Scene from Unit 101

This is a scene taken from Joel Redmond's Unit 101, WGA # 1372097. The scene is a direct adaptation of the actual interchange between Colonel Mishael Shaham and 25-year-old Ariel Scheinerman.

HEBREW UNIVERSITY - MOUNT SCOPUS - DAY

Hot sunny afternoon. A neatly dressed, handsome young student taking an exam taps his pen against his mouth.

TEACHER

Stop.

The student walks up to the teacher and hands in the paper, smiling. He is stopped by an ADJUTANT as he gets out of the door.

DOV

Major, Colonel Shaham needs to see you. ASAP, sir. (seeing him nod and salute, seeing him off)

The STUDENT walks down a narrow corridor, down a flight of stairs, and crosses over to an older-looking annex of the building he just left. All around him is the beauty of Jerusalem at the height of summer. He stops for a moment and closes his eyes, listening to the birds, smelling the flowers. Then he sighs, adjusts his backpack strap, and goes into the annex and up to the lecture hall door.

INT. LECTURE HALL

The door is open. At the foot of the lecture hall stairs is a wiry, silent man in his late thirties in full military dress. Before him spread out on the table are an assortment of wrinkled military maps and diagrams.

STUDENT

You wanted to see me, Colonel?

SHAHAM

Have you heard of Mustafa Samueli?

STUDENT

Yes. (seeing SHAHAM look at him) Lost his brother in 48. Swore to kill a hundred Jews for revenge.

SHAHAM

He's already killed four. One of them was a friend of mine, from Ramat Gan.

STUDENT
(sensing an assignment he doesn't really want)
You want me to retaliate.

SHAHAM

I need a deterrent. We have permission from Dayan himself. We have to get across the border and blow up his house, and I want you to do the job.

STUDENT

I still have two more finals -

SHAHAM

(waving his words off) A man has to choose between two options: studying the deeds of others, or leaving it to others to study his own deeds.

The STUDENT is silent.

Choose anyone you want for this. No more than a dozen men. Report back at 0800.

STUDENT

Yes sir.

Additional Hebrew

Ata (at)...? - Are you...?

mefakhed (et) - afraid
ko'es (et) - angry
kar li - cold
asir (at) toda - grateful
same'akh (smekha) - happy
kham li - hot
ani ra'ev (re'eva)
memaher (et) - in a hurry
met (a) le... - keen to...
atsuv (a) - sad
menumnam (menumnemet) - sleepy
tankhumay - sorry (condolence)
mitstaer'(et) - sorry (regret)
tsame (tsme'a) - thirsty
ayef (a) - tired
bari (bri'a) - well
mud'ag (mud'eget) - worried

Source: Ben-Adam, Justin, and Wistinetzki, Ilana. Hebrew Phrasebook. Lonely Planet, Victoria, Australia, 2007.

Sharon and Dayan

Moshe Dayan greets Arik and the commando teams on 12 December 1955 after the Alei Zait raid.

Source: Sharon and Chanoff.

Response to question #5, Kimmerling

Can the treatment of Palstinians by the Israelis in their newly-formed state be reasonably compared with the treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government?

This is a complex question, and has a good deal of depth to it. Intuitively it seems absurd, and even insulting to the Israelis, who to this day maintain the only true democracy in the Middle East. Without consulting mounds of details, documents, primary and secondary sources, and interviews, it seems almost inconceivable that an offer like the one Ehud Barak made to Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian people at the Camp David-Taba negotiations in 2000-2001 could reasonably be compared to the legacy of violations of U.S. Indian treaties that is taught to any middle school student today. Barak at this time offered the Palestinians:

• 94-96% of the West Bank;
• All of the Gaza Strip;
• A Palestinian state with Arab Jerusalem as its capital;
• Complete control of East Jerusalem and the Arab Quarter of the Old City;
• Control of the entire Temple Mount; and
• $30 billion in compensation for Palestinian people not moving to the new Palestinian state.

This was an unprecedentedly unfair deal - for the Israelis! Incredibly, Arafat dismissed it. Without overgeneralizing, it can safely be said that in this scenario alone, the Israelis viewed Palestinians much more favorably than the US government viewed Native Americans in the first stereotypical examples of mistreatment we think of, such as Wounded Knee.

