War with No Name (2020): Season 1, Episode 2 - 1990-1997 - 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.
Are you crazy?
Why did you keep this?
There's a new R.E.M. record.
Look, R.E.M. put out a new record.
I preferred Lebanon
because in Gaza
I had to deal with policing
children, running after rock throwers,
and it was very difficult for me personally.
Going up to Lebanon was like
going to do your real job as a soldier.
We'd get into those trucks
and look at those big iron plates
with their tiny bulletproof windows.
Soldiers had scribbled things on them,
"If you dreamed of Givati brigade, wake up."
We started to drive up.
Of course, the guys had sent me messages:
"Bring milk, bring cheese, bring food."
I brought shopping bags with me.
I arrived like that
and it didn't sink in
that I'd just entered a war zone.
Drives that should have taken
15-20 minutes
took about an hour.
The desire to avoid
a large number of casualties
made us fortify ourselves to death.
Each supply convoy
had armored vehicles
and armored safari trucks
and planes in the front and the rear.
It was an entire undertaking
just to bring in some water.
Crocus, Retama, Gourd and Basil
are the flowery names given by the IDF
to the grinding reality
of life inside the outposts.
Lost time.
By the 1990s,
the IDF was deployed in outposts
throughout south Lebanon,
in the so-called "security zone".
Across the red line was Lebanon.
Behind, the lights of Israel.
Several hundreds of soldiers engaged
in a routine of convoys, patrols and ambushes
against a deceptive, hidden enemy.
This is Outpost Gourd. This is the entrance.
We're going in.
This is the outpost courtyard.
As soon as I entered, I saw my guys,
the ones I hadn't seen in a long time.
"What's up?"
They said, "Say, are you okay?
You look shocked."
He says hello.
-This is the best place ever.
And then I heard the boom.
Bombardment, bombardment!
I saw dozens of people
running around like crazy
while I still held my bags with the milk
and the cheese and...
I was in total shock,
and they told me: "Run!"
"Why are you standing there?
You're about to get hit by a mortar."
I ran, and I remember people bumped into me
and it all flew out of my hand.
This is the left guard post.
It looks over Nabatieh.
What did the outpost look like in '93?
It was a mound of rubble
with a few reinforced guard posts
and some barbed wire at the bottom.
Two platoons, about 50 soldiers.
40-50.
-Less. -40 or 50.
Clinton is now arranging for the handshake.
This was a time when...
everyone around us was trying to make peace.
It was the height of the Oslo peace process.
But over there, we were a little detached.
We were living in a war
and it felt like no one
was really paying any attention to us.
And who was your enemy?
By our time Hezbollah was already in power.
I think we even
respected them, in a way.
When Yitzhak Rabin drafted
the idea of the security belt in 1985,
he imagined a defensive territory
that would prevent terrorists
from reaching the border.
But this was not the situation now.
Hezbollah covered south Lebanon
in yellow,
attacking the outposts
and especially the roads that led to them.
Back then I was the operations officer
for the territorial brigade.
We had safari trucks
that had been fortified to half-height.
The Hezbollah realized it couldn't
penetrate those vehicles' defenses.
So they built directional mines
that were aimed to hit
precisely at their week spots,
meaning the heads of the soldiers
that peaked over the armored plating.
Funerals for the five soldiers killed
in yesterday's terrorist attack in Lebanon
took place this afternoon.
One of our logistical convoys
was traveling to a frontier outpost
inside the security zone,
and it hit a roadside charge.
I evacuated the casualties from that truck.
I can say
it was one of the most personally
traumatizing events I ever experienced.
It was a very difficult sight, so...
Let's leave it at that,
even now.
Kaplan reached the truck
and evacuated the casualties,
who were fatalities by then.
Since it was such a difficult scene,
he didn't let the younger soldiers
go up there.
He did it all himself and radioed me
with everyone's names.
Losing friends is hard,
especially when they die in your arms,
as we say here.
But I think the soldiers here
are all aware of the risk,
and know that they are keeping
the northern district safe.
What set this incident apart was that...
I think it was the first time
we fully realized,
very clearly, how much Hezbollah
was a learning organization,
how much it had improved and developed.
Within five days, ambushes
and artillery fire in Lebanon
killed two IDF soldiers
and eight SLA soldiers,
and wounded another eight IDF soldiers.
Unfortunately, Hezbollah
not only enjoys increased success
but has also doubled its efforts.
While convoys and outposts
were being attacked by the Hezbollah,
Israel was also negotiating peace with Syria.
This notion was floating around
during my term as Chief of the General Staff.
We all knew that if we could make headway
with the Syrians,
the south Lebanon issue would resolve itself
as a result.
Sir, why doesn't Israel demand
an end to Hezbollah hostilities
as a condition of the continued
negotiations with Syria?
We consider the peace process
to be its own separate thing.
At the time, and in hindsight as well,
I sensed a lot of confusion.
Gourd Outpost had a sign that said:
"Protect the northern district".
That was our goal.
But what does that mean
when you're in a sedentary outpost
and the enemy is manipulating
and challenging you?
What I'd learned about the IDF till then
was entirely different.
Food for the corporals!
We did the dishes non-stop.
We washed and set up the mess hall non-stop.
We underwent gear inspections.
Endless guard duty.
And mostly we waited for the weekend
so we could get our minute-long shower.
What's a minute of water?
The deputy company sergeant major
took you to the showers and timed you.
He'd count: "One, two, three, four."
You'd use the water, wash your hair,
spend half an hour scrubbing your body,
and then you had another twenty seconds
to wash. It was a kind of game.
What is this? What's going on?
Did you hear about the attack on this outpost?
The casualty? -Sure I did,
I was walking up that side,
and as I was walking
there was gunfire all around me.
Missiles flew towards me.
Most importantly, I should mention
that no one in the outpost
was dressed appropriately.
And every three weeks
you had a week's leave to look forward to,
assuming that during those three weeks
no one caught you sleeping during guard duty,
taking anything, doing anything wrong,
fighting another soldier over phone rights.
Hopefully soon we'll be changing
into our service uniform and going home
to forget about this hellhole for a week.
Going home, Hib?
-Sure.
You excited?
-Everyone's happy, as you can see.
And then there were times you were
supposed to leave, and the convoy was canceled.
The convoy's been delayed.
As usual, we've been screwed over.
Looks like we aren't going home today.
We felt like we didn't really know
what we were doing there.
Another day passed, we defended the outpost,
the outpost was attacked.
Bombardment! Bombardment!
A few mortars,
then you lose a friend
who was on your team for two years.
It was almost surreal.
We'd sit in our bunkers
and watch movies.
The most significant film we saw
and connected with,
the one we learned by heart,
was "The Deer Hunter".
No way, I ain't giving him no boots.
No more.
In the movie Robert De Niro
keeps saying, over and over:
"You know why? 'Cause this is this."
This is this. This ain't something else.
This is this.
And that's the reasoning.
"'Cause this is this."
We're here,
and this is this.
All I can do is sit and think
Think about you, Mother
Every soldier here hopes to make contact
and... plug as many terrorists as he can,
so to speak.
But he might get plugged himself.
That's the way it goes.
-It's part of the risk.
It's part of the risk.
It's you or him.
We arrived in Lebanon
in the summer of '93.
We arrived at Outpost Crocus.
There was a sign in the briefing room:
"Our mission - defend the northern district".
And that's how everyone saw it.
This was Lebanon, and if you couldn't handle it
you had no business being in this company.
We trained for 18 months to get there,
to serve our country
and get the job done.
Avi Hirshenzon served
in a Golani brigade infantry rifle company.
Some of the company's routine tasks
involved ambushing terrorist units
who tried to set charges along the roads.
A game of hunters and prey.
What do you want to know?
Tell me the story. What happened?
Roll call.
One.
-Two.
Three. -Four.
-Five. -Six. -Seven.
It was Wednesday, August 18, 1993.
We are now going on an ambush,
which we will perform flawlessly.
We were getting ready to go on an ambush
about 3-4 miles away from our outpost, Crocus.
I remember we entered a very dense field.
The night was pitch black
and you couldn't see your friend up ahead.
You only heard his footsteps,
and you followed those.
We got to the valley,
lay down on the ground
and waited, weapons at the ready.
This was our night.
