War with No Name (2020): Season 1, Episode 1 - 1982-1990 - full transcript
"War With No Name" is the story of
18 years of fighting in south Lebanon.
It contains content
that some viewers may find disturbing.
We were a group of coordinators
who'd arrived in Tyre from all over the place.
We aimed to use our knowledge and experience
from our time in the Occupied Territories.
The big difference between
south Lebanon and the Occupied Territories
was that in the Occupied Territories
we understood our goals.
Who was the enemy in Tyre?
The enemy was the civilian population,
sections of which were hostile
towards our presence there.
Slowly, those sections grew.
I always keep this photograph in my office.
It reminds me of what
has bothered me all these years.
That night I had a terrible headache,
and I decided to leave the guys there
and just go to sleep.
At 6:45 AM,
on November 11,
I woke up.
I always had a book in my hand.
At the time I was reading "King Rat".
Are those still your blood stains?
-Yes, of course.
It hasn't changed.
In one fell swoop I collapsed,
dropped down with the bed and the book.
I found myself covered in rocks,
with only my head sticking out.
I said to myself,
"It's a terrorist attack."
Stand back, everyone.
-Guys... -Stand back.
Back.
I stepped outside.
I smelled gunpowder.
I was covered in blood,
but my injuries were all superficial.
Then I heard the voice of Roni Liran.
Can anyone hear me?
-Yes, yes, we hear you.
Shh... He'll do the yelling.
Quiet.
Stop talking!
-He's running out of oxygen.
Quiet for a moment. Don't say anything.
Is there anyone down there?
I heard him,
but I couldn't see him.
So we started digging him up.
We pulled him out of the earth,
got him out.
Grab his hand, two tourniquets,
keep his arm dangling.
"Fears Grow for Dozens
Trapped Under the Rubble in Tyre"
I was a new recruit,
and we were called to assist in the evacuation.
It's been 12 hours,
and this is a difficult race against time.
The hardest thing for a young soldier
was to see the row of bodies they pulled out.
It was the first time
I'd seen anything like that.
I think that experience
is the one that stayed with me
ever since, more...
more than anything else.
I remember I stood there and began to cry,
because I realized what had happened,
what this was. I...
After three days of attempted rescue,
a national day of mourning was declared
and a moment of silence was held.
The collapse of the military headquarters
in Tyre killed over 90 people,
among them 76 members of the armed forces,
which is almost inconceivable today.
It happened in November 1982,
just after the First Lebanon War
supposedly ended.
No one expected such a strike,
and no one imagined what would happen next.
The terrorists moved from one apartment
to the next, shooting the inhabitants
or throwing them out the windows.
Funerals will be held tomorrow
for kibbutz secretary Sammy Shani
and the infant Eyal Gluska.
After roughly a decade of Palestinian
terror attacks along the northern border,
Israel invades Lebanon with the aim
of installing a new order.
If we want to,
we can shut off their water,
cut off their electricity,
deny them fuel.
And if they come at us
with a sniper rifle,
we'll drop a one-ton bomb
on any target we want.
After four months of combat,
the IDF triumphs over the PLO.
Yasser Arafat and his men
are deported to Tunisia.
Minister of Defense,
is the war in Lebanon over?
We've achieved the goals
we set for ourselves
and so we can consider
the war to be over.
Israel wants a friendly Lebanese government
and its Christian allies win the election.
Their leader, Bachir Gemayel,
is elected President of Lebanon.
The posters that covered Beirut
hailed him as Lebanon's hope.
He was also Israel's hope.
The assassination was painstakingly planned
and meticulously, horrifically executed.
Mere days after his election,
Gemayel is assassinated at Syria's command.
As revenge for their leader's death,
Christian forces enter
the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps
and massacre their inhabitants.
Hundreds of refugees are fleeing
the site of the massacre.
Israelis begin
to protest Sharon and Begin's actions
and "Operation Peace for Galilee"
arrives at a deadlock.
Arik Sharon is a war criminal!
The IDF remains in Lebanon
for another 18 years.
Ziva, can you hear me? Hello?
I'm alright!
I'm alright!
In Tyre.
Naturally, the question that continues to hound
all those concerned is how this happened.
At this time it remains unclear
whether this was an attack or an accident.
This is one of the questions
the military investigation will need to answer.
Several days after the disaster,
Chief of the General Staff Rafael Eitan
appointed a military committee of inquiry,
headed by Major General Meir Zorea,
to investigate the circumstances
of the mysterious explosion.
When was I summoned to the Zorea Committee?
I don't know. A couple of days later.
We were appointed on the eve
of that same day.
All in all we questioned over 60 witnesses.
I still remember that I told Meir Zorea
that I could still smell the gunpowder.
He asked me if I was a chemist.
I told him, "I'm not a chemist,
but I was a military officer
"and I can still smell gunpowder."
Did that appear in the final report?
The Zorea Committee claimed
no one told them about the smell of gunpowder.
"The Tyre Report:
Sabotage Unlikely"
Only eight days after the disaster,
the committee submitted its findings.
The report claimed the building collapsed
because of a gas explosion,
and ruled out the possibility
of destruction by explosives
as a result of a terrorist attack.
Major General Zorea,
was this disaster unavoidable?
Our conclusion was that it was preventable,
had gas canisters not been brought
into the building against regulations.
Zorea was a very serious man.
He questioned everyone.
But the committee published its findings
after a very short time.
Based on everything I read
and everything I know,
if we had any suspicion
that this was a terrorist attack
we would have been aware of that.
It would have bothered us.
And to this day,
you believe it was a gas explosion?
My data hasn't changed since then.
If you're an honest and experienced
military professional,
you know it isn't likely.
What do you mean? -It was an attack.
-The army still claims it was not.
I... disagree.
I claim that's not what happened.
After the report was published,
the military criminal investigation division
decided to launch an independent investigation
in collaboration with the Israel Police.
Justice Itzhak Dar,
then a military investigator, was sent to Tyre.
This is the first time
he's agreed to talk on camera.
He left for Lebanon and arrived
at the hospital in Tyre to meet two Lebanese
who were outside the building
and were caught in the explosion.
What did they tell you?
They got up early
and drove to work.
When they neared the building,
a Peugeot 504 appeared before them.
The Peugeot drove into the building,
and then a large flame erupted
and they were both burned by it.
According to the testimony
of the two Lebanese witnesses, this Peugeot
entered the building and exploded.
-Yes.
Do you believe these two witnesses?
I believe them both.
As we continued to investigate,
it turned out there was a soldier who said:
"I heard a car speeding in."
And we found a Peugeot 504 engine
inside the building.
My report stated: "Our impression
is that the Lebanese spoke the truth."
The criminal investigations division commander,
or his deputy, or the both of them,
decided to remove this note
about our assessment.
People were ordered
not to get involved in this issue.
You know of investigators who were told
not to get involved? -Yes, unequivocally.
It was a cover-up. No doubt about it.
50 minutes ago,
IDF armored corps forces entered the area,
beginning an operation
that has no clear end date.
When Israel invaded Lebanon,
the Christians were its allies.
What it did not take into account
was that south Lebanon was largely
and heavily populated by Shiites.
As a brigade commander,
what did you know about the Shiites?
Look, it was a big old mess then.
Our idea
was to remain in Lebanon
until we could restore the Christians to power
and have them take control.
Until that happened, anyone
who opposed the Christians was an enemy.
It was a very banal, superficial understanding,
a lack of observation
that would haunt the IDF for years.
As an example,
imagine a young intelligence officer
who needs to start dealing with the Shiites.
What would he do?
Look for existing literature on the subject,
and lo and behold,
there was almost nothing there.
The only thing he'd find is a tiny booklet,
only three or four pages long,
about the Amal Movement.
Amal was the movement which represented
the oppressed Shiites in the south,
who'd been under ruthless attack
by the Palestinians
in the decades leading
to the Israeli invasion.
That's why their leader, Nebih Berri,
instructed his men not to oppose Israeli tanks.
I remember many things about that time.
In 1982 I was eight years old.
We had to go with my family
to the basement,
to hide while the Israelis came in.
And when we came out,
it was over,
and I was standing with my family
on my grandmother's balcony
and I remember, vividly,
the Israeli tanks were coming in
and people around in the neighborhood were
throwing rice and rose petals on the tanks.
And people were cheering.
Hanin Ghaddar was born in 1976
in the town Al-Ghazieh, between Tyre and Sidon,
to a family of eight.
