Israel Matzav

What happened at the 'house of death'?

I have a client who is currently in the IDF reserves sorting out the mess that took place in Lebanon this past summer. He told me - without names of course - of one incident (and it sounds like it may be one of many) where an elite IDF unit was ordered into a village in South Lebanon during the daytime, and the commanding officer refused to carry out the order, because the elite units operate only at night. This horror story from this past summer's war - which appears in today's Jerusalem Post - will tell you why.

"They should not have died, not like that. It didn't need to happen," said Ran, 24, his voice trembling as he described the bright blue morning a second Russian-made Kornet missile streaked over his head and slammed into a house 400-meters from his position. His fellow reservists were evacuating the casualties from a first missile strike on two-story villa they had commandeered when the missile struck the house and set off explosives inside.

Nine soldiers from a reservist paratrooper demolition regiment were killed and another 31 injured in an incident in the village of Debel southern Lebanon that has been dubbed "the house of death" and has come to symbolize all that was bad in the IDF during the recent war.

After the initial shock of losing so many of their buddies in the small village during fighting with Hizbullah on August 9th, Ran said the reserve paratroopers turned on their commanders and demanded: "How could you pack so many guys into one structure despite intelligence that Hizbullah was targeting IDF-commandeered homes with advanced anti-tank missiles?"

...

Though they were under strict orders to operate only at night, commanders ordered them to enter the ill-fated house that was isolated from the other structures as the sun was well over the eastern horizon, according to Ran.

"It went against everything we had been taught in our regular army service," Ran said. "Before we left on the mission, officers from Golani that had been in Bint Jbail warned us that Hizbullah was shooting RPG's and Sagger missiles into buildings," Ran said. "And the homes they chose just looked vulnerable because they were out there in the open."

According to the trendily dressed, athletic young man who now works as a bodyguard and studies in Tel Aviv, an officer from a combat engineering battalion working with the reservists refused to enter the homes for fear that the buildings were exposed on three sides to guerrillas believed to be in the vicinity.

The officer also feared that the troops' movements were detectable by guerrillas in the daylight, Ran said.

Last week, Yediot Aharonot also reported that the company's commander Maj. Gal Green was wary to enter the home, which was low and vulnerable, and instead asked to take cover in brush on the hillsides outside the village. Yediot also reported that military intelligence regarding an imminent attack against the reservists was even more precise than had been originally thought, but failed to reach soldiers in the doomed house in time.

According to the report, an intelligence unit obtained information about a Hizbullah cell preparing to launch missiles at the exact home soldiers had seized hours earlier. The report stated that the information was relayed to the northern command, but officials there said they did not receive the warning until after the first missile had been fired into the house, and it was thus deemed irrelevant.

Commanders from the reservist division who were in the field denied they received the tip in time to act, the report said.

The report in Yediot said 110 soldiers entered one house - a number Ran said sounded large too him, though he did confirm the ten homes commandeered were crowded, with over 50 soldiers in each.

"We were told to stay out of the windows and to be inside rooms that did not have exterior walls, but there just wasn't enough room - there were too many people."

Ran was sitting on the bathroom floor of his commandeered villa eating combat rations with four other soldiers when he heard the first explosion.

"I knew immediately there were dozens of casualties," Ran said shaking his head, his voice void of expression.

One has to wonder who was giving orders this summer - something Ehud Olmert and Amir Comrade Peretz don't want you to know. But whoever was giving them seems to have been utterly clueless about the way the IDF is supposed to operate. Sounds like Peretz, doesn't it? Read the whole thing.

Comments especially appreciated from anyone who has served in combat in the military (I was never drafted. In the US, the year I turned 18 was the year that they stopped the lottery. When I arrived in Israel, at the age of 34, it was at the tail end of the Russian aliya, and although I was questioned at the airport several times before I turned 40, the army only called for my car and not for me).

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:30 AM