Samuel Zakai enters as a young fighter in the first Lebanon war • Moshe Kaplinsky was wounded in battle over Beaufort • Yair Golan fought in Lebanon even before 1982 • And Moshe (Chico) Tamir counts thousands of dangerous operations over two decades • Four senior commanders talk about failure of concept, 20 years to exit From Lebanon

• Yair Golan

  Photo: 

  Yoav Galai, in the camp

Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi will do well if he adopts the recommendations of the commission appointed, and gives a signal of the IDF's war years in southern Lebanon. It would be a late justice for historical injustice, where the obvious - the term between the "peace of the Galilee" and the withdrawal from Lebanon as "war" - was avoided.

For Major General Kochavi and his contemporaries, designed in the years of Lebanon, it was a war for everything. "War without a signal," Brigadier General (Res.) Moshe (Chico) Tamir read in his book, which described the IDF's past in those forgotten years It may have been the second intifada that immediately broke out and pumped Israel into a bloody battle, and perhaps the desire to forget and forget, but for a whole generation Lebanon was and still is the event that defined his years of service and maturity.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the catharsis that erupted with the establishment of the Facebook group "Stories from Lebanon - what happened in the posts". Tens of thousands of soldiers shared stories, pictures and memories from Lebanon, some difficult; For years, they waited for a moment when their "war" would get the place it deserved, and when they did not win it, they would produce it themselves.

One of the charms of this group is the lack of classes. Senior officers are crucified with corporals; Junior soldiers criticize the commanders who sent them to risk their lives. Over the years, everyone was "my brother," and they all had the same goal, which hung on the wall in each of the posts and sounds like an archaic advertisement today: "Protecting the Northern Settlements."

In retrospect, it turns out, almost everyone was in favor of leaving Lebanon. Or so, at least from the now-published 20-year-old article and movie. "I die for all those who look back 6/6," says Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai. "It is a pity that in real time they did not see beyond their noses."

Much more than terrorists

The truth is that in those days, only a few officers thought they needed to leave Lebanon. "Even in the two days before the retreat, I thought that we should not withdraw," says Maj. Gen. (res.) Moshe Kaplinsky. "I admit that I was part of this concept, which may have been because we were busy most of the time fighting. We did not ask if we were right, but how we can do better and win."

Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan believes otherwise: "From '86, I thought we had nothing to look for there, but when I came to command the Eastern Brigade at the Yakal it was clear to me. I remember a meeting in late '96 with then-commanding general Amiram Levin and senior commanders of the JCL. We told him we had nothing to look for there. The Lebanese are afraid to talk to us, that the number of defections in the SLA is growing, that everything is falling apart. He said 'I understand. You need to go on an extensive offensive operation and then return to the border line so that it doesn't look like we've run away. ' It did not happen. The IDF leadership was captivated by the concept that must be there to protect the north. "

This concept seemed logical: the security zone was a continuation of the Lebanon war, which was intended to stop the terrorist attacks by the Palestinian organizations in the northern communities. It is intended to create a buffer between the terrorists and the residents of the north. Its supporters point out that there were indeed no terrorist incursions into localities in all the years of the security band's existence; Opponents say that Israel missed one significant change: Hezbollah, which rose to prominence, was not interested in penetrating Israeli communities. Unlike the Palestinian terrorist organizations, he focused on the IDF and acted on his expulsion from Lebanon.

"We had to change tactics when Hezbollah became the main enemy," says Tamir. "Hezbollah used the security band to weaken Israel, and succeeded. We played into his hands, and we did more harm than good."

And still, the IDF devoted itself entirely to fighting. Officers competed for the positions, units fought for the right to serve in the security band, soldiers wanted to go to operations "to kill terrorists." Unlike the policing activities in the Occupied Territories, Lebanon was the real thing: a war across the border, against an enemy that improved and stationed Significant operational challenge.

