Partial list of operations for Unit 101

Unit 101's operations (including those of Unit 202, which followed Unit 101, and Paratroop Battalion 890, which was born after Dayan merged the paratroops with the original Unit 101 commandos) included:

• Nebi Samuel - The operation to detonate Mustafa Samueli's house
• Hebron raid
• Jordanian Legion raid - Azun
• Kuntila
• Egyptian post at Kissufim
• Egyptian HQ - Gaza
• Alei Zait (Olive Leaf) - Syrian posts east of the Kinneret
• Khan Yunis
• Kibeyeh
• Sabha - capture of Egyptian compounds
• Kalkiliya

Source: Bar-Zohar, Michael, and the Israeli Ministry of Defence Publishing House. Lionhearts: Heroes of Israel. New York, 2002.

Meir Har-Zion

"The most outstanding paratrooper at the time was Meir Har-Zion. Meir came to us when Unit 101 was established. He had been a corporal in the Nahal who could not find peace there for his stormy spirit, for his desire to be active, for his belief that we must and could find a way to overcome the Arab terrorist activity. Within a short time he became the most daring fighter in Unit 101 and in the paratroopers, and an excellent scout, perhaps the best that the IDF has ever known.

He outshone the others by far in leadership qualities. His achievements in the battlefield were many. He commanded several operations himself, and played a major role in others. Meir Har-Zion became a symbol of a fighter in the paratroop units and in the army as a whole."

- Ariel Sharon

Source: Bar-Zohar, Michael, and the Israeli Ministry of Defence Publishing House. Lionhearts: Heroes of Israel. New York, 1998.

The commandos

The most prominent commando to emerge from Unit 101 - other than Sharon himself - joined the unit's ranks at the age of nineteen. He took his name from the mountain the ancient City of David stands on - Mount Zion.

"There are few fighters who have influenced the spirit and the fighting methods of a whole army over a period of several years. One of these fighters is Meir Har-Zion. Through his leadership, his determination, and his actions during the days of the courageous reprisal raids of the IDF during the 1950s, Meir Har-Zion contributed greatly to the revolutionary change not only in the army's approach to special operations, but also in its fighting spirit.

There are fighters who shine in one battle. There are legendary commanders who have excelled in one war. Meir Har-Zion is a fighter and a commander of an era. From 1953 to 1956 he fought as a soldier and as an officer, leading scores of operations, from which he returned only after they were sucessfully completed."

- Ariel Sharon

Source: Bar-Zohar, Michael (editor). Lionhearts: Heroes of Israel. Michael Bar-Zohar and the Israeli Ministry of Defence Publishing House, New York. 1998.

Aims of future posts

The background should by now be fairly evident for Israel in the early 1950s. Distended by swarms of largely illiterate, non-Hebrew speaking immigrants, many of whom were very young, the new nation found itself without a formal army capable of stemming the lawlessness and terror occurring daily on its borders. The solution was Unit 101. Questions to be addressed in future posts include:

• Who were the commandos in Unit 101?
• What operations did the unit conduct?
• What tactics, strategy, equipment, and training did the men learn, undergo, and use?
• What political and military aims did the operations have?
• What impact did they have on the citizens of Israel? Were the operations successful, both in the near-term and in the short-term?
• What impact did they have on the Arab population?
• How did they influence Zahal (the Israeli Defence Force) today?

Jewish and Arab populations at partition time

"By the mid-1890s - only a dozen years after the beginning of the First Aliyah - Jews were becoming an important part of the ethnic and religious mix of Palestine, especially in the area eventually partitioned by the United Nations for a Jewish state in 1947. At the time of the partition, there was a clear Jewish majority in the area (538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs, emphasis mine)...without any doubt, there was already a significant Jewish presence in that area (what is now central Israel) before the beginning of the twentieth century."

Source: Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2003.

Palestinian refugee camps (1993)

The UN partition plan to separate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1949 dispossessed thousands of Palestinians from the homes they had inhabited before the mandate. Since the birth of the official state of Israel in 1948, many of the children of Ishmael have languished in camps in Tyre, Sidon and Beirut, to the north; along the West bank and the Gaza Strip; and, since 1967, in the interior of the land in Jordan. According to 2002 census figures, the total Palestinian refugee population was 3.9 million, over 1 million of whom live in camps.