We were going to catch some terrorists.
At around 4:00 AM,
as dawn was breaking,
we got ready to move.
I was the last one in the single file line
and I remember I fell behind
because I was looking for a knee pad.
Suddenly I saw this wave of fire
about 30 or 40 yards away from me.
"Roll call."
No one responded.
"Roll call," again.
No response.
Then we realized that the ones
at the front weren't responding.
Seven IDF soldiers were killed
and two were wounded in a roadside explosion.
The bombs were planted by Hezbollah terrorists
next to village of Chihine
in the western sector of the security belt.
After the funerals,
they didn't let anyone leave for home.
We returned to Crocus.
We walked into the room,
and then it hit us
that seven of us were gone.
We often cry at the funerals.
It's hard.
But when we come back here,
we get back to our routine.
We're back in Lebanon,
back to doing our job,
back to doing what we always do.
That's all.
Psychologists came to the company
to try and see
if they could ease our pain somehow.
There were no psychologists in Golani.
But this situation
did not begin in the mid-90s.
Hezbollah grew into this war,
and at a certain point in time
Israel was convinced
that it could cut the head off the snake:
The man who strengthened
the organization's hold on south Lebanon,
the Iranian-appointed
Abbas al-Moussawi.
I was the head of the Iran Branch,
and I was called into an urgent meeting
with the head of the Research Division.
The leader of the Hezbollah,
Abbas al-Moussawi,
was scheduled to travel south for a gathering
and they wanted to know what we could do.
What was the conclusion?
We would observe the gathering
and study it,
so that we could abduct
Abbas al-Moussawi next year.
Why abduct him?
-So we could free Ron Arad.
This was supposed to be
a preliminary drill on a model.
We sent out drones
and the convoy traveled to the cemetery.
And lo and behold,
someone must have gotten greedy.
What happened was...
This may have been a drill,
but I got the feeling
we could identify where he was
and I knew our attack helicopters
were available to take him out.
This drama unfolded on the very week
Israel received a new war toy,
the Apache helicopter.
It was also the day after a brutal attack
known as the "Night of Pitchforks".
Everyone's blood was boiling.
What do you mean, take him out?
Did anyone look into the possible consequences
of taking him out?
Later, when I became Military Secretary,
I realized how amateurish that was.
My assessment was that we should attack him.
But this decision
wasn't made in a void.
We had a fairly consistent policy
that said this is what we did.
I also don't remember any objections,
to be honest.
You don't remember any objections?
-Anyone who said it was wrong to attack? No.
Oh, he doesn't remember any objections?
Alright. What can you do?
People remember what they want to.
There was strong objection
from the Head of the Research Division,
Kuti Mor,
from yours truly
and from others.
And there were consequences,
including the possibility of attacks abroad.
Did you raise this point?
-I did, yes.
I did.
And of course... Do you know this motion?
Yes.
Did our terrorism intelligence
warn us that a possible response
would be attacks abroad?
Yes.
It was an ad-hoc discussion among
the decision-makers in the war room,
with Moshe Arens, Uri Sagi.
All that was left was to receive the go-ahead
from prime minister Shamir,
who was taking his midday nap.
As usual, Shamir said "alright."
He said something like, "Fine..."
I was present when they held the phones
and tried to get a hold of this person or that.
"Light him up."
I said, "Gentlemen, what's going on?"
Mr. Arens, can you confirm
this was a planned attack
intended to hurt Abbas al-Moussawi?
One must assume that his death
was not entirely incidental.
He died,
and that night the entire northern sector
from Kiryat Shmona to Nahariya
was under rocket fire.
14 rockets were fired at the Galilee
this afternoon. One landed in Granot,
where five-year-old Avia Elizada
had stepped out into the yard.
She died instantly.
This was the first time Hezbollah
fired at Israel itself.
Till then they had only attacked
the security zone.
This was the first time this happened.
Thousands gathered to mourn Moussawi.
The impassioned masses
called out for one thing: Revenge.
Alongside Moussawi, the attack killed
his wife, his six-year-old son and others.
The funeral was a great show
of the Hezbollah's strength.
Many of the leaders in Lebanon
paid their respects, including rivals
of this rising power
in intra-Lebanese politics.
And the story goes on,
but I don't want to tell it.
Tell what?
30 days later
there had been no attack,
and I was asked, "Wait, why did you scare us?
It's been 30 days, nothing happened."
It's been less than 24 hours since the attack,
and the number of fatalities continues to rise.
Clearly this was carried out
by Mughniyeh's men,
with help from Iranian intelligence.
Then there was the attack on the AMIA building
of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires.
This building belongs to the Jewish community.
"Dozens Killed in Buenos Aires:
Iran Is Behind The Bombing"
I can say for myself,
the scale of the Hezbollah's
international response
was something we should have considered,
or I should have,
and it should have raised questions.
It's often forgotten,
but later there was also an attempt
to hit our embassy in London.
No one considered the alternative.
Who would replace him.
-Yes.
Yesterday our brothers
the decision-makers gathered
and gladly elected him.
Here he is, Mr. Hassan Nasrallah.
Come here, photographer man.
You know what they say.
They say photographers
are always looking for someone to fall
just next to them.
Look around, you might...
Go, go!
-Get in!
This is Liora Goshen with the news.
A barrage of rockets
in the Galilee Panhandle...
Get in, get in.
So we've started using rockets
in order to try and make the Israeli understand
that when he bombs our citizens,
we will bomb his colonies in the Galilee.
The rockets became a regular problem,
a trickle that turned into a downpour.
At this time,
casualties are still being cared for
at the site of the rocket's landing.
The exact threat that drew Israel
into Lebanon a decade earlier
was now resurrected in Shia garb.
In the spring of 1993, after several
bloody events and increased rocket fire,
the IDF launched a wide-scale bombardment
of south Lebanon.
The operation,
whose goal was to drive civilians north
and create political pressure,
ended a week later
with international accords
that forbade both sides
from firing at civilians.
Hezbollah, embedded within civilian areas,
came out on top,
while the soldiers in the outposts
remained hostage
to a complex political puzzle.
Good evening,
this is the lookout at Outpost Gourd...
My brother's friend was a lookout
in the western sector,
and he told me I should ask
to be a lookout
and that I should ask for Gourd,
that it was right for me.
This is the area around the outpost,
the foothills.
It's pretty quiet for the outpost...
Our job was to identify terrorists.
Nati Shemesh was a lookout in Gourd.
He could hold a weapon,
but he was not a combat soldier.
The lookout station was the most
important place in the outpost.
It was an unenforced storage container
housing sophisticated surveillance gear.
It was Saturday,
and I was in the ops room.
I was the company medic.
I got up at 6:00 AM.
At 6:15 I went on lookout duty.
It was a fairly calm Saturday.
I remember that after dawn
I went off duty and started watching a movie.
Which movie?
"Navy SEALs".
That's when the shit hit the fan.
At a certain point
I started hearing explosions,
and I called out the bombardment alert.
Bombardment!
The rockets that fell
was something I'd never experienced before.
There was a huge boom
inside the outpost.
At 6:15, a missile landed in our post.
The blast sent me flying backwards.
My friend Gideon and I
were both lookouts,
and we lay down on the rampart.
The rampart behind your post?
-Yes.
Then the artillery fire began.
It was massive, heavy.
I went up to one of the lookout stations
and thought I saw four figures.
I flew out of the room
and yelled, "Which way?"
They yelled back, "From the north!"
Because that's where the fire came from.
You can see it in the Hezbollah's video.
Their firepower was intense
and their mortar bombs were precise.
They were the ones with the upper hand,
not us.
Turns out that roughly 20 Hezbollah terrorists
had left the nearby villages that night.
Some of them fired from a distance
while the rest climbed up towards Gourd.
That's the force seen in the video,
armed with machine guns, grenade launchers,
a camera and a flag.
As we were shooting towards the north,
I'll never forget I heard someone scream:
"Terrorist in the outpost." -Yes.
I yelled, "Terrorist in the outpost."
I remember seeing an unfamiliar figure
wearing an IDF uniform...
He came from the west.
He managed to climb up the rampart.
We'd never seen these people
even at a distance,
so how could we imagine
someone was this close?
In addition to Nati,
two Givati soldiers left the western station,
leaving that entire side exposed
to the Hezbollah's attack.
