It's very rare that you come across someone deserving of the title "hero" - or "heroine," for that matter - but I just did.

Cliona Campbell is a 19-year old student from Cork, in Ireland. She is something of a prodigy; in 2008, she was a finalist in the Young Journalist of the Year competition run by British broadcaster Sky News. Last year, she won the essay-writing competition run by the law faculty at University College in Cork, one of the more prestigious institutions of higher education in Europe. She has, it would seem, everything going for her.

Except that right now, Cliona lives in fear. She's become an object of vilification in parts of the Irish press. Grown men have walked to up to her in the street and abused her. Browsing in a clothes store, the security guard recognized her and showered her with insults. Threats have been emailed to her...

I've never been a compulsive person, or a thrill seeker, quite the contrary, I'm one of the most reserved and skeptical people you will ever meet. Yet my decision to fly 5,000km across the globe from my comfortable suburban existence to the sweltering heat and harsh discipline of the Israeli army was never one based on impulse. Ever since the age of nine, I have been captivated by the Jewish people - a nation which has endured hatred, persecution and genocide, and yet still retains an unyielding will to survive, unifying them in an unbreakable kinship.

But why the army? I had watched the injustice during Cast Lead, where after eight years of incessant rockets, Israel cried enough and was villainised for the deaths caused by terrorists who used their own people as human shields, hiding cowardly in densely populated civilian areas, brandishing their dead shamelessly before the media. I couldn't stand by another day and see the people I cherish being discredited before the world and wanted to show solidarity to the Jewish nation...