Operation ‘Protective Edge’
A Personal Account
By Shaliach Roi Yair
As some of you already know, before coming here I spent most of my last month in Israel on reserve duty around the Gaza strip. With operation ‘Protective Edge’ now in the books, hopefully for good, I
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would like to share with you some of my personal experiences from that time.
My battalion was called up on a Thursday evening. It caught me during the preparation seminar the Jewish Agency holds in Jerusalem every year for its new Shlichim. I went home, grabbed a quick meal and some clean clothes, and set out.
We were told to arrive at a certain location, where we boarded buses that took us to our storage unit, located up north. By the time we got there it was already midnight and we knew we had a long night ahead of us.
By 4:30 a.m. we were issued all of our gear including our weapons, combat vests and backpacks, and were working to customize everything that was needed. We were told to grab a couple of hours sleep and expect buses to take us down south at around 8 a.m.
After a few hours delay, we departed for our training base in the Negev, still a considerable distance from the Gaza strip. The long drive ended at about 3 p.m, and we wasted no time heading straight for the shooting range. We spent most of that day zeroing in our rifles and scrubbing off some rust, as most of us haven’t touched a firearm for at least five months.
Our Shabbat meal that week consisted of combat rations containing canned tuna, corn, beans and peanuts to go along with dried biscuits. Training was stopped for an hour to allow for a short service and dinner, and went straight on afterwards, focusing on shooting in the dark.
The day ended at around 11 p.m, after a short training maneuver from the shooting range back to base. We were gathered for a short conversation with the battalion commander, who told us we were to spend the next day at an urban warfare training facility, and we should expect a mission on Sunday night.
We did spend Shabbat training at this facility, but on Sunday, command decided to delay our mission by 24 hours. Tension levels dropped a bit and we used Sunday to hone in our skills and better study the details of the mission.
Monday, around noon, we were moved to the "gathering grounds" where we were set to prepare for the mission. The gathering grounds are fields a couple of miles away from the strip, where infantry, armor, and combat engineering forces make their base before heading inside Gaza. Our mission was eventually aborted and we ended up spending most of the next two weeks on these grounds, preparing for a new mission every day or two, only to have it, too, delayed and then aborted.
A Nation Unified, If Not United
But the focus of my story is not the frustration of being ready to go and having the mission aborted, nor is it the dangers behind becoming complacent about the preparation process after so many aborted missions. What I want to tell you about is the feeling I got on these gathering grounds, the feeling of having the full extent of the Israeli people, and the Jewish nation, at our backs, propelling us onward.
It started small. A van came by and dropped off a couple of boxes of snacks. It was a nice addition to our combat rations, and we were all touched by the effort of the guy driving it down to us, especially after hearing about the first Israeli casualty – an Israeli citizen who was hit by a mortar as he was delivering food and equipment to soldiers on one of the bases around Gaza.
But as we soon found out, people were not deterred at the slightest by that incident. We had people coming over from as far as Tzfat. Some brought food, some clean underwear and some just came to visit friends and help pass the time. Within a day we had everything we needed and much more. Trust me; nobody in the battalion had canned food for Shabbat dinner that week.
The amazing thing, to me, was that we felt that almost every single citizen related to us. Regardless of affiliation, political opinions or religious belief, people have embraced the soldiers and reservists of the IDF and have joined forces to be with us. It wasn’t even limited to the people of Israel; by chance my unit had received packages from Jewish teenagers from camp Yavneh in Massachusetts, located about an hour away from the camp I worked in the previous summer. I know a lot of other communities in the Diaspora, including this one, joined the effort.
That’s not to say the whole of Israel was in favor of this operation. Outside of the gathering grounds, ardent debates, fervent rallies and countless protests were held both in favor and against everything related to "Protective Edge." Some were arguing to call off the ground assault, some to enhance it.
Some called to reach an agreement with Hamas, while others called to have it obliterated.
But we, the sons and daughters of the nation, were given a special place, outside the boiling cauldron of Israeli politics. You can’t imagine how far it goes to have this kind of driving force behind us.
Last year when I was travelling, I met a veteran company commander of the American airborne. He fought in Honduras and Nicaragua in the late 80’s and in Iraq in the 90’s. He told me that today; he feels that he has fought for politics and not for people. This last conflict has made me realize the complete contrast of our positions. I constantly knew and saw who and what I was fighting for.
Spending two weeks in a field in the Negev desert during the peak of summer, sleeping on the ground and being constantly unaware what tomorrow will bring is not easy. However, the amount of support and encouragement we have gotten made it more than bearable.
It is said that the temple will be rebuilt upon "Ahavat Chinam" (unconditional love). A lot is left to be desired in that area, but I hope we can build upon the love shown to us during that operation.