The problem was that this war only occupied the army itself, or more precisely: the parts of it that served in Lebanon (and their parents). The public's head was in the intifada, then in the hopes of the Oslo Accord and the terrorist attacks that followed. "At that time, there was Israel up to Kiryat Shmona, and the one who is conscientious about it," says Tamir.

"Even within the IDF, Lebanon was not the most important thing," Zakai says. "The army continued to focus on Syria as if for a moment there would be a war out there, and did not allocate sufficient resources, resources and even enough training for Lebanon." Tamir agrees: "Only when Amnon Lipkin-I Play was appointed chief of staff, Lebanon became the main thing. Until then, the IDF treated the enemy as terrorists - first Palestinians, then Shiites. Amnon understood that it was a war, that the enemy had become guerrillas and that we had to put in that war everything we had to win. "

At that time, a walnut unit was established (Tamir was the second headquarters) and the IDF gained quite a few achievements against Hezbollah. Zakai was sent to learn from the British about guerrilla warfare, and Kaplinsky was integrated into a team designed to bring the IDF's intelligence benefits to the intelligence arena. Along with Commander Levin - a specialist in operations and out-of-the-box thinking - the IDF replaced a floppy disk, but that was not enough. The reason: A tragic sequence of events - the helicopters, the fire, the cruise - that put Lebanon to the top of the agenda from the most public point of view - the casualties .

In a short time, Lebanon became a "swamp" in the public consciousness, and the fighters became "ducks in range." Each event was defined as a "disaster", and the soldiers as "boys" or "children". "We didn't stand a chance," says Kaplinsky. "Our successes, and there were quite a few of them, no one was counting. We were only judged by the disasters."

The IDF resented. Zakai called the organization four mothers "four rags", and Brigadier General Erez Gerstein - one of the prominent commanders killed in early '99 from a Lebanese bombing - claimed that the protest harmed soldiers and the IDF's ability to win.

It didn't help. Public opinion intensified, and the inevitable result was that the IDF began to rage. The activity was no longer examined in terms of results and achievements, but only in casualties. Kaplinsky: "We went and got better. The posts became entrenched and the caravans became endless, and at the same time, we endlessly restrained ourselves.

A year before the retreat, a number entitled, the General Staff came to the discussion in Division 91. "I told them: Get us out of here because you stopped believing in this war," he recalls. "You lock us up in positions and do not approve operations just because you are scared. Instead of us initiating and Hezbollah defending, he is chasing us. You cannot win the defense."

The fate fell when the politicians who ran for the 1999 elections pledged that they would win - leaving the IDF from Lebanon. "Then I also realized that the business was finished," says Kaplinsky.

As always, there was a personal element as well. When Gerstein was killed, the sky fell on them. He was not only a close friend of Kaplinsky, entitled and Tamir. The realization was that if he - the immune and omnipotent symbol of fighting in Lebanon - was killed, it would seem that the war in Lebanon was truly futile. 

"Strategic failure" 

They are the face of the war years in Lebanon and its price. Kaplinsky, who was wounded when he led the Golani Patrol to the occupation of Beaufort in '82 and closed a circle when he commanded the Galilee design on the retreat; Zakai, who entered as a young soldier in the First Lebanon War and last time left Lebanon as a Golani Brigade; Tamir, who did thousands of operations in Lebanon and in 2000 commanded the "Hiram" (769th Brigade) designation on the northern border; and Golan, who had been there before the First Lebanon War, was wounded The Eastern Division, and at the time of the withdrawal, was the Chief of the Operations Department of the General Staff.

They acted best they knew. Everyone admits they loved the war, the challenge, the action. "An army must look for friction. An army that does not fight loses it," Zakai says, and Tamir adds: "Lebanon has provided us with a real operational occupation better than Yeshua's police occupation. The territories create an identity crisis for the army; In Lebanon, that was the real deal. "

But even against this "real thing" the IDF has lost orientation. Kaplinsky points to three main reasons: the processes Hizbullah has undergone, public criticism in the country, and the IDF's burial for fear of casualties. "They have evolved, learned lessons and learned all our weaknesses and exploited them," he said. "We were shrinking. Suddenly every soldier was the child of us all; a girl killed by Katyusha interested the public less than a soldier killed. We got confused."