People later said that you abandoned your post.
-Yes, that we ran away.
No, it was an act of survival.
But a soldier is supposed to stay and fight.
I regret not going to the machine gun.
I should have done that.
But you don't think about that in the moment.
You can't think.
You can't think.
You freeze.
At your command, Nasrallah!
At your command, Nasrallah!
Hezbollah was very aware
of the so-called "war of perception".
They quickly identified
the weaknesses in Israeli society.
They formed a propaganda unit
whose task was to carry a camera
alongside the rifle.
The goal was to show the Hezbollah
planting its flag.
It didn't matter if that flag
was removed a second later.
The flag had been planted.
At the time I was in Marjayoun,
and the TV next to my treadmill
was always tuned to Al-Manar,
the Hezbollah station.
An important operation
against the Israeli Outpost Gourd...
And I saw a Hezbollah flag
planted in a Gourd outpost station.
On the other side
all I heard was that nothing happened,
that our forces had everything under control.
I called high command and said,
"Don't embarrass yourselves.
I can see the flag."
"No," They said,
"It's another flag, another outpost."
"The terrorists' approach was halted
dozens of yards away from the outpost fence."
This report is still calm.
Then we have the next day's headline.
Yes.
-This headline calls it "a disgrace".
On the first day it wasn't a disgrace yet.
When did you realize
this was a media event?
In the evening, in the scouts' room.
Suddenly we saw it,
and we were in shock.
This is footage taken by Hezbollah
during their Saturday attack on an IDF outpost.
In an inquiry conducted today,
harsh criticism was directed
towards the conduct of Givati soldiers
during the battle.
I remember I finished treating Almog.
In the end,
by the time the evac helicopter arrived
and the wounded were evacuated...
"Soldier Killed; Hezbollah Attempts
to Capture IDF Outpost"
When I got back to the outpost,
my uniform was covered in blood
and I felt this whole mess
like a lump in my throat.
I couldn't breathe.
It was a very difficult time for me.
I was lonely, I was in pain.
Anxiety. A lot of very intense anxiety.
"Shock in the IDF: Outpost Soldiers
Ran Away During a Hezbollah Attack"
Nati and the second solder were tried
and sentenced to a month in prison.
Nati never recovered, and years later
was diagnosed as suffering from PTSD.
He worked as a night guard in a parking lot,
never married and never started a family.
His life stopped when that flag was planted.
Three weeks after our interview,
he was killed
in a cycling accident in Tel Aviv.
I remember having to offer explanations
at home, in the kibbutz.
But no matter how I tried to explain,
the image was far stronger.
Certainly, if you analyze the event
you can see we were stuck in an outpost
so heavily fortified that it had no visibility,
while they came, moved around,
planned, shot the footage
and published it.
Suddenly everything we'd been taught,
about how we were the David
to our enemy's Goliath, was overturned.
We were absolutely Goliath,
and they were David.
I had time to prepare
for my posting in the Northern Command,
and I worked on a plan to fight guerilla wars.
It turned out they were using the same methods
as the Viet Cong
and the forces in Algeria,
and we needed to go on the offensive.
In 1994,
a new Chief of the General Staff was appointed
and Major General Amiram Levin
was made Head of the Northern Command.
Together they offered a new approach
to the way the IDF could win
the war of attrition at the outposts.
At this point, the IDF had been
in Lebanon for 13 years.
It's a war of attrition,
a guerilla war.
Every other army
that came against this type of warfare
encountered the same difficulties.
It's very hard to show immediate success.
The first thing you need is patience.
What changed in the field?
The change was dramatic.
Suddenly we started to receive
both equipment and reinforcements.
These are the units most often
deployed by the IDF in south Lebanon.
Small units which engage in specific missions
intended to hit the terrorists where it hurts.
Very extensive offensive operations
with General Staff units,
with the special forces.
The more offensive, the better.
We want them to be unable to breathe,
to feel like their lives are in danger,
to fear their own shadow.
The establishment of the Egoz Recon Unit.
These images may remind you
of footage taken by Hezbollah fighters.
This is no coincidence.
The IDF has realized that in order
to win the guerilla war in Lebanon
it must simply learn the methods
used by the Hezbollah.
This was the first time
we truly began to talk about guerilla,
about capturing and controlling the territory.
Suddenly we knew
when a bomber unit was coming in,
and when it was headed out.
Suddenly we could enter Hezbollah outposts,
camps, stations.
We blew up their launchers,
deployed mines.
The IDF's missions changed significantly.
The most important thing
was to kill.
I said that if we were to kill
15-20 Hezbollah fighters a month,
the organization would disappear.
I called it "Nine-to-One".
I said that I wanted 10 missions.
Sure, one or two of them would fail,
but today we know that we suffered almost
no fatalities in our offensive operations,
while they suffered immensely.
My goal was to beat the Hezbollah,
not eradicate it but suppress it enough
that we could control the situation.
Unfortunately, my hands were tied.
Otherwise we would have done much worse.
The activity reached new heights
when Amiram Levin ordered the Command
to plan the assassination
of the Nabatieh Regional Commander,
a man called Rida Yassin,
just outside of Gourd.
The Nabatieh region is huge, and...
he was considered a very senior commander.
They refused to give the go-ahead.
We debated whether we should...
If the opportunity presented itself
to close in on him
and take him out,
should we do it?
The assassination of such a commander
would surely lead to missiles on the north.
Rabin and Shahak were not convinced
this was a good idea.
Suddenly at midnight, 1:00 AM,
it occurred to me I could catch the Chief
of the General Staff while he was tired.
I told Yuval, my intelligence officer,
"Bring me the material."
He was tired and said,
"What do you want, Amiram?"
I said, "I want to show you
that it works,
"that I can call in the force,
lock onto him and everything,
"and if it does work,
"I want your go-ahead to do it."
He said, "Alright."
Apparently, there was a bit of a gray zone
in their understanding.
At 6:00, 7:00 AM,
we ran a drill of the operation
and everything worked.
Then they asked, "What now?"
I said, "Fire!"
According to Lebanese sources,
Apache helicopters ambushed
the car of Rida Yassin,
the Hezbollah Commander
in the Nabatieh Sector.
That event led to a mass funeral in Nabatieh
and a barrage of missile fire.
Several missiles fell
in the Galilee Panhandle.
Shortly afterwards, a large number of missiles
fell in the Western Galilee.
The attack shook the city of Nahariya
and its surrounding fields.
As it happened,
a missile hit a boy who'd been running
on the beach in Nahariya and killed him.
If we'd known the IDF
was going to assassinate a Lebanese terrorist,
if they'd told us
to expect retribution,
he wouldn't have gone on that run.
If they'd told us,
he might still be alive.
At 8:00 AM
the phone started ringing.
"Rabin is angry," and, "What's going on?"
They told me, "Get on a helicopter
for immediate inquiry."
It went far beyond the yelling
that was directed at Amiram in that room.
They were afraid
of the kind of operations
Egoz continued to engage in,
of the continued development
of targeted killings.
We did many more of those.
People outside the room
told me there was yelling.
No, no.
-That Rabin was very angry.
He was angry,
but Rabin didn't yell.
He'd get angry, his face got red,
but he never yelled.
Despite the anger,
the offensive policy continued.
On the eve of Memorial Day, 1995,
a force from the paratrooper recon unit
spent days deep inside the territory to ambush
and eliminate a special Hezbollah force.
There are seven.
Seven, over.
Giora Inbar was in the command post.
Just before Memorial Day,
our forces attacked Hezbollah
under optimal conditions.
The attack went perfectly,
according to plan.
Every terrorist was killed.
How many?
-Don't remember. I think it was eight.
No one in our unit was hit.
We were almost euphoric.
Give me some, Uri.
I'll never forget that Memorial Day.
I felt good.
I was scheduled to go on leave.
The north was celebrating too,
everyone was looking forward
to their Independence Day barbecues.
Then at night, alongside the fireworks
in my hometown of Timrat,
we heard the sound
of a missile attack along the northern border.
There might have even been some casualties
in Beit Hillel.
All those Independence Day celebrations,
those barbecue plans...
were immediately destroyed.
I grabbed my head and said,
"Look at this.
