War with No Name (2020): Season 1, Episode 3 - 1997-2000 - full transcript
This is Kol Yisrael's Network B
with the morning news.
Senior IDF officers arrived by helicopter
last night at a south Lebanon outpost
to boost morale among soldiers
whose friends died in the Helicopter Disaster.
With them was our military correspondent,
Carmela Menashe.
Good morning, Carmela.
-Good morning.
I was the first civilian
to arrive at Outpost Gourd, in which...
many of the soldiers had been hurt.
A soldier came up to me,
showed me their empty lookout post,
and, crying, said:
"You've come to a cemetery of the living."
It hasn't sunk in yet.
We haven't...
We haven't even had time to cry,
we need to carry on with our routine.
These are their beds.
They slept here.
This bed was Yaron's, bless his memory,
this one's mine.
That one belonged to Rafi Balalti,
to Alter,
to Shahar Rosenberg,
to Gilad Mishaiker.
"73 Boys Who Will Never Return"
I knew about 30 people
who died there.
Did you attend their funerals?
Don't know.
We went to a lot of funerals.
But I kept telling myself
that I shouldn't cry,
that...
I represent the army,
I have to show strength.
It may be a bit different now that I'm older,
that I have kids.
I tell myself, why stop?
Why shouldn't I cry?
Why shouldn't I scream?
73 soldiers were killed
in the Helicopter Disaster,
including Yaakov Hartoum's friends
from the Nahal's combat engineering company,
which suffered heavy losses.
The disaster raised a previously
unasked question in Israeli society:
Why has the IDF been in Lebanon
for the past 15 years?
Over 1.000 fatalities since 1982
and thousands of physical and mental injuries,
and to what end?
It was a blow.
I couldn't shake it off.
I'm not ashamed to say
that I couldn't stop crying.
Another soldier killed in the disaster
was Avner Alter from Ashdot Yaakov.
Avner came from the same kibbutz
as Bruria's youngest son,
who had just enlisted as a paratrooper.
The valley in which she'd raised her children
would become a central arena
of the struggle she and her friends took on.
I saw that image
of a pram over tank tracks,
and I couldn't shake it off.
It was obvious to me
that we had to leave Lebanon.
Enough with this sacrifice.
If they say on Memorial Day
that they were heroes,
that their death gave us life,
I'll say I don't want a life
in which my son is dead.
People yelled at us:
"How dare you speak out against this?"
Sometimes it feels as though
you're sending your son
to fight a holy war,
but the God he's fighting for keeps changing.
That's not how we live our life.
I don't want to wait for after.
I want it to happen before.
10 minutes after that broadcast,
my phone started ringing:
"What should we do?
Tell us what to do."
I said, "I don't know what to do.
"I only know we should do it."
I think the IDF should withdraw and protect
the north from this side of the border.
Their problem was that for several months,
the media wasn't interested in them.
I remember thinking and wondering,
"What can we do?"
People said,
"You're a reporter. Report on this."
I met Shelly Yachimovich,
who's a very good friend of mine,
as she was leaving the studio.
We sat in the cafeteria and I said to her,
"Shelly,
"let's get the army out of Lebanon."
After the Helicopter Disaster,
Outpost Gourd was the same.
Our routine was the same.
The week I returned,
a tank was attacked
and there was one fatality
and one major casualty.
I thought
that if you were looking for heroism,
for people's strength,
it was in their ability to keep doing their job
day after day.
What happened in Lebanon tonight?
A naval commando raid
was ambushed by the Hezbollah.
At the beginning
of the "Four Mothers" protest,
a chain of events helped
amplify these women's voices.
It began with a fire in Wadi Saluki
which claimed five soldiers' lives.
Then, naval commandos were attacked
and 12 of them were killed.
Things did not end there.
A Golani unit hit a roadside bomb,
a Nahal unit was ambushed.
In 1997 alone,
the number of IDF fatalities in Lebanon
reached 112 men.
One of those killed during these events
was Orna's son, Eyal Shimony,
another native of Ashdot Yaakov.
Two of Eyal's classmates
were killed in the Helicopter Disaster.
We need to get out of Lebanon.
I've been saying it for years.
I know it's hard and difficult,
I understand the dangers to the north,
but I always thought we need to leave.
For many years, bereaved parents
didn't speak up
and didn't express an opinion,
certainly not so soon
after their child's death.
It was a very significant moment
in the struggle to get the IDF out of Lebanon.
We finished the Shiva,
and just a month later
a soldier who'd attended the funeral
died as well.
He was in the same company as Eyal.
It was the same kind of event, the same tank.
Ronen Hayun.
And I began to feel
that I was responsible
for every fallen soldier.
It was Friday
and I went on the air on the Army Radio.
I said, "Strategically..."
I used the word "strategically",
me, a woman.
That guy... I thought
he would blow up the studio.
"What do you know about strategy?"
Mothers come to me and say,
"I can't join 'Four Mothers'
"because my son won't let me."
I ask them then,
"When he was three years old
"and tried to stick an electric wire
into the wall socket,
"did you have a discussion with him then?"
Our capacity for blood has been filled.
We will no longer wait and cry after the fact.
I hadn't been a feminist before then,
but suddenly I saw my mental abilities
were being dismissed
because I was a woman
and wasn't allowed to discuss military matters.
What was the worst thing
anyone ever said to you?
There were so many things.
From...
"Arafat's whore."
You are worth
two Syrian and Iranian armored divisions.
You're doing unimaginable harm to Israel.
"You don't understand."
"What do you know about the army?"
"What are you doing this for?"
"We have a government."
"Your children will return
to their own territory"
I realized we had to reach
the home of every family in Israel,
and the media was the only way to do that.
I sat in front of the presidential residence
with a sign that read:
"We die, and you stay silent."
What's this?
-The ostrich
buries its head in the sand
when it doesn't want to see.
We let all sorts of artists
to draw their associations
with the withdrawal from Lebanon.
We also said
that we needed a leader with balls this big...
-That's right.
to take us out of Lebanon.
Where did you want to deliver the eggs?
-To the president.
President Weizman met today with
representatives of the "Four Mothers" movement.
Hello there.
Orna, dear, it's not that simple.
Did "Four Mothers" talk to you
while you were still in command? -Sure.
I invited them.
I opened doors for them,
set up meetings for them.
Sure, why not?
When we delivered them to Netanyahu,
we meant it both ways.
For over a year, members
of the "Four Mothers" movement
have sought to meet the Prime Minister.
I'm willing to withdraw from Lebanon,
but I will not abandon
the northern district
and so we need appropriate security measures.
I think the political leadership at the time
was in favor of our continued presence
in the security zone.
Due to public pressure,
new Chief of the General Staff Mofaz
made it a priority to lower
the number of casualties in the security zone.
More fortifications,
fewer initiated actions.
You know,
we had 15, 20,
22 fatalities a year.
Every once in a while there were missiles.
We got used to it.
Meanwhile, an official assessment posited
that Israel's continued presence in Lebanon
was the lesser evil
and preferable to a unilateral withdrawal.
Most of the senior command agreed.
We are in the southern Lebanon area
because it is necessary.
We do not love to be in Lebanon,
we have to be in Lebanon.
Itzik Mordechai, enough is enough!
Itzik Mordechai, enough is enough!
To be honest, at a certain point
"Four Mothers" had lost some steam.
Then Orna came in
and started organizing her tours.
Two bereaved mothers have set out
on a bicycle tour to raise awareness
of the IDF's continued presence
in south Lebanon.
In the past five days,
they've traveled over 200 miles.
We will wear them down until this becomes
the most important item on their agenda.
We toured with bicycles, jeeps, ATVs.
People kept honking at us in support.
I felt that with every tour,
the atmosphere changed.
Did the "Four Mothers" protest
reach you and your soldiers?
Of course. It was everywhere.
The soldiers' faith in their commanders
was the only thing holding it all together.
Movements that support
a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon
have an adverse effect on the field
and are a threat to our soldiers,
because if they think we're on our way out,
the local population will not cooperate,
and because it encourages the terrorists
who say,
"This army is weak
and is running away, unilaterally."