As a Shiite child, she experienced the brutal
takeover of her native south Lebanon
by Palestinian terrorist organizations.
We've gotten rid of the terrorists.
We've gotten rid of the terrorists.
I welcome the People of Israel.
So I asked my mom, like,
"What's going on?"
And she told me that people were very happy
that the Israelis kicked out the Palestinians.
That was the moment when the Shia community
was celebrating the Israelis' invasion,
and it could have been an opportunity for
Israel to work with the Shia, not against them.
But there was another contender for the heart
of the Shiite population in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Khomeini, who had just completed
the Islamic Revolution in Iran,
set the Land of Cedars as a target
for his second revolution.
Imam Khomeini asked me to send one
of the Revolutionary Guard leaders to Lebanon.
In the summer of 1982, the Iranians sent
roughly 1.500 Revolutionary Guard soldiers
to Lebanon,
with one clear goal:
to establish a Khomeinist authority
in the Beqaa Valley.
The forces settled in Baalbek,
and there, in the local mosque,
they lay the groundwork
for the political core of the Hezbollah.
Subhi al-Tufayli,
Mohammad Yazbek,
Hassan Nasrallah,
Abbas al-Moussawi.
It was named by the Iranians.
What does Hezbollah mean?
It's "The Party of God".
At this point, Israel has not yet fathomed
this growing connection
between the Shiites of Lebanon
and their brothers in the Iranian theocracy.
People did not know what the timetable was
for the Israelis, so what's the plan now?
You came in, you kicked the Palestinians out,
so now what? What are you going to do?
Nobody knew.
People expected that now that it's over, Israel
would hand the place to the Lebanese and leave.
That did not happen.
As we said,
rescue efforts are still ongoing.
Naturally, the question that continues to hound
all those concerned is how this happened.
I know there's an argument
in Israel about this issue,
but I think it's an argument
that needs to be settled,
and the facts are conclusive.
The incident happened
because of an exploding car bomb
driven by a suicide bomber.
We know the bomber's name,
who supplied him
with the explosives,
who traveled with him
in the days leading up to the incident,
who surveilled the headquarters in Tyre
and knew what the schedule there was like.
How do you know all these things?
If you read the news,
you can spot the signs.
Today marks the anniversary of the sacrifice
made by the martyr Ahmed Qassir.
The enemy refused to admit
this was a suicide action.
The truth is that every south Lebanese child
knows the story, and the name.
Ahmed Qassir, the first suicide bomber.
He was a very young man,
only 18 or 19 years old.
He came from the village of Deir Qanoun,
near Tyre.
Very shortly after the attack,
a square was built in Deir Kanoun,
and it was named after Ahmed Qassir.
Remember, at the time
no one knew what suicide attacks were.
It wasn't common.
This was the first.
What's the target?
How many losses on the enemy's side?
The Hezbollah has recreated
the attack many times.
They consider it a pivotal moment.
The man who sent Ahmed Qassir to his death
has become a Lebanese and Iranian hero.
Imad Mughniyeh.
The preparation stage
took place near Nabatieh.
They prepared for it
in my family's home.
His mother knows,
Hezbollah knows,
the squares know,
but we're the only ones saying,
"No, it wasn't that,
"it was gas."
And every year, Hezbollah gathers there
to mark the anniversary of its founding.
This terrorist attack
marks the day Hezbollah was founded.
Hezbollah wasn't known by that name yet.
It existed in secret and used code names
like the Islamic Jihad,
the Islamic Resistance and more.
It would take years
before Israel understood what it was facing.
This little organization
was controlled by the Iranian embassy in Beirut
and began to trickle south.
The Israeli forces deployed
from Beirut to Chouf were a convenient target.
Six months prior, Israel entered Lebanon
to fight Palestinian terrorists.
Now it was fighting an entirely different war.
Between 1982 and 1983,
dozens of soldiers were killed.
The 640th fatality...
Like a standard ritual
during the evening news.
The car bombs in south Lebanon...
Roadside bombs in Tyre,
RPG missiles shot from alleyways
and ambushes which attacked
the conveys from the orchards.
The attacks reached their peak
in the fall of 1983,
when Mughniyeh sent van bombs
which killed over 300 men and women
at the American
and French headquarters in Beirut.
In Iran's eyes, this made Iman Mughniyeh
a national hero.
He managed to get the American forces
out of Lebanon.
One year to the day
after the disaster at the Tyre headquarters,
at 6:09 AM, the two buildings
to which HQ had relocated, collapsed.
A month after the Beirut attacks,
another car bomb,
once again directed
at the Israeli headquarters in Tyre.
60 people were killed, including 28 Israelis.
This time, everyone knew for certain
it was a terror attack.
The protests at home grew,
even reaching the ranks of the army.
We're just completing our reserve service here.
You do know it's necessary, don't you?
That's not true. It isn't necessary.
-How come?
Because when I sit here
I'm not protecting "peace in the Galilee".
Peace in Galilee can be achieved in other ways,
not here and not for so long.
Who imagined that a year later,
we'd still be here in Lebanon,
doing the same things?
This whole move, this mess,
feels like a bet in a casino.
Say, Georgie...
Besides eggs,
what happens here?
Fries, salad, mixed grill...
The 1986 film "Two Fingers from Sidon"
was produced by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.
It attempted to respond to growing objections
among reservists and civilians,
and explain to the Israeli public
about the mire the army had been caught in.
It goes like this:
The Christians hate the Druze, the Shiites,
the Sunnis and the Palestinians.
The Druze hate the Christ...
No...
Yes. The Druze hate the Christians
and the Shiites and the Syrians.
The Shiites have been screwed over for years,
so they hate everyone.
The Sunnis hate whoever their leader
tells them to hate,
and the Palestinians hate each other,
on top of everyone else.
Now, they all have one thing in common:
They all really, really hate us,
the Israelis.
They'd love to blow us apart
if they could,
but they can't, because the army is here.
Well, not the entire army.
Only the suckers who ended up in Lebanon.
You didn't really understand
who the parties involved were.
The briefings were like a history lesson
abut the Druze of Jumblatt,
the Shiites of...
back then it was Nebih Berri.
Then there was the PLO,
the Palestinians,
the Christians,
who were on our side
but could flip at any moment,
and the Syrians in the background,
who were supposedly
the most well-defined enemy.
The work is complicated and difficult,
because these aren't exactly Syrians
and they aren't exactly terrorists.
There are all sorts of nuances
you need to understand,
and every soldier has to become a politician.
Who was the army? Who were you fighting?
-Firstly, we always called them terrorists.
Okay?
At first the only ones we knew were the PLO,
so we called them terrorists.
Then we started hearing about
an organization called "Amal",
and we called them terrorists too.
We killed one unit, we killed another.
We treated them all like terrorists.
There were a lot of terrorist attacks,
but we didn't catch the terrorists.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
We didn't catch them.
So I ask you,
who did you arrest?
A few members of the Palestinian organizations,
and a lot of Shiites.
Why? We heard they were getting organized
and had weapons,
so we arrested them.
Open up! It's the army!
Did the intel behind these arrests
absolutely mandate their execution,
in hindsight?
I can't quite say that it did,
but hindsight is 20/20.
The entire approach was completely warped.
Thousands were arrested,
fostering a deep hatred.
And that was utterly foolish.
5.400 people are being held in this camp.
In order to circumvent legal issues,
the camp was built on Lebanese soil
and its inhabitants have not been labeled
detainees, captives or suspects.
They are "the brought".
The curfew was very harsh.
My first cousin, he was with his friends
out past curfew
and he was shot at by the Israelis,
and he died.
This incident, in my family, was a crossroads
where people started to feel
that Israel is now the enemy.
My introduction to Lebanon, unfortunately,
was when I was with the 188th Brigade.
I was a technical sergeant
in a tank company.
On my first day there, the company commander
was shot dead by a sniper right next to me.
Nissim Assayag commanded a vehicle workshop
on the outskirts of the Shiite town Nabatieh.
We were housed
in a tobacco building in Nabatieh.
It was a round building with no railings
that was used to dry tobacco.
We were situated in the basement.
Floor -1, so to speak.
It was a combat service support unit
in a combat environment.
I remember that in Nabatieh
they celebrated Ashura,
in which they hold processions
and engage in self-flagellation.
Ashura is the most important day
in the Shiite calendar.
It's a day of atonement and penance.
An IDF convey broke down that day,
so me and my guys went out,
despite the holiday, to bail them out.
