وطن نيوز
Nadav saw soldiers breaking into homes and looting everything they saw. Gitai was there and froze. As for Elad, he felt disgusted by the destruction of the villages and swore not to return. Tomer asked his friends not to allow any officer to speak at his funeral, and Or, for his part, stopped carrying a gun for fear of hurting himself. These are five soldiers from a different background. They serve in the regular forces and reserve forces, in the infantry and armored vehicles. Some of them are fathers of children, some of them have recently graduated from high school, some of them were in Bint Jbeil, and others arrived in the Litani. But they all feel that the ceasefire is just an illusion, and that the security zone is a scar etched on their bodies. This is how they see their presence in southern Lebanon, in their own words. “The routine was set. Every evening after sunset, the mobile unit’s convoy would arrive. Its mission was to bring us supplies: food, oil, ammunition, everything we needed. But there was another unofficial mission, which was to seize the spoils. Unload them at the headquarters site, waiting for the fighters when they returned home. Of course, the mobile unit soldiers were not stupid. They were taking just as much of it for themselves. ‘Choose what you want,’ they would tell them. There was no shortage of what could be done,” he said. We looted it. The village where we worked was full of wealthy people, with villas with swimming pools, luxury cars, and jewelry. We entered the houses, opened them randomly, and then searched them. After making sure the area was clear, the real mission began – locating the valuables. It started with small things, and then it gradually increased. The soldiers carried carpets, bicycles, chairs, ovens, and entire stores on Hummers. You could hear them arguing This before?” “I already took a lot from the previous house.” But the crown jewels were not the houses, but the shops. The soldiers would come in and take all the goods: full boxes of sweets, cigarettes, cleaning supplies, and even stationery. One of them took a school bag for his son, another took a lathe, and even the laundry soap in the headquarters was imported from Lebanon. At any moment, soldiers could be seen walking around the village carrying civilian items. It appeared as if this was the main task. Most senior leaders didn’t care about this. The soldiers were looting even when the battalion commander was visiting them, and he completely ignored the matter and pretended that he did not see anything. One time, the battalion commander phoned and said: I remind you, we are in enemy territory. We must maintain operational readiness. If someone enters a store to take something, he should open it with great caution, as there may be dirty things (terrorists, author). This was the prevailing attitude – there is no problem with looting, the important thing is that no one gets hurt. The large army did not try to stop us, and there was never any military police presence at the border crossings. “I must admit that it did not bother me at first, but over time it began to disgust me. I came to ensure the security of the people of the North, not to steal. I tried to talk to the soldiers and argue with them, but no one would listen. There were those who said it was a religious duty and gave it a religious justification. Others said that everything would be destroyed anyway, so there was no need to leave valuables there. When I told one of the officers about this, he sighed and said that it bothers him too. But he said, “There is a shortage of soldiers and it is difficult to protest against soldiers.” They spent 400 days in reserve.” There is a feeling that the Israeli army has become like a Viking army, where they allow the soldiers to plunder to please them and continue fighting. “After the news spread in the media, they contacted us. “What happened here will stay here,” the company commander said. After a few hours, he entered the warehouses and began smashing everything so that the soldiers would not find anything to loot. Everyone got angry and pretended as if nothing had happened, as if they did not always return home with the trunk full of the things they had looted. There were sofas on site that we brought from Lebanon, the evidence is everywhere, but everyone got away with it. “I remember the moment when I knew that I could no longer bear it. This happened in the house where we were sleeping in Bint Jbeil at the end of March. The rain did not stop, and there was no heating. The cold seeped in and mixed with the sweat on my military uniform. I did not stop shivering. I tried to cover my face with a scarf, but to no avail. I remember that I started crying, but quietly so that no one would hear me. I was tired and could not move, I could not sleep. Rats were everywhere, climbing on us. We did not have much Let’s do it.” In the morning, I asked the company commander to stay at the site and not go to any activity, but he refused and said, “Are you stupid, you can’t stay here, everyone is moving forward, stop the nonsense.” The others laughed. It insulted me. I didn’t try to go out or go home. I was in crisis. “My friends rushed, but I froze in place. I felt like I was nothing. Every moment seemed like an eternity. There was a hail of bullets. I felt like I was losing my mind. I didn’t know what was happening around me.” After a few days, we got into a confrontation. A number of terrorists opened fire on us. My friends attacked with a volley of gunfire, but I froze in place. As I was looking for cover behind a wall, one of my earplugs fell out. There was a hail of bullets and I started gasping. I felt like I was losing my mind. One of my friends tried to talk to me, but I didn’t understand what he said. He grabbed me and pushed me to a safer place behind a building. After the accident ended, I learned that we had many injured people, three of whom were seriously injured. I felt guilty. “We didn’t have time to comprehend what happened. They didn’t stop shooting at us, shells and missiles. Explosions all the time. Then, the drones started. And that scared us even more. I couldn’t stop looking at the sky. When I left the house, I felt something strange. After a few hours, I knew that I no longer understood what it meant to move around in the world without hearing the sound of explosions and without fear. “My parents sensed that something was wrong. They asked me if I needed anything. But I did not have the courage to tell them what was inside me. They were really afraid that something bad would happen to me. My mother said: If something happens to you, I don’t know what I will do with myself. My little sister told me that she doesn’t stop crying when I’m not around. This affected me and broke my heart. “When we got back inside, I asked to meet the security officer. But they wouldn’t stop procrastinating, and said it was problematic and that I had to wait. I felt like everything was closing in around me, and that I couldn’t stay. I started to hate everyone, and I felt alone. Eventually, they took me for an interview. He asked me if I wanted to harm myself. He told me that I had to learn to breathe