Erez Gerstein was a legend
among the soldiers in south Lebanon,
the commander of the Golani recon unit
who took part in the capture of Beaufort Castle
and was now the head
of the Lebanon Liaison Unit.
Erez was eager to confront them
because as commanders,
they made it difficult for us
to lead soldiers in the security zone.
"Four Mothers" made things very difficult.
We return to remarks made by
Golani Brigade Commander, Col. Shmuel Zakai.
"I don't want cowardly soldiers in my brigade.
"We're heading to the front line in Lebanon,
but don't forget you're Golani soldiers.
"Pay no attention to the media
"and Silly Yachimovich's radio show
with Carmela Menashe.
"Forget about the 'Four Mopers' Movement."
"Four Mopers".
I actually liked it.
Look at what these mopers are capable of.
I lost my equilibrium.
I lost my mind.
I, the moper Orna,
would like to ask him if my son,
whose body, spirit,
dreams, hopes, along with mine,
remained in Outpost Basil in Lebanon,
was also a cowardly moper,
in his eyes?
Take the soldiers, for example.
On the one hand, it was,
"Mopers are hurting the soldiers."
Or whatever Erez Gerstein said about them.
And they were.
On the other hand, suddenly
these soldiers were being talked about.
Did anyone care about them before?
Well, these arguments
show that people care.
People care about us, they're invested.
It's very important,
it really helps
to know that people are worried about you
and care about you.
The soldiers here don't understand
what this is all about,
it it's fatigue or a lack of motivation.
And that's what they want.
No matter what people say
about the soldiers here,
stories about draft evasion
or about how this is the "Death Outpost"
and stupid things like that,
units are fighting for the opportunity
to come and serve here,
and that tells you all you need to know.
My son was a soldier then and I felt
that I was on borrowed time.
Bruria's time was borrowed because her son,
Ofer, was already a trained machine gunner
and she was worried.
In February 1999
he sat in Erez Gerstein's briefing
before infiltrating the Maidun area under
the head of his recon unit, Eitan Belhassen.
If there's an artillery blast on the road,
if the force comes under mortar attack,
each of you stick to your unit.
Don't let the units disperse.
The 27-man operation marched
through the dark night deep into the field,
intending to lay a 72-hour ambush.
This is butterfly.
Proceed.
This is butterfly, the force is 400 short ones
from a gallop. Over.
We reached the deployment point.
At this point Eitan,
the recon unit commander,
went to make sure
our two rear team were in position.
I'm seeing the force now, over.
Performing a quick sweep of the positions,
then we'll keep going.
What I remember from those moments
is how cold it was.
We sat there, freezing to death.
What are those dots? Is that them?
-I'm seeing movement.
Yes, there's a lot of movement here.
And I remember that suddenly,
in the middle of this cold darkness,
I heard a crazy burst of gunfire.
In my head, I thought
the vanguard were the terrorists,
that they'd been killed
and the attack was over.
But pretty soon, we heard shouting.
This is 20, do you copy?
I'm raising my hand. I'm here.
"Come, come quickly."
Come here, 40. Quickly.
Oh, no.
They're throwing grenades,
do you copy?
We ran there
and met some soldiers.
I saw Ofer and asked him,
"Where's the fight?"
He said, "Down there."
We have at least two major injuries
and five minor ones, over.
It was clear the kill zone
was down below
and that everyone there
was either wounded or dead.
Not everyone had gone down.
David Granit, Ofer's commander,
called for him.
Ofer did not go down.
Yaron and other friends who did,
fought their way out of the ravine
with great difficulty.
The unit was evacuated to Israel in helicopters
with five casualties and three dead officers:
David Granit,
Liraz Tito
and the recon unit commander,
Eitan Belhassen.
These are soldiers
from the paratrooper recon unit
in the early hours of the morning,
as they return from an operation
covered in their friends' blood.
Hezbollah celebrated its victory,
and that hurt,
but there was another reason this story
has been etched into our collective memory:
Ofer Sharon.
Of course it's hard for me.
David called for my help and I didn't go down.
The question is, why didn't I?
That's what I'm asking.
-Look...
Was it ideology, fear, or both?
Look, obviously, at first
it's the fear that nails you to the ground.
But the time it took to get down there
was longer than a second.
It might have even been minutes,
it's hard to assess the exact amount of time.
And at that point it was ideology.
After the incident, with his unit,
Ofer told his friends he'd been afraid.
But six months later
he completed his service,
and in an interview for Haaretz newspaper
he told Avihai Becker
that David Granit told him to come down,
and he didn't dare.
Look, I talked to Avihai Becker
in order to raise awareness
about Lebanon and its issues.
Meaning, you pushed...
You dragged that battle
into the ideological realm. -Sure.
I came to Avihai Becker and told him
my personal story
so I could express my opinion.
"I didn't dare go down there.
My mind was reeling.
"I knew that anyone who went down there
would not come back.
"I knew that to charge now
would mean dying for a stupid cause."
I hope no one imagines
that I set out that night
intending to stay rooted in place
in case of gunfire.
-Of course not.
I didn't say that.
-It happened,
and the question is why it happened.
There's no doubt
that the IDF needs to tackle this issue,
because to fight for something
you don't believe in
is a problem.
That's what happened to me.
Ofer's story is a private one,
because he was one soldier
against the entire IDF,
but it also represented public sentiment.
We need heroes.
Even 20 years later,
Ofer refused to talk to us.
The televised exchange between him
and David Granit's twin brother
is all the public record we have.
I appreciate and love Ofer
as a person.
But I'm very angry with him
for what he represents.
What happened
was that David called out to Ofer,
Ofer was frightened,
and maybe if he had gone down there
David would still be alive.
Now, Ofer presents this as an ideology,
and his mother hails him as a hero,
but Ofer was a coward,
and if he knew his private opinions
could affect
his conduct in Lebanon,
he shouldn't have gone up there.
When he took this story
to the press,
we needed to nip it in the bud,
especially when you considered the fact
that an incident like this
might happen again.
Elazar Stern was then
the Chief Education Officer.
After the interview,
he circulated a lesson plan
comparing the bravery of Eitan,
the paratrooper from ammunition hill
who charged forward and was killed,
to Ofer.
Ofer faced severe media backlash.
As a phenomenon,
we can't accept Ofer's explanation
of a "stupid cause".
That's where I draw the line.
Why did we need a lesson plan?
So people wouldn't say,
"Look, he said this and came back,
"and now everything's fine."
We had to build a lesson plan.
It wasn't just something we could do,
but something we absolutely had to.
He was exploited.
He was exploited for everything,
but mostly in order to draw a comparison
between the religious Zionists
and the sons of the kibbutz movement.
Naturally, he was influenced by his mother.
Bruria at her finest.
It's true things turned out that way.
The religious settler vs. the kibbutz guy?
Undoubtedly.
In those years, you could feel the change
in the army elites.
In that respect,
the biggest mistake
Ofer and Bruria made
was to get the rank and file combat soldiers
mixed up in the question
of the fight's legitimacy.
If each of us got to choose
when to charge to the end
and when to stay in place,
both our society and our army
would fall apart.
In an unbelievable sequence of events,
just days after the paratroopers' failure
Erez Gerstein headed into the security zone
for a SLA condolence visit.
We interrupt our programming
to bring you this announcement.
A convoy of the Lebanon Liaison Unit
headed by Brigadier General Erez Gerstein,
bless his memory.
I was skiing with my youngest son
when my wife called.
It was one of my most difficult moments.
She said to me, in these words:
"Sit down. Are you sitting down?"
I said,
"No, I'll sit down."
Then she said:
"Your best friend has been killed."
Did you realize who it was?
Yes, of course.
Of course. It was very hard.
MK Ehud Barak, hello.
Hello.
-A difficult day.
A very painful day.
On this day, the die was cast.
The death of Erez Gerstein,
along with the paratrooper incident,
marked the moment in which the fighting spirit
was replaced by political thought
in the election campaign
between Netanyahu and Barak.
I'm telling you that the next government
will make it a top priority
to get the boys out of Lebanon
without harming national security.
Your withdrawal announcement took place
the day after Erez Gerstein was killed.
Was that a coincidence?
Don't know. It may be been
another straw on the camel's back.
Again, it exposed the lack of...
