[Marxism] Israel expected lesser foe

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-soldiers6aug06,0,7722186.story?coll=la-home-headlines
From the Los Angeles Times
WARFARE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Israeli Soldiers Expected Lesser Foe
On a break from battle, some express frustration about the campaign in 
Lebanon and surprise over the effectiveness of the Hezbollah force.
By Tracy Wilkinson
Times Staff Writer

August 6, 2006

TIBERIAS, Israel ? From his position in a Lebanese village, Israeli 
infantryman Alon Gelnik could hear the Hezbollah missiles exploding closer 
and closer, until one slammed into the ground just yards from him.

There was a flash and a jolt that threw him to the ground. Trembling, he 
crawled to safety, shouting every curse he could think of. He was unhurt 
but so shaken that the words came out in sputters.

"I was really freaked out," Gelnik recalled. A nearby soldier who was 
traumatized by the blast now hears whistling noises that aren't there; he 
won't be returning to Lebanon.

Gelnik, 20, is one of thousands of Israeli soldiers who have spent the last 
six days seizing villages in southern Lebanon. Exhausted, their equipment 
caked in dirt and sweat, several hundred with the Nahal brigade marched 
back into Israel on Saturday for a respite. Most are expected to return to 
Lebanon within a day or so.

With Israel's offensive dragging into its fourth week, many of these 
soldiers say they are encountering in Hezbollah an enemy more formidable 
than any they have fought in recent years.

And to hear some of them describe it, the ground war is not going quite as 
they expected. It is a slow, tough slog that has failed to stop Hezbollah 
rocket fire from scorching northern Israel.

They expressed frustration that Hezbollah fighters mingled with the 
civilian population, making them harder to find and root out.

Several Israelis also complained of weak supply lines that left their 
platoons low on food and without water in their last hours in Lebanon. One 
medic told of testing local water for poison because their own supply was gone.

Gelnik's unit walked all night to reach the village of Adessa, just a few 
miles over the border, and found a virtual ghost town. Street by street, 
they moved into position, taking over several old stone houses and girding 
for the Hezbollah attacks that would come.

"In the distance, you see the red lights and white flashes," said Ron Evan, 
21. "Then you hear the rockets, phooofff, phooofff. I was thinking 'Oh my 
God.' Then you feel the air waves, like a big shock."

Hezbollah, the soldiers said, mostly attacked from a distance, using 
rockets and sniper fire.

The soldiers said they found weapons stockpiled in some of the homes they 
seized. Overall, they said, they found Hezbollah to be a much more 
effective fighting force than the Palestinian militants they were more 
accustomed to confronting.

With the Palestinians, the fight is usually more of a policing operation in 
familiar territory, involving occupation and arrests with the occasional 
airstrike, the soldiers said, not the wholesale armored offensive required 
against Hezbollah.

"I realized we were fighting a real organized army," Gelnik said at a hotel 
near Tiberias, just off the Sea of Galilee, where he and his platoon were 
resting, reuniting with friends and relatives and taking showers. "These 
are people who know what they are doing."

The soldiers expressed great frustration that Hezbollah made use of 
civilian locations from which to strike, regroup and resupply.

"The lines are very blurred," said infantryman Jason Reich, 24.

Gabe Avner, 21, recalled seeing an elderly Lebanese woman carrying a sack 
of food from one house to another. He suspected she might have been helping 
a Hezbollah fighter. But he could not know for sure.

"Obviously I can't shoot her and have that on my conscience," he said.

Shmuel O'Neil, originally of Irvine, Calif., said the Lebanese house where 
he was positioned very nearly took a direct Hezbollah hit. With the sound 
of fighting all around, he hunkered down in his post, helmet on, weapon at 
the ready.

"The house is shaking as the noise of the explosions is getting closer and 
closer," he recalled. "You don't know how close it will get. They get 
really close. Will it do big damage or just scare the bejesus out of you?"

O'Neil, 20, and several other soldiers at the Tiberias hotel are part of a 
program that brings Americans to Israel specifically to join the army to 
fulfill their concept of a Zionist mission.

Hundreds of young Americans have taken part. They come without their 
families. Some are placed in a kibbutz or similar situation, and all end up 
in the military. After a three-year tour of duty, many stay as residents 
and Israel gives them financial aid with school tuition and housing.

O'Neil, who said one of his first acts Saturday after marching out of 
Lebanon was to call his mother in California, said he never imagined that 
he would be fighting in Lebanon when he joined the Israeli army two years ago.

"It was always something we joked about," said O'Neil, who comes from a 
military family and believes fighting for Israel is a duty to his faith. 
"That would be the big war! And now, damn. It's totally weird."

Brian Waxman, a member of the program from Queens, N.Y., said he was 
stunned by how entrenched and concealed the enemy was.

"I think the Israeli army was very surprised at the beginning," he said of 
their arrival in Lebanese villages. "You get there, and there are bunkers 
that we had no idea were there, with rockets being set off that you can't 
see where they come from.

"It is very tough. You say guerrilla warfare, and you think of a couple of 
guys who set something off. But these people are very organized."

Members of another unit of the Nahal brigade that took up position inside 
the village of Taibe, about halfway between the Israeli border and 
Lebanon's Litani River, said they were dismayed by the slow pace of 
operations. Two of them spoke on condition that their last names not be 
published, because they did not have authorization to speak to reporters.

"It's very frustrating," Assaf, a 21-year-old sergeant, said of fighting 
the Hezbollah guerrillas. "It is surprising that they are struggling so, 
and still standing. I didn't expect it. I thought it would be two weeks.

"We can do a lot more damage than we have done. I don't know why we don't."

He was especially upset to see the destruction wrought on northern Israel, 
where he is from. His friends have fled to Tel Aviv, he said; cows and 
horses have been killed by rockets, and lush, green fields have been 
scorched to black.

Amir, a 21-year-old medic, said the unit came under intense fire when it 
moved into the village at sunrise July 30. A few days later, Israeli tanks 
joined them, and that made a big difference.

"It gives you confidence to see the tanks around," Amir said. "You know you 
are not alone."

He described firefights with an often unseen enemy. His troops, he said, 
often called in airstrikes to kill Hezbollah fighters they spotted in the 
distance.

Like several other soldiers, Amir said food was low and water had run out 
by the last day of their weeklong mission. His platoon began drinking the 
local water, but only after testing to be sure it was safe.

Even though they were out of the combat zone, Amir and Assaf were in a 
hotel bomb shelter when they were interviewed. Hezbollah rockets pounded 
the nearby hillsides in the northern city of Kiryat Shemona.

In the hotel, barefoot soldiers in jockey shorts, delighted to not have to 
wear their combat boots, if only for a few hours, mingled with friends and 
munched on cookies and fruit. Some cavalierly sat by floor-to-ceiling 
windows. Others huddled in the stairwells, away from the bombardment.

Outside, an estimated 40 Hezbollah rockets fell around the city, injuring 
several people and setting fires in the national forest. Late Saturday, 
fires still raged on the hillsides.


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