The oldest of feuds

There are many arguments for the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the simplest is to compare three conversations.

Here is the first:

The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted company with him, 'Look all round from where you are towards the north and the south, towards the east and the west. All the land within sight I will give to you and your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants like the dust on the ground: when men succeed in counting the specks of dust on the ground, then they will be able to count your descendants! Come, travel through the length and breadth of the land, for I mean to give it to you.'

Genesis 14.14-17

Here is the second:

The angel of the LORD met her near a spring in the wilderness, the spring that is on the road to Shur. He said, 'Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?' 'I am running away from my mistress Sarai,' she replied. The angel of the LORD said to her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her.' The angel of the LORD said to her, 'I will make your descendants too numerous to be counted.' Then the angel of the LORD said to her:

'Now you have conceived, and you will bear a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard your cries of distress. A wild-ass of a man shall he be, against every man, and every man against him, setting himself to defy all his brothers.'

Genesis 16.7-12

Here is the third:

And the LORD was there, standing over him, saying, 'I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give to you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants shall be like the specks of dust on the ground; you shall spread to the west and the east, to the north and the south, and all the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.'

Genesis 28.13-14

The first conversation is between God and Abram, the father of the Jews. The second is between God and Hagar, the servant of Sarai, Abram's wife. The third is between God and Jacob, Abram's grandson. The implications of each conversation reverberate throughout the ages in a boundless torrent of divinely-inspired wars over the same tiny patch of land. The Jews can say in truth that God here promised them the land. These are the implications of the first and third conversations. The Arabs, though promised many descendants, were not promised land. This is the implication of the second conversation.

The Arabs can trace their lineage back to Hagar, the servant girl who slept with Abram to give birth to Ishmael. The second conversation indicates that Ishmael will be defiant towards his brothers. Again, there is no promise of land being given to Hagar and her son from God. Is it any wonder he and his offspring are jealous?

The implications for this are broad. But the simplest interpretation is that Ishmael and his descendants - the Arabs - set themselves against Abraham's descendants by Sarah - the Jews. Why? Because the descendants of Jacob were promised the land, and the descendants of Ishmael weren't. Can Middle Eastern politics be this simple? The Book of Books seemingly makes it so.

Why all this history? Unit 101 was founded for this very reason: to protect the newly founded state of Israel from Arab terror. Sacred history reveals that Arab hatred is neither new nor mysterious: it is little more than an enormous and bloody case of sibling rivalry.

Background, III

"During the first four years following the establishment of the state of Israel, the main security problem was that of infiltration - from Jordan and Egypt. At first the aims of infiltration were theft or an attempt to take over and cultivate no-man's land. Israel was in danger of reverting to a state in which ownership was established by actual possession of the land and not in accordance with a signed document. In effect, the cease-fire borders were not final ones, despite their having been agreed upon and entered onto maps. Any lapse in the rigid watch kept upon the countryside would result in a mass reoccupation of the fields and villges by the Arab refugees. This was of course dangerous, since it opened up a possibility of penetration of Arab spies along with the farmers."

- Moshe Dayan, letter written in the 1970s

Source: Miller, Anita & Jordan, and Zetouni, Sigalit. Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician. Academy Chicago Publishers & Olive Publishing, Chicago, 2002.

Background, II

Perhaps the simplest summary of the pre-1950 situation in the fledgling Israel came from Moshe Dayan, writing about it in the early 1970s.

"(it was)...practically impossible to describe the tense atmosphere of the two-year-old Israeli nation. By the end of the War of Independence on March 1, 1949, the 650,000 Jewish inhabitants were in the midst of a wide-scale immigration absorption campaign. On the other side of the border, hundreds of Arab refugees...(waited) for the day they could go back into what were now Jewish cities. In the meantime, they lived in tents in the big refuge camps from which they had a clear view of the homes they had fled. Their hatred of the Jews now became a personal one."

Source: Miller, Anita & Jordan, and Zetouni, Sigalit. Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician. Academy Chicago Publishers & Olive Publishing, Chicago, 2002.