-It wasn't political?
Not at all.
-Was it an emotional decision?
Were you considering the polls?
Look at my previous remarks,
I talked about it many times.
I only made the announcement then
because it was relevant to the election.
Polls kept asking,
"Who's in favor of leaving Lebanon?"
52% support a withdrawal from Lebanon.
And the number kept rising.
A dramatic upset.
A sweeping victory for Ehud Barak.
And I pledge to do everything I can
to get the IDF out of Lebanon within a year,
and to strengthen security up north.
I started taking these announcements seriously
as soon as he was elected.
I read them, heard them, followed them.
Once he was elected,
I understood we were on a ticking clock.
What did Barak tell you
after his election?
At first he stated very clearly
that he wanted to do it bilaterally.
Meanwhile, President Clinton
has arrived in Shepherdstown
in order to facilitate
the start of these negotiations.
Remember that negotiations
and the expected agreement with Syria
also encompassed the Lebanon issue.
I'm convinced the key is in Damascus.
I'm convinced the arrangement will involved
a staggered, agreed-upon withdrawal
and not a unilateral one.
The Syrians were willing to take responsibility
for Hezbollah's disarmament.
Disagreements regarding the agenda
continue to hound the Shepherdstown talks.
"The machine is creaking,"
said a spokesperson
for the American Secretary of State.
After six months,
the attempted peace talks failed.
Now it seemed much harder
to keep this campaign promise.
This began a period of ambiguity.
We knew we would leave,
but we didn't know how.
I spoke with Mofaz
about preparing for this contingency,
including the need to do it covertly.
Not because I wanted to hide it from the IDF,
but because as soon as it leaked,
the SLA would hear about it too
and it would be impossible to implement.
You've been here for 23 years, right?
-That's right.
Do you think Israel will leave by July 2000?
-No. Maybe if there's an agreement.
It won't leave without an agreement?
I don't think they'd abandon the people
who served with them for 23 years.
And you're still here, fighting?
-We're still here, strong to the end.
Akel Hashem was a well-respected SLA figure
and his love affair with Israel went on
for as long as the security zone existed.
You don't mind this connection with Israel?
It's a foreign country, after all.
How do you view your relationship with Israel?
-It doesn't bother me.
The Israelis are human beings.
27:58
We relate to them as human beings,
not as their slaves or inferiors.
We are their equals.
This is in our interest as Lebanese.
The Israelis are our friends.
When the security zone was formed,
the SLA was positioned at the point of contact
while the IDF outposts were situated
behind them as backup.
Over the years, SLA soldiers
suffered hundreds of fatalities.
The word "exploitation"
doesn't work in this business.
I'll give you an example.
If we got word of a possible bomb
somewhere along a specific road,
one way to deal with the danger
was to take an armored bulldozer,
drop down its blade and drive along the road
where the suspected bomb was planted.
And so we'd take an IDF bulldozer
and let an SLA combat engineer
drive it,
telling him to clear the road.
If they hadn't been around,
what would the IDF have done?
It prevented IDF deaths.
As soon as Barak came into office,
attacks on SLA soldiers and outposts worsened.
The worst of it came when Hezbollah planted
a bomb in Akel Hashem's vacation home.
I attended the funeral.
That procession, surrounded
by thousands of people from the security zone,
gave me a lot to think about.
When I got back to the division that night,
I knew we had to push our plans forward.
Meanwhile among the high command,
tensions were running high.
Most of the generals opposed Barak's plan
of a unilateral withdrawal,
and the Intelligence Directorate even wrote
a scathing assessment.
Some of them said it was crazy,
that if we left,
the fire and missiles and everything
would follow us to the home front.
This all happened while the withdrawal
was promised but had no definite timeline.
"Four Mothers" continued to pressure
the government, the IDF faltered
and the outposts continued
their ambiguous routine
behind reinforced concrete walls.
The routine in Lebanon meant
a steady stream of mortar attacks,
all the time.
Every day, morning and night.
The outpost ran out of water.
The generator broke down.
Ariel Levinson was a lookout at Outpost Retama
in the western sector during those months.
3:00 to 5:00 AM
were always the hardest hours,
and we identified groups,
black dots in our surveillance gear
that were walking together.
They looked like a unit.
We asked for permission to open fire,
and were denied.
Suddenly I heard the scariest noise
I'd ever encountered,
the whistle of a missile
headed straight towards me.
The missile landed about 1.5 feet
under the lookout gap.
It threw us back against the wall
and we initiated our escape protocol.
My commanding officer
and my best friend in the squad
weren't so fortunate.
A week later, a missile
breached their post.
The squad started to fall, one by one.
We were the targets.
At this time we can relay
that an IDF soldier died this afternoon
from a direct hit by an anti-tank missile
at an IDF outpost.
Another IDF soldier was severely wounded
from a TAU missile at the Beaufort Outpost
in the eastern sector of the security zone.
In early 2000, a Hezbollah anti-tank sniper
managed to hit several outpost stations,
killing six soldiers in a short amount of time.
Sergeant Tzachi Itach, a 19-year-old
Yavneh native, was killed yesterday
and another IDF soldier
was severely wounded in south Lebanon.
I lost my signal operator
and Tidhar, my Communications Officer,
in one of those attacks.
I made the greatest sacrifice
any man could make.
Enough killing.
Get the boys out of Lebanon.
I hope Tzachi will be the last victim.
In front of the Tel Aviv offices
of the Ministry of Defense
there is now a protest watch
being held by members
of the "Four Mothers" movement.
Why are people dying for a place
everyone knows is completely useless?
How is this happening?
We call on the Prime Minister to find
a way to stop our losses in Lebanon.
Many medics are working
to contain the injuries
as they await the evacuation helicopters.
On the one hand, we had to combat
an enemy that was always learning.
On the other hand,
this was the first time people asked us:
"Do we really have to be
"Lebanon's last fatalities?"
The things we go through every day,
the tension,
the daily mortar attacks,
standing guard,
all these things are wearing us down
and the strain is becoming hard to bear.
A soldier got up and asked me,
"Say, the ones at the gate asked us
"why we were going out
to be the last fatalities in Lebanon.
"What should we tell them?"
Each of us is basically saying we don't
want to be the last fatality in Lebanon,
and we believe that in today's situation
we are not defending the country,
only exposing ourselves to danger.
If we're going to leave anyway,
why wait?
What do we gain from waiting?
It will only lead to another fatality or two.
They asked me,
"Why aren't we leaving today?"
They asked me, "If the past 18 years here
were so important,
"why are we leaving at all?"
And I had to answer.
And what did you say,
regarding those 18 years?
It wasn't easy.
It wasn't easy.
-It's a difficult question.
Yes, a very difficult question.
Very difficult.
Those 18 years were too long.
It should not have taken 18 years.
The decision should have been made
a lot sooner.
The security zone
lost its reason for existing
within the first five or six years.
I can even say I'm sorry
they didn't do it earlier than that.
Looking back on it now,
I think it was a mistake
and we should have developed
other methods
of defending the northern district.
If they'd examined this decision
at the end of each year,
and if they'd considered the price
we were paying for our presence there,
it may very well have happened sooner.
We would have left a lot sooner?
Maybe.
Leaders find it hard
to make the tough decisions.
Damn, look at that.
Look at them bombing.
We'll be back at the outpost
in 12 hours.
I hope we'll still have beds to sleep on.
The entire outpost was evacuated.
I hope we'll have something to return to
We began widespread efforts
to thin out our presence in the security zone,
in terms of both soldiers and equipment.
We're attempting to empty the outpost
of beds, mattresses, heaters, ammo.
Look at you.
-Hello. -What a dream.
What's up?
-How are you?
Great, how are you?
-You stayed tall.
What's up?
-Great.
It's good to see you, man.
-Good to see you, too.
Ran and Ofer were two junior officers
in the Nahal's anti-tank company,
and served at Outpost Gourd
during those uncertain months.
As part of our preparations,
we received a ton of mines.
Yehuda, how many lbs. is that?
Let's see how many mines we have.
Count them and you'll know.
Our mission was to place them
all over the place,
and we put them everywhere.
In the ovens, on the beds,
under the beds,
in the showers,
in the bunkers,
along the paths,
in the courtyard.