Source: Dershowitz.

Kimmerling, cont'd - response to question #4

Was Unit 101 habitually excessive in its approach to operations?

There are arguments on either side of the fence to handle this question. Looking at it rather coolly with statistics provided by Drory, we can compare the number of Israelis killed to the number of infiltrators killed in the various incidents that took place in border actions during this period. They are:

1953, 54, 55, 56:

Israelis killed - 51, 18, 20, 39; Infiltrators killed - 125, 52, 24, 58.
Israelis wounded - 45, 47, 43, 67; Infiltrators captured/surrendered* - 239, 152, 27, 75.

* Infiltrator wounded figures unavailable.

Looking only at these statistics, the claim doesn't appear groundless. But there are subjective concerns as well. For example, the infiltrators were in some cases army-trained soldiers attacking civilians, as in the case of Susan Kanias and her two children being killed by a grenade tossed in their house in Yahud. If two men perpetrated this act, and they were subsequently killed in a retaliatory raid, is it simply two Palestinian casualties and three Israeli casualties? Is that the math most clear-thinking people would use? Probably not.

But back to the simple numbers. Drory lists additional Israeli casualties in the reprisal actions in another table: they add up to 164 for the four years in question. If this is taken as the hard number - 164 - and this is compared to the infiltrator casualty number of 259, then there is at least a grain of truth in Ben-Gurion's growling assessment of the Alei Zait raid: "Too successful!"

Source: Drory, Sharon.

Response to question #3, Kimmerling

Who started the incidents? Were they Arabs, or others?

Here a bit of imagination is required, though the framework is fairly evident. According to Ze'ev Drory, author of a work on the reprisal raids that emerged from his MA thesis at Tel Aviv University in the late 1980s, the shooting incidents occurring between 1953 and 1956 on Israeli borders occurred primarily on the Jordanian border (particularly in 1954-1955, when there were 153 incidents, or nearly 3 a week), and the Egyptian border a year later (319, or almost one per day). The total number of shooting incidents on these borders, as well as the Syrian and Lebanese borders, grew from 134 in 1953-54, to 301 in 1954-55, to 436 in 1955-56.

These are statistics, but behind every statistic is a story. It is doubtful that there was never a situation in all these incidents where a Palestinian was innocent of belligerent action and the Israelis made a mistake or were the first to show aggressive intent. And it's impossible to gather all of the data, or to make blanket assumptions about the ethnicity of those involved in these border actions. But perhaps one indicator is Israel's contemporary response to terrorist attacks. For example, in January and February 2003, there were no successful terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Over two hundred, however, were attempted by Palestinian terrorists. This number eclipses the 1953 figure for the number of border shooting incidents.

So what's the point? The point is that there is a very real resentment on the part of a number of people that translates into violent action, and this action occurs on a recurring basis with a minority of Palestinians. The stereotype of Islam is of explosive-carrying extremists calling for the destruction of Israel. Even though the majority of Arabs and Muslims are peace-loving and simply desire to live their lives, the radical behaviors of a few have - from long ago to now - fomented an environment rivaled by none in the earth for its martial clamor. And its desire for peace.

Sources: Drory, Dershowitz.

Response to question #2, Kimmerling

Who owned the land - Arab or Jew - at this time?

Few census records exist dating from the First Aliyah (1880) to the UN Partition of Palestine in 1947. Nonetheless, Benny Morris - an acclaimed Israeli historian known widely for his distinct pro-Palestinian bent - summarizes the matter as follows:

Historians have concluded that only "several thousand" families were displaced during land sales to Jews between the 1880s and the 1930s.

Even after 1930, the amount of Arab land available for sale well exceeded Jewish ability to purchase. A formal study of land purchases between 1880 and 1948 revealed that three-quarters of the plots bought by Jews were from mega-landowners (many of them absentee) rather than from those who worked the soil.

Finally, the groups of people existing in Palestine prior to the First Aliyah and the century prior rival those of today's metropolitan New York in their multitudinous ethinicities: Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Bosnians, Druzes, Circassians, Egyptians, Kurds, German Templars, Persians, Sudanese, Algerians, Samaritans, Tatars, Georgians, and those of mixed race.