It was incredibly dangerous.
It was terrifying.
During the incident the force was attacked,
panicked and opened fire.
Two Shiite residents were killed.
What happened there?
There was a protest. An IDF vehicle
happened to pass by, and it was attacked.
No one was killed as far as I remember,
though they barely made it out.
But it happened during a drive.
We used to drive all the time in Nabatieh.
I don't know what you're getting at.
It wasn't a significant event.
There were far more severe incidents.
-No...
In hindsight it's always easy to say,
how did you end up stuck during Ashura?
How come you didn't know it was Ashura?
With the flagellation and the blood
and the excitement,
couldn't you have had that breakdown
a couple of days earlier, later?
It may be significant because it shows
how badly we misunderstood the locals.
I've said before that all of us,
including a lot of people who weren't there,
seem to have 20/20 vision in hindsight.
Let's roll.
-It'll be okay. -Come on!
A long row of safari trucks.
The soldiers nicknamed them "death traps",
but still climb inside happily.
This wasn't the last time Assayag's company
came head-to-head with the reality in Lebanon.
Two years after that incident,
he led a convoy of his soldiers
from Fatima's Gate
to the workshop in Nabatieh.
There are many objects
scattered on the ground.
Clothes, weapons, shoes.
Bring the wounded here,
to the side.
Up.
You want to get up?
-Yes? -Why?
I feel alright.
You feel alright.
It'll be okay. Take it slow.
Don't worry. You'll be evacuated soon.
These are the remains of the vehicle
which exploded on top of the safari truck.
It appears to be a truck
driven by a single person.
It was a narrow passage.
Two cars couldn't pass it at the same time,
one of us had to stop.
I was in the jeep and I stopped.
He stopped right in front of me.
I remember his face as if it was yesterday.
-Did you talk to him?
Yes. Yes.
It was a red truck.
I said,
"Hold on, let us pass, don't move."
And once I started moving forward
I heard a boom...
I turned around and couldn't see the truck.
The blast had flung it into the field.
The first thing I saw
was burned soldiers running towards me:
"Nissim, Nissim, put us out."
That was the first sight,
my first flash.
They ran towards you?
-Yes, as they burnt. They were like torches.
I wasn't some bystander.
I was their commander.
Suddenly, the noise in the workshop died down.
Today there are no welders,
no electrician, no tire changer,
no tank extraction driver,
no car mechanic.
The few who remained
attempt to fill the void,
but work is difficult.
Some were present during the attack
and are still in shock,
others can do no work at all.
I returned to Nabatieh.
Now, I needed to sleep.
What helped me fall asleep
was...
At the time we used cheap wine
for the blessings on Shabbat, which literally
made you feel like you were hammered.
It knocked you out like nothing else could.
I used to drink bottles of this wine
just so I could sleep. Entire bottles.
Getting back to our routine isn't the problem.
We can do that,
but our mood is awful.
You saw it yourself
when we walked down the hall.
While everyone was there,
that hallway was always noisy.
Now it's quiet, depressing.
No one knows about it. When you
mention the "Safari Disaster", no one...
"Remind me what that was?"
No one knows what the Safari Disaster
was all about.
How do you explain that?
It's because this war...
was taken for granted.
As in, fine, we're at war, we're in Lebanon.
Everything related to Lebanon,
to the IDF's presence there
until the withdrawal,
is an event that was taken for granted
as something that had to be done.
Nothing.
The past. Just an incident.
The safari attack took place as Israel
was straining to keep up with wartime expenses.
Inflation was running rampant, and the public
continued to pressure the government.
At the end of a tense election campaign,
Peres and Shamir formed a unity government
and Rabin, the Minister of Defense,
made it a priority to withdraw from Lebanon.
The Israeli public seems to feel
that the IDF has essentially capitulated
to the Shiite terrorism in south Lebanon.
IDF soldiers and units
have become both moving and stationary targets.
Good evening, Chief of the General Staff.
-Good evening to you.
Is it final? Are we withdrawing?
We are withdrawing.
Guys, that light is blinding me.
Thank you.
How does it feel to fold up the Israeli flag?
-It feels great.
May all we do in Lebanon
is fold up flags.
Under the pressure of terrorism
and protests at home, Israel began to withdraw.
We have no business being here.
We've suffered enough.
"Goodbye, the land that devours its occupiers"
We will not return to you, Sidon.
We are on our way home.
First, the army left central Lebanon
and settled on the banks of the Awali river.
In early 1985 it withdrew southward once again,
in several stages.
But it did not leave Lebanon entirely.
The IDF established a security zone,
an undefined creation just north of the border.
Among the members of high command,
a staunch opponent of the security zone
was Ehud Barak,
then the head of the Intelligence Directorate.
Back then I was most vocal opponent
of this plan.
I claimed we'd experienced something similar
in the Canal.
When you establish a front line,
you need to defend it.
So you place machine guns along the line.
When the enemy shoots back with machine guns,
you dig them in.
You make a trench, and you shoot out of it.
Then they fire 2-inch mortars,
so you add a cover.
So they fire an 81-mm mortar,
and you create an even deeper cover.
And so instead of a chair you have a desk,
instead of a desk you have a closet,
and pretty soon you've got outposts,
roads, infrastructure, bunkers,
steel beams
and big stone blocks.
But I couldn't convince anyone.
Today I have no doubt,
and admittedly this is a bird's-eye view...
If you'd asked me
while we were still walking that path,
after five years and after ten
and after 12,
even after 15,
I would have given you a passionate explanation
of why we needed to stay.
Looking back on it now,
I think it was a mistake.
But the man I'd truly like to ask
about this issue,
and unfortunately I can't,
is Itzhak Rabin.
The government decided
that the IDF shall redeploy
along Israel's northern border.
Back then I felt it was a dream come true.
It felt like we were getting out of there
and leaving things to the South Lebanon Army.
The South Lebanon Army was a reincarnation
of local militias
that Israel had been operating in south Lebanon
since the 1970s.
Now, it sought
to strengthen it and make it an official force.
You are in fact the highest-ranking
SLA officer still living. -True.
I left the organization as a colonel,
the SLA Commander
of the Eastern Sector Brigade.
Nabi Abu Rafa is a Druze from Hasbaya.
He's a soldier at heart,
and his love affair with Israel
began in the mid-70s
when Palestinian terrorist organizations
settled in south Lebanon.
Israel shared our interests.
Israel wanted to protect
its northern districts,
and we wanted to protect our homes
in south Lebanon.
In early 1984 the army decided
to transfer all the militias
and the civil administration
to the army.
General Lahad
started organizing the army.
He formed battalions, platoons.
And he came to you?
-Yes.
He said, "I'm your commander,
and we want you to be a platoon commander."
I said, "No problem."
In 15 villages north of the Litani River,
the ambitious project was already underway.
The Shiites, members of the Amal Movement,
were reenlisted.
They quickly assumed their new role.
Were most of the SLA soldiers
Maronite Christians?
No, most of the soldiers were Shiites.
70 percent of the of SLA soldiers were Shiites.
70 percent? -Yes. And 70 percent
of the commanders were Christian and Druze.
What a ratio.
I don't know why that happened,
but when it comes
to Israel's political mistakes in Lebanon,
this was definitely one them.
And they paid it no mind,
they didn't listen to what we were saying
and we paid the price.
The SLA soldiers were deployed
according to their hometowns.
When an outpost was stationed
next to a town,
it protected that town
and at the same time
protected Israel's northern border.
It helped their motivation.
They didn't really look like an army.
Their houses were right next door.
When they left to go home,
not all of them came back.
The atmosphere was very...
SLA.
South Lebanese soldiers
will join the South Lebanon Army.
All this will take place in the security zone,
with the IDF's backing.
The SLA, with the IDF's backing.
This is one of the great delusions
surrounding the 1985 security zone decision,
because the government's announcement
does not clarify what this means.
These words, "with the IDF's backing",
would shape Israel's presence in south Lebanon
for the next 15 years.
I can't even tell you
whether those
who made and formulated that decision
knew that eventually
it would be "the IDF,
with the SLA's occasional backing".
The idea was to minimize.
To minimize our presence there,
to keep us out of that quagmire.
We wanted to steer them, guide them,
but not fight for them.
Are you happy to be coming home?
-Yes. -Sure.
Happy Holiday.
-Happy Holiday.
"Israel"
Those in power
decided we should leave.
I hope that with the security zone
and the new front line, things will be safer.