I remember the soldiers and I felt that,
you know...
What could we do?
We were sleeping on top
of 6 tons of explosives.
What could we do with that information?
If you stay in the occupied zone,
if you don't give yourselves up
and don't retreat with the occupying forces,
we will come at you with weapons.
There were clear signs
that the SLA had stopped functioning.
We gave them equipment and never got it back,
they failed to follow orders,
they were worried.
No one came to any SLA soldier and said,
"Listen, by June 30th the IDF won't be here.
"You'll get no support whatsoever."
The issue was avoided so they wouldn't despair,
so they'd have some hope.
We wanted them to hold fast
at least until we ran away.
Left.
Fares, pose.
20 days before the withdrawal,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak said to me,
"Look at me, officer to officer."
He banged his hand on the table.
"I will not move a single inch
without an agreement."
General Lahad later claimed
that you deceived him.
I never deceived him.
I didn't tell him every detail of our plan.
I couldn't tell them everything.
And he left for Paris.
I don't think he went there by accident,
because he didn't know,
but precisely because
he understood what we were saying.
Tell him that as soon as he's ready,
we'll bring our men down,
he'll take over the guard posts
and we'll switch.
A decision was made to start
handing outposts over to the SLA.
That sent the message that it was over.
And so one morning we woke up
to a procession of civilians
walking to Qantara, a faux funeral.
This is the procession.
It's being led by a member of parliament,
Hezbollah's representative
in the Lebanese parliament.
They've passed the UN barricade.
Then these processions began.
At first they began along the Ramim Range,
which was occupied
by the SLA's Shiite battalion.
Battalion 70 was essentially disbanded.
We can see these images
of their open progress in full daylight.
Outpost, personnel carrier, tank.
150 civilians came, with children,
and climbed onto the tank.
How could you use the tank then?
Who would you fire at?
The Hezbollah never came.
No one came with weapons.
They all came...
Allah hu Akbar! Hezbollah!
Our soldiers couldn't kill 50 or 60 of them.
One of those people could be their brother,
their sister.
Hezbollah!
What did your soldiers do, then?
Nothing. They ran home.
They got in their cars and left.
They knew it was the end.
-Yes.
The SLA's collapse happened quickly,
beginning with the central Shiite battalions.
Within 48 hours it spread almost to the entire
sector, catching the IDF unprepared.
We've lost Outpost Taybeh.
We've lost Outpost Qantara.
The only thing we have left...
are my guys.
The time is now 10:49,
and the end is coming.
Looks like this is the end.
We can see it now.
The entire section from Taybeh to Beit Yahoun,
essentially 25% of the security zone,
has been cut off.
And here comes
the Head of the Northern Command.
We'll hear what he has to say
to this press conference.
The collapse happened a lot faster
than Northern Command anticipated,
and so as soon as it began they said,
"Wait, let's do it now, immediately."
I said, "We can't do it immediately."
Barak decided to withdraw,
but delayed the order by 48 hours
in order to receive the UN's approval
for the new international border.
Meanwhile, the collapse continued.
This footage shows equipment
that the SLA left behind.
In all this mess, I realized the Liaison Unit
hadn't emptied the SLA outposts.
They were filled with tanks,
personnel carriers,
ammunition, weapons.
It was all taken as-is, including computers...
-Classified equipment? -Yes,
and mortars,
all taken by the Hezbollah.
Let's keep things in perspective.
Ultimately there are soldiers, and the SLA,
and then there's equipment, alright?
Even if it's classified? Or if it's ammo?
-There was no classified equipment.
The Hezbollah considered it a huge victory.
This was the first time Israel retreated
under fire from an Arab country.
Abdel Nasser couldn't do it,
Sadat couldn't do it,
Assad couldn't do it,
but Hezbollah did.
On second day of the withdrawal I woke up
to see that the entire SLA,
with their families,
had arrived at Fatima Gate.
People who'd partnered with Israel for years,
who fought side by side with IDF officers,
have arrived with only two suitcases
to stand behind the fence.
They came like refugees.
I worked with them for 20 years.
They covered me, I covered them.
They cried when they left.
They were standing at the gate
and Israel wouldn't let them in.
Afternoon at Fatima Gate.
This is all that's left of the SLA.
No convoy arrived at Outpost Gourd.
There was a lot of movement around us,
but no convoy reached us.
It felt as though we were alone there.
We heard birds chirping.
It was very pastoral.
As though we were alone.
Our orders were to wait until 11:00 PM,
and evacuate.
Blow up the outpost.
-Yes, at 11:00 PM.
And we waited for the order.
We stepped away from our posts,
which felt weird. Everything was empty.
At 11:00 PM the order was given,
and the outposts began to explode.
I sat there, some distance away,
with my earplugs,
we connected the wire and began to...
I had a detonator,
and I started detonating, so to speak,
and it didn't take.
I looked at the people around me.
The outpost hadn't blown up.
The Beaufort Outpost was up in the air,
I could hear the noise,
I heard the explosions
from every outpost around us,
it was already a few minutes past 11:00,
but Outpost Gourd hadn't exploded.
I was convinced the wires had disconnected,
and I followed the wires
to try and find the break.
There was mortar and missile fire
on the outpost,
but I kept walking along with the wire
to find the problem.
We made it all the way to the top.
Everything was connected.
I went back down
and called for a personnel carrier.
I said, "Come on,
let's connect it to the battery."
Meanwhile I kept trying the detonator,
and suddenly it worked.
That explosion...
You can't imagine what it was like.
Wow!
-Wow. -Oh man.
One by one, 18 years of memories
went up in smoke.
Hundreds of tons of concrete
flew up in the air,
from Basil, Crocus, Retama,
Galgalit, Beaufort and Gourd.
Fairy tale names
from a story that's long been forgotten.
To me, Lebanon is the people we left behind.
It isn't just a line.
We fought there every day,
every day and every night,
and the only times anyone
heard about what we were doing
was when something bad happened,
when there were casualties.
But in the end, it all stayed back there.
The losses were great,
but how many were wounded
during those 18 years, exactly?
It's difficult to say because no one
recognizes this sequence as a single war.
There's the First Lebanon War
and the Second Lebanon War,
and between them there's a void,
a war with no name.
Why is it a war with no name?
Look, failure is an orphan.
When you look back at all those needless years
spent inside the security zone,
this was not a successful war,
so obviously this failure is an orphan.
Mom! I love you, Mom!
Yeah, Mom!
I heard about the withdrawal on the radio.
Dad, take care.
I'll be back in Israel in a few hours.
Bye, Dad.
I called Orna, I called Zahara.
We got into the car
and drove to the border, to Metula.
Let's hope we never come here again.
I was beside myself.
It seems strange to say,
but I felt like I'd saved lives.
They yelled,
"Mom, I made it out of Lebanon."
Mom, I'm home!
Hold me close, Mom
We'll never be apart...
We arrived in Metula
to the beginning of a press conference.
Please sit down.
We're about to begin.
Good afternoon.
Today is a historic day.
On May 24, 2000,
the IDF has left the security zone.
It was a very rigid mindset,
that the security zone was a necessity.
That's what people said.
"We need the security zone."
I would expect various leaders,
Prime Ministers,
Defense Ministers and so forth,
to analyze the situation and conclude,
maybe after three or five or seven years,
that we needed to leave.
Rigidity starts somewhere.
Where does it start?
You get used to something,
and you grow afraid of the unknown.
You keep hearing the general consensus.
It's very hard to break away
from the consensus.
There's a very important lesson
to be learned here.
Rigidity comes at a heavy price.
It doesn't seem that way,
in the day to day it seems like a small payment
that you can always postpone,
but it comes at a heavy price.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you to the Chief of the General Staff and
the Head of the Northern Command. -I'd like...
to say one thing to you.
I'd like...
It's hard for me to speak,
and it's not every day that you meet
the highest ranking generals of the army.
I'd like to embrace
the army's commanders and soldiers,
the Chief of the General Staff
and the Head of the Northern Command,
who got the IDF out of Lebanon
without a single casualty.
I'd like to try and embrace
the families whose sons
could not return today
and call out, "Mom, I'm home."
