5/10/24 Reading this exactly at the time we had to run down to our air raid shelter in central Israel because the Israeli Airforce wiped out Nasrallah and most of the Hezbollah leadership. Iran sent 180 rockets into Israel on 2/10/24 but nobody was hurt. 2 of our window panes were shattered.
The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” foreshadow the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Oleander are the code for dead soldiers. Pumpkin was 3 miles north of Beaufort a Crusader castle turned into an army base.
The group he was in was called the Fighting Pioneer Youth who understood combat was necessary but not concepts of "death before dishonor" or " no surrender" but rather "Lets get through with this "
Basic training is like marriage, inside its unforgiving intimacy and you can't hide who you are for long. Friendship is created in a platoon under great pressure, armies plan it this way knowing that this bond will keep men together is the lawless underworld of war, and will not run from enemy fire but go into it. Sargent's had them 18 hours on their feet and 6 hours in sleeping bag and again the next day. It was 1994 in the bushes of Lebanon but he armies clock was still 1973.
1977 and 1979 the Shah of Iran was overthrown and Kumauni brought the Islamic Revolution.
1980 to 1988 Iran / Iraq war.
1992 Nasrallah take over running Hezbollah in Lebanon, after Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in 1992.
June 1982 Israel fought a misguided war to support the Lebanese Christians and successfully drove the PLO out of Lebanon hoping to set up a friendly government. However the local Shiites set themselves up as the Party of God. Israel with drew to a buffer zone in Lebanon to protect her northern border.
1994 the Pumpkin Incident, Hezbollah terrorist ambushed and killed Israeli soldiers and had a cameraman filming it. The first of the "jihadi selfies" in this buffer zone. This took place at the same time as the Israel PM visited the Moroccan King.
1996 The Falcon Incident this is an unrecorded event at Pumpkin in which his friend died. The term Improvised Explosive Devises started here against conveys bringing and returning soldiers to their bases. The result was that they started flying them there at night by Helicopter.
1997 2 helicopters over Kibbutz Dafna soon after taking off, crashed killing 73 Israeli crew and soldiers. The soldiers in the unit that had been in the Falcon incident and the Helicopter crash had lost a third of number in 9 months and now knew this was a real war.
In Jerusalem on the mount of Olives is covered with graves of 150,000Jews buried over the millennia to be close to the Temple Mount . In a Jerusalem suburb is a mass grave of surrounded by rosemary bushes of Indian soldiers including fighter from Hong Kong and Singapore who died while fighting for the British against the Turks.
The kibbutz Ashdod Ya'akov had been one of the most successful agricultural communes before the 1950s but then there was a feud between the Stalinist and the moderate socialist and this tore the society apart and into split into 2 with a fence between them. Years later the next generation never understood what the feud was about.
Bruria from here was one of 4 mothers who protested to get the soldiers out of Lebanon. The subject of the buffer zone had never been debated, but once the loss of the 2 helicopters and 73 boys the price was too high. If nobody could make a decision Bruria would end the war. The war had never even been given a name.
Living in Pumpkin the author say he never knew any other surrounding so well where day or night they never took their boots off and it s view remains imprinted on the retinas of his eyes years later. They looked at the town Nabatieh with the monastery of St Antony the Cal-Tex gas station the al Ghoudour hospital and mosques and abandoned homes . The population was both Shiite and Christian.
In the army no matter where you were the religious soldiers would risk their lives to come to make the place Kosher for Pessach. Matza and other Pessach food would arrive and a seder was help with dinner for those not on guard duty.
1998 The most important event then was the World Cup in France and the few who like him were unfamiliar with the game took guard while the other watched the favorite team which was Brazil. Even Nabatieh was draped with flags of the teams playing. When Zidane a non practicing Muslim from Algeria scored they celebrated.
The outpost Red Pepper was manned by the South Lebanon Army a Christian militia allied with Israel. They had Soviet bloc material seized from the PLO fighters in the 1982 invasion. They allied themselves to Israel for protection against the Palestinians but by the nineties some lower ranks were Druze and Shiites who did it for the salary Israel paid in US dollars.
1999 A new left wing government promised to make peace with Palestinians and Syrians and to get out of Lebanon, even right supporters wanted this. The mothers protesting didn't talk of soldiers but children. Everyones children. A soldiers death is considered more tragic than that of a civilian. The army Education Corp warned that you must not let your political beliefs interfere with your duty.
Everyone knew the 4 mother by now and Hezbollah could fire rockets over the out post from deeper in Lebanon to hit Israel. The Palestinians had long gone but Hezbollah was supported by Iran and Syria. Iran wanted us inside Lebanon where they could hit us with their pawns. On the hill was a very wholesome life with not serious drinking or drug taking. There was a guitar and free books passed around. Instead of soldiers in trenches looking out you had TV screen with joysticks.
Trucks arrived bringing hundreds of disc mines that were safe until live detonators were added. They saw around them outposts Basil and Beaufort blow up. Hezbollah started firing at Pumpkin which was empty by now, tried to make a last effort against us before Pumpkin blew up.
The finger of the Galilee was clogged with armored vehicles coming south out of the security zone. Christian militiamen and their families were escaping to Israel.
2007 The movie Beaufort was made by Joseph Cedar on the abandoning of a outpost, unlike what the movie portrayal they functioned till the end.
He was thinking about travel after his discharge India and the far East where most Israeli youngster go after their 3 years in the army. Instead he studied at the Jerusalem University. Middle East and Arabic studies. He met others from the other outpost and they came to the conclusion that this was an error a decade of chronic pain that shaped us all. He now was not interested in politics but progressing in his own life
Israel then had a period of suicide bombing which was eventually dealt with and brought under control. Hezbollah wrote that what happened in Lebanon could happen in Palestine. This was when Iran started pouring money, weapons and advise to her proxies in the middle East. Any ideas of a compromise were shattered and amongst the Israel politicians.
2001 you had 9/11 and the American were at war in Afghanistan.
A Canadian friend visited him after a tour of Lebanon. With a clean Canadian passport he flew from Toronto to Beirut and was waved in with not problem. Beirut is a cosmopolitan city. He went to see the areas that he could view from Pumpkin and was driven around by friendly taxi drivers.
He enters into Lebanon as a Canadian tourist and had to hide throughout his visit 1) his Jewish identity; 2) his Israeli citizenship; and 3) his service to the IDF. The most powerful part is when he was on his way to the Pumpkin (the outpost where he was stationed in the 90s) in southern Lebanon, and remarks that he "had traveled 12,000 miles (from Toronto) to arrive 20 miles from" where his family's home was.
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