Thoughts On The War (From 1/29/09)

Many people have asked me what the war in Gaza was like, so here seems a good way to answer a number of you together and in proper detail.

For a long time now, I’d been wondering what it feels like when a war starts. To be at Pearl Harbor or the German-Belgian border in 1914… Not that I wanted there to be a war, I was just curious what it’s like the moment peace (of whatever sort) switches to war. I was guarding Gaza for something like 7 months, and there were many times when it seemed something was going to start, but it always either calmed down or turned out to be nothing.

We finished our new unit’s training at the end of December, and were supposed to get a long weekend (meaning 2 days) off, especially as we had closed the previous one (during training you get a lot more chances to go home), before heading up north for training and exercises with the entire brigade. Instead, they told us we were heading back to our base outside of Gaza because they were afraid something would happen.

We got back to Kissufim Thursday afternoon, unpacked and arranged all of our equipment and got settled in for what we expected to be a couple days of sitting around doing very little before heading up north. To our surprise, the next day my officer came up to a few of us and told us we’d be spending the night in the field, trying to catch a sniper who’d been shooting at our patrols. We got excited for it because we saw it as our last chance to do something in Gaza, plus I’d be going with some good friends from another platoon whom I know work well and I can trust.

Surprise again, that evening we were told that Israel was giving Hamas a 24-hour “test” to see if they’d go for a new cease-fire. Meaning for us that we had absolutely no permission to fire guns, even if there was a terrorist standing on the fence with two Kalatchnikovs and an explosive belt. No opening fire whatsoever. So we went back to expecting a day or two of very little to do and then leaving the area.

Saturday morning I was hanging out with Jared and Rami, two Americans with me, when the base shook and we heard a number of very loud explosions. I was convinced the kibbutz we were attached to had been hit, and we all ran to grab our equipment and find out what to do.

Over the course of the afternoon, we learned that it was our air force that attacked Gaza after they fired a rocket at us, and that something was on. They told us we’d be entering in the next day or two, and to take just what we’d need for the next week - everything else would catch up with us.

We headed to a large base somewhere in the area and began preparing equipment, learning our assignments, and so on. It seemed like every morning they’d give us a new plan for how we’d go in the next day, then every night we’d be told it was put off another day and there’s another new plan. We used the time well, though. We fixed up all the equipment, did some important last-minute training, and even got to see friends we hadn’t seen in a long time (all the infantry who were going in were at the base together).

Plus, we were drowned in donations. They constantly distributed candy, gloves, phone chargers/batteries, and all sorts of random things. People came to visit, including the President of Bed, Bath, and Beyond - turns out he’s also in charge of the American side of the Friends Of The IDF organization, and Avigdor Kahalani (A very famous soldier - it’s could be argued that if it wasn’t for his incredible work during the Yom Kippur War, the State of Israel wouldn’t exist today). They came specifically looking for American soldiers, so I talked to them for a bit, they filmed me and some of my friends, and were very nice. To be honest, talking to Kahalani relaxed me more than anything else - I realized that almost no matter what happens, it can’t be worse than what he went through, and he made it out (of course, I tried to think about him rather than all the other guys who had been with him)

Finally Friday night, the commander of the Paratroopers gave a speech to all of us. For the whole week, we’d been discussing and questioning if we’d go in at all or they’d just cancel it in the end. Once the commander got up, I was convinced it was going to happen. The IDF is required to follow Jewish law anytime there isn’t a valid reason to break it, and one of the rules is that you can’t use microphones or speakers on Shabbat. So if the Paratrooper’s rabbi was watching the commander speaking into a microphone on Friday night, it had to be something big.

Saturday afternoon we all got onto buses to head to yet another base just at the edge of Gaza. We did some last-minute organizing of bags, had another speech by the batallion commander, and started walking.

As we were going in, we were preceeded by the helicopters. We quickly got used to the loud blast, buzz, then a flash off in the distance as they fired their rockets. Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sun Is Burning” kept going through my head:
Now the sun has come to earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash

After several hours of walking with my incredibly uncomfortable bag, we finally made it to our hill. We began digging our holes and setting up equipment. I don’t know how to say my unit’s job in English, but basically we watch through binoculars to find the enemy as well as aiming mortars/helicopters… So in general, we are a bit away from the action.

At some point while we were setting up, my officer came over to me and said, “Matt, we got a report that they’re sending a suicide bomber at us. It’s your job to find and kill him.” I got myself ready and started looking around, terrified and trying not to think that everyone with us’s lives depended on me finding someone trying to sneak up to us in the middle of the night. After a while they decided no one was coming, so I went back to digging holes.

That night was by far the scariest time of my life. Lying down and trying to sleep, while realizing that no matter how hard I worked and training, the only thing keeping me alive was the random chance that their mortars would miss my hole.

Over the first few days, though, you learn to get over it. There’s nothing you can do, and in any case, they didn’t hit anywhere near us. We just went about our day, taking turns looking through the binoculars and trying to sleep when we could. The real problem turned out to be the cold. Our boots are designed so they let in cold and keep our heat. That works well in the summer, but when it’s January and you can’t feel your toes 10 hours each day, it’s another story. We did everything we could to keep them warm - one person put an empty sandbag over each boot then stuck them into his backpack, I first put my feet into my bag and then put some extra clothes over them… nothing really helped, though.

We only had one big event in our first spot. We were sitting around one afternoon, when we saw something come out of the sky towards my commander’s hole and dirt burst all around (he was behind a bank of dirt, so we couldn’t see exactly what happened). Levi yelled, “They hit Vlad!” and we all held our breath as our officer ran to see what happened. Vlad was standing in his hole in shock, with a tank shell literally a meter away from him. We still have no idea how it didn’t explode. People shot guns at us a few times, but we were safe in our holes and they never made it close to us.