Things were very scary where we were,
and we really wanted to come home.
And finally, here we are.
It's cool.
-What's cool? -To be going home.
We're sick of this place.
Do this last leg right.
This isn't a field trip to the south.
Did you get the go-ahead to move?
-Not yet, we're the last ones.
No one wants to stay here.
The important thing
is to fulfill our mission.
An SLA unit is traveling
to the new front line,
just west of the Christian town Jezzine.
And so, three years after marching into Lebanon
with high hopes and a great show of strength,
the IDF has withdrawn,
leaving behind an active terrorist movement
and a big question mark regarding
the effectiveness of its deterrence.
This morning's quiet withdrawal
leaves no clues as to what might transpire.
In the security zone things were much easier.
You looked behind you and saw home.
The first outpost I was stationed in,
I think, was Kaukaba.
You saw the northern border,
and the motto we lived by,
"protect the northern district",
was very clear,
so we knew what we were doing there.
Our job was to prevent the next attack
on Misgav Am or Kfar Yuval.
It seemed very simple.
No more mortars, no missiles,
the idyllic Lebanese landscape.
We reorganized
to look for Palestinian terrorists.
Did we see anything?
We can't see anything now and we didn't then,
because Lebanon always seemed very pastoral.
Everything seemed calm.
You fight alone against the Israeli enemy.
There are only a handful of you.
You are the vanguard.
That's Abbas al-Moussawi.
The year is 1986,
and Hezbollah has already gone public
with its murderous manifesto.
Moussawi, one of the organization's founders,
is seen here briefing a unit of fighters
on their way to attack an Israeli convoy.
Remember God,
and know that God will be with you.
Remember that you are not 13 men alone,
but that thousands of angels are with you.
The terrorists awaited the Mercedes cars
along the bend in the road.
The red Mercedes carried the slain SLA driver
and the two missing IDF soldiers.
The attack took place inside the security zone,
on the way to Beit Yahoun.
Rachamim Elsheikh and Yosef Fink were abducted,
establishing a pattern for the Hezbollah.`
We've been in the security zone
for nearly a year now.
We've seen many successes,
but sometimes
there are consequences like yesterday's event,
which we've seen before,
and those are certainly severe.
But the organization did not stop there.
It looked for the security zone's weak spot.
SLA soldiers, most of whom were Shiites
serving in small outposts along the front line,
were the most convenient target.
They came in large numbers.
They didn't care
if they suffered 20 fatalities,
30 fatalities, 40.
It didn't matter.
They took over the outpost,
killed everyone there
and left.
They didn't stay.
They attacked several SLA outposts
and literally slaughtered the men there.
They decapitated them
and put their heads on iron poles.
The cruelty was part of the terrorists' tactic,
because they knew it would
spread fear among the SLA soldiers.
They did it by sect.
When Hezbollah found a Shiite soldier,
they killed him immediately.
Immediately, Shiites against Shiites.
They'd ask him, "Why?"
But the Druze and Christians
were something else.
You could wake up in the morning
and find that the outpost wasn't responding.
It had been captured.
They took the APCs...
They took the communication devices.
They paraded them across Tyre and Sidon,
killed whoever
while the rest of them hid.
Now, Yitzhak Rabin grew tired of it.
By then Dan Shomron headed the IDF
and Barak was his deputy.
What should be done about the security zone?
They started talking about
leaving the security zone
because the SLA were useless
and weren't worth the effort.
Then Rabin turned to me,
after hours of discussion:
"Major-General Peled,
You're the head of the Northern Command.
"From this moment on,
no outpost will not be captured.
"Good day."
Following this discussion, the Northern Command
changed its tactics in the security zone.
The IDF began to train the SLA more vigorously
and to reinforce its outposts.
More importantly, the IDF
redeployed its own forces in the field,
so it could provide
more immediate backup to the SLA.
Thus, with the backing of the IDF,
Israeli presence in Lebanon became involvement.
The SLA realized that their mission
was to drag the IDF as deeply as possible
into the territory, into becoming involved,
into taking responsibility,
into investing manpower
and funds and roads and...
weapons and engineering infrastructure.
That was the SLA's realization,
and the IDF realized
that it couldn't rely on the SLA
to defend the security zone in its stead.
And once it was decided
that IDF soldiers should be sent in,
the responsibility for them
fell to the IDF, of course,
and it was forced to send in
more and more troops
that took on more and more responsibilities
in the security zone.
Now,
in hindsight it's no longer clear
what came first,
the chicken or the egg,
but when you're
a senior commander there,
you find yourself in charge of the entire coop,
the chickens, the eggs and the swamp.
Lebanon was a swamp
that never ceased to ooze.
Roadside bombs, grenades,
rockets, infiltration.
Shomria was an outpost in the eastern sector,
in front of the Litani river's famous knee.
It stood side by side with a SLA outpost.
In the winter of 1987, it was manned
by a 51st Golani Battalion auxiliary company.
Intel from high command indicated plans
for a large-scale attack on the outpost.
Jean Boenish
was the machine gun operator in the company,
Ronen was a platoon commander.
There's a smile I'll never forget.
Hey there.
How are you?
-It's been so long. -Man.
This is great.
-It really is.
You really...
I still remember you
with black paint on your face. -Yes, yes.
Wonderful.
Don't you ever say to yourself,
"Why am I doing all this?
"Let's go back to the French Riviera,
where I'm from?"
As a Jew, I believe that any war
that Israel is involved in
involves me, too.
I was a month away
from my end-of-service leave,
and I was pretty good with the machine gun,
so he asked me to take it
to the guard post,
because he...
He rightly worried that, as he said,
"They will try and enter from there,
because that's the easiest area to capture."
Every soldier in the outpost was in position.
Then we waited.
Read the Shahada and trust in God.
You wait,
but you don't know where they will attack.
You're nervous,
you think things over.
You hope it won't happen,
that they'll abort the mission or something,
that they'll go to the SLA outpost instead.
I remember a flock of birds
suddenly took flight
when they started shooting.
They fired grenades at the archway.
I held onto the machine gun
and kept firing.
Allah hu Akbar!
As far as I was concerned,
if they passed the final concrete barricade,
they were in.
I don't know how many grenades they fired,
but... -It was endless.
The fire lasted for several hours.
But I never stopped working.
I went through 16 cases of ammo.
16 cases?
-About 16.000 bullets.
Every once in a while everything went quiet.
The fire stopped and we listened.
Then you could hear, "Ow, ow,"
all sorts of...
-Yeah.
The cries of the terrorists
who lay there.
I think it was only when we stepped out
that we realized... -Yeah. -What had happened.
That image by the concrete barricade,
all that blood right next to the gate,
with a foot lying there...
Images of a war zone.
I think there were dozens of bodies.
How does you feel after such a battle,
with so many terrorists dead?
The fact that so many are dead...
maybe it...
I don't know what it sounds like,
but it feels good to know
that we managed to hold them back
with minimal casualties
and certainly no fatalities.
We caught them in time.
We were a little shocked
when we stepped out. -Yeah.
While we were outside, we saw
some of the ones we'd caught, and our eyes met.
"18 Hezbollah bodies remain after the hellfire
rained down on them by the IDF."
It's difficult to describe,
but you know, something happened there.
Something happened.
A battle.
It was a battle,
and we survived it.
There was a calm that came with that knowledge.
I smoked a cigarette and thought about it,
and on some level
I respected the moment.
Then the convoy from Israel arrived.
All these beautiful Tel Aviv people,
all the...
I remember the photo shoot.
It looked like an Italian film.
The result of the incident:
18 dead terrorists.
A definitive strike
against Shiite terrorism.
This was the first time Hezbollah
crashed and burned.
They tried to do it a few more times,
but they quickly realized
that what worked for them
a year or two ago
was no longer effective.
It came at a great cost, and I think it was
a turning point in Hezbollah's understanding
of what tactics they could and couldn't employ
against the IDF.
What did they learn?
Their solution was guerilla warfare.
After the failure in Shomria
and another one
in the Battle of Maidun in 1988,
Hezbollah changed its tactics.
Led by Abbas al-Moussawi,
it used Iranian money to ingratiate itself
with the Shiite population
by building dozens
of mosques, clinics
and educational facilities
alongside its guerilla forces.
When the First Intifada
broke out in Israel in the late 1980s
and the IDF busied itself
with rocks thrown in Gaza and Nablus,
Hezbollah crushed
their rival organization "Amal"
in a series of bloody battles,
formed an alliance with Syria
and became
the most powerful organization in Lebanon.