It would be misleading and mendacious to say that no Arab was displaced by a Jew in the era of the reprisal raids. Neither would it be true to say that Arabs as a people had no substantial stake in the physical land of Palestine. But the intimation that the rank and file of Palestinians were just victims of the Israeli war machine is more than false - it's ridiculous. The strongest supporters of the Palestinian people acknowledge readily that three-quarters of the land sold to the Jews were from non-fellahin landowners, many of whom ruled the lands from Beirut or Damascus. And these lands were bought, not stolen. Very likely, many of their landlords never took the time to get a firsthand look at their holdings. Isn't that what advocates of a free market call a market inefficiency? Viewed in this light, it seems the worst criticism that could be levied against the Jews buying plots of malarial swamps in their own strange, ancient land was that they had the foresight and the faith to see their dream through with their sweat and blood. But not before they paid for the lands their own Bible told them would be their own forever. With money.

Source: Dershowitz.

Response to question #1, Kimmerling

1. Was the land that became the state of Israel predominantly Arab or Jewish at the onset of the reprisal raids and the formation of Unit 101?

According to UN estimates, there were 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs in the land allotted to the Jewish state under the Partition Plan of 1947. Discounting the Negev, which is almost completely uninhabitable and uncultivatable, the Jews received less land than that allotted to the Palestinians. They also did not receive Hebron, the biblical city of refuge with a Jewish majority for over twenty centuries, and western Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site on earth.

Source: Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. Wiley, Hoboken, 2003.

Commentary on Kimmerling

Kimmerling's comments on the scene unfolding in Israel during the creation of Unit 101 raise a few necessary questions.

1. Was the land of Palestine predominantly Jewish or Arab at the unit's founding?
2. Who owned the land - Arab or Jew - at this time?
3. Among the thousands of inciting incidents recorded during 1953-1956, how many were precipitated by Arabs, whether from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon?
4. Was Unit 101 habitually "excessive" in its carrying out of orders, as Kimmerling implies and states?
5. How comparable is the founding of the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians to the founding of the United States and its treatment of Native Americans?

These questions will be addressed in future posts.

Another view, III

The operation caused an international uproar and generated questions within important political and intellectual circles. At first, Israel tried to deny that the massacre was carried out by military unit and claimed that "angry border-area settlers" were responsible. But among the military, the wider population, and especially among the youth, it was considered a big success and raised national pride. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, hearing of the action, suspected that the young commander beloneged to a revisionist stream of Zionism, and called him for a talk. During the meeting, Ben-Gurion was very satisfied to discover that Sharon and his family belonged to the "correct" political stream (the Laborite one) and was enchanted by the young, brave, handsome, and bright officer - the embodiment of his vision of the Sabra, a healthy, Israeli-born Jew free from all the maladies of exile. From that time on, the "Old Man," as Ben-Gurion was known, gave Sharon his personal protection and maintained a special relationship with him, which Sharon used every time he got into trouble following one of his adventurous and unauthorized military operations.

Source: Kimmerling.

Another View, II

Unit 101's first assignment, in September 1953, was to expel the nomadic Bedouin tribes from the Negev desert. Traditionally, the Bedouins do not recognize state borders, and even after the 1948 War they moved freely between Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. The Israelis saw these unauthorized border crossings as a violation of their sovereignty over the territory (which was internationally contested during that period anyway). Unit 101's mission was accomplished efficiently and cruelly...
Among the dozens of raids executed by the 101 under the command of Ariel Sharon, two are inscribed in both Israeli and Palestinian history and memory. The first was the massacre at Qibiya. Qibiya was a Palestinian village in Jordan (the West Bank) between Latrun and Qalkilliya, which was attacked on October 15, 1953 as a reprisal for the murder of a woman and two children in the Israeli town of Yahud two days before. There had been about 130 Israeli civilian victims of this "border war," and public opinion demanded revenge. About forty-five houses in Qibiya were blown up with their inhabitants inside. Sixty-seven men, women, and children died. Sharon argued during the subsequent investigation that he ordered his soldiers to check every house and warn the inhabitants to leave, but the soldiers denied that they had had such an order.

Source:Kimmerling.

