December 20th, 2023 - 10th Report: Hostages

 

December 13th, 2023

Dear Family and friends,

Report number nine: soldiers

 

The son of a friend has been critically injured. We’ve got more 3-degree casualties. The daily number of casualties is rising. Last week Gal Eisenkot and his cousin Maor were killed on consecutive days. They shared the middle name Meir, after their grandfather. Imagine having two grandsons named after you, and both killed in the same battle.

Gal was the 25-year-old son of Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff and senior member of the centrist National Unity Party. He and his party boss Benny Gantz joined the emergency government in October, in return for two seats on the six-member War Cabinet. All along he’s had a son and nephew on the battlefield. Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also have sons in battle, but not Netanyahu, Ron Dermer, or Arye Deri, the other members. This distinction – some leaders send their sons to battle, others don’t – is important. But I’m not reporting on the politics yet.

Today I’m writing about two recent long in-depth TV reports. The first, a film by 76-year-old Uri Barabash, is about the warriors of his own generation. The second, by veteran reporter Itai Engel, is about the reservists in Gaza right now.

Barabash’s “Broken Time” tells three tales. The catastrophe of the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago; the resolve of its old warriors to save their country a second time in 2023; and their response now that we’re in another epic failure. He focuses on five people, three men and two women. The men all fought in 1973, but of all they might tell, Barabash is interested in stories of rescue. Eyal, a tank officer, remembers his frustration at being sent to a besieged Israeli position on the Suez Canal with orders to extract wounded soldiers only. Whoever was still able-bodied was left to die or be captured by the Egyptians. The other two, infantry soldiers, met in the midst of battle when Uzi returned three times under fire to rescue Guri who was mortally wounded. “When we finally loaded you onto the personnel carrier, all you had to say was a string of curses”. ”Yeah, well, my entire abdomen was open, and you guys threw me in like a sack of potatoes”. Guri was nursed back to health, and spent decades developing the IDF’s search and rescue abilities. Uzi still volunteers as a medic and ambulance driver.

One of the women – Naomi – had been a 19-year-old radio operator. The doomed soldiers along the canal were demanding reinforcements; the officers around her insisted she tell them to hang on. As one position after the other fell, she disobeyed, and told the fighters in the last position they should think of retreating. Barabash brings her together with two survivors.

-          You told us to retreat! To abandon our post! Nobody in the IDF retreats!

-          Was I wrong?

-          No. You saved our lives, bless you.

The second woman – Idit – was in her 9^th month on Yom Kippur. Her husband Pinke fell two days before she gave birth to his only child, and his brother Yair fell a day later. At one point we meet the daughter, now 50. It took her years to understand the mythical lost “Pinke and Yair” were two separate people, and only one was her father. We watch military funerals every evening these days, and they’re full of weeping family members – even General Eisenkot. Barabash shows us survivors of 50 years, and they’re still weeping.

On December 29^th 2022 Netanyahu’s current government was sworn in. Our first government ever of what he called “Really full Right-wingers”. On January 4^th Minister of Justice Yariv Levin gave a speech announcing a raft of legislation tailored to limit the judiciary and subordinate it to the politicians; he reassured us that after he neutered the independence of the courts and the government legal counsels, he would launch additional legislation to strengthen the politicians. Concurrently other members of the coalition proposed more than a hundred new laws stretching from delaying the next elections to neutering the press to legitimizing bribery and on and on.