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
What do you have to say to the women
of the "Four Mothers" movement now?
with the morning news.
Senior IDF officers arrived by helicopter
last night at a south Lebanon outpost
to boost morale among soldiers
whose friends died in the Helicopter Disaster.
With them was our military correspondent,
Carmela Menashe.
Good morning, Carmela.
-Good morning.
I was the first civilian
to arrive at Outpost Gourd, in which...
many of the soldiers had been hurt.
A soldier came up to me,
showed me their empty lookout post,
and, crying, said:
"You've come to a cemetery of the living."
It hasn't sunk in yet.
We haven't...
We haven't even had time to cry,
we need to carry on with our routine.
These are their beds.
They slept here.
This bed was Yaron's, bless his memory,
this one's mine.
That one belonged to Rafi Balalti,
to Alter,
to Shahar Rosenberg,
to Gilad Mishaiker.
"73 Boys Who Will Never Return"
I knew about 30 people
who died there.
Did you attend their funerals?
Don't know.
We went to a lot of funerals.
But I kept telling myself
that I shouldn't cry,
that...
I represent the army,
I have to show strength.
It may be a bit different now that I'm older,
that I have kids.
I tell myself, why stop?
Why shouldn't I cry?
Why shouldn't I scream?
73 soldiers were killed
in the Helicopter Disaster,
including Yaakov Hartoum's friends
from the Nahal's combat engineering company,
which suffered heavy losses.
The disaster raised a previously
unasked question in Israeli society:
Why has the IDF been in Lebanon
for the past 15 years?
Over 1.000 fatalities since 1982
and thousands of physical and mental injuries,
and to what end?
It was a blow.
I couldn't shake it off.
I'm not ashamed to say
that I couldn't stop crying.
Another soldier killed in the disaster
was Avner Alter from Ashdot Yaakov.
Avner came from the same kibbutz
as Bruria's youngest son,
who had just enlisted as a paratrooper.
The valley in which she'd raised her children
would become a central arena
of the struggle she and her friends took on.
I saw that image
of a pram over tank tracks,
and I couldn't shake it off.
It was obvious to me
that we had to leave Lebanon.
Enough with this sacrifice.
If they say on Memorial Day
that they were heroes,
that their death gave us life,
I'll say I don't want a life
in which my son is dead.
People yelled at us:
"How dare you speak out against this?"
Sometimes it feels as though
you're sending your son
to fight a holy war,
but the God he's fighting for keeps changing.
That's not how we live our life.
I don't want to wait for after.
I want it to happen before.
10 minutes after that broadcast,
my phone started ringing:
"What should we do?
Tell us what to do."
I said, "I don't know what to do.
"I only know we should do it."
I think the IDF should withdraw and protect
the north from this side of the border.
Their problem was that for several months,
the media wasn't interested in them.
I remember thinking and wondering,
"What can we do?"
People said,
"You're a reporter. Report on this."
I met Shelly Yachimovich,
who's a very good friend of mine,
as she was leaving the studio.
We sat in the cafeteria and I said to her,
"Shelly,
"let's get the army out of Lebanon."
After the Helicopter Disaster,
Outpost Gourd was the same.
Our routine was the same.
The week I returned,
a tank was attacked
and there was one fatality
and one major casualty.
I thought
that if you were looking for heroism,
for people's strength,
it was in their ability to keep doing their job
day after day.
What happened in Lebanon tonight?
A naval commando raid
was ambushed by the Hezbollah.
At the beginning
of the "Four Mothers" protest,
a chain of events helped
amplify these women's voices.
It began with a fire in Wadi Saluki
which claimed five soldiers' lives.
Then, naval commandos were attacked
and 12 of them were killed.
Things did not end there.
A Golani unit hit a roadside bomb,
a Nahal unit was ambushed.
In 1997 alone,
the number of IDF fatalities in Lebanon
reached 112 men.
One of those killed during these events
was Orna's son, Eyal Shimony,
another native of Ashdot Yaakov.
Two of Eyal's classmates
were killed in the Helicopter Disaster.
We need to get out of Lebanon.
I've been saying it for years.
I know it's hard and difficult,
I understand the dangers to the north,
but I always thought we need to leave.
For many years, bereaved parents
didn't speak up
and didn't express an opinion,
certainly not so soon
after their child's death.
It was a very significant moment
in the struggle to get the IDF out of Lebanon.
We finished the Shiva,
and just a month later
a soldier who'd attended the funeral
died as well.
He was in the same company as Eyal.
It was the same kind of event, the same tank.
Ronen Hayun.
And I began to feel
that I was responsible
for every fallen soldier.
It was Friday
and I went on the air on the Army Radio.
I said, "Strategically..."
I used the word "strategically",
me, a woman.
That guy... I thought
he would blow up the studio.
"What do you know about strategy?"
Mothers come to me and say,
"I can't join 'Four Mothers'
"because my son won't let me."
I ask them then,
"When he was three years old
"and tried to stick an electric wire
into the wall socket,
"did you have a discussion with him then?"
Our capacity for blood has been filled.
We will no longer wait and cry after the fact.
I hadn't been a feminist before then,
but suddenly I saw my mental abilities
were being dismissed
because I was a woman
and wasn't allowed to discuss military matters.
What was the worst thing
anyone ever said to you?
There were so many things.
From...
"Arafat's whore."
You are worth
two Syrian and Iranian armored divisions.
You're doing unimaginable harm to Israel.
"You don't understand."
"What do you know about the army?"
"What are you doing this for?"
"We have a government."
"Your children will return
to their own territory"
I realized we had to reach
the home of every family in Israel,
and the media was the only way to do that.
I sat in front of the presidential residence
with a sign that read:
"We die, and you stay silent."
What's this?
-The ostrich
buries its head in the sand
when it doesn't want to see.
We let all sorts of artists
to draw their associations
with the withdrawal from Lebanon.
We also said
that we needed a leader with balls this big...
-That's right.
to take us out of Lebanon.
Where did you want to deliver the eggs?
-To the president.
President Weizman met today with
representatives of the "Four Mothers" movement.
Hello there.
Orna, dear, it's not that simple.
Did "Four Mothers" talk to you
while you were still in command? -Sure.
I invited them.
I opened doors for them,
set up meetings for them.
Sure, why not?
When we delivered them to Netanyahu,
we meant it both ways.
For over a year, members
of the "Four Mothers" movement
have sought to meet the Prime Minister.
I'm willing to withdraw from Lebanon,
but I will not abandon
the northern district
and so we need appropriate security measures.
I think the political leadership at the time
was in favor of our continued presence
in the security zone.
Due to public pressure,
new Chief of the General Staff Mofaz
made it a priority to lower
the number of casualties in the security zone.
More fortifications,
fewer initiated actions.
You know,
we had 15, 20,
22 fatalities a year.
Every once in a while there were missiles.
We got used to it.
Meanwhile, an official assessment posited
that Israel's continued presence in Lebanon
was the lesser evil
and preferable to a unilateral withdrawal.
Most of the senior command agreed.
We are in the southern Lebanon area
because it is necessary.
We do not love to be in Lebanon,
we have to be in Lebanon.
Itzik Mordechai, enough is enough!
Itzik Mordechai, enough is enough!
To be honest, at a certain point
"Four Mothers" had lost some steam.
Then Orna came in
and started organizing her tours.
Two bereaved mothers have set out
on a bicycle tour to raise awareness
of the IDF's continued presence
in south Lebanon.
In the past five days,
they've traveled over 200 miles.
We will wear them down until this becomes
the most important item on their agenda.
We toured with bicycles, jeeps, ATVs.
People kept honking at us in support.
I felt that with every tour,
the atmosphere changed.
Did the "Four Mothers" protest
reach you and your soldiers?
Of course. It was everywhere.
The soldiers' faith in their commanders
was the only thing holding it all together.
Movements that support
a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon
have an adverse effect on the field
and are a threat to our soldiers,
because if they think we're on our way out,
the local population will not cooperate,
and because it encourages the terrorists
who say,
"This army is weak
and is running away, unilaterally."
Erez Gerstein was a legend
among the soldiers in south Lebanon,
the commander of the Golani recon unit
who took part in the capture of Beaufort Castle
and was now the head
of the Lebanon Liaison Unit.