"We completed the mission,
we killed the terrorists,
"we did it without hurting ourselves
or any civilian bystanders,
"and just 24 hours later,
"my mission of ensuring
peace in the northern district
"has utterly failed."
That led me to a chain of conclusions,
and the bottom line was
that our presence in the security zone
has become a great liability,
rather than an asset.
Did you share this realization
with the army in 1995?
With my own men,
rather than my superiors.
I didn't go to the Major General and said,
"We need to leave Lebanon."
But I realized
that if we didn't want to beat the Hezbollah
and didn't want to suppress it,
we had to start planning our exit.
You drafted some sort of graph
and showed it to Rabin, right? -Yes.
I still have it.
This is what I presented to Rabin
at the end of 1995.
This graph shows the number of terror attacks.
We were looking at 500 bombings
and shootouts a year.
That's almost two attacks a day,
for four years.
I asked Rabin,
"How many have to die before we leave?"
I was very harsh,
very brutal.
What did Rabin say?
"Major General,
"you minimize the number of missiles,
"you keep the terrorists away from the border
and make sure our men don't die."
That's what he said.
And we carried on.
They couldn't break out
of this "lesser evil" mindset.
That was always the argument.
"This is the lesser evil."
We've been living with Lebanese terror attacks
for the past 30 years,
perhaps even longer.
We made an attempt.
Did it work?
So what you're saying
is that this will continue indefinitely,
that we'll employ military solutions
if there are any,
and do nothing if there aren't.
That's what's happening now.
Sir. I'd like to clarify.
What changed?
The true issue
is our ability to withstand terror attacks,
even knowing that there is
no immediate solution.
Things are really tense.
After... what? Two and a half months?
People lose their minds.
They come here and lose their minds.
They think they need to come back to this mess.
When night comes,
you start imagining the next terrorist attack
as you're going on guard duty.
You should see
how happy people are
when they come back from an ambush.
They came back and nothing happened.
For a long time I wanted to go into battle,
like everyone else here,
but after seeing the attacks
and talking to people who'd seen them,
it's not the most pleasant thing ever.
It's not like there's an attack every day.
There isn't a new dead body here
every day, right?
It isn't pleasant.
This is only because
he just saw a dead terrorist.
What's that got to do with anything?
-It really grossed him out.
That's irrelevant.
That's the terrorist.
-After he fell out. -See?
This is where he hid,
and here's where he was shot. It was a mess.
This is when we brought the bodies back.
Everyone's pleased.
That's what he's holding there.
We loaded the body onto the tank.
-You can see their guts in every photo.
We loaded the body onto the tank...
-Who took my photo of the terrorist?
Oh, here. Take it.
-Have you got this one? -Is that the terrorist?
No...
-Here are the idiots who posed with a body.
A suicide bomber arrived at the scene
carrying a bag
and possibly strapped to a bomb as well.
In the winter and fall of 1995,
Israel was bleeding.
The clouds of peace made way
for violent waves of terrorist attacks,
and in November, Rabin was murdered.
The Israeli government is appalled to announce
the death of Prime Minister...
Two soldiers are dead
and 11 were wounded in a skirmish
with Hezbollah forces in the security zone.
In the spring of 1996,
Hezbollah upped its attacks as well.
An IDF unit was on the move
when it was attacked by a Hezbollah force
numbering roughly 15 men.
Tensions rose
amidst a turbulent election season
that pitted Netanyahu against Peres,
who reluctantly announced that Israel
would no longer tolerate this provocation.
If the Hezbollah has missiles,
ours are better.
If it has trucks,
our vehicles are better.
"Operation Grapes of Wrath"
began with high aspirations.
Special forces were sent deep into the field
to ambush the rocket launchers
as they attempted to shoot,
and deliver a blow to Hezbollah's capabilities.
Among these forces was a Maglan unit
commanded by Naftali Bennett.
This is the first time he's spoken on camera
about what happened there.
We arrived at our position at dawn.
While in position,
all you had to eat and drink were sausages,
peanuts, dates and water.
You peed into bags or bottles.
Our job was to use sophisticated means
to hunt terrorists and their rocket launchers.
During that time we officially killed
about 70 terrorists.
We counted them all.
After a few days of combat,
which is always successful initially,
I came into Peres' office and said,
"Shimon,
"this is your chance,
right now.
"Get out of there
while things still look alright."
He said, "I don't know what it would mean
if I left now."
Day one, day two, day three.
At some point,
during our sixth or seventh day in the field,
which was a very long time,
at 8:00 or 9:00 AM,
we heard the whistle, the boom.
Mortars began to fall,
drawing nearer and nearer to the soldiers.
Shrapnel was already hitting
their positions.
I called it in, "Letting you know
that I'm getting ready to withdraw."
Since he was close
to a UNIFIL camp,
we had to ignore
the standard safety orders
in order to provide him
with effective cover fire.
We fired four shells.
By the evening, the force
was evacuated by helicopter to the Galilee,
unaware of the ongoing turbulence
in Israel and abroad.
I stepped off the helicopter
and saw the entire chain of command.
They told me what happened.
It was like a day of mourning.
Then people started yelling
that civilians had been killed.
According to the UN,
five shells landed on site
and caused this massive death toll
among the refugees who were there
under the protection of UN soldiers.
These images are coming in.
Shells fell inside a UNIFIL camp
to which hundreds of civilians
had fled in fear of the fire,
as it was considered safe.
The bombing killed 102 men and women,
as well as children.
The IDF Spokesperson
doubted the validity of those numbers,
but the loss of innocent civilian lives
aroused international anger
which led to pressures
to end the operation.
Once again, Hezbollah lost the war
but won the political fight.
Hezbollah buried a few people,
but they knew it was over.
How did they interpret it?
Once again, as Israeli weakness
rather than strength.
It's the idea of the cobweb.
Israel talks a big game,
and then an unfortunate event happens
and it brings the war to an end.
Grapes of Wrath, like Operation Accountability,
tried and failed to tip the balance.
Meaning that for any significant
strike against the Hezbollah,
deep in its territory
or when its men were assassinated,
Hezbollah responded
by firing missiles into Israel.
It's fairly similar
to the situation in Gaza today.
I don't think anything changed
in terms of what's going on inside Lebanon,
with us and the Hezbollah.
I don't think anything changed,
because the ones who eat dirt
are usually us.
Don't misunderstand,
we're not broken or anything,
we're still strong
and we feel good about ourselves,
but it's important that the people
keep supporting and helping us.
After the operation, attacks on outposts
and convoys continued and even increased.
The desire to minimize the number
of casualties on the roads
led the IDF high command
to seek a different solution.
I was the one who, along with Amiram,
suggested we could send soldiers
to the security zone in helicopters.
The air force came and said,
"You're traveling in cumbersome convoys.
"We can get you in and out of there
with a helicopter."
We'd done it, I think,
one time before.
On February 2, 1997,
two transport helicopters
carrying 73 combat soldiers
took off towards the Lebanese border.
One was headed to Beaufort,
the other to Gourd.
When night fell that evening,
I was supposed to visit
a bereaved family.
I called my chief of staff,
Shuki Shichrur,
and said,
"Stop, I don't want to do it."
I was always uneasy about
the two-helicopter system, but...
He said, "Major General,
they're already off the ground."
That was it.
Hero team, over here! Come on!
This is a major collision
with roughly 70 fatalities.
We are currently engaged
in evacuation and identification.
There were several awful moments.
I saw the...
concentration of bodies,
the helicopter shards, the equipment, and...
As they pulled it out, I saw
there were names written on the equipment.
Did you realize immediately
it was going to be a paradigm shift? -No.
Self-reflection came only later.
At that moment, and in the following weeks,
I didn't think about it.
And you can't blame yourself.
At the end of the day, it was an accident.
Accidents happen.
Among the dead were several sons
of communities in the northern valleys.
From those fields,
the growing cries of mothers
would become the most effective
civilian protest movement
that ever existed here.
A blow. A huge blow.
I couldn't stop crying,
no matter where I went
or what I did.
And I... I don't know.
It weighed on me.
The next day, the paper published the photos
of these young men
and my blood boiled.
I began to lose it.
I couldn't stop crying.
73 dead soldiers who had not died in battle,
but were headed off to war,
would push the security zone,
and Israel as a whole,
into a new era.