30 October 1955 following the Kuntilla raid. Standing (L-R): Meir Har-Zion, Ariel Sharon, Moshe Dayan, Danny Mat, Moshe Efron, Asaf Simchon. Seated: Ahron Davidi, Yaacov Yaacov, Eitan Rafael.

Source: Sharon, Ariel, and Chanoff, David. Warrior: An Autobiography. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001.

Border shooting incidents, 1953-1956

1953-1954;1954-1955; 1955-1956; 1956-1957.

Lebanese border: 3, 3, 0, 3.
Syrian border: 19, 59, 66, 69.
Jordanian border: 102, 153, 51, 102.
Egyptian border: 10, 86, 319, 199.

Total: 134, 301, 436, 293.

Source: Drory, Ze'ev. Israel's Reprisal Policy 1953-1956: The dynamics of military retaliation. Frank Cass, London, 2005.

Israeli casualties in acts of terror, 1953-1956

1953, 1954, 1955, 1956

(killed/injured by year)

Northern Command: 5/9, 2/4, 3/13, 3/12.
Central Command: 26/29, 9/5, 12/10, 10/15.
Southern Command: 20/7, 7/38, 5/20, 26/40.

Total: 51/45, 18/47, 20/43, 39/67.

Source: Drory, Ze'ev. Israel's Reprisal Policy 1953-1956: The dynamics of military retaliation. Frank Cass, London, 2005.

Terrorism statistics in Israel, 1953-1956

1. Violent acts of infiltrators (not including sabotage and mine-laying).

1953, 1954, 1955, 1956.

Northern Command: 20, 13, 11, 17.
Central Command: 49, 22, 18, 19.
Southern Command: 18, 28, 22, 50.

Total: 87, 63, 51, 86.

Source: Israel's Reprisal Policy 1953-1956: The dynamics of military retaliation, by Ze'ev Drory. Frank Cass, London, 2005.

Background

When The LORD brought Zion's captives home, at first it seemed like a dream;
then our mouths filled with laughter and our lips with song. - Psalm 126.1-2

God, do not remain silent; do not be unmoved, O God, or unresponsive!
See how your enemies are stirring, see how those who hate you rear their heads.

Weaving a plot against your people, conspiring against those you protect, they say,
'Come, we will finish them as a nation, the name of Israel shall be forgotten!' - Psalm 83.1-4

It is questionable if any other literature in the world so aptly sums up the pendulating emotions felt by the Jewish people in the late 1940s.

First came the dream: the Jewish people's return to the land conquered by Joshua and expanded by King David and King Solomon over three thousand years ago. The streets were thronged with students dancing the hora with British soldiers on the eve of the United Nations vote making Israel a nation. But the dream gave way to a stark reality for the people of Israel. David Ben-Gurion, watching the young women and men dancing and refusing to celebrate along with them, was chided and asked why he was so dour. He responded: "All this means is war."

He was right. The day after the official inauguration of the state of Israel, the five Arab nations surrounding the land declared war on the fledgling state. Though defeated soundly by the new nation, the Arab nations continued to wage war with acts of terror, especially along the borders of the new land. It was against this backdrop that Ariel Sharon - known as "Arik" to those close to him - was tasked with the protection of the borders.

Sources: O Jerusalem! Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1972.

Purpose

In July 1953, a 25-year-old student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was preparing for an exam when he was summoned by his reserve battalion commander in the Israeli Defense Force. He was asked to blow up the home of a known terrorist across the Jordanian border. The operation failed. Not only had the terrorist left town, the charges didn't detonate and the team was detected by enemy hosts. On his return, the student told his commander that a special unit was needed for such operations, dismissing the matter summarily to return to his history exam. Returning to the safety of his books and papers, little did this student realize that not only would the IDF take his advice, but would within a month place him at the head of this new unit.

The student's name was Ariel Sharon, and the group he created was Unit 101.

Sources:
Warrior: An Autobiography, by Ariel Sharon and David Chanoff. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001.
Lionhearts: Heroes of Israel, edited by Michael Bar-Zohar. Warner Books and the Israeli Ministry of Defence Publishing House, New York, 1998.

"We cannot protect every water pipe from being blown up, nor every tree from being uprooted. Nor can we prevent the murder of workers in the orchards, nor of families in our beds, but we can exact a high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, the Arab governments to pay."

- Moshe Dayan