Erez was eager to confront them
because as commanders,
they made it difficult for us
to lead soldiers in the security zone.
"Four Mothers" made things very difficult.
We return to remarks made by
Golani Brigade Commander, Col. Shmuel Zakai.
"I don't want cowardly soldiers in my brigade.
"We're heading to the front line in Lebanon,
but don't forget you're Golani soldiers.
"Pay no attention to the media
"and Silly Yachimovich's radio show
with Carmela Menashe.
"Forget about the 'Four Mopers' Movement."
"Four Mopers".
I actually liked it.
Look at what these mopers are capable of.
I lost my equilibrium.
I lost my mind.
I, the moper Orna,
would like to ask him if my son,
whose body, spirit,
dreams, hopes, along with mine,
remained in Outpost Basil in Lebanon,
was also a cowardly moper,
in his eyes?
Take the soldiers, for example.
On the one hand, it was,
"Mopers are hurting the soldiers."
Or whatever Erez Gerstein said about them.
And they were.
On the other hand, suddenly
these soldiers were being talked about.
Did anyone care about them before?
Well, these arguments
show that people care.
People care about us, they're invested.
It's very important,
it really helps
to know that people are worried about you
and care about you.
The soldiers here don't understand
what this is all about,
it it's fatigue or a lack of motivation.
And that's what they want.
No matter what people say
about the soldiers here,
stories about draft evasion
or about how this is the "Death Outpost"
and stupid things like that,
units are fighting for the opportunity
to come and serve here,
and that tells you all you need to know.
My son was a soldier then and I felt
that I was on borrowed time.
Bruria's time was borrowed because her son,
Ofer, was already a trained machine gunner
and she was worried.
In February 1999
he sat in Erez Gerstein's briefing
before infiltrating the Maidun area under
the head of his recon unit, Eitan Belhassen.
If there's an artillery blast on the road,
if the force comes under mortar attack,
each of you stick to your unit.
Don't let the units disperse.
The 27-man operation marched
through the dark night deep into the field,
intending to lay a 72-hour ambush.
This is butterfly.
Proceed.
This is butterfly, the force is 400 short ones
from a gallop. Over.
We reached the deployment point.
At this point Eitan,
the recon unit commander,
went to make sure
our two rear team were in position.
I'm seeing the force now, over.
Performing a quick sweep of the positions,
then we'll keep going.
What I remember from those moments
is how cold it was.
We sat there, freezing to death.
What are those dots? Is that them?
-I'm seeing movement.
Yes, there's a lot of movement here.
And I remember that suddenly,
in the middle of this cold darkness,
I heard a crazy burst of gunfire.
In my head, I thought
the vanguard were the terrorists,
that they'd been killed
and the attack was over.
But pretty soon, we heard shouting.
This is 20, do you copy?
I'm raising my hand. I'm here.
"Come, come quickly."
Come here, 40. Quickly.
Oh, no.
They're throwing grenades,
do you copy?
We ran there
and met some soldiers.
I saw Ofer and asked him,
"Where's the fight?"
He said, "Down there."
We have at least two major injuries
and five minor ones, over.
It was clear the kill zone
was down below
and that everyone there
was either wounded or dead.
Not everyone had gone down.
David Granit, Ofer's commander,
called for him.
Ofer did not go down.
Yaron and other friends who did,
fought their way out of the ravine
with great difficulty.
The unit was evacuated to Israel in helicopters
with five casualties and three dead officers:
David Granit,
Liraz Tito
and the recon unit commander,
Eitan Belhassen.
These are soldiers
from the paratrooper recon unit
in the early hours of the morning,
as they return from an operation
covered in their friends' blood.
Hezbollah celebrated its victory,
and that hurt,
but there was another reason this story
has been etched into our collective memory:
Ofer Sharon.
Of course it's hard for me.
David called for my help and I didn't go down.
The question is, why didn't I?
That's what I'm asking.
-Look...
Was it ideology, fear, or both?
Look, obviously, at first
it's the fear that nails you to the ground.
But the time it took to get down there
was longer than a second.
It might have even been minutes,
it's hard to assess the exact amount of time.
And at that point it was ideology.
After the incident, with his unit,
Ofer told his friends he'd been afraid.
But six months later
he completed his service,
and in an interview for Haaretz newspaper
he told Avihai Becker
that David Granit told him to come down,
and he didn't dare.
Look, I talked to Avihai Becker
in order to raise awareness
about Lebanon and its issues.
Meaning, you pushed...
You dragged that battle
into the ideological realm. -Sure.
I came to Avihai Becker and told him
my personal story
so I could express my opinion.
"I didn't dare go down there.
My mind was reeling.
"I knew that anyone who went down there
would not come back.
"I knew that to charge now
would mean dying for a stupid cause."
I hope no one imagines
that I set out that night
intending to stay rooted in place
in case of gunfire.
-Of course not.
I didn't say that.
-It happened,
and the question is why it happened.
There's no doubt
that the IDF needs to tackle this issue,
because to fight for something
you don't believe in
is a problem.
That's what happened to me.
Ofer's story is a private one,
because he was one soldier
against the entire IDF,
but it also represented public sentiment.
We need heroes.
Even 20 years later,
Ofer refused to talk to us.
The televised exchange between him
and David Granit's twin brother
is all the public record we have.
I appreciate and love Ofer
as a person.
But I'm very angry with him
for what he represents.
What happened
was that David called out to Ofer,
Ofer was frightened,
and maybe if he had gone down there
David would still be alive.
Now, Ofer presents this as an ideology,
and his mother hails him as a hero,
but Ofer was a coward,
and if he knew his private opinions
could affect
his conduct in Lebanon,
he shouldn't have gone up there.
When he took this story
to the press,
we needed to nip it in the bud,
especially when you considered the fact
that an incident like this
might happen again.
Elazar Stern was then
the Chief Education Officer.
After the interview,
he circulated a lesson plan
comparing the bravery of Eitan,
the paratrooper from ammunition hill
who charged forward and was killed,
to Ofer.
Ofer faced severe media backlash.
As a phenomenon,
we can't accept Ofer's explanation
of a "stupid cause".
That's where I draw the line.
Why did we need a lesson plan?
So people wouldn't say,
"Look, he said this and came back,
"and now everything's fine."
We had to build a lesson plan.
It wasn't just something we could do,
but something we absolutely had to.
He was exploited.
He was exploited for everything,
but mostly in order to draw a comparison
between the religious Zionists
and the sons of the kibbutz movement.
Naturally, he was influenced by his mother.
Bruria at her finest.
It's true things turned out that way.
The religious settler vs. the kibbutz guy?
Undoubtedly.
In those years, you could feel the change
in the army elites.
In that respect,
the biggest mistake
Ofer and Bruria made
was to get the rank and file combat soldiers
mixed up in the question
of the fight's legitimacy.
If each of us got to choose
when to charge to the end
and when to stay in place,
both our society and our army
would fall apart.
In an unbelievable sequence of events,
just days after the paratroopers' failure
Erez Gerstein headed into the security zone
for a SLA condolence visit.
We interrupt our programming
to bring you this announcement.
A convoy of the Lebanon Liaison Unit
headed by Brigadier General Erez Gerstein,
bless his memory.
I was skiing with my youngest son
when my wife called.
It was one of my most difficult moments.
She said to me, in these words:
"Sit down. Are you sitting down?"
I said,
"No, I'll sit down."
Then she said:
"Your best friend has been killed."
Did you realize who it was?
Yes, of course.
Of course. It was very hard.
MK Ehud Barak, hello.
Hello.
-A difficult day.
A very painful day.
On this day, the die was cast.
The death of Erez Gerstein,
along with the paratrooper incident,
marked the moment in which the fighting spirit
was replaced by political thought
in the election campaign
between Netanyahu and Barak.
I'm telling you that the next government
will make it a top priority
to get the boys out of Lebanon
without harming national security.
Your withdrawal announcement took place
the day after Erez Gerstein was killed.
Was that a coincidence?
Don't know. It may be been
another straw on the camel's back.
Again, it exposed the lack of...
-It wasn't political?
Not at all.
-Was it an emotional decision?