18 years of fighting in south Lebanon.
It contains content
that some viewers may find disturbing.
We were a group of coordinators
who'd arrived in Tyre from all over the place.
We aimed to use our knowledge and experience
from our time in the Occupied Territories.
The big difference between
south Lebanon and the Occupied Territories
was that in the Occupied Territories
we understood our goals.
Who was the enemy in Tyre?
The enemy was the civilian population,
sections of which were hostile
towards our presence there.
Slowly, those sections grew.
I always keep this photograph in my office.
It reminds me of what
has bothered me all these years.
That night I had a terrible headache,
and I decided to leave the guys there
and just go to sleep.
At 6:45 AM,
on November 11,
I woke up.
I always had a book in my hand.
At the time I was reading "King Rat".
Are those still your blood stains?
-Yes, of course.
It hasn't changed.
In one fell swoop I collapsed,
dropped down with the bed and the book.
I found myself covered in rocks,
with only my head sticking out.
I said to myself,
"It's a terrorist attack."
Stand back, everyone.
-Guys... -Stand back.
Back.
I stepped outside.
I smelled gunpowder.
I was covered in blood,
but my injuries were all superficial.
Then I heard the voice of Roni Liran.
Can anyone hear me?
-Yes, yes, we hear you.
Shh... He'll do the yelling.
Quiet.
Stop talking!
-He's running out of oxygen.
Quiet for a moment. Don't say anything.
Is there anyone down there?
I heard him,
but I couldn't see him.
So we started digging him up.
We pulled him out of the earth,
got him out.
Grab his hand, two tourniquets,
keep his arm dangling.
"Fears Grow for Dozens
Trapped Under the Rubble in Tyre"
I was a new recruit,
and we were called to assist in the evacuation.
It's been 12 hours,
and this is a difficult race against time.
The hardest thing for a young soldier
was to see the row of bodies they pulled out.
It was the first time
I'd seen anything like that.
I think that experience
is the one that stayed with me
ever since, more...
more than anything else.
I remember I stood there and began to cry,
because I realized what had happened,
what this was. I...
After three days of attempted rescue,
a national day of mourning was declared
and a moment of silence was held.
The collapse of the military headquarters
in Tyre killed over 90 people,
among them 76 members of the armed forces,
which is almost inconceivable today.
It happened in November 1982,
just after the First Lebanon War
supposedly ended.
No one expected such a strike,
and no one imagined what would happen next.
The terrorists moved from one apartment
to the next, shooting the inhabitants
or throwing them out the windows.
Funerals will be held tomorrow
for kibbutz secretary Sammy Shani
and the infant Eyal Gluska.
After roughly a decade of Palestinian
terror attacks along the northern border,
Israel invades Lebanon with the aim
of installing a new order.
If we want to,
we can shut off their water,
cut off their electricity,
deny them fuel.
And if they come at us
with a sniper rifle,
we'll drop a one-ton bomb
on any target we want.
After four months of combat,
the IDF triumphs over the PLO.
Yasser Arafat and his men
are deported to Tunisia.
Minister of Defense,
is the war in Lebanon over?
We've achieved the goals
we set for ourselves
and so we can consider
the war to be over.
Israel wants a friendly Lebanese government
and its Christian allies win the election.
Their leader, Bachir Gemayel,
is elected President of Lebanon.
The posters that covered Beirut
hailed him as Lebanon's hope.
He was also Israel's hope.
The assassination was painstakingly planned
and meticulously, horrifically executed.
Mere days after his election,
Gemayel is assassinated at Syria's command.
As revenge for their leader's death,
Christian forces enter
the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps
and massacre their inhabitants.
Hundreds of refugees are fleeing
the site of the massacre.
Israelis begin
to protest Sharon and Begin's actions
and "Operation Peace for Galilee"
arrives at a deadlock.
Arik Sharon is a war criminal!
The IDF remains in Lebanon
for another 18 years.
Ziva, can you hear me? Hello?
I'm alright!
I'm alright!
In Tyre.
Naturally, the question that continues to hound
all those concerned is how this happened.
At this time it remains unclear
whether this was an attack or an accident.
This is one of the questions
the military investigation will need to answer.
Several days after the disaster,
Chief of the General Staff Rafael Eitan
appointed a military committee of inquiry,
headed by Major General Meir Zorea,
to investigate the circumstances
of the mysterious explosion.
When was I summoned to the Zorea Committee?
I don't know. A couple of days later.
We were appointed on the eve
of that same day.
All in all we questioned over 60 witnesses.
I still remember that I told Meir Zorea
that I could still smell the gunpowder.
He asked me if I was a chemist.
I told him, "I'm not a chemist,
but I was a military officer
"and I can still smell gunpowder."
Did that appear in the final report?
The Zorea Committee claimed
no one told them about the smell of gunpowder.
"The Tyre Report:
Sabotage Unlikely"
Only eight days after the disaster,
the committee submitted its findings.
The report claimed the building collapsed
because of a gas explosion,
and ruled out the possibility
of destruction by explosives
as a result of a terrorist attack.
Major General Zorea,
was this disaster unavoidable?
Our conclusion was that it was preventable,
had gas canisters not been brought
into the building against regulations.
Zorea was a very serious man.
He questioned everyone.
But the committee published its findings
after a very short time.
Based on everything I read
and everything I know,
if we had any suspicion
that this was a terrorist attack
we would have been aware of that.
It would have bothered us.
And to this day,
you believe it was a gas explosion?
My data hasn't changed since then.
If you're an honest and experienced
military professional,
you know it isn't likely.
What do you mean? -It was an attack.
-The army still claims it was not.
I... disagree.
I claim that's not what happened.
After the report was published,
the military criminal investigation division
decided to launch an independent investigation
in collaboration with the Israel Police.
Justice Itzhak Dar,
then a military investigator, was sent to Tyre.
This is the first time
he's agreed to talk on camera.
He left for Lebanon and arrived
at the hospital in Tyre to meet two Lebanese
who were outside the building
and were caught in the explosion.
What did they tell you?
They got up early
and drove to work.
When they neared the building,
a Peugeot 504 appeared before them.
The Peugeot drove into the building,
and then a large flame erupted
and they were both burned by it.
According to the testimony
of the two Lebanese witnesses, this Peugeot
entered the building and exploded.
-Yes.
Do you believe these two witnesses?
I believe them both.
As we continued to investigate,
it turned out there was a soldier who said:
"I heard a car speeding in."
And we found a Peugeot 504 engine
inside the building.
My report stated: "Our impression
is that the Lebanese spoke the truth."
The criminal investigations division commander,
or his deputy, or the both of them,
decided to remove this note
about our assessment.
People were ordered
not to get involved in this issue.
You know of investigators who were told
not to get involved? -Yes, unequivocally.
It was a cover-up. No doubt about it.
50 minutes ago,
IDF armored corps forces entered the area,
beginning an operation
that has no clear end date.
When Israel invaded Lebanon,
the Christians were its allies.
What it did not take into account
was that south Lebanon was largely
and heavily populated by Shiites.
As a brigade commander,
what did you know about the Shiites?
Look, it was a big old mess then.
Our idea
was to remain in Lebanon
until we could restore the Christians to power
and have them take control.
Until that happened, anyone
who opposed the Christians was an enemy.
It was a very banal, superficial understanding,
a lack of observation
that would haunt the IDF for years.
As an example,
imagine a young intelligence officer
who needs to start dealing with the Shiites.
What would he do?
Look for existing literature on the subject,
and lo and behold,
there was almost nothing there.
The only thing he'd find is a tiny booklet,
only three or four pages long,
about the Amal Movement.
Amal was the movement which represented
the oppressed Shiites in the south,
who'd been under ruthless attack
by the Palestinians
in the decades leading
to the Israeli invasion.
That's why their leader, Nebih Berri,
instructed his men not to oppose Israeli tanks.
I remember many things about that time.
In 1982 I was eight years old.
We had to go with my family
to the basement,
to hide while the Israelis came in.
And when we came out,
it was over,
and I was standing with my family
on my grandmother's balcony
and I remember, vividly,
the Israeli tanks were coming in
and people around in the neighborhood were
throwing rice and rose petals on the tanks.
And people were cheering.
Hanin Ghaddar was born in 1976
in the town Al-Ghazieh, between Tyre and Sidon,
to a family of eight.
As a Shiite child, she experienced the brutal
takeover of her native south Lebanon
by Palestinian terrorist organizations.