Another view

Not all sources - even Jewish or Israeli - are complimentary towards Arik and his commando unit. One of his harsher critics paints a more calculating and even cruel portrait:

"With (Sharon's) sharp political instincts, he soon discovered the secret that relatively junior field officers possess more actual power than higher-ranking officers who are far from the battlefield, not to mention civilian politicians who had little knowledge of military affairs yet adored the 'new Jewish warriors.' A field officer can inflame any border and blow any minor incident out of proportion. All such activities were nominally approved by the command as limited reactions to what Israel perceived as violations of the ceasefire agreements by the Arab states. However, in executing these actions, Sharon went far beyond he scope of what was ordered, planned, and accepted by his superiors. He explained these departures as the result of unexpected resistance by the enemy, unanticipated difficulties and obstacles on the battlefield, and the need to save the lives of Israeli soldiers or to avoid leaving behind the wounded and killed. The fact of the matter was that Sharon's expansive actions caused greater casualties - not only among the Arabs, but among Israeli soldiers as well. His practice of using provocations as a strategy - inciting Arabs and Jews to fight one another - became a major pattern of Sharon's conduct, one that he elaborated on and perfected as his career progressed."

Source: Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians. Verso, London. 2003.

Additional references for Unit 101

• The Israeli Commando: a Short History of Israeli Commando, 1950-1969. Tel Aviv, Madim.
• Sharon: An Israeli Caesar. Tel Aviv: Adam Publishers, 1985.
• Dayan, Moshe. Avnei Derech: An Autobiography. Tel Aviv: Dvir Publishing House, 1976.
• Eitan, Rafael, with Dov Goldstein. A Soldier's Story. Israel: Maariv-Modi'in Publishing House, 1985.
• Har-Zion, Meir. Pirkei Yoman (Memoir Chapters). Tel Aviv: A. Levine Publications, 1969.
• Margalit, Dan. Commando 101. Tel Aviv:Moked.
• Milstein, Uri. Milhamot Ha'tzanhanim. Israel: Ramdor Inc., 1968.
• Morris, Benny. Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Yenuka, Moshe. From Kibiya to the Mitleh. Tel Aviv: Bitan, 1967.

If I forget you, Jerusalem...

The biblical city of Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish longing since the Diaspora. The spirit permeating the soldiers of Unit 101 and the people who lived in the newly reborn nation of Israel at that time are reminscent of the ancient psalm:

Beside the streams of Babylon, we sat and wept at the memory of Zion,
Leaving our harps hanging on the poplars there.
For we had been asked to sing to our captors, and to entertain those who had carried us off:
"Sing," they said, "one of Zion's hymns."
How could we sing one of the LORD's hymns in a pagan country?
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.
May I never speak again, if I forget you;
If I do not count Jerusalem the greatest of my joys.
Remember, LORD, the sons of Edom on the day of Jerusalem,
How they said, "Down with her! Raze her to the ground!"
Destructive daughter of Babylon,
A blessing on the man who treats you as you have treated us,
A blessing on him who takes and dashes your babies against the rock.

- Psalm 137

Arik & Ben-Gurion

Sharon's legendary relationship with David Ben-Gurion began in the days of Unit 101 - and extended throughout the fledgling Israel's wars. At left, Ben-Gurion stands examining formations on the front during the 1971 War of Attrition, wearing a beret at Sharon's urging lest the enemy get a glimpse of his distinctive shock of white hair. In his own words, on the relationship between the two men at the outset of 101:

"Before long, however, I found that Ben-Gurion's affection was a curse as well as a blessing. At high-level meetings and get-togethers with the room full of generals and staff officers, he would call me up to be next to him. Sitting there, I would watch the generals come up to say hello to the old man and would feel embarrassed to hear him say, "Who are you?" or "What are you doing here?"...Without the wisdom to be more careful, I contributed in that period to the births of jealousies and anatgonisms some of which were to last for decades."

Sources: Life magazine, Sharon, Chanoff.