Were you considering the polls?
Look at my previous remarks,
I talked about it many times.
I only made the announcement then
because it was relevant to the election.
Polls kept asking,
"Who's in favor of leaving Lebanon?"
52% support a withdrawal from Lebanon.
And the number kept rising.
A dramatic upset.
A sweeping victory for Ehud Barak.
And I pledge to do everything I can
to get the IDF out of Lebanon within a year,
and to strengthen security up north.
I started taking these announcements seriously
as soon as he was elected.
I read them, heard them, followed them.
Once he was elected,
I understood we were on a ticking clock.
What did Barak tell you
after his election?
At first he stated very clearly
that he wanted to do it bilaterally.
Meanwhile, President Clinton
has arrived in Shepherdstown
in order to facilitate
the start of these negotiations.
Remember that negotiations
and the expected agreement with Syria
also encompassed the Lebanon issue.
I'm convinced the key is in Damascus.
I'm convinced the arrangement will involved
a staggered, agreed-upon withdrawal
and not a unilateral one.
The Syrians were willing to take responsibility
for Hezbollah's disarmament.
Disagreements regarding the agenda
continue to hound the Shepherdstown talks.
"The machine is creaking,"
said a spokesperson
for the American Secretary of State.
After six months,
the attempted peace talks failed.
Now it seemed much harder
to keep this campaign promise.
This began a period of ambiguity.
We knew we would leave,
but we didn't know how.
I spoke with Mofaz
about preparing for this contingency,
including the need to do it covertly.
Not because I wanted to hide it from the IDF,
but because as soon as it leaked,
the SLA would hear about it too
and it would be impossible to implement.
You've been here for 23 years, right?
-That's right.
Do you think Israel will leave by July 2000?
-No. Maybe if there's an agreement.
It won't leave without an agreement?
I don't think they'd abandon the people
who served with them for 23 years.
And you're still here, fighting?
-We're still here, strong to the end.
Akel Hashem was a well-respected SLA figure
and his love affair with Israel went on
for as long as the security zone existed.
You don't mind this connection with Israel?
It's a foreign country, after all.
How do you view your relationship with Israel?
-It doesn't bother me.
The Israelis are human beings.
27:58
We relate to them as human beings,
not as their slaves or inferiors.
We are their equals.
This is in our interest as Lebanese.
The Israelis are our friends.
When the security zone was formed,
the SLA was positioned at the point of contact
while the IDF outposts were situated
behind them as backup.
Over the years, SLA soldiers
suffered hundreds of fatalities.
The word "exploitation"
doesn't work in this business.
I'll give you an example.
If we got word of a possible bomb
somewhere along a specific road,
one way to deal with the danger
was to take an armored bulldozer,
drop down its blade and drive along the road
where the suspected bomb was planted.
And so we'd take an IDF bulldozer
and let an SLA combat engineer
drive it,
telling him to clear the road.
If they hadn't been around,
what would the IDF have done?
It prevented IDF deaths.
As soon as Barak came into office,
attacks on SLA soldiers and outposts worsened.
The worst of it came when Hezbollah planted
a bomb in Akel Hashem's vacation home.
I attended the funeral.
That procession, surrounded
by thousands of people from the security zone,
gave me a lot to think about.
When I got back to the division that night,
I knew we had to push our plans forward.
Meanwhile among the high command,
tensions were running high.
Most of the generals opposed Barak's plan
of a unilateral withdrawal,
and the Intelligence Directorate even wrote
a scathing assessment.
Some of them said it was crazy,
that if we left,
the fire and missiles and everything
would follow us to the home front.
This all happened while the withdrawal
was promised but had no definite timeline.
"Four Mothers" continued to pressure
the government, the IDF faltered
and the outposts continued
their ambiguous routine
behind reinforced concrete walls.
The routine in Lebanon meant
a steady stream of mortar attacks,
all the time.
Every day, morning and night.
The outpost ran out of water.
The generator broke down.
Ariel Levinson was a lookout at Outpost Retama
in the western sector during those months.
3:00 to 5:00 AM
were always the hardest hours,
and we identified groups,
black dots in our surveillance gear
that were walking together.
They looked like a unit.
We asked for permission to open fire,
and were denied.
Suddenly I heard the scariest noise
I'd ever encountered,
the whistle of a missile
headed straight towards me.
The missile landed about 1.5 feet
under the lookout gap.
It threw us back against the wall
and we initiated our escape protocol.
My commanding officer
and my best friend in the squad
weren't so fortunate.
A week later, a missile
breached their post.
The squad started to fall, one by one.
We were the targets.
At this time we can relay
that an IDF soldier died this afternoon
from a direct hit by an anti-tank missile
at an IDF outpost.
Another IDF soldier was severely wounded
from a TAU missile at the Beaufort Outpost
in the eastern sector of the security zone.
In early 2000, a Hezbollah anti-tank sniper
managed to hit several outpost stations,
killing six soldiers in a short amount of time.
Sergeant Tzachi Itach, a 19-year-old
Yavneh native, was killed yesterday
and another IDF soldier
was severely wounded in south Lebanon.
I lost my signal operator
and Tidhar, my Communications Officer,
in one of those attacks.
I made the greatest sacrifice
any man could make.
Enough killing.
Get the boys out of Lebanon.
I hope Tzachi will be the last victim.
In front of the Tel Aviv offices
of the Ministry of Defense
there is now a protest watch
being held by members
of the "Four Mothers" movement.
Why are people dying for a place
everyone knows is completely useless?
How is this happening?
We call on the Prime Minister to find
a way to stop our losses in Lebanon.
Many medics are working
to contain the injuries
as they await the evacuation helicopters.
On the one hand, we had to combat
an enemy that was always learning.
On the other hand,
this was the first time people asked us:
"Do we really have to be
"Lebanon's last fatalities?"
The things we go through every day,
the tension,
the daily mortar attacks,
standing guard,
all these things are wearing us down
and the strain is becoming hard to bear.
A soldier got up and asked me,
"Say, the ones at the gate asked us
"why we were going out
to be the last fatalities in Lebanon.
"What should we tell them?"
Each of us is basically saying we don't
want to be the last fatality in Lebanon,
and we believe that in today's situation
we are not defending the country,
only exposing ourselves to danger.
If we're going to leave anyway,
why wait?
What do we gain from waiting?
It will only lead to another fatality or two.
They asked me,
"Why aren't we leaving today?"
They asked me, "If the past 18 years here
were so important,
"why are we leaving at all?"
And I had to answer.
And what did you say,
regarding those 18 years?
It wasn't easy.
It wasn't easy.
-It's a difficult question.
Yes, a very difficult question.
Very difficult.
Those 18 years were too long.
It should not have taken 18 years.
The decision should have been made
a lot sooner.
The security zone
lost its reason for existing
within the first five or six years.
I can even say I'm sorry
they didn't do it earlier than that.
Looking back on it now,
I think it was a mistake
and we should have developed
other methods
of defending the northern district.
If they'd examined this decision
at the end of each year,
and if they'd considered the price
we were paying for our presence there,
it may very well have happened sooner.
We would have left a lot sooner?
Maybe.
Leaders find it hard
to make the tough decisions.
Damn, look at that.
Look at them bombing.
We'll be back at the outpost
in 12 hours.
I hope we'll still have beds to sleep on.
The entire outpost was evacuated.
I hope we'll have something to return to
We began widespread efforts
to thin out our presence in the security zone,
in terms of both soldiers and equipment.
We're attempting to empty the outpost
of beds, mattresses, heaters, ammo.
Look at you.
-Hello. -What a dream.
What's up?
-How are you?
Great, how are you?
-You stayed tall.
What's up?
-Great.
It's good to see you, man.
-Good to see you, too.
Ran and Ofer were two junior officers
in the Nahal's anti-tank company,
and served at Outpost Gourd
during those uncertain months.
As part of our preparations,
we received a ton of mines.
Yehuda, how many lbs. is that?
Let's see how many mines we have.
Count them and you'll know.
Our mission was to place them
all over the place,
and we put them everywhere.
In the ovens, on the beds,
under the beds,
in the showers,
in the bunkers,
along the paths,
in the courtyard.