18 years of fighting in south Lebanon.
It contains content
that some viewers may find disturbing.
Are you crazy?
Why did you keep this?
There's a new R.E.M. record.
Look, R.E.M. put out a new record.
I preferred Lebanon
because in Gaza
I had to deal with policing
children, running after rock throwers,
and it was very difficult for me personally.
Going up to Lebanon was like
going to do your real job as a soldier.
We'd get into those trucks
and look at those big iron plates
with their tiny bulletproof windows.
Soldiers had scribbled things on them,
"If you dreamed of Givati brigade, wake up."
We started to drive up.
Of course, the guys had sent me messages:
"Bring milk, bring cheese, bring food."
I brought shopping bags with me.
I arrived like that
and it didn't sink in
that I'd just entered a war zone.
Drives that should have taken
15-20 minutes
took about an hour.
The desire to avoid
a large number of casualties
made us fortify ourselves to death.
Each supply convoy
had armored vehicles
and armored safari trucks
and planes in the front and the rear.
It was an entire undertaking
just to bring in some water.
Crocus, Retama, Gourd and Basil
are the flowery names given by the IDF
to the grinding reality
of life inside the outposts.
Lost time.
By the 1990s,
the IDF was deployed in outposts
throughout south Lebanon,
in the so-called "security zone".
Across the red line was Lebanon.
Behind, the lights of Israel.
Several hundreds of soldiers engaged
in a routine of convoys, patrols and ambushes
against a deceptive, hidden enemy.
This is Outpost Gourd. This is the entrance.
We're going in.
This is the outpost courtyard.
As soon as I entered, I saw my guys,
the ones I hadn't seen in a long time.
"What's up?"
They said, "Say, are you okay?
You look shocked."
He says hello.
-This is the best place ever.
And then I heard the boom.
Bombardment, bombardment!
I saw dozens of people
running around like crazy
while I still held my bags with the milk
and the cheese and...
I was in total shock,
and they told me: "Run!"
"Why are you standing there?
You're about to get hit by a mortar."
I ran, and I remember people bumped into me
and it all flew out of my hand.
This is the left guard post.
It looks over Nabatieh.
What did the outpost look like in '93?
It was a mound of rubble
with a few reinforced guard posts
and some barbed wire at the bottom.
Two platoons, about 50 soldiers.
40-50.
-Less. -40 or 50.
Clinton is now arranging for the handshake.
This was a time when...
everyone around us was trying to make peace.
It was the height of the Oslo peace process.
But over there, we were a little detached.
We were living in a war
and it felt like no one
was really paying any attention to us.
And who was your enemy?
By our time Hezbollah was already in power.
I think we even
respected them, in a way.
When Yitzhak Rabin drafted
the idea of the security belt in 1985,
he imagined a defensive territory
that would prevent terrorists
from reaching the border.
But this was not the situation now.
Hezbollah covered south Lebanon
in yellow,
attacking the outposts
and especially the roads that led to them.
Back then I was the operations officer
for the territorial brigade.
We had safari trucks
that had been fortified to half-height.
The Hezbollah realized it couldn't
penetrate those vehicles' defenses.
So they built directional mines
that were aimed to hit
precisely at their week spots,
meaning the heads of the soldiers
that peaked over the armored plating.
Funerals for the five soldiers killed
in yesterday's terrorist attack in Lebanon
took place this afternoon.
One of our logistical convoys
was traveling to a frontier outpost
inside the security zone,
and it hit a roadside charge.
I evacuated the casualties from that truck.
I can say
it was one of the most personally
traumatizing events I ever experienced.
It was a very difficult sight, so...
Let's leave it at that,
even now.
Kaplan reached the truck
and evacuated the casualties,
who were fatalities by then.
Since it was such a difficult scene,
he didn't let the younger soldiers
go up there.
He did it all himself and radioed me
with everyone's names.
Losing friends is hard,
especially when they die in your arms,
as we say here.
But I think the soldiers here
are all aware of the risk,
and know that they are keeping
the northern district safe.
What set this incident apart was that...
I think it was the first time
we fully realized,
very clearly, how much Hezbollah
was a learning organization,
how much it had improved and developed.
Within five days, ambushes
and artillery fire in Lebanon
killed two IDF soldiers
and eight SLA soldiers,
and wounded another eight IDF soldiers.
Unfortunately, Hezbollah
not only enjoys increased success
but has also doubled its efforts.
While convoys and outposts
were being attacked by the Hezbollah,
Israel was also negotiating peace with Syria.
This notion was floating around
during my term as Chief of the General Staff.
We all knew that if we could make headway
with the Syrians,
the south Lebanon issue would resolve itself
as a result.
Sir, why doesn't Israel demand
an end to Hezbollah hostilities
as a condition of the continued
negotiations with Syria?
We consider the peace process
to be its own separate thing.
At the time, and in hindsight as well,
I sensed a lot of confusion.
Gourd Outpost had a sign that said:
"Protect the northern district".
That was our goal.
But what does that mean
when you're in a sedentary outpost
and the enemy is manipulating
and challenging you?
What I'd learned about the IDF till then
was entirely different.
Food for the corporals!
We did the dishes non-stop.
We washed and set up the mess hall non-stop.
We underwent gear inspections.
Endless guard duty.
And mostly we waited for the weekend
so we could get our minute-long shower.
What's a minute of water?
The deputy company sergeant major
took you to the showers and timed you.
He'd count: "One, two, three, four."
You'd use the water, wash your hair,
spend half an hour scrubbing your body,
and then you had another twenty seconds
to wash. It was a kind of game.
What is this? What's going on?
Did you hear about the attack on this outpost?
The casualty? -Sure I did,
I was walking up that side,
and as I was walking
there was gunfire all around me.
Missiles flew towards me.
Most importantly, I should mention
that no one in the outpost
was dressed appropriately.
And every three weeks
you had a week's leave to look forward to,
assuming that during those three weeks
no one caught you sleeping during guard duty,
taking anything, doing anything wrong,
fighting another soldier over phone rights.
Hopefully soon we'll be changing
into our service uniform and going home
to forget about this hellhole for a week.
Going home, Hib?
-Sure.
You excited?
-Everyone's happy, as you can see.
And then there were times you were
supposed to leave, and the convoy was canceled.
The convoy's been delayed.
As usual, we've been screwed over.
Looks like we aren't going home today.
We felt like we didn't really know
what we were doing there.
Another day passed, we defended the outpost,
the outpost was attacked.
Bombardment! Bombardment!
A few mortars,
then you lose a friend
who was on your team for two years.
It was almost surreal.
We'd sit in our bunkers
and watch movies.
The most significant film we saw
and connected with,
the one we learned by heart,
was "The Deer Hunter".
No way, I ain't giving him no boots.
No more.
In the movie Robert De Niro
keeps saying, over and over:
"You know why? 'Cause this is this."
This is this. This ain't something else.
This is this.
And that's the reasoning.
"'Cause this is this."
We're here,
and this is this.
All I can do is sit and think
Think about you, Mother
Every soldier here hopes to make contact
and... plug as many terrorists as he can,
so to speak.
But he might get plugged himself.
That's the way it goes.
-It's part of the risk.
It's part of the risk.
It's you or him.
We arrived in Lebanon
in the summer of '93.
We arrived at Outpost Crocus.
There was a sign in the briefing room:
"Our mission - defend the northern district".
And that's how everyone saw it.
This was Lebanon, and if you couldn't handle it
you had no business being in this company.
We trained for 18 months to get there,
to serve our country
and get the job done.
Avi Hirshenzon served
in a Golani brigade infantry rifle company.
Some of the company's routine tasks
involved ambushing terrorist units
who tried to set charges along the roads.
A game of hunters and prey.
What do you want to know?
Tell me the story. What happened?
Roll call.
One.
-Two.
Three. -Four.
-Five. -Six. -Seven.
It was Wednesday, August 18, 1993.
We are now going on an ambush,
which we will perform flawlessly.
We were getting ready to go on an ambush
about 3-4 miles away from our outpost, Crocus.
I remember we entered a very dense field.
The night was pitch black
and you couldn't see your friend up ahead.
You only heard his footsteps,
and you followed those.
We got to the valley,
lay down on the ground
and waited, weapons at the ready.
This was our night.