We've gotten rid of the terrorists.
We've gotten rid of the terrorists.
I welcome the People of Israel.
So I asked my mom, like,
"What's going on?"
And she told me that people were very happy
that the Israelis kicked out the Palestinians.
That was the moment when the Shia community
was celebrating the Israelis' invasion,
and it could have been an opportunity for
Israel to work with the Shia, not against them.
But there was another contender for the heart
of the Shiite population in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Khomeini, who had just completed
the Islamic Revolution in Iran,
set the Land of Cedars as a target
for his second revolution.
Imam Khomeini asked me to send one
of the Revolutionary Guard leaders to Lebanon.
In the summer of 1982, the Iranians sent
roughly 1.500 Revolutionary Guard soldiers
to Lebanon,
with one clear goal:
to establish a Khomeinist authority
in the Beqaa Valley.
The forces settled in Baalbek,
and there, in the local mosque,
they lay the groundwork
for the political core of the Hezbollah.
Subhi al-Tufayli,
Mohammad Yazbek,
Hassan Nasrallah,
Abbas al-Moussawi.
It was named by the Iranians.
What does Hezbollah mean?
It's "The Party of God".
At this point, Israel has not yet fathomed
this growing connection
between the Shiites of Lebanon
and their brothers in the Iranian theocracy.
People did not know what the timetable was
for the Israelis, so what's the plan now?
You came in, you kicked the Palestinians out,
so now what? What are you going to do?
Nobody knew.
People expected that now that it's over, Israel
would hand the place to the Lebanese and leave.
That did not happen.
As we said,
rescue efforts are still ongoing.
Naturally, the question that continues to hound
all those concerned is how this happened.
I know there's an argument
in Israel about this issue,
but I think it's an argument
that needs to be settled,
and the facts are conclusive.
The incident happened
because of an exploding car bomb
driven by a suicide bomber.
We know the bomber's name,
who supplied him
with the explosives,
who traveled with him
in the days leading up to the incident,
who surveilled the headquarters in Tyre
and knew what the schedule there was like.
How do you know all these things?
If you read the news,
you can spot the signs.
Today marks the anniversary of the sacrifice
made by the martyr Ahmed Qassir.
The enemy refused to admit
this was a suicide action.
The truth is that every south Lebanese child
knows the story, and the name.
Ahmed Qassir, the first suicide bomber.
He was a very young man,
only 18 or 19 years old.
He came from the village of Deir Qanoun,
near Tyre.
Very shortly after the attack,
a square was built in Deir Kanoun,
and it was named after Ahmed Qassir.
Remember, at the time
no one knew what suicide attacks were.
It wasn't common.
This was the first.
What's the target?
How many losses on the enemy's side?
The Hezbollah has recreated
the attack many times.
They consider it a pivotal moment.
The man who sent Ahmed Qassir to his death
has become a Lebanese and Iranian hero.
Imad Mughniyeh.
The preparation stage
took place near Nabatieh.
They prepared for it
in my family's home.
His mother knows,
Hezbollah knows,
the squares know,
but we're the only ones saying,
"No, it wasn't that,
"it was gas."
And every year, Hezbollah gathers there
to mark the anniversary of its founding.
This terrorist attack
marks the day Hezbollah was founded.
Hezbollah wasn't known by that name yet.
It existed in secret and used code names
like the Islamic Jihad,
the Islamic Resistance and more.
It would take years
before Israel understood what it was facing.
This little organization
was controlled by the Iranian embassy in Beirut
and began to trickle south.
The Israeli forces deployed
from Beirut to Chouf were a convenient target.
Six months prior, Israel entered Lebanon
to fight Palestinian terrorists.
Now it was fighting an entirely different war.
Between 1982 and 1983,
dozens of soldiers were killed.
The 640th fatality...
Like a standard ritual
during the evening news.
The car bombs in south Lebanon...
Roadside bombs in Tyre,
RPG missiles shot from alleyways
and ambushes which attacked
the conveys from the orchards.
The attacks reached their peak
in the fall of 1983,
when Mughniyeh sent van bombs
which killed over 300 men and women
at the American
and French headquarters in Beirut.
In Iran's eyes, this made Iman Mughniyeh
a national hero.
He managed to get the American forces
out of Lebanon.
One year to the day
after the disaster at the Tyre headquarters,
at 6:09 AM, the two buildings
to which HQ had relocated, collapsed.
A month after the Beirut attacks,
another car bomb,
once again directed
at the Israeli headquarters in Tyre.
60 people were killed, including 28 Israelis.
This time, everyone knew for certain
it was a terror attack.
The protests at home grew,
even reaching the ranks of the army.
We're just completing our reserve service here.
You do know it's necessary, don't you?
That's not true. It isn't necessary.
-How come?
Because when I sit here
I'm not protecting "peace in the Galilee".
Peace in Galilee can be achieved in other ways,
not here and not for so long.
Who imagined that a year later,
we'd still be here in Lebanon,
doing the same things?
This whole move, this mess,
feels like a bet in a casino.
Say, Georgie...
Besides eggs,
what happens here?
Fries, salad, mixed grill...
The 1986 film "Two Fingers from Sidon"
was produced by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.
It attempted to respond to growing objections
among reservists and civilians,
and explain to the Israeli public
about the mire the army had been caught in.
It goes like this:
The Christians hate the Druze, the Shiites,
the Sunnis and the Palestinians.
The Druze hate the Christ...
No...
Yes. The Druze hate the Christians
and the Shiites and the Syrians.
The Shiites have been screwed over for years,
so they hate everyone.
The Sunnis hate whoever their leader
tells them to hate,
and the Palestinians hate each other,
on top of everyone else.
Now, they all have one thing in common:
They all really, really hate us,
the Israelis.
They'd love to blow us apart
if they could,
but they can't, because the army is here.
Well, not the entire army.
Only the suckers who ended up in Lebanon.
You didn't really understand
who the parties involved were.
The briefings were like a history lesson
abut the Druze of Jumblatt,
the Shiites of...
back then it was Nebih Berri.
Then there was the PLO,
the Palestinians,
the Christians,
who were on our side
but could flip at any moment,
and the Syrians in the background,
who were supposedly
the most well-defined enemy.
The work is complicated and difficult,
because these aren't exactly Syrians
and they aren't exactly terrorists.
There are all sorts of nuances
you need to understand,
and every soldier has to become a politician.
Who was the army? Who were you fighting?
-Firstly, we always called them terrorists.
Okay?
At first the only ones we knew were the PLO,
so we called them terrorists.
Then we started hearing about
an organization called "Amal",
and we called them terrorists too.
We killed one unit, we killed another.
We treated them all like terrorists.
There were a lot of terrorist attacks,
but we didn't catch the terrorists.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
We didn't catch them.
So I ask you,
who did you arrest?
A few members of the Palestinian organizations,
and a lot of Shiites.
Why? We heard they were getting organized
and had weapons,
so we arrested them.
Open up! It's the army!
Did the intel behind these arrests
absolutely mandate their execution,
in hindsight?
I can't quite say that it did,
but hindsight is 20/20.
The entire approach was completely warped.
Thousands were arrested,
fostering a deep hatred.
And that was utterly foolish.
5.400 people are being held in this camp.
In order to circumvent legal issues,
the camp was built on Lebanese soil
and its inhabitants have not been labeled
detainees, captives or suspects.
They are "the brought".
The curfew was very harsh.
My first cousin, he was with his friends
out past curfew
and he was shot at by the Israelis,
and he died.
This incident, in my family, was a crossroads
where people started to feel
that Israel is now the enemy.
My introduction to Lebanon, unfortunately,
was when I was with the 188th Brigade.
I was a technical sergeant
in a tank company.
On my first day there, the company commander
was shot dead by a sniper right next to me.
Nissim Assayag commanded a vehicle workshop
on the outskirts of the Shiite town Nabatieh.
We were housed
in a tobacco building in Nabatieh.
It was a round building with no railings
that was used to dry tobacco.
We were situated in the basement.
Floor -1, so to speak.
It was a combat service support unit
in a combat environment.
I remember that in Nabatieh
they celebrated Ashura,
in which they hold processions
and engage in self-flagellation.
Ashura is the most important day
in the Shiite calendar.
It's a day of atonement and penance.
An IDF convey broke down that day,
so me and my guys went out,
despite the holiday, to bail them out.
It was incredibly dangerous.
It was terrifying.