After a few days in our spot, we got news that we were finally leaving for a new location. Happy to finally go somewhere new, we hiked over, climbed up a steep hill, and realized whoever sent us forgot to mention there were already people there. Again, we were lucky they didn’t shoot us, but we got things settled out quickly. It was another Paratrooper unit, so we saw ran into some friends who had been doing basically the same thing we had, and we began again setting everything up.

The next day the other unit left and we were in the same situation we had been in previously, just with a new view. We had several more days of frozen feet, until we were told on Friday night (everything in the war seemed to happen on Shabbat) that we’d be going into the city.

We’d been told that it was harder for everyone who was inside the city, that they were warmer but almost never slept, constantly moved from house to house… After some moving around and walking ourselves, we got to our first house. This was a mansion, just with absolutely no furnishings - no beds, chairs, rugs, windows… We spent the night with an exhausting guarding schedule as tanks and one of our companies attacked some buildings a few meters away from us. We weren’t too happy with the tanks after they tried to kill Vlad, and they weren’t helping things by nearly destroying our eardrums with their non-stop blasting.

Shortly before dawn we headed back to the first house we had briefly stopped in, and then to a new house of our own. All of the buildings we saw and entered had been cleaned out well before by advance units, so there was never any danger of people being inside, traps, or any of that.

We basically spent the rest of the week changing houses once a day or so, and as usual, looking through binoculars. But unlike what we had been told, we slept quite well. At least, as well as you can with a bulletproof vest and combat vest on, not to mention being in the same uniform you’d been wearing for four weeks straight.

Once again, we had our one bit of excitement when just before leaving a house, someone turned on a flashlight to make sure they didn’t forget anything. Immediately there were two cracks and a couple of bullet holes appeared a few centimeters from my officer’s head. Thankfully we already had everything ready, so we quickly finished up and got out.

Finally, early Sunday morning we were in yet another house, getting instructions on where to guard and all, when our officer ran upstairs to us and told us to forget all of that, there’s a ceasefire and we’d be leaving in 20 minutes. Things took a bit longer to work out, but we were excited. We could finally leave and hopefully go home sometime in the near future. No more hurting ribs from the vests or having to get up every few hours to guard.

The walk back would normally have been incredibly difficult, but we were too excited and exhausted to care that much. We had a six kilometer hike along the coast (very much along the coast - I got water in my boot a couple times). I wasn’t too sure on the plan, and kept thinking about one of our briefings back at the last base, when they told us how the beaches were all mined, but we made it out alright.

We entered the nearby base as dawn broke and felt we could finally breath. My company commander gave me his phone so I could call my parents - I hadn’t talked to them since Kissufim. We took off our equipment finally and had something to eat. After several hours we went back to the big base to be ready in case the ceasefire didn’t hold. Finally, on Monday evening after something like 38 straight days in the army, they let me go home, and tomorrow morning I have to be at this base up north.

I’m still somewhat unsure how I feel about the whole thing. On one hand, it was planned and carried out incredibly well - we expected lots of tough fighting, many people killed… but between the air force and the Paratrooper Commander’s brilliant entrance plan, nearly everyone ran away. We saw maybe 5-10 “bad guys” the whole time, and I never once fired my gun, neither of which I’m terribly sad about.

I have no idea how things were outside of Israel, but from what I’ve heard, the whole country really came together during the last few weeks. They understood it was necessary and this time, unlike in Lebanon, we were ready and knew what we were doing. Everywhere I go, I see banners and billboards encouraging the soldiers and wishing us luck and love. I find it slightly odd - those of us who were actually in the war and (I assume) were the intended targets of these had no way to see or even know about them. But still a very nice gesture.

From my friends, I am amazed by the care and concern. I turned on my computer and was flooded by messages from friends making sure I’m alright, people constantly left messages on my phone the whole time I was inside (which I never saw since they were deleted as being too old before I even got out). Darby in particular - like most of my friends, I talk to her very infrequently since I started the army, but she was so worried between what she saw on the news and that I hadn’t updated Facebook in weeks, sent a letter to Wheaton asking if they’d heard anything and even somehow found my parents and kept up conversation with them. To all of you, thank you so much. It all means a huge amount to me.

As for my personal reaction, I hated it. I didn’t like the idea of war beforehand, and like it even less now that I’ve seen some. I couldn’t get over how much effort, time, and money are put into nothing more than destruction. You see families’ homes with giant holes in the walls, doors broken in…

Don’t get me wrong, though. As I said, this was necessary to do. I don’t consider the war to truly have started in January, but rather years ago when they started shooting rockets into Israeli cities and towns. As they say, there is only one reason to go to war - when they attack you first and you have to defend yourself.

As a final point, I’d also like to register my disgust with what I saw on the other side. I’d always heard how everyone in Gaza lives in poverty, they have nothing, it’s terribly overcrowded… We stayed in the houses of people from Hamas, and of you would be happy to switch homes with them. Mansions and villas larger than any house I’ve seen to in America, beautiful apartments, great views of the sea and expansive private lawns, expensive SUVs, imported furniture, fancy computers… while the regular people, those not in Hamas or some other terrorist group live in shacks without even a bathroom. And the Hamas guys don’t care at all. Even during the war, they forced children and families to stay with some of the higher-ups in order that they could shoot at us without us shooting back.

One final thing that confused me - I didn’t see a single paved road. I have no idea why. Even next to the mansions, every road was dirt. If someone can explain, please do.