Additional Hebrew

mefakhed - afraid
sho'el - ask(a question)
matkhil - begin
kone - buy
melsaltsel - call (by phone)
ole - cost
ose - do
shote - drink
okhel - eat
masbir - explain
motse - find
shokhe'akh - forget
mekabel - receive
noten - give
holekh - go
tsarikh - have to
mekhapes - look for
meshalem - pay
sam - put
kore - read
khozer - return
omer - say
ro'e - see
mokher - sell
shole'akh - send
matkhil - start
loke'ach - take
mesaper - tell
metayel - walk
kotev - write

Hostage Negotations 101, III

The one-eyed general was pleased with the major's chutzpah, daring, and initiative. Scheinerman did not need to have things spelled out. Dayan liked operating in this theater of the unsaid, where orders were given in silence and plans were set in motion with raised eyebrows and imperceptible nods. Officers were given vast leeway, and the question of ultimate responsibility was ambiguous. Eventually, this modus operandi would sour their relationship: Success has many proud parents, but failure is frequently an orphan.

Source: Hefez and Bloom.

Hostage Negotiations 101, II

Scheinerman and Grover grabbed the two soldiers from behind, gagged them, and marched them back across the river, guns to their heads. Back on the Israeli bank, they cuffed their hands and threw them in the back of the truck. Grover hopped in after them, and Scheinerman drove like a wild man across the hills of lower Galilee toward Nazareth.

The truck pulled in to the city with first light. Scheinerman and Grover marched the Jordanians into the night officer's room and gave them tea and sandwiches. Two hours later, when Dayan entered his office, he found a note from Scheinerman on his desk. The Jordanians he had wondered about were waiting for the general in the holding cell, it said. Dayan called Scheinerman - by now shaved and spit-polished - to his office and asked for the whole story.

Source: Hefez, Nir, and Bloom, Gadi. Ariel Sharon: a Life. Random House, New York, 2006.

Hostage negotiations 101, I

In November 1952, Dayan summoned Scheinerman to his office in Nazareth. He wondered aloud whether it would be possible to kidnap two Jordanian soldiers. Perhaps, he thought, a pair of Legionnaires could be used as bargaining chips to secure the release of two Israeli soldiers who had been captured while training near the Jordanian city of Qalqilya.

Scheinerman answered with a knee-jerk affirmative, but said he'd have to look into the matter. As soon as he left the general's office, he rifled through maps in search of Jordanian positions within striking distance. The Sheikh Hussein Bridge, which crossed the meandering Jordan River, seemed a suitably vulnerable point. With nightfall, Major Scheinerman and Lieutenant Shlomo Grover of the northern reconnaissance team set off in a flatbed truck. They parked on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and made their way to the river on foot. On the opposite bank they saw two soldiers smoking cigarettes. The Israeli officers grabbed metal rods protruding from the bottom of the ruined bridge and made their way across the shallow river in silence. On the eastern bank, they crawled to the guards' hut and pulled out their pistols.

Source: Hefez, Nir, and Bloom, Gadi. Ariel Sharon: a Life. Random House, New York, 2006.

Hebrew phrases

khaval al hazman - describes an extreme situation (lit. waste of time)
sababa - great/cool
akhla - great/cool
ptsatsa/ptsatsot/pitsuts - excellent; beyond description; great (lit.a bomb, bombs, an explosion)
mashehu mashehu - used for something that defies description; words fail (lit. something something)
ba li hase'if - when you lose your temper because of something annoying
tered li mehakarakhat - when someone's nagging and you want them to stop NOW (lit. get off my baldness)
khapes oti basivuv - when you want to tell someone to scram and they're bothering you (lit. go and look for me in the street corner)
lama ma - used when someone asks you to do something you think is crazy (lit. why what)
katan ala'i - when someone apologetically asks a favor and you're more than happy to help (lit. it is small on me)
al hapanim - when it's looking gloomy, odds against you (lit. on the face)
neshama - appellation for someone wonderful, sweet (lit. soul)
yal'la bye - cooler version of goodbye
ba'asa - used when you're bored
akhi - used when you meet someone you like (lit. my brother)
kif - used when you meet a friend and shake their hand, used in response to friend's extending their hand

Source: Ben-Adam, Justin, and Wistinetzki, Ilana. Hebrew phrasebook. Lonely Planet Publications, Footscray, Victoria, Australia, 2007.

