Saturday, July 22. 2006
By Alex Fishman (Ynet)
There are tough days when fighting. Not every battle ends in victory. People get hurt, helicopters are brought down, and ships are hit. Even Nasrallah's appearance Thursday, after 23 tons of bombs, is a blow to consciousness.
But there is need to make sure not to create a sequence of such blows to our consciousness, as they may affect the public's tolerance. Our neighbors, God forbid, and those nations who support us across the globe, should not get the false impression that perhaps we are unable to properly deal with Hezbollah. We must create a switch in consciousness, and we must do it fast.
In order to bring about this switch, we first of all must ask ourselves some profound questions. We must not have mercy. We must not be nice. But we have a habit: We don?t ask our commanders tough questions in times of war, because we don't want to hurt their morale.
This is a mistake. The defense minister and chief of staff have the right and duty to challenge the commanders, on all levels, with difficult questions. Otherwise, when will they fix the mistakes? After the war?
In the past couple of days there have also been quite a few supreme tales of bravery. During the Maglan unit's first battle at the Maroun al-Ras area, a medic who attended to an injured soldier was killed, while the paramedic who rushed to assist him in attending to the injured soldier was also killed. The injured soldier himself survived thanks to these two fighters' self-sacrifice and devotion.
On Thursday morning, a paratrooper from the anti-tank company was hurt after being shot by a sniper in his head. The rescue force that entered the area in order to take him out arrived on an airlifting with the Air Force's rescue and escape unit ? 699.
The pilot, under fire of anti-tank missiles and light weapons, did not give up. He floated over the injured soldier, risked his life, until the paratrooper was rescued and arrived at the hospital. In this case, the speed of the rescue determined the difference between life and death.
To this day, since the day the two reserve soldiers were kidnapped on July 12, 14 IDF soldiers have been killed in Lebanon. Twenty-four have been injured, two of them sustaining serious wounds. Most of the injuries are in the limbs. This may testify to the fact that personal protection of the chest and body does the job.
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