We were going to catch some terrorists.
At around 4:00 AM,
as dawn was breaking,
we got ready to move.
I was the last one in the single file line
and I remember I fell behind
because I was looking for a knee pad.
Suddenly I saw this wave of fire
about 30 or 40 yards away from me.
"Roll call."
No one responded.
"Roll call," again.
No response.
Then we realized that the ones
at the front weren't responding.
Seven IDF soldiers were killed
and two were wounded in a roadside explosion.
The bombs were planted by Hezbollah terrorists
next to village of Chihine
in the western sector of the security belt.
After the funerals,
they didn't let anyone leave for home.
We returned to Crocus.
We walked into the room,
and then it hit us
that seven of us were gone.
We often cry at the funerals.
It's hard.
But when we come back here,
we get back to our routine.
We're back in Lebanon,
back to doing our job,
back to doing what we always do.
That's all.
Psychologists came to the company
to try and see
if they could ease our pain somehow.
There were no psychologists in Golani.
But this situation
did not begin in the mid-90s.
Hezbollah grew into this war,
and at a certain point in time
Israel was convinced
that it could cut the head off the snake:
The man who strengthened
the organization's hold on south Lebanon,
the Iranian-appointed
Abbas al-Moussawi.
I was the head of the Iran Branch,
and I was called into an urgent meeting
with the head of the Research Division.
The leader of the Hezbollah,
Abbas al-Moussawi,
was scheduled to travel south for a gathering
and they wanted to know what we could do.
What was the conclusion?
We would observe the gathering
and study it,
so that we could abduct
Abbas al-Moussawi next year.
Why abduct him?
-So we could free Ron Arad.
This was supposed to be
a preliminary drill on a model.
We sent out drones
and the convoy traveled to the cemetery.
And lo and behold,
someone must have gotten greedy.
What happened was...
This may have been a drill,
but I got the feeling
we could identify where he was
and I knew our attack helicopters
were available to take him out.
This drama unfolded on the very week
Israel received a new war toy,
the Apache helicopter.
It was also the day after a brutal attack
known as the "Night of Pitchforks".
Everyone's blood was boiling.
What do you mean, take him out?
Did anyone look into the possible consequences
of taking him out?
Later, when I became Military Secretary,
I realized how amateurish that was.
My assessment was that we should attack him.
But this decision
wasn't made in a void.
We had a fairly consistent policy
that said this is what we did.
I also don't remember any objections,
to be honest.
You don't remember any objections?
-Anyone who said it was wrong to attack? No.
Oh, he doesn't remember any objections?
Alright. What can you do?
People remember what they want to.
There was strong objection
from the Head of the Research Division,
Kuti Mor,
from yours truly
and from others.
And there were consequences,
including the possibility of attacks abroad.
Did you raise this point?
-I did, yes.
I did.
And of course... Do you know this motion?
Yes.
Did our terrorism intelligence
warn us that a possible response
would be attacks abroad?
Yes.
It was an ad-hoc discussion among
the decision-makers in the war room,
with Moshe Arens, Uri Sagi.
All that was left was to receive the go-ahead
from prime minister Shamir,
who was taking his midday nap.
As usual, Shamir said "alright."
He said something like, "Fine..."
I was present when they held the phones
and tried to get a hold of this person or that.
"Light him up."
I said, "Gentlemen, what's going on?"
Mr. Arens, can you confirm
this was a planned attack
intended to hurt Abbas al-Moussawi?
One must assume that his death
was not entirely incidental.
He died,
and that night the entire northern sector
from Kiryat Shmona to Nahariya
was under rocket fire.
14 rockets were fired at the Galilee
this afternoon. One landed in Granot,
where five-year-old Avia Elizada
had stepped out into the yard.
She died instantly.
This was the first time Hezbollah
fired at Israel itself.
Till then they had only attacked
the security zone.
This was the first time this happened.
Thousands gathered to mourn Moussawi.
The impassioned masses
called out for one thing: Revenge.
Alongside Moussawi, the attack killed
his wife, his six-year-old son and others.
The funeral was a great show
of the Hezbollah's strength.
Many of the leaders in Lebanon
paid their respects, including rivals
of this rising power
in intra-Lebanese politics.
And the story goes on,
but I don't want to tell it.
Tell what?
30 days later
there had been no attack,
and I was asked, "Wait, why did you scare us?
It's been 30 days, nothing happened."
It's been less than 24 hours since the attack,
and the number of fatalities continues to rise.
Clearly this was carried out
by Mughniyeh's men,
with help from Iranian intelligence.
Then there was the attack on the AMIA building
of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires.
This building belongs to the Jewish community.
"Dozens Killed in Buenos Aires:
Iran Is Behind The Bombing"
I can say for myself,
the scale of the Hezbollah's
international response
was something we should have considered,
or I should have,
and it should have raised questions.
It's often forgotten,
but later there was also an attempt
to hit our embassy in London.
No one considered the alternative.
Who would replace him.
-Yes.
Yesterday our brothers
the decision-makers gathered
and gladly elected him.
Here he is, Mr. Hassan Nasrallah.
Come here, photographer man.
You know what they say.
They say photographers
are always looking for someone to fall
just next to them.
Look around, you might...
Go, go!
-Get in!
This is Liora Goshen with the news.
A barrage of rockets
in the Galilee Panhandle...
Get in, get in.
So we've started using rockets
in order to try and make the Israeli understand
that when he bombs our citizens,
we will bomb his colonies in the Galilee.
The rockets became a regular problem,
a trickle that turned into a downpour.
At this time,
casualties are still being cared for
at the site of the rocket's landing.
The exact threat that drew Israel
into Lebanon a decade earlier
was now resurrected in Shia garb.
In the spring of 1993, after several
bloody events and increased rocket fire,
the IDF launched a wide-scale bombardment
of south Lebanon.
The operation,
whose goal was to drive civilians north
and create political pressure,
ended a week later
with international accords
that forbade both sides
from firing at civilians.
Hezbollah, embedded within civilian areas,
came out on top,
while the soldiers in the outposts
remained hostage
to a complex political puzzle.
Good evening,
this is the lookout at Outpost Gourd...
My brother's friend was a lookout
in the western sector,
and he told me I should ask
to be a lookout
and that I should ask for Gourd,
that it was right for me.
This is the area around the outpost,
the foothills.
It's pretty quiet for the outpost...
Our job was to identify terrorists.
Nati Shemesh was a lookout in Gourd.
He could hold a weapon,
but he was not a combat soldier.
The lookout station was the most
important place in the outpost.
It was an unenforced storage container
housing sophisticated surveillance gear.
It was Saturday,
and I was in the ops room.
I was the company medic.
I got up at 6:00 AM.
At 6:15 I went on lookout duty.
It was a fairly calm Saturday.
I remember that after dawn
I went off duty and started watching a movie.
Which movie?
"Navy SEALs".
That's when the shit hit the fan.
At a certain point
I started hearing explosions,
and I called out the bombardment alert.
Bombardment!
The rockets that fell
was something I'd never experienced before.
There was a huge boom
inside the outpost.
At 6:15, a missile landed in our post.
The blast sent me flying backwards.
My friend Gideon and I
were both lookouts,
and we lay down on the rampart.
The rampart behind your post?
-Yes.
Then the artillery fire began.
It was massive, heavy.
I went up to one of the lookout stations
and thought I saw four figures.
I flew out of the room
and yelled, "Which way?"
They yelled back, "From the north!"
Because that's where the fire came from.
You can see it in the Hezbollah's video.
Their firepower was intense
and their mortar bombs were precise.
They were the ones with the upper hand,
not us.
Turns out that roughly 20 Hezbollah terrorists
had left the nearby villages that night.
Some of them fired from a distance
while the rest climbed up towards Gourd.
That's the force seen in the video,
armed with machine guns, grenade launchers,
a camera and a flag.
As we were shooting towards the north,
I'll never forget I heard someone scream:
"Terrorist in the outpost." -Yes.
I yelled, "Terrorist in the outpost."
I remember seeing an unfamiliar figure
wearing an IDF uniform...
He came from the west.
He managed to climb up the rampart.
We'd never seen these people
even at a distance,
so how could we imagine
someone was this close?
In addition to Nati,
two Givati soldiers left the western station,
leaving that entire side exposed
to the Hezbollah's attack.