Hebrew words, II

ch - as in throat-clearing noise

cham - warm
chalav - milk
chom - heat
chodesh - month
chetsi - half
chika - waited
chuts - outside
chidush - renewal
chadash - new
chech - palate
chacham - smart
shlomcha - greeting (as in ma shlomacha, how are you?)
chemed - delight
chaval - pity
chut - thread
lechem - bread
ochel - food
echad - one
achal - he ate
shachav - he lay
achim - brothers
achot - sisters
oreach - guest
ech - how
shlomech - greeting (to a woman)
shelach - yours
namuch - short
matsliach - succeeds
toch - inside

Hebrew words

These are the first of a series interspersed throughout the narratives of Unit 101 that define a few Hebrew words. The words are transliterated, not directly put into Hebrew font.

li - to me
lo - to him
la - to her

lanu - to us
lev- heart
shalom - hello
sheli - mine
shelo - his
shelanu - ours
milon - dictionary
el - to
al - on
kol - all
gadol - big
meil - coat
kilkul - malfunction
klal - generalization
menahel - director
gidel - he raised
godel - size

Source (this and most future transliterations): Hebrew Basic Course, Barron's Educational Series, Hauppage, 1988.

Alei Zait, III

Gulliver's death reverberated throughout the entire IDF, from the paratroopers to the senior command. His death was in some ways the apotheosis of the era of new hope Arik and his bold commandos had breathed into the people of Israel, much as God had breathed into the dust before Him in Gan Eden at the dawn of the world:

"There was no mission that seemed too hard for him."

- Moshe Dayan

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

Alei Zait, II

Alei Zait became a symbol of the type of operation the IDF became famous for in the years to come: storied for its chutzpah, characterized by its lightning speed and the simultaneity of its attacks from differing directions and means (sea, air, and land); and unusually economical in its achievement of maximum results with minimal casualties.

The raid, conducted on the night of 11-12 December 1955, consisted of three cohorts: an airborne radio relay flying southeast over the northern half of the Kinnereth, four landing crafts, led by Yitzhak Ben-Menachem (called "Gulliver" by the men in the unit because of his great size) and followed closely by Sharon, and terrestrial forces at the north and south of the sea, led by Marcel Tobias and Meir Har-Zion, among others. The land forces were fortified by 120MM mortars in the south and cannon in the north.

Fourteen Syrian strongholds dotted the northeastern shore of the Galilee; of these, nine lay directly along the shore. All nine were attacked and the operation was considered highly successful. Sorrow for the men and for Sharon especially lay at the end of the operation, however. Gulliver, who had fought with Sharon at the Battle of Latrun and was a childhood friend of Arik's, was killed by a grenade while disembarking from his landing craft. Sharon made the decision to tell his parents the next day:

"When I arrived at the house, his parents had just gotten the terrible news a few moments earlier. While I talked to them, his mother cried continuously. "Arik, how did you let him die? You remember how he saved your life. You remember how he loved you. How he stayed behind and saved the wounded." In her grief she was talking about the Battle of Latrun in 1948, when Gulliver had heroically stayed behind with a machine gun covering Asher Levy's retreat with the Second Platoon. It hadn't been my platoon, but that didn't matter...now I had let him die. As she talked, she looked at me not with anger but with her eys full of anguish and disbelief. It was a look I would never forget."

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

Alei Zait, I

Throughout the year 1955, Syrian gun emplacements on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee fired randomly and haphazardly into the water, often damaging civilian fishing boats. By the close of the year, the Israeli government had decided that it had had enough, and entrusted one of its most ambitious missions to Arik and his commandos, now part of Paratroop Battalion 890. This was Operation Alei Zait (Olive Leaves), conducted on 11-12 December 1955.

The objective of the mission was to inflict deterrent damage on the gun emplacements and capture Syrian soldiers. The outcome of the mission was successful; the unit captured 30 prisoners and inflicted heavy damage on the enemy.

The raid was emblematic of many of Arik's operations, as he himself relates:

"By the time we arrived in the prime minister's office (the morning after the raid), Dayan looked very worried. I happened to walk in first; and looking up from his chair, Ben-Gurion caught my eye. 'So, Arik,' he said, 'how did it go?' 'I think it was succssful,' I said. There was a short silence while Ben-Gurion glowered at us. 'Too successful!' he said.

