THE WARS THAT DEFINED US - A FLASHBACK IN TIME: THE SECOND LEBANON WAR-BY YAAKOV KATZ

For every Israeli triumph over the past 70 years, there was unspeakable loss. The Jerusalem Post has dutifully chronicled those victories and defeats and their inevitable accompanying anguish. As such, here are reflection pieces from our reporters on the ground who literally dodged bullets so that we could understand the decisions being made, what was at stake, and tell the stories of people whose very lives were on the line.

It was the summer of 2007 and I was home working on my computer. I opened The Jerusalem Post website and came across a link that presented the paper’s front pages from the 34 days of the Second Lebanon War that I had covered and which had ended a year earlier. I clicked and started scrolling through the different pages. Each day had its stories. The front page of July 13 was a story I wrote about the IDF planning a massive assault on Lebanon in retaliation for the Hezbollah cross-border attack a day earlier during which eight soldiers were killed and two were abducted.

On July 19, five days after the Navy’s Hanit ship had been hit by a Hezbollah missile and four sailors had been killed, the Navy invited me to sail with another one of its ships patrolling Lebanese waters. The headline was straight to the point: “50 miles from Beirut, ‘We are in charge of the sea.’” There were also countless interviews – with IDF generals, the defense minister, soldiers, commandos and pilots. All leading up to the front page of August 15, the day after the cease-fire went into effect, ending the bloody and brutal conflict.

It was a flashback in time. Here I was, a year later, sitting in my office, looking back at one of the most intense periods in my journalism career. During the war, which I spent up North, there was no time to sit back and consider what was really happening. My job was to get the news and to report it. That meant racing along the border for briefings and interviews and making sure to be where the stories could be found.

Some moments were more intense than others. One Sunday toward the end of July, a military source tipped me off that IDF tanks were returning from Lebanon near the town of Metulla – located directly along the border – and that they had seen combat the night before with Hezbollah guerrillas. I decided to go there.

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Driving up north those days was like traveling through an endless ghost town. No one was on the roads and fires were burning on almost every other mountaintop, started by the Katyusha rockets fired into Israel.

I arrived in Metulla and the scene was like out of a M*A*S*H episode. Tanks were rolling back into Israel and dusty tank crew members, leaning out of the upper hatch, were catching cartons of cigarettes and food packages thrown from soldiers down below. For a moment, it seemed like a return from victory.

As I stepped out of my car, though, mortars began raining down. Wearing a helmet and flak jacket, I dashed for cover inside a nearby tank together with some other soldiers. After a few minutes, the mortar fire stopped and one of the soldiers suggested I run to my car and “get the hell out of here.”

I got my keys ready in the tank, dashed outside, jumped in the car, turned the ignition and floored the gas pedal. After a few moments, I noticed that my windshield was shattered, as were some of the car’s other windows. I stopped on the shoulder and saw that little pieces of shrapnel were wedged into the car frame.

I started heading south, thinking about what could have happened had the mortars started falling just a few seconds earlier. I remember thinking that I would be safer in Jerusalem where I could make some phone calls, follow the radio broadcasts and write from my office.

On the other hand, I said to myself, my job was to be up at the front, where the story was happening. Only this way, I knew, could I properly do my job.

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This commitment – of being on the front lines and covering news from where it is happening – has been a driving principle throughout my own career but also for this paper. Our reporters have covered Israel’s wars since the country’s inception 70 years ago. During the Six Day War, reporters were stationed on all of Israel’s fronts and during the Yom Kippur War, Jerusalem Post reporters were deployed with the IDF units that managed to push the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.

Our reporters have crossed enemy lines into Lebanon and Gaza and have joined IDF troops on late-night patrols and arrest operations throughout the West Bank. Our job has always been the same – to give our readers the most accurate and updated information possible. The only way to do that is by being on the front lines.

YAAKOV KATZ takes notes while waiting to take off in a IDF helicopter during the Second Lebanon War. (Credit: Courtesy)

At its 70th birthday, Israel finds itself in a unique position. There is no enemy today along our borders capable of conquering territory. As bad as Hezbollah is with its 130,000 rockets and missiles and Hamas with its tens of thousands of rockets and terror tunnels, neither enemy can conquer and hold onto, for an extended period of time, a single moshav or kibbutz along the northern or southern borders.

Israel’s peace with Egypt and Jordan might be cold, but it is durable and Syria, after seven years of a bloody civil war, poses challenges to Israel but is not capable of invading the country to try and reconquer the Golan Heights. Even Iran, with all the dangers it poses today, is still not yet an existential threat to Israel. Diplomatically, the country has never been less isolated as demonstrated by increased trade and diplomatic visits to Africa, South America and Asia.

The question, though, is what should Israel do with this reality? Should it hunker down and fortify itself due to the possibility that one day the threat matrix will change? Or, should it take advantage of its unprecedented power and strength and be more proactive in turning the region in a positive direction? These are the questions for Israelis as they begin their country’s eighth decade. As Theodor Herzl famously once said: If you will it, it is no dream.