During the incident the force was attacked,
panicked and opened fire.
Two Shiite residents were killed.
What happened there?
There was a protest. An IDF vehicle
happened to pass by, and it was attacked.
No one was killed as far as I remember,
though they barely made it out.
But it happened during a drive.
We used to drive all the time in Nabatieh.
I don't know what you're getting at.
It wasn't a significant event.
There were far more severe incidents.
-No...
In hindsight it's always easy to say,
how did you end up stuck during Ashura?
How come you didn't know it was Ashura?
With the flagellation and the blood
and the excitement,
couldn't you have had that breakdown
a couple of days earlier, later?
It may be significant because it shows
how badly we misunderstood the locals.
I've said before that all of us,
including a lot of people who weren't there,
seem to have 20/20 vision in hindsight.
Let's roll.
-It'll be okay. -Come on!
A long row of safari trucks.
The soldiers nicknamed them "death traps",
but still climb inside happily.
This wasn't the last time Assayag's company
came head-to-head with the reality in Lebanon.
Two years after that incident,
he led a convoy of his soldiers
from Fatima's Gate
to the workshop in Nabatieh.
There are many objects
scattered on the ground.
Clothes, weapons, shoes.
Bring the wounded here,
to the side.
Up.
You want to get up?
-Yes? -Why?
I feel alright.
You feel alright.
It'll be okay. Take it slow.
Don't worry. You'll be evacuated soon.
These are the remains of the vehicle
which exploded on top of the safari truck.
It appears to be a truck
driven by a single person.
It was a narrow passage.
Two cars couldn't pass it at the same time,
one of us had to stop.
I was in the jeep and I stopped.
He stopped right in front of me.
I remember his face as if it was yesterday.
-Did you talk to him?
Yes. Yes.
It was a red truck.
I said,
"Hold on, let us pass, don't move."
And once I started moving forward
I heard a boom...
I turned around and couldn't see the truck.
The blast had flung it into the field.
The first thing I saw
was burned soldiers running towards me:
"Nissim, Nissim, put us out."
That was the first sight,
my first flash.
They ran towards you?
-Yes, as they burnt. They were like torches.
I wasn't some bystander.
I was their commander.
Suddenly, the noise in the workshop died down.
Today there are no welders,
no electrician, no tire changer,
no tank extraction driver,
no car mechanic.
The few who remained
attempt to fill the void,
but work is difficult.
Some were present during the attack
and are still in shock,
others can do no work at all.
I returned to Nabatieh.
Now, I needed to sleep.
What helped me fall asleep
was...
At the time we used cheap wine
for the blessings on Shabbat, which literally
made you feel like you were hammered.
It knocked you out like nothing else could.
I used to drink bottles of this wine
just so I could sleep. Entire bottles.
Getting back to our routine isn't the problem.
We can do that,
but our mood is awful.
You saw it yourself
when we walked down the hall.
While everyone was there,
that hallway was always noisy.
Now it's quiet, depressing.
No one knows about it. When you
mention the "Safari Disaster", no one...
"Remind me what that was?"
No one knows what the Safari Disaster
was all about.
How do you explain that?
It's because this war...
was taken for granted.
As in, fine, we're at war, we're in Lebanon.
Everything related to Lebanon,
to the IDF's presence there
until the withdrawal,
is an event that was taken for granted
as something that had to be done.
Nothing.
The past. Just an incident.
The safari attack took place as Israel
was straining to keep up with wartime expenses.
Inflation was running rampant, and the public
continued to pressure the government.
At the end of a tense election campaign,
Peres and Shamir formed a unity government
and Rabin, the Minister of Defense,
made it a priority to withdraw from Lebanon.
The Israeli public seems to feel
that the IDF has essentially capitulated
to the Shiite terrorism in south Lebanon.
IDF soldiers and units
have become both moving and stationary targets.
Good evening, Chief of the General Staff.
-Good evening to you.
Is it final? Are we withdrawing?
We are withdrawing.
Guys, that light is blinding me.
Thank you.
How does it feel to fold up the Israeli flag?
-It feels great.
May all we do in Lebanon
is fold up flags.
Under the pressure of terrorism
and protests at home, Israel began to withdraw.
We have no business being here.
We've suffered enough.
"Goodbye, the land that devours its occupiers"
We will not return to you, Sidon.
We are on our way home.
First, the army left central Lebanon
and settled on the banks of the Awali river.
In early 1985 it withdrew southward once again,
in several stages.
But it did not leave Lebanon entirely.
The IDF established a security zone,
an undefined creation just north of the border.
Among the members of high command,
a staunch opponent of the security zone
was Ehud Barak,
then the head of the Intelligence Directorate.
Back then I was most vocal opponent
of this plan.
I claimed we'd experienced something similar
in the Canal.
When you establish a front line,
you need to defend it.
So you place machine guns along the line.
When the enemy shoots back with machine guns,
you dig them in.
You make a trench, and you shoot out of it.
Then they fire 2-inch mortars,
so you add a cover.
So they fire an 81-mm mortar,
and you create an even deeper cover.
And so instead of a chair you have a desk,
instead of a desk you have a closet,
and pretty soon you've got outposts,
roads, infrastructure, bunkers,
steel beams
and big stone blocks.
But I couldn't convince anyone.
Today I have no doubt,
and admittedly this is a bird's-eye view...
If you'd asked me
while we were still walking that path,
after five years and after ten
and after 12,
even after 15,
I would have given you a passionate explanation
of why we needed to stay.
Looking back on it now,
I think it was a mistake.
But the man I'd truly like to ask
about this issue,
and unfortunately I can't,
is Itzhak Rabin.
The government decided
that the IDF shall redeploy
along Israel's northern border.
Back then I felt it was a dream come true.
It felt like we were getting out of there
and leaving things to the South Lebanon Army.
The South Lebanon Army was a reincarnation
of local militias
that Israel had been operating in south Lebanon
since the 1970s.
Now, it sought
to strengthen it and make it an official force.
You are in fact the highest-ranking
SLA officer still living. -True.
I left the organization as a colonel,
the SLA Commander
of the Eastern Sector Brigade.
Nabi Abu Rafa is a Druze from Hasbaya.
He's a soldier at heart,
and his love affair with Israel
began in the mid-70s
when Palestinian terrorist organizations
settled in south Lebanon.
Israel shared our interests.
Israel wanted to protect
its northern districts,
and we wanted to protect our homes
in south Lebanon.
In early 1984 the army decided
to transfer all the militias
and the civil administration
to the army.
General Lahad
started organizing the army.
He formed battalions, platoons.
And he came to you?
-Yes.
He said, "I'm your commander,
and we want you to be a platoon commander."
I said, "No problem."
In 15 villages north of the Litani River,
the ambitious project was already underway.
The Shiites, members of the Amal Movement,
were reenlisted.
They quickly assumed their new role.
Were most of the SLA soldiers
Maronite Christians?
No, most of the soldiers were Shiites.
70 percent of the of SLA soldiers were Shiites.
70 percent? -Yes. And 70 percent
of the commanders were Christian and Druze.
What a ratio.
I don't know why that happened,
but when it comes
to Israel's political mistakes in Lebanon,
this was definitely one them.
And they paid it no mind,
they didn't listen to what we were saying
and we paid the price.
The SLA soldiers were deployed
according to their hometowns.
When an outpost was stationed
next to a town,
it protected that town
and at the same time
protected Israel's northern border.
It helped their motivation.
They didn't really look like an army.
Their houses were right next door.
When they left to go home,
not all of them came back.
The atmosphere was very...
SLA.
South Lebanese soldiers
will join the South Lebanon Army.
All this will take place in the security zone,
with the IDF's backing.
The SLA, with the IDF's backing.
This is one of the great delusions
surrounding the 1985 security zone decision,
because the government's announcement
does not clarify what this means.
These words, "with the IDF's backing",
would shape Israel's presence in south Lebanon
for the next 15 years.
I can't even tell you
whether those
who made and formulated that decision
knew that eventually
it would be "the IDF,
with the SLA's occasional backing".
The idea was to minimize.
To minimize our presence there,
to keep us out of that quagmire.
We wanted to steer them, guide them,
but not fight for them.
Are you happy to be coming home?
-Yes. -Sure.
Happy Holiday.
-Happy Holiday.
"Israel"
Those in power
decided we should leave.
I hope that with the security zone
and the new front line, things will be safer.
Things were very scary where we were,
and we really wanted to come home.
And finally, here we are.