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

One goal, two more methods

The overarching goal of this blog is to acquaint the casual reader with Unit 101 and provide as comprehensive and interesting a history of it as possible. To achieve this goal, two additional methods have to be used.

1. Most of the source documents - particularly the source biographies and letters, news reports of the attacks, etc. - are in Hebrew. Since the average person reading this may not know how to read, write, speak, or understand Hebrew, ongoing vocabulary and links to Hebrew-learning resources will be included.

2. The action, conflict, and mystery surrounding Unit 101 are tailor-made for the movies. Because the reader might want to see or get an idea of how the materials from the lives of these soliders might be weaved into a story worthy for worldwide audiences, links to already-written movie scenes, a completed film script, and insight into ongoing revisions of that script will be included as well.

Ma avarech (How shall I bless him?)

This links to a song that is a traditional Hebrew hymn to those who have served and fallen in war.

(To cut and paste the link into your browser: Do this by bringing the cursor to the left of the text, highlighting it by holding the return key down as you arrow over the line, pressing CTRL + C, and then bringing the cursor up to your explorer bar at page top and pressing CTRL + V.)

http://www.youtube.watch/?v=BgYBqwBm8dU

Lyrics:

How should I bless him, with what should he be blessed?
Is it this boy? The angel asked (2X)

And he blessed him with a shining smile
And he blessed him with big seeing eyes
To catch every flower, animal and bird
And a heart to feel all he sees

How should I bless him, with what should he be blessed?
Is it this youngster? The angel asked (2X)

And he blessed him with legs to dance the whole time
And a soul to remember all the rhythms
And a hand that collects shells on the beach
And a listening ear for old and young

How should I bless him, with what should he be blessed?
Is it this young man? The angel asked (2X)

And he blessed his powers with experienced hands
To succeed in controlling the power of steel
And legs to dance along the journey
And lips singing the rhythm of command

How should I bless him, with what should he be blessed?
Is it this man? The angel asked (2X)

I gave him all that I could give
A song, a smile, and legs to dance with
A soft hand and a beating heart
And what else should I bless you with?

How should I bless him, with what should he be blessed?
Is it this boy, the soft young man? (2X)

This youngster, is an angel now
Will not be blessed any longer, not blessed anymore
God, God, God -
If only you blessed him with life!

Nebi Samuel, II

Continued, from Bar-Zohar's summary:

"Sharon did not understand why he had received this sudden summons to his battalion commander. Shaham's sphere of military responsibility included the area of Nebi Samuel. He was well aware that troubles for Israel were liable to originate there. Now he explained his idea to Sharon. He had requested permission from his superiors to carry out a deterrent action against Samueli, and had been given permission in principle. "We have to get there and blow up his house," he said, "and I want you to do the job."

Sharon muttered something about his exams, but Shaham cut him off. "A man has to choose between two options," he said, "to study the deeds of others or to leave it to others to study about his deeds."

A photograph of Nebi Samuel taken in the early 1900s. Sharon and his seven army friends conducted their first raid here, on the home of known Arab terrorist Mustafa Samueli in 1953.

Source: Wikipedia

Nebi Samuel

In the first week of August, 1953, 25-year-old Ariel Sharon was preparing for a history exam when he was interrupted and summoned to a meeting with his reserve battalion commander, Mishael Shaham. The tale is told by Michael Bar-Zohar in his Lionhearts:

(Sharon) thought it was going to be a discussion about administrative and logistics matters, but Shaham opened with the question: "Have you heard of Mustafa Samueli?"

"Yes," Sharon said. Despite his studies at the university, this young man, who had distinguished himself during the War of Independence, kept up with army material enough to know who Samueli was. This Palestinian Arab, a resident of the village of Nebi Samuel, had sworn to massacre a hundred Jews to avenge the blood of his brother, who had been killed in one of the battles in the War of Independence. Sharon even knew that Samueli had begun to carry out his threat and had already committed a few murders. Nebi Samuel was across the border, on the West Bank, which was under Jordanian rule. Samueli had only to sneak across the border (actually the 1949 cease-fire line), which was close to his village, carry out his bloody design, and retreat to his village with impunity.