I remember the soldiers and I felt that,
you know...
What could we do?
We were sleeping on top
of 6 tons of explosives.
What could we do with that information?
If you stay in the occupied zone,
if you don't give yourselves up
and don't retreat with the occupying forces,
we will come at you with weapons.
There were clear signs
that the SLA had stopped functioning.
We gave them equipment and never got it back,
they failed to follow orders,
they were worried.
No one came to any SLA soldier and said,
"Listen, by June 30th the IDF won't be here.
"You'll get no support whatsoever."
The issue was avoided so they wouldn't despair,
so they'd have some hope.
We wanted them to hold fast
at least until we ran away.
Left.
Fares, pose.
20 days before the withdrawal,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak said to me,
"Look at me, officer to officer."
He banged his hand on the table.
"I will not move a single inch
without an agreement."
General Lahad later claimed
that you deceived him.
I never deceived him.
I didn't tell him every detail of our plan.
I couldn't tell them everything.
And he left for Paris.
I don't think he went there by accident,
because he didn't know,
but precisely because
he understood what we were saying.
Tell him that as soon as he's ready,
we'll bring our men down,
he'll take over the guard posts
and we'll switch.
A decision was made to start
handing outposts over to the SLA.
That sent the message that it was over.
And so one morning we woke up
to a procession of civilians
walking to Qantara, a faux funeral.
This is the procession.
It's being led by a member of parliament,
Hezbollah's representative
in the Lebanese parliament.
They've passed the UN barricade.
Then these processions began.
At first they began along the Ramim Range,
which was occupied
by the SLA's Shiite battalion.
Battalion 70 was essentially disbanded.
We can see these images
of their open progress in full daylight.
Outpost, personnel carrier, tank.
150 civilians came, with children,
and climbed onto the tank.
How could you use the tank then?
Who would you fire at?
The Hezbollah never came.
No one came with weapons.
They all came...
Allah hu Akbar! Hezbollah!
Our soldiers couldn't kill 50 or 60 of them.
One of those people could be their brother,
their sister.
Hezbollah!
What did your soldiers do, then?
Nothing. They ran home.
They got in their cars and left.
They knew it was the end.
-Yes.
The SLA's collapse happened quickly,
beginning with the central Shiite battalions.
Within 48 hours it spread almost to the entire
sector, catching the IDF unprepared.
We've lost Outpost Taybeh.
We've lost Outpost Qantara.
The only thing we have left...
are my guys.
The time is now 10:49,
and the end is coming.
Looks like this is the end.
We can see it now.
The entire section from Taybeh to Beit Yahoun,
essentially 25% of the security zone,
has been cut off.
And here comes
the Head of the Northern Command.
We'll hear what he has to say
to this press conference.
The collapse happened a lot faster
than Northern Command anticipated,
and so as soon as it began they said,
"Wait, let's do it now, immediately."
I said, "We can't do it immediately."
Barak decided to withdraw,
but delayed the order by 48 hours
in order to receive the UN's approval
for the new international border.
Meanwhile, the collapse continued.
This footage shows equipment
that the SLA left behind.
In all this mess, I realized the Liaison Unit
hadn't emptied the SLA outposts.
They were filled with tanks,
personnel carriers,
ammunition, weapons.
It was all taken as-is, including computers...
-Classified equipment? -Yes,
and mortars,
all taken by the Hezbollah.
Let's keep things in perspective.
Ultimately there are soldiers, and the SLA,
and then there's equipment, alright?
Even if it's classified? Or if it's ammo?
-There was no classified equipment.
The Hezbollah considered it a huge victory.
This was the first time Israel retreated
under fire from an Arab country.
Abdel Nasser couldn't do it,
Sadat couldn't do it,
Assad couldn't do it,
but Hezbollah did.
On second day of the withdrawal I woke up
to see that the entire SLA,
with their families,
had arrived at Fatima Gate.
People who'd partnered with Israel for years,
who fought side by side with IDF officers,
have arrived with only two suitcases
to stand behind the fence.
They came like refugees.
I worked with them for 20 years.
They covered me, I covered them.
They cried when they left.
They were standing at the gate
and Israel wouldn't let them in.
Afternoon at Fatima Gate.
This is all that's left of the SLA.
No convoy arrived at Outpost Gourd.
There was a lot of movement around us,
but no convoy reached us.
It felt as though we were alone there.
We heard birds chirping.
It was very pastoral.
As though we were alone.
Our orders were to wait until 11:00 PM,
and evacuate.
Blow up the outpost.
-Yes, at 11:00 PM.
And we waited for the order.
We stepped away from our posts,
which felt weird. Everything was empty.
At 11:00 PM the order was given,
and the outposts began to explode.
I sat there, some distance away,
with my earplugs,
we connected the wire and began to...
I had a detonator,
and I started detonating, so to speak,
and it didn't take.
I looked at the people around me.
The outpost hadn't blown up.
The Beaufort Outpost was up in the air,
I could hear the noise,
I heard the explosions
from every outpost around us,
it was already a few minutes past 11:00,
but Outpost Gourd hadn't exploded.
I was convinced the wires had disconnected,
and I followed the wires
to try and find the break.
There was mortar and missile fire
on the outpost,
but I kept walking along with the wire
to find the problem.
We made it all the way to the top.
Everything was connected.
I went back down
and called for a personnel carrier.
I said, "Come on,
let's connect it to the battery."
Meanwhile I kept trying the detonator,
and suddenly it worked.
That explosion...
You can't imagine what it was like.
Wow!
-Wow. -Oh man.
One by one, 18 years of memories
went up in smoke.
Hundreds of tons of concrete
flew up in the air,
from Basil, Crocus, Retama,
Galgalit, Beaufort and Gourd.
Fairy tale names
from a story that's long been forgotten.
To me, Lebanon is the people we left behind.
It isn't just a line.
We fought there every day,
every day and every night,
and the only times anyone
heard about what we were doing
was when something bad happened,
when there were casualties.
But in the end, it all stayed back there.
The losses were great,
but how many were wounded
during those 18 years, exactly?
It's difficult to say because no one
recognizes this sequence as a single war.
There's the First Lebanon War
and the Second Lebanon War,
and between them there's a void,
a war with no name.
Why is it a war with no name?
Look, failure is an orphan.
When you look back at all those needless years
spent inside the security zone,
this was not a successful war,
so obviously this failure is an orphan.
Mom! I love you, Mom!
Yeah, Mom!
I heard about the withdrawal on the radio.
Dad, take care.
I'll be back in Israel in a few hours.
Bye, Dad.
I called Orna, I called Zahara.
We got into the car
and drove to the border, to Metula.
Let's hope we never come here again.
I was beside myself.
It seems strange to say,
but I felt like I'd saved lives.
They yelled,
"Mom, I made it out of Lebanon."
Mom, I'm home!
Hold me close, Mom
We'll never be apart...
We arrived in Metula
to the beginning of a press conference.
Please sit down.
We're about to begin.
Good afternoon.
Today is a historic day.
On May 24, 2000,
the IDF has left the security zone.
It was a very rigid mindset,
that the security zone was a necessity.
That's what people said.
"We need the security zone."
I would expect various leaders,
Prime Ministers,
Defense Ministers and so forth,
to analyze the situation and conclude,
maybe after three or five or seven years,
that we needed to leave.
Rigidity starts somewhere.
Where does it start?
You get used to something,
and you grow afraid of the unknown.
You keep hearing the general consensus.
It's very hard to break away
from the consensus.
There's a very important lesson
to be learned here.
Rigidity comes at a heavy price.
It doesn't seem that way,
in the day to day it seems like a small payment
that you can always postpone,
but it comes at a heavy price.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you to the Chief of the General Staff and
the Head of the Northern Command. -I'd like...
to say one thing to you.
I'd like...
It's hard for me to speak,
and it's not every day that you meet
the highest ranking generals of the army.
I'd like to embrace
the army's commanders and soldiers,
the Chief of the General Staff
and the Head of the Northern Command,
who got the IDF out of Lebanon
without a single casualty.
I'd like to try and embrace
the families whose sons
could not return today
and call out, "Mom, I'm home."
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
What do you have to say to the women
of the "Four Mothers" movement now?