deeply. This made me feel very superficial, as if his only goal was to get me back into the fight and not to treat or help me. At the end of the meeting, he said he recommended I stayed out for another night, then came back and explained: It is important to maintain the continuity of the performance. I tried to explain that I was unable to do that, but he said: We will meet again in two weeks, and we will see if there is any improvement. I did not know what I would do. The soldier was not transferred to intensive psychological treatment under the supervision of the army’s mental health department until after Haaretz contacted the army. Elad (28 years old), a soldier in the reserve infantry brigade from the northern region. “A few hours before we entered Lebanon for the first time, the brigade commander came to talk to us and said: This is a historic moment. We will eliminate Hezbollah. There will be fierce battles, the terrorists are waiting for us. Some of you may not return. But the people of the north will be able to live here in safety, and that is thanks to you.” Everyone cheered. It seemed like a national ritual. I felt uncomfortable. I have seen this scene before – before entering Gaza, before the previous operation in Lebanon. The same promises, the same disappointment. “The same situation is repeated this time as well. There were no terrorists in the village we entered. The houses are empty. No fighting, but operations to demolish homes. This is the IDF in the last two years – the IDF to demolish homes. The news will talk about fierce battles and the destruction of terrorist infrastructure, but our mission was the same, which was not to leave any building standing, to demolish everything. Previously, you had to “criminalize” the building in order to demolish it, find a weapon in it and prove the presence of terrorists. But now They simply demolish schools and clinics, except for the cemetery. “They even stopped using explosive devices, as the officer explained that they are very expensive and less effective.” Instead, they used contractors with excavators (military excavators), some paid a daily salary, some based on the number of homes they demolished. There are no soldiers among them, they are all civilians, and it seems that they were not in the army at all. Most of them were settlers, Bedouins, or Druze. When I asked a contractor how that was possible, he said they were the only ones who agreed to do that. And we? Our job was to protect them. “Each company was assigned to a new compound in the village every day. We felt like we were in a race against time to destroy as many as possible. Every evening the officers had to submit a report on the number of houses each company had destroyed. They called it a ‘completion assessment.’ One time, we were ordered to stop demolition at two o’clock in the afternoon, but the contractor refused and said, ‘They promised me we would work until the evening.’ “I will not get out of here without demolishing more houses.” The leaders had to pray, even the squad leader, to convince him to stop. “For many of the religious people who were with me, this was a very difficult task. The battalion commander was the most extreme. He refused to return to his home, and the smile never left his face. As a die-hard fan, he was delighted that his team had won the championship after a twenty-year absence. He has become accustomed to saying, “What was will never be. What we destroy will never arise again.” When someone talked about returning to Israel, he would correct him and say: “This is Israel too.” “This is what disgusted me more than anything else. We would enter homes, some of which were still full of equipment and the remains of life. It was as if the owners had fled without having time to pack their belongings: pictures on the walls, clothes in the rooms, and furniture. It was breaking my heart. I felt uncomfortable. As if I was breaking into people’s homes and into their lives. Most of those who were with me did not care. They would enter and look for what could be stolen and looted. Sometimes, they were not content with valuables; They stole some souvenir, a small cup, a cup. Others enjoyed destroying and demolishing, or they opened the cupboard and scattered the cups and plates for no reason other than revenge. I told the leaders that they were pressuring me at my workplace to return, and that they were threatening to fire me, but that was a lie. I felt like I had to get out of there. When I boarded the convoy for the last time on the way back, I looked at Lebanon and swore that I would never return, and that it would be the last time.” Tomer (19 years old), a fighter in the “Givati” Brigade from the “Haron” area, says: “It is scary. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. When there is a clash with terrorists, you can step forward and hide. There’s air cover and armor, you can deal with that, but with marches, it seems like a matter of luck. Two drones exploded near my unit, but there were no casualties. The company commander spoke to us and said that this was due to good operational discipline. But it’s really shameful. If we had gone back a few meters, we would have died or we would have ended up in Ichilov Hospital without a leg. I kept ringing in my ears after one of the explosions, and they wouldn’t let me see a doctor. “We have to tell the truth. Our basic feeling in the field is helplessness. We are asked to obey instructions, wear protective equipment and not take off the helmet. But the officers, in the end, have no practical solutions. They say that we have to use ‘flashlights’, soldiers who stand like idiots on a hill and look up if something is coming. Is this the solution offered by the army, which has hundreds of combat aircraft and large budgets? How can we stand for hours and maintain the highest degree of concentration? Simply put, this is inhumane. We feel that they do not care about us.” “After a few weeks, they brought us a system that was not working well. Even with the Pegion device (a smart electro-optical scope), we often do not hit the target. They say that there are many attempts and they ask us to deploy networks, but it is impossible to deploy them in the entire region. A clergyman reads a chapter from the Psalms daily, and that’s all we have left, prayer. When We talked to the officers about this, they told us that it is better to get hurt than the civilians in the north. I think they are right, but it is scary and disappointing. “Three men from my unit wrote their will. I wrote a farewell letter to my parents and left it in a file at the post office. One night we talked about what we would say at a funeral if one of us died. It was like a joke, but a little serious. The most broken soldier, the one who complained whenever he needed to do something, asked me: “Tell them that I love the country, that I was an artilleryman, and that I always volunteered so that my father would be proud of me.” As for me, I said that I would prefer a quiet funeral in which only my parents would speak, and perhaps my brother, and nothing more, without all this indoctrination from the officers. I hate that.” Tom Levinson Haaretz 5/20/2026
