, the only people who "clear" anti-personnel mines in Israel are still innocent civilians like me and 11-year-old Daniel Yuval.

When I returned last year to Tel Aziziat-the "scene of the crime"-with a journalist and photographer, I told them that I believed one day this place would be mine free.  The young reporter covering my story muttered, "It can't be done."  I countered firmly, "Yes, it can be done!"

How can I be sure?  I've seen it happen in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Jordan