It's cool.
-What's cool? -To be going home.
We're sick of this place.
Do this last leg right.
This isn't a field trip to the south.
Did you get the go-ahead to move?
-Not yet, we're the last ones.
No one wants to stay here.
The important thing
is to fulfill our mission.
An SLA unit is traveling
to the new front line,
just west of the Christian town Jezzine.
And so, three years after marching into Lebanon
with high hopes and a great show of strength,
the IDF has withdrawn,
leaving behind an active terrorist movement
and a big question mark regarding
the effectiveness of its deterrence.
This morning's quiet withdrawal
leaves no clues as to what might transpire.
In the security zone things were much easier.
You looked behind you and saw home.
The first outpost I was stationed in,
I think, was Kaukaba.
You saw the northern border,
and the motto we lived by,
"protect the northern district",
was very clear,
so we knew what we were doing there.
Our job was to prevent the next attack
on Misgav Am or Kfar Yuval.
It seemed very simple.
No more mortars, no missiles,
the idyllic Lebanese landscape.
We reorganized
to look for Palestinian terrorists.
Did we see anything?
We can't see anything now and we didn't then,
because Lebanon always seemed very pastoral.
Everything seemed calm.
You fight alone against the Israeli enemy.
There are only a handful of you.
You are the vanguard.
That's Abbas al-Moussawi.
The year is 1986,
and Hezbollah has already gone public
with its murderous manifesto.
Moussawi, one of the organization's founders,
is seen here briefing a unit of fighters
on their way to attack an Israeli convoy.
Remember God,
and know that God will be with you.
Remember that you are not 13 men alone,
but that thousands of angels are with you.
The terrorists awaited the Mercedes cars
along the bend in the road.
The red Mercedes carried the slain SLA driver
and the two missing IDF soldiers.
The attack took place inside the security zone,
on the way to Beit Yahoun.
Rachamim Elsheikh and Yosef Fink were abducted,
establishing a pattern for the Hezbollah.`
We've been in the security zone
for nearly a year now.
We've seen many successes,
but sometimes
there are consequences like yesterday's event,
which we've seen before,
and those are certainly severe.
But the organization did not stop there.
It looked for the security zone's weak spot.
SLA soldiers, most of whom were Shiites
serving in small outposts along the front line,
were the most convenient target.
They came in large numbers.
They didn't care
if they suffered 20 fatalities,
30 fatalities, 40.
It didn't matter.
They took over the outpost,
killed everyone there
and left.
They didn't stay.
They attacked several SLA outposts
and literally slaughtered the men there.
They decapitated them
and put their heads on iron poles.
The cruelty was part of the terrorists' tactic,
because they knew it would
spread fear among the SLA soldiers.
They did it by sect.
When Hezbollah found a Shiite soldier,
they killed him immediately.
Immediately, Shiites against Shiites.
They'd ask him, "Why?"
But the Druze and Christians
were something else.
You could wake up in the morning
and find that the outpost wasn't responding.
It had been captured.
They took the APCs...
They took the communication devices.
They paraded them across Tyre and Sidon,
killed whoever
while the rest of them hid.
Now, Yitzhak Rabin grew tired of it.
By then Dan Shomron headed the IDF
and Barak was his deputy.
What should be done about the security zone?
They started talking about
leaving the security zone
because the SLA were useless
and weren't worth the effort.
Then Rabin turned to me,
after hours of discussion:
"Major-General Peled,
You're the head of the Northern Command.
"From this moment on,
no outpost will not be captured.
"Good day."
Following this discussion, the Northern Command
changed its tactics in the security zone.
The IDF began to train the SLA more vigorously
and to reinforce its outposts.
More importantly, the IDF
redeployed its own forces in the field,
so it could provide
more immediate backup to the SLA.
Thus, with the backing of the IDF,
Israeli presence in Lebanon became involvement.
The SLA realized that their mission
was to drag the IDF as deeply as possible
into the territory, into becoming involved,
into taking responsibility,
into investing manpower
and funds and roads and...
weapons and engineering infrastructure.
That was the SLA's realization,
and the IDF realized
that it couldn't rely on the SLA
to defend the security zone in its stead.
And once it was decided
that IDF soldiers should be sent in,
the responsibility for them
fell to the IDF, of course,
and it was forced to send in
more and more troops
that took on more and more responsibilities
in the security zone.
Now,
in hindsight it's no longer clear
what came first,
the chicken or the egg,
but when you're
a senior commander there,
you find yourself in charge of the entire coop,
the chickens, the eggs and the swamp.
Lebanon was a swamp
that never ceased to ooze.
Roadside bombs, grenades,
rockets, infiltration.
Shomria was an outpost in the eastern sector,
in front of the Litani river's famous knee.
It stood side by side with a SLA outpost.
In the winter of 1987, it was manned
by a 51st Golani Battalion auxiliary company.
Intel from high command indicated plans
for a large-scale attack on the outpost.
Jean Boenish
was the machine gun operator in the company,
Ronen was a platoon commander.
There's a smile I'll never forget.
Hey there.
How are you?
-It's been so long. -Man.
This is great.
-It really is.
You really...
I still remember you
with black paint on your face. -Yes, yes.
Wonderful.
Don't you ever say to yourself,
"Why am I doing all this?
"Let's go back to the French Riviera,
where I'm from?"
As a Jew, I believe that any war
that Israel is involved in
involves me, too.
I was a month away
from my end-of-service leave,
and I was pretty good with the machine gun,
so he asked me to take it
to the guard post,
because he...
He rightly worried that, as he said,
"They will try and enter from there,
because that's the easiest area to capture."
Every soldier in the outpost was in position.
Then we waited.
Read the Shahada and trust in God.
You wait,
but you don't know where they will attack.
You're nervous,
you think things over.
You hope it won't happen,
that they'll abort the mission or something,
that they'll go to the SLA outpost instead.
I remember a flock of birds
suddenly took flight
when they started shooting.
They fired grenades at the archway.
I held onto the machine gun
and kept firing.
Allah hu Akbar!
As far as I was concerned,
if they passed the final concrete barricade,
they were in.
I don't know how many grenades they fired,
but... -It was endless.
The fire lasted for several hours.
But I never stopped working.
I went through 16 cases of ammo.
16 cases?
-About 16.000 bullets.
Every once in a while everything went quiet.
The fire stopped and we listened.
Then you could hear, "Ow, ow,"
all sorts of...
-Yeah.
The cries of the terrorists
who lay there.
I think it was only when we stepped out
that we realized... -Yeah. -What had happened.
That image by the concrete barricade,
all that blood right next to the gate,
with a foot lying there...
Images of a war zone.
I think there were dozens of bodies.
How does you feel after such a battle,
with so many terrorists dead?
The fact that so many are dead...
maybe it...
I don't know what it sounds like,
but it feels good to know
that we managed to hold them back
with minimal casualties
and certainly no fatalities.
We caught them in time.
We were a little shocked
when we stepped out. -Yeah.
While we were outside, we saw
some of the ones we'd caught, and our eyes met.
"18 Hezbollah bodies remain after the hellfire
rained down on them by the IDF."
It's difficult to describe,
but you know, something happened there.
Something happened.
A battle.
It was a battle,
and we survived it.
There was a calm that came with that knowledge.
I smoked a cigarette and thought about it,
and on some level
I respected the moment.
Then the convoy from Israel arrived.
All these beautiful Tel Aviv people,
all the...
I remember the photo shoot.
It looked like an Italian film.
The result of the incident:
18 dead terrorists.
A definitive strike
against Shiite terrorism.
This was the first time Hezbollah
crashed and burned.
They tried to do it a few more times,
but they quickly realized
that what worked for them
a year or two ago
was no longer effective.
It came at a great cost, and I think it was
a turning point in Hezbollah's understanding
of what tactics they could and couldn't employ
against the IDF.
What did they learn?
Their solution was guerilla warfare.
After the failure in Shomria
and another one
in the Battle of Maidun in 1988,
Hezbollah changed its tactics.
Led by Abbas al-Moussawi,
it used Iranian money to ingratiate itself
with the Shiite population
by building dozens
of mosques, clinics
and educational facilities
alongside its guerilla forces.
When the First Intifada
broke out in Israel in the late 1980s
and the IDF busied itself
with rocks thrown in Gaza and Nablus,
Hezbollah crushed
their rival organization "Amal"
in a series of bloody battles,
formed an alliance with Syria
and became
the most powerful organization in Lebanon.