People later said that you abandoned your post.
-Yes, that we ran away.
No, it was an act of survival.
But a soldier is supposed to stay and fight.
I regret not going to the machine gun.
I should have done that.
But you don't think about that in the moment.
You can't think.
You can't think.
You freeze.
At your command, Nasrallah!
At your command, Nasrallah!
Hezbollah was very aware
of the so-called "war of perception".
They quickly identified
the weaknesses in Israeli society.
They formed a propaganda unit
whose task was to carry a camera
alongside the rifle.
The goal was to show the Hezbollah
planting its flag.
It didn't matter if that flag
was removed a second later.
The flag had been planted.
At the time I was in Marjayoun,
and the TV next to my treadmill
was always tuned to Al-Manar,
the Hezbollah station.
An important operation
against the Israeli Outpost Gourd...
And I saw a Hezbollah flag
planted in a Gourd outpost station.
On the other side
all I heard was that nothing happened,
that our forces had everything under control.
I called high command and said,
"Don't embarrass yourselves.
I can see the flag."
"No," They said,
"It's another flag, another outpost."
"The terrorists' approach was halted
dozens of yards away from the outpost fence."
This report is still calm.
Then we have the next day's headline.
Yes.
-This headline calls it "a disgrace".
On the first day it wasn't a disgrace yet.
When did you realize
this was a media event?
In the evening, in the scouts' room.
Suddenly we saw it,
and we were in shock.
This is footage taken by Hezbollah
during their Saturday attack on an IDF outpost.
In an inquiry conducted today,
harsh criticism was directed
towards the conduct of Givati soldiers
during the battle.
I remember I finished treating Almog.
In the end,
by the time the evac helicopter arrived
and the wounded were evacuated...
"Soldier Killed; Hezbollah Attempts
to Capture IDF Outpost"
When I got back to the outpost,
my uniform was covered in blood
and I felt this whole mess
like a lump in my throat.
I couldn't breathe.
It was a very difficult time for me.
I was lonely, I was in pain.
Anxiety. A lot of very intense anxiety.
"Shock in the IDF: Outpost Soldiers
Ran Away During a Hezbollah Attack"
Nati and the second solder were tried
and sentenced to a month in prison.
Nati never recovered, and years later
was diagnosed as suffering from PTSD.
He worked as a night guard in a parking lot,
never married and never started a family.
His life stopped when that flag was planted.
Three weeks after our interview,
he was killed
in a cycling accident in Tel Aviv.
I remember having to offer explanations
at home, in the kibbutz.
But no matter how I tried to explain,
the image was far stronger.
Certainly, if you analyze the event
you can see we were stuck in an outpost
so heavily fortified that it had no visibility,
while they came, moved around,
planned, shot the footage
and published it.
Suddenly everything we'd been taught,
about how we were the David
to our enemy's Goliath, was overturned.
We were absolutely Goliath,
and they were David.
I had time to prepare
for my posting in the Northern Command,
and I worked on a plan to fight guerilla wars.
It turned out they were using the same methods
as the Viet Cong
and the forces in Algeria,
and we needed to go on the offensive.
In 1994,
a new Chief of the General Staff was appointed
and Major General Amiram Levin
was made Head of the Northern Command.
Together they offered a new approach
to the way the IDF could win
the war of attrition at the outposts.
At this point, the IDF had been
in Lebanon for 13 years.
It's a war of attrition,
a guerilla war.
Every other army
that came against this type of warfare
encountered the same difficulties.
It's very hard to show immediate success.
The first thing you need is patience.
What changed in the field?
The change was dramatic.
Suddenly we started to receive
both equipment and reinforcements.
These are the units most often
deployed by the IDF in south Lebanon.
Small units which engage in specific missions
intended to hit the terrorists where it hurts.
Very extensive offensive operations
with General Staff units,
with the special forces.
The more offensive, the better.
We want them to be unable to breathe,
to feel like their lives are in danger,
to fear their own shadow.
The establishment of the Egoz Recon Unit.
These images may remind you
of footage taken by Hezbollah fighters.
This is no coincidence.
The IDF has realized that in order
to win the guerilla war in Lebanon
it must simply learn the methods
used by the Hezbollah.
This was the first time
we truly began to talk about guerilla,
about capturing and controlling the territory.
Suddenly we knew
when a bomber unit was coming in,
and when it was headed out.
Suddenly we could enter Hezbollah outposts,
camps, stations.
We blew up their launchers,
deployed mines.
The IDF's missions changed significantly.
The most important thing
was to kill.
I said that if we were to kill
15-20 Hezbollah fighters a month,
the organization would disappear.
I called it "Nine-to-One".
I said that I wanted 10 missions.
Sure, one or two of them would fail,
but today we know that we suffered almost
no fatalities in our offensive operations,
while they suffered immensely.
My goal was to beat the Hezbollah,
not eradicate it but suppress it enough
that we could control the situation.
Unfortunately, my hands were tied.
Otherwise we would have done much worse.
The activity reached new heights
when Amiram Levin ordered the Command
to plan the assassination
of the Nabatieh Regional Commander,
a man called Rida Yassin,
just outside of Gourd.
The Nabatieh region is huge, and...
he was considered a very senior commander.
They refused to give the go-ahead.
We debated whether we should...
If the opportunity presented itself
to close in on him
and take him out,
should we do it?
The assassination of such a commander
would surely lead to missiles on the north.
Rabin and Shahak were not convinced
this was a good idea.
Suddenly at midnight, 1:00 AM,
it occurred to me I could catch the Chief
of the General Staff while he was tired.
I told Yuval, my intelligence officer,
"Bring me the material."
He was tired and said,
"What do you want, Amiram?"
I said, "I want to show you
that it works,
"that I can call in the force,
lock onto him and everything,
"and if it does work,
"I want your go-ahead to do it."
He said, "Alright."
Apparently, there was a bit of a gray zone
in their understanding.
At 6:00, 7:00 AM,
we ran a drill of the operation
and everything worked.
Then they asked, "What now?"
I said, "Fire!"
According to Lebanese sources,
Apache helicopters ambushed
the car of Rida Yassin,
the Hezbollah Commander
in the Nabatieh Sector.
That event led to a mass funeral in Nabatieh
and a barrage of missile fire.
Several missiles fell
in the Galilee Panhandle.
Shortly afterwards, a large number of missiles
fell in the Western Galilee.
The attack shook the city of Nahariya
and its surrounding fields.
As it happened,
a missile hit a boy who'd been running
on the beach in Nahariya and killed him.
If we'd known the IDF
was going to assassinate a Lebanese terrorist,
if they'd told us
to expect retribution,
he wouldn't have gone on that run.
If they'd told us,
he might still be alive.
At 8:00 AM
the phone started ringing.
"Rabin is angry," and, "What's going on?"
They told me, "Get on a helicopter
for immediate inquiry."
It went far beyond the yelling
that was directed at Amiram in that room.
They were afraid
of the kind of operations
Egoz continued to engage in,
of the continued development
of targeted killings.
We did many more of those.
People outside the room
told me there was yelling.
No, no.
-That Rabin was very angry.
He was angry,
but Rabin didn't yell.
He'd get angry, his face got red,
but he never yelled.
Despite the anger,
the offensive policy continued.
On the eve of Memorial Day, 1995,
a force from the paratrooper recon unit
spent days deep inside the territory to ambush
and eliminate a special Hezbollah force.
There are seven.
Seven, over.
Giora Inbar was in the command post.
Just before Memorial Day,
our forces attacked Hezbollah
under optimal conditions.
The attack went perfectly,
according to plan.
Every terrorist was killed.
How many?
-Don't remember. I think it was eight.
No one in our unit was hit.
We were almost euphoric.
Give me some, Uri.
I'll never forget that Memorial Day.
I felt good.
I was scheduled to go on leave.
The north was celebrating too,
everyone was looking forward
to their Independence Day barbecues.
Then at night, alongside the fireworks
in my hometown of Timrat,
we heard the sound
of a missile attack along the northern border.
There might have even been some casualties
in Beit Hillel.
All those Independence Day celebrations,
those barbecue plans...
were immediately destroyed.
I grabbed my head and said,
"Look at this.