It took about two weeks for the masses to pour onto the streets. One of the earliest organizations was the veterans of 1973. They fashioned white T-shirts broadcasting that “The veterans of 1973 are mobilizing again to defend Israel”. They stole a rusty tank hulk from on old battlefield on the Golan. This scandalized the media and the police blocked them, so they built a full-size plastic replica of a tank, wrapped it in a gigantic copy of the Declaration of Independence, and traveled throughout the country inviting citizens to add their own signatures. Barabash and his camera followed his five subjects participating in mass rallies over the summer, wearing their distinctive T-shirts. One after another they repeated variations of the same theme: we defended our country in its worst hour with our bodies and our lives. Now we’re back, because this time the threat is even greater. That was a war on the borders; this is a campaign to save the country’s soul. No, we’re not exaggerating. Yes, it’s that bad.  Idit described a gigantic rally in front of the Knesset: “I’m a 74-year-old war widow. I served in the army. I’ve served my country. The police were forcing us away from the Knesset, because I’m an enemy of the Knesset? I’m willing to die for this country, rather than let it become unworthy of the deaths of Pinke and Yair!”

In October Barabash added an unforeseen section. He followed a group of veterans as they volunteered in the fields of a devastated kibbutz. He filmed Naomi, who had once been a 19-year-old radio operator listening in as troops went into captivity on the banks of the Suez Canal. “It was a fist to the stomach. Horrible. And now, exactly 50 years later, it’s happening again. But this time they’re taking children and women in their 80s. Who takes old women as hostages?” The camera followed her to the rally in Tel Aviv demanding Israel bring them back. Now. Now. Now.

Wars have long aftermaths. Uzi: “My days are alright, though my wife complains I’m never happy. But the nights? Every night for 50 years my nose fills with the smell of dead and charred bodies”. His words haunted me while watching Itai Engel’s report from a commando unit of reservists in the hellscape of Beit Hanun, north of the city of Gaza.

Urban warfare is the most lethal form of modern wars. The attackers can’t see beyond the next building, and the defenders have had time to prepare, to shoot from wherever they chose – an alley, window, firing hole in a blank wall, or a rooftop – and then disappear. The main tool the attackers have is massive firepower, and massive destruction. You win a battle in urban terrain by making it less urban. The Americans and British systematically bombed Berlin for months, then the Russians massively shelled it. There were still massive death tolls: more than 80,000 attacking troops, 100,000 defenders, and an even larger number of civilians. 21^st century urban warfare has the added layer of aerial surveillance, from planes to hand-held drones. According to The Economist, Israel has developed and is deploying the most advanced drones in the world, with capacities such as scouting inside buildings, seeing through walls, blasting open steel doors in underground tunnels, and other wizardry. Hamas, famously, has built the most intricate system of tunnels in history.

The major commanding the unit Engel embedded in, Yair, says they’ve been fighting for weeks, and he has yet to see a single living Hamas soldier.

When Engel and his cameraman arrived, the troops were in a pause of sorts. There were sounds of battle all around them, but they seemed rather idle. Laying around in a partially destroyed building, preparing their gear, smoking, talking. Havana, a gigantic black soldier, was offering haircuts to his mates. His dad was a black man in San Francisco; Havana came to Israel with his Jewish mom. “Life here is a lot more interesting”, he grins. Ron is a professional actor. His most recent role was at Habima, where he played the settler in a romantic triangle with a Jewish woman and a Palestinian. Zvi tells about his close friend Avinatan Or who was kidnapped from the Nova festival. He reads a letter from his wife which includes the hope they’ll bring Avinatan back safely.

Engel gets them to talk about the last time they fought in Gaza, in 2014. They lost three friends, and now feel they’re back to finish that story. Ron remarks that they were enlisted men and were told that commandos don’t cry or talk about loss. This time there’s no such machoistic pretense; he can say he’s frightened. His friends all nod. Then someone tells them to move to the other side of the building. There’s a large tunnel out in front, and the sappers are about to destroy it and there will be flying debris. There’s a blast. They argue about the different columns of smoke: is each a separate entrance of the tunnel, or was it one and the blast opened another one? Lots of opinions, all expressed with confidence, and no one really knows what he’s talking about. A typical conversation.

After nightfall Yair explains the morning’s mission. Everyone concentrates. A major part of such briefings is that every soldier needs to know as much as possible, including the roles of the ranks around him, so that if someone is wounded or killed someone else will step in and the unit will carry on. Eventually they settle in for a few hours of sleep while warning Engel that that guy’s snores will be louder than the surrounding explosions.