Golan believes that the IDF's cables themselves - guided by the political echelon - made the mission impossible. "In 1993, as a commander, I led a tour of the Sharif to Khardon. When I transferred all the power in the wadi that marked the Red Line, I asked the soldiers : 'Do you feel anything different?' Of course the answer was 'no.' We were all crossed by Eddie. That line was fiction, handcuffs we put on ourselves. "

"Instead of taking petty warfare, targeted assassinations, raids, cargo laying, we invented new combat teachings," Zakai adds. "Who heard that fighting guerrillas with artillery fire?"

The inevitable result was that Hezbollah gained security, became professional, developed the Mukwama ideology (resistance) and became a Lebanese defender. "From a military point of view, no organization like Hizbullah has developed in the world," says Tamir. "The capabilities he has developed - from suicide bombers and inferno cars to missiles and rockets - are unprecedented."

The IDF saw it happen and fought to change - from the inside. Forever. But Israel's strategist lost. "The political echelon has not been under pressure," Zakai says. "The role of the military is to fight and protect the state and civilians. We suddenly found ourselves in a position where civilians protect the soldiers. It's a moral distortion."

Although the public campaign removed the IDF from Lebanon, it also left quite a few damages. The soldiers' blood became blushing with civilians; the IDF discovered increasing hesitation in exercising power; Israel was seen as abandoning its allies, Christians in southern Lebanon; And at the strategic level - in Lebanon a monster has emerged. Zakai: "When we were in Lebanon, Hezbollah had a local problem that a division and a half were dealing with, and today is a threat that the entire country is concerned about.

Golan also believes that Lebanon is an example of Israel's security policy being "medium-minus", as defined. "In general, our conduct in Lebanon was dumb. With our own hands we built a huge front. At the tactical level the IDF fought and improved and learned, but at the strategic level we failed."

Kaplinsky believes the lesson is far broader than the Lebanese case: "We tend to stagnate. If things are calm and successes then say 'why change'. And if hard and fighting then refuse to change so they don't say we escaped and succumbed to pressure. That causes paralysis, which is what happened to us in Lebanon. Until Ehud Barak stood up and made a leadership decision. "

Take the retreats out of the bush

The consensus today is that they should have left Lebanon, and that Israel should have done this before. "The main responsibility that this did not happen is the military," Golan says. "He thought of concepts that were no longer relevant, and continued to sanctify them."

Tamir believes that Israel missed the opportunity when the enemy changed from Palestinians to Shiites. "That was the moment when we had to ask what we were doing there and if staying in Lebanon served us," he said. "It didn't happen, because very few people realized it in real time. The main thing was an enemy you could fight."

Anyway, Tamir adds, judgment is the wisdom of hindsight. Real-time people looked at the mission and threats: "If we backed down and a few weeks later there was a terrorist attack on the settlement and Israelis would be murdered, what would they say?" Kaplinsky admits that this was also the way of thinking - and perhaps the defense mechanism: "We believed Shaw Wei, what would happen if we left."

Zakai believes that judgments from time to time embellish reality. "Let's see what we've had since we left Lebanon: two abductions with five killed soldiers, several incidents of miracles that did not end in kidnapping, several more attacks, the Second Lebanon War, and an intifada with a thousand casualties that broke out as the Palestinians also thought we were weak because we escaped from Lebanon."

Worse, Zakai argues that the current public discourse is dangerous and harmful: "If you think an army ethos can be built on retreats then we have an international patent here. Ethos build on professionalism, determination and valor. Victories. Retreats are interpreted in the Middle East as weakness, and weakness is paid here. Dear. It's hard for me with this discourse, which today says that staying in southern Lebanon was unnecessary. What do the soldiers who risk their lives there, or the bereaved parents who lost their sons there - think it was just? "