By Anonymous, Translated by Sol Salbe
The writer is a reserve Israeli soldier who took part in the ground manoeuvres in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip over the past year. His name is withheld by Haaretz.
The really surprising thing is the speed with which you find everything becoming so natural and logical. After a few hours, you try to force yourself to be impressed by the extent of the destruction, you catch yourself saying aloud things like “wow, this is crazy”, but the truth is, you get used to it pretty quickly. It gets banal, kitschy. Another pile of rabble. This was probably an official institution, those were residences, and this entire area was a neighbourhood. Whichever way you look — piless of iron, sand, concrete, and building blocks. Empty plastic bottles of Israeli Eden water and talcum powder. All the way to the horizon. All the way to the sea. The eye is drawn to some building that is still standing. “Why didn’t they take down this particular building?” my sister asked on WhatsApp after I sent her a photo. “And also,” she added, “what the hell are you doing there?”
Why I’m here is less interesting. I’m not the story here. And neither is this an indictment against the IDF. That has a place elsewhere, in editorials, in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in universities in the United States, at the UN Security Council.
What is important is for me to provide the vision for the Israeli public. To flood it with what I’m seeing. So that they won’t say later that they didn’t know. I wanted to know what’s going on here. That’s what I said to my countless friends who asked me, “Why did you go into Gaza?”
There is not much to say about the destruction. It’s everywhere. It pops up when your drone gets closer to what used to be residential neighbourhoods: a well-kept garden surrounded by a broken wall and a pulverised house. A dining-table, a swing. An improvised hut with a tin roof behind an alley. Dark dots in the sand, next to each other, apparently there was sort of a grove here. Perhaps olives. It’s the olive harvest season. And here is a movement — a man climbing a pile of rubble, gathering some wood on the footpath, smashing something with a rock. All from a drone’s perspective.
As you get closer to the IDF’s logistical routes — Netzarim, Kissufim, Philadelphi — fewer and fewer buildings are standing. The destruction is enormous, and it is here to stay. And here’s what you need to know. This will not be erased in the next hundred years. No matter how much Israel tries to conceal it, to blot it out, the destruction in Gaza will define our lives and the lives of our children from now on. Evidence of an unbridled rampage. A friend wrote on the wall of the war room, “tranquillity will be answered with tranquillity, the Nova will be answered with a Nakba.” IDF commanders adopted the text.
From a military point of view, destruction is inevitable. Fighting in densely populated urban terrain against a well-equipped adversary means massive destruction of buildings, or certain death of soldiers. If a brigade commander has to choose between the lives of the soldiers under his command and flattening the ground, an F-15 loaded with bombs will be on the tarmac at the ready at the Nevatim airbase, and an artillery battery will zero in on the target. No one will take any more risks, this is that kind of war.
The ability to fight in this way is made possible by the influx of munitions that the IDF receives from the United States, and the need to control the area by means of a minimal order of battle that is stretched to the limit. This is true for both Gaza and Lebanon. The main difference between Lebanon and the yellow hell around us are the civilians. Unlike the villages of southern Lebanon, the civilians are still here. They drag themselves from one combat zone to another, carrying tightly packed backpacks and jerrycans.
Mothers with children walk slowly along the road. If we have some, we give them water. The technological capabilities that the IDF has developed in this war are impressive. The intensity of fire, the use of accurate fire, and the collection of intelligence from drones. These give a counterweight to the underworld that Hamas and Hezbollah have built for years.
You find yourself looking from a distance for hours on end at a civilian dragging a suitcase a few kilometres along Salah ad-Din Road. The sun is blazing on him. And you’re trying to figure out: Is it an explosive device? Is this the rest of his life? You watch people walk around the tent compound in the centre of the camp, looking for explosives and staring at grizzly murals in charcoal grey. Here, for example, is a drawing of a butterfly.
It is clear to all of us, down to the last fighter, that the political echelon has no clue in hell as to how to proceed. There is nowhere to advance to, and there is no political ability to retreat.
All the roofs are poked full of holes from the bombardments. All of them have blue water barrels to capture rainwater. If a barrel is identified on the road, operations room should be informed with it marked as a possible IED. Here is a man baking the local bread. Next to him is a man sleeping on a mattress. By virtue of what inertia can life go on? How can a person wake up in such a horror and find the strength to get up, to find food, to try to survive? What future does the world offer them? Heat, flies, stench, stale water. Another day has passed.
I’m waiting for a writer to come and write about it, a photographer to document it, but there’s only me. Other combatants, if they have heretical thoughts, keep them to themselves. They don’t talk about politics because we’ve been asked not to, but the truth is that it just doesn’t interest anyone who has done 200 days of reserve duty this year. The reserve soldier system is crumbling. Those who arrive are already indifferent, preoccupied with personal problems or other matters. Children, dismissal from jobs, studies, spouses. Gallant was fired. [Prominent abductee’s mother] Einav Zangauker. The bread rolls with schnitzel have arrived.
The only ones here who are excited about anything are the animals. The dogs, oh the dogs. Wagging their tails, running in huge packs, playing with each other. They search for leftover food left behind by the army. Here and there they dare to approach the vehicles in the dark, try to grab a carton of cabanas, and are pushed away by a shower of screams. There are also a lot of puppies.
For the past fortnight, the Israeli left has been concerned about the IDF’s entrenchment in the Gaza Strip’s lateral routes. The Netzarim route, for example. What hasn’t been said about it? That it was paved, that it had five-star bases built upon it. That the IDF is there to stay, that on the basis of these infrastructures, the settlement enterprise in the Gaza Strip will be rebuilt.
I don’t belittle these concerns. There are enough crazy people who are just waiting for an opportunity. But the Netzarim and Kissufim routes are war zones, boundaries between huge concentrations of the Palestinian population. A critical mass of despair, hunger and distress. This is not the West Bank. The entrenchment in the route’s path is tactical, and more than for the purpose of civilian land grab, it is intended to ensure routine stay and security for worn out soldiers. The bases and outposts are made up of portable structures that can be dismantled and removed within a few days on a convoy of trucks. This can change, of course.
It is clear to all of us, from the war room commander to the last fighter, that the political echelon does not have a clue in hell as to how to proceed. There are no goals to move towards, no political ability to retreat. With the exception of Jabalya, there is almost no fighting. Only on the outskirts of the camps. It is also limited, for fear of the presence of abductees. The problem is political. It is neither military nor tactical. Therefore, it is clear to everyone that we will be called to another round of fighting and the exact same missions. There will still be reservists turning up, but fewer in numbers.
Where is the line between understanding the “complexity” involved and blind obedience? When do you earn the right to refuse to be part of a war crime? That’s less interesting. What is more interesting is when will the Israeli mainstream wake up, when will a leader arise who will explain to the citizens what a shameful business we are in? And who will be the first religious nationalist to call them a traitor? Because before The Hague, before the US universities, before the condemnation in the Security Council, it is first and foremost our internal matter, ours and that of two million Palestinians.