In the early morning the men don their gear – ceramic vests, helmets, protective eye shields, communications, large amounts of ammo, diverse weapons and lots more. Easily 40lbs each. Off they go, trudging through the debris and sand, accompanied by a tank or two, in communication with air support. Their goal: an UNRWA school and an adjacent mosque. The school is clearly marked, with the gigantic letters UN painted on its roof to warn off Israeli bombers. It’s a few hundred yards beyond the front line, though there’s no noticeable difference in the terrain: bombed and shelled buildings, torn-up streets, destruction. The ground troops try only to enter areas that have been heavily bombed and from which the populace has left. There are only fighters left: Israelis in the air and above ground; Hamas in the tunnels underneath, popping out unexpectedly.

Approaching the school, the troops unleash a hail of fire. If there were any Hamas men inside, they stayed away from the windows until the troops entered. The troops advance from floor to floor, classroom to classroom. Locked doors aren’t opened for fear of booby traps. Soon enough it becomes clear this is no normal school. In one classroom a cabinet hide the opening to a concealed room which had been a Hamas hide-hole, with beds, weapons – and a chart detailing the nearby Israeli villages and towns, and which angle to aim rockets so as to hit each one. This is location-specific information. Move a block over and the angles will be different. These are the angles from this UN school.

The soldiers identify the distinctive crack of Kalashnikov fire, signifying the presence of the enemy. It appeared to come from the next-door mosque. While moving towards it one of the troops is killed. A camera is identified, and taken out. Later, the TV station was given footage from Hamas cameras inside the mosque, showing the same troops from the opposite side. One of the final scenes of the film was hours later, in the early evening. The troops had almost finished clearing the school, but one of the upper classrooms was still locked. Rather than risk going through the potentially booby-trapped door, they broke a hole in the wall. Inside were rockets and a launcher. In a United Nations school next to a mosque with combat surveillance cameras.

Two days ago, five IDF troops were killed in a similar situation, when a booby-trapped tunnel in a school exploded. Yesterday nine troops were killed in a similar situation, when Hamas fighters appeared out of a tunnel, and apparently activated two booby-traps. The troops’ go-pro films coming out of Gaza show missiles and weapons in homes, under beds, in children’s bedrooms decorated with cheerful paintings on the walls and tunnel openings underneath. The laws of war permit the destruction of military targets, even when they’re in civilian structures. As we survey the vast scope of destruction in the towns of the Gaza Strip, we must remember who turned them into legitimate military targets and then provoked the IDF by massacring civilians. Whatever you say about the desperate conditions of millions of Gazan civilians who have lost their homes, neighborhoods and towns, remember that Hamas turned them into legitimate military targets long before Israel demanded they leave.

I’m wary of the strong chauvinistic atmosphere in Israel these days, and of the pervasive militarism. I try to see through the swaggering bluster about how our military power is going to ensure that we reach all our goals – to destroy Hamas, bring home the hostages, and ensure our future security. I know that over the decades we have made decisions which contributed significantly to our intractable conflict with the Palestinians, and have encouraged some of the antisemitism in the world.

None of which diminishes the genocidal hatred of Hamas, nor the extent to which they have turned every playground, home, school, mosque and hospital in Gaza into legitimate military targets; indeed, turned them into inevitable military targets on the day they launched their murderous barbarism at our citizens. Say what you will about our military methods – and there’s much to say – we’re not using our military might to destroy the citizens of Gaza. Once we’re finished, a million Palestinians won’t have roofs over their heads. This, too, is our response to a choice they made. When they permitted Hamas to store rockets under their children’s cribs, they had to know there might be a cost.

Who knows what nightmares will haunt these reservists 50 years from now.

*            *            *

Earlier this morning I went to the Prime Minister’s Office and stood in the rain with the families of the hostages as they demand the return of their families. It’s so sad, so complicated. A story for another day.

yaacov