University of Virginia Library

Israel: Bombardment In The North

By Jonathan D. Broder
Special to The Cavalier Daily

The following dispatch, dated
22 September, was submitted by a
graduate of the University now
working as a reporter for the Jerusalem
Post. He explains, "The night
before, we came under a rocket
attack from the guerrillas and the
bombardment was in retaliation
for that attack."

No one speaks of the Galil very
much because it is there in the
North that the border settlements
come under guerrilla bombardment
every night and the terrorists mine
the roads. During the day, snipers
lay in the tall reeds across the
Jordan river waiting for the Israelis
to fall into their gunsights as the
kibbutz workers file into the olive
groves that line the river.

At night from the watchtower,
secure behind a .50 caliber machine
gun, you can sense them around
you like animals in the desert, felt
but not seen, always one step ahead
of the large spotlight that sweeps
the hills, cutting a swath of gold
over the rocks, the night following
silently behind.

It is intensely hot in the Galil, so
hot that as you drive east from
Afula, the wet, thick air rushes into
your mouth and nostrils and scalds
your throat like steam.. The heat
rises off the pavement in ripples
and as the road swings north at Belt
She'an, you suddenly see the lush
green of the Jordan Valley far
below to the east, and across the
river the tawny mountains of Bash
an rise sharply out of the valley and
into Jordan.

Gesher is one of the border
kibbutzim that lay beside the road
that runs north along the frontier
to the Sea of Galilee. The grim
reminders of their location are
everywhere; bunkers, sandbags and
shelters punctuate a complex network
of trenches that twists
through the kibbutz giving the impression
of a front line WW I battle
post. The trenches are covered with
sheets of corrugated iron and they
are the ugly, neutral grey-yellow
color that almost everything is in
war.

The people of Gesher are farmers,
spending their day in the
fields and taking their evening meal
in the large communal dining hall in
silent anticipation of the bombardment
that