"We completed the mission,
we killed the terrorists,
"we did it without hurting ourselves
or any civilian bystanders,
"and just 24 hours later,
"my mission of ensuring
peace in the northern district
"has utterly failed."
That led me to a chain of conclusions,
and the bottom line was
that our presence in the security zone
has become a great liability,
rather than an asset.
Did you share this realization
with the army in 1995?
With my own men,
rather than my superiors.
I didn't go to the Major General and said,
"We need to leave Lebanon."
But I realized
that if we didn't want to beat the Hezbollah
and didn't want to suppress it,
we had to start planning our exit.
You drafted some sort of graph
and showed it to Rabin, right? -Yes.
I still have it.
This is what I presented to Rabin
at the end of 1995.
This graph shows the number of terror attacks.
We were looking at 500 bombings
and shootouts a year.
That's almost two attacks a day,
for four years.
I asked Rabin,
"How many have to die before we leave?"
I was very harsh,
very brutal.
What did Rabin say?
"Major General,
"you minimize the number of missiles,
"you keep the terrorists away from the border
and make sure our men don't die."
That's what he said.
And we carried on.
They couldn't break out
of this "lesser evil" mindset.
That was always the argument.
"This is the lesser evil."
We've been living with Lebanese terror attacks
for the past 30 years,
perhaps even longer.
We made an attempt.
Did it work?
So what you're saying
is that this will continue indefinitely,
that we'll employ military solutions
if there are any,
and do nothing if there aren't.
That's what's happening now.
Sir. I'd like to clarify.
What changed?
The true issue
is our ability to withstand terror attacks,
even knowing that there is
no immediate solution.
Things are really tense.
After... what? Two and a half months?
People lose their minds.
They come here and lose their minds.
They think they need to come back to this mess.
When night comes,
you start imagining the next terrorist attack
as you're going on guard duty.
You should see
how happy people are
when they come back from an ambush.
They came back and nothing happened.
For a long time I wanted to go into battle,
like everyone else here,
but after seeing the attacks
and talking to people who'd seen them,
it's not the most pleasant thing ever.
It's not like there's an attack every day.
There isn't a new dead body here
every day, right?
It isn't pleasant.
This is only because
he just saw a dead terrorist.
What's that got to do with anything?
-It really grossed him out.
That's irrelevant.
That's the terrorist.
-After he fell out. -See?
This is where he hid,
and here's where he was shot. It was a mess.
This is when we brought the bodies back.
Everyone's pleased.
That's what he's holding there.
We loaded the body onto the tank.
-You can see their guts in every photo.
We loaded the body onto the tank...
-Who took my photo of the terrorist?
Oh, here. Take it.
-Have you got this one? -Is that the terrorist?
No...
-Here are the idiots who posed with a body.
A suicide bomber arrived at the scene
carrying a bag
and possibly strapped to a bomb as well.
In the winter and fall of 1995,
Israel was bleeding.
The clouds of peace made way
for violent waves of terrorist attacks,
and in November, Rabin was murdered.
The Israeli government is appalled to announce
the death of Prime Minister...
Two soldiers are dead
and 11 were wounded in a skirmish
with Hezbollah forces in the security zone.
In the spring of 1996,
Hezbollah upped its attacks as well.
An IDF unit was on the move
when it was attacked by a Hezbollah force
numbering roughly 15 men.
Tensions rose
amidst a turbulent election season
that pitted Netanyahu against Peres,
who reluctantly announced that Israel
would no longer tolerate this provocation.
If the Hezbollah has missiles,
ours are better.
If it has trucks,
our vehicles are better.
"Operation Grapes of Wrath"
began with high aspirations.
Special forces were sent deep into the field
to ambush the rocket launchers
as they attempted to shoot,
and deliver a blow to Hezbollah's capabilities.
Among these forces was a Maglan unit
commanded by Naftali Bennett.
This is the first time he's spoken on camera
about what happened there.
We arrived at our position at dawn.
While in position,
all you had to eat and drink were sausages,
peanuts, dates and water.
You peed into bags or bottles.
Our job was to use sophisticated means
to hunt terrorists and their rocket launchers.
During that time we officially killed
about 70 terrorists.
We counted them all.
After a few days of combat,
which is always successful initially,
I came into Peres' office and said,
"Shimon,
"this is your chance,
right now.
"Get out of there
while things still look alright."
He said, "I don't know what it would mean
if I left now."
Day one, day two, day three.
At some point,
during our sixth or seventh day in the field,
which was a very long time,
at 8:00 or 9:00 AM,
we heard the whistle, the boom.
Mortars began to fall,
drawing nearer and nearer to the soldiers.
Shrapnel was already hitting
their positions.
I called it in, "Letting you know
that I'm getting ready to withdraw."
Since he was close
to a UNIFIL camp,
we had to ignore
the standard safety orders
in order to provide him
with effective cover fire.
We fired four shells.
By the evening, the force
was evacuated by helicopter to the Galilee,
unaware of the ongoing turbulence
in Israel and abroad.
I stepped off the helicopter
and saw the entire chain of command.
They told me what happened.
It was like a day of mourning.
Then people started yelling
that civilians had been killed.
According to the UN,
five shells landed on site
and caused this massive death toll
among the refugees who were there
under the protection of UN soldiers.
These images are coming in.
Shells fell inside a UNIFIL camp
to which hundreds of civilians
had fled in fear of the fire,
as it was considered safe.
The bombing killed 102 men and women,
as well as children.
The IDF Spokesperson
doubted the validity of those numbers,
but the loss of innocent civilian lives
aroused international anger
which led to pressures
to end the operation.
Once again, Hezbollah lost the war
but won the political fight.
Hezbollah buried a few people,
but they knew it was over.
How did they interpret it?
Once again, as Israeli weakness
rather than strength.
It's the idea of the cobweb.
Israel talks a big game,
and then an unfortunate event happens
and it brings the war to an end.
Grapes of Wrath, like Operation Accountability,
tried and failed to tip the balance.
Meaning that for any significant
strike against the Hezbollah,
deep in its territory
or when its men were assassinated,
Hezbollah responded
by firing missiles into Israel.
It's fairly similar
to the situation in Gaza today.
I don't think anything changed
in terms of what's going on inside Lebanon,
with us and the Hezbollah.
I don't think anything changed,
because the ones who eat dirt
are usually us.
Don't misunderstand,
we're not broken or anything,
we're still strong
and we feel good about ourselves,
but it's important that the people
keep supporting and helping us.
After the operation, attacks on outposts
and convoys continued and even increased.
The desire to minimize the number
of casualties on the roads
led the IDF high command
to seek a different solution.
I was the one who, along with Amiram,
suggested we could send soldiers
to the security zone in helicopters.
The air force came and said,
"You're traveling in cumbersome convoys.
"We can get you in and out of there
with a helicopter."
We'd done it, I think,
one time before.
On February 2, 1997,
two transport helicopters
carrying 73 combat soldiers
took off towards the Lebanese border.
One was headed to Beaufort,
the other to Gourd.
When night fell that evening,
I was supposed to visit
a bereaved family.
I called my chief of staff,
Shuki Shichrur,
and said,
"Stop, I don't want to do it."
I was always uneasy about
the two-helicopter system, but...
He said, "Major General,
they're already off the ground."
That was it.
Hero team, over here! Come on!
This is a major collision
with roughly 70 fatalities.
We are currently engaged
in evacuation and identification.
There were several awful moments.
I saw the...
concentration of bodies,
the helicopter shards, the equipment, and...
As they pulled it out, I saw
there were names written on the equipment.
Did you realize immediately
it was going to be a paradigm shift? -No.
Self-reflection came only later.
At that moment, and in the following weeks,
I didn't think about it.
And you can't blame yourself.
At the end of the day, it was an accident.
Accidents happen.
Among the dead were several sons
of communities in the northern valleys.
From those fields,
the growing cries of mothers
would become the most effective
civilian protest movement
that ever existed here.
A blow. A huge blow.
I couldn't stop crying,
no matter where I went
or what I did.
And I... I don't know.
It weighed on me.
The next day, the paper published the photos
of these young men
and my blood boiled.
I began to lose it.
I couldn't stop crying.
73 dead soldiers who had not died in battle,
but were headed off to war,
would push the security zone,
and Israel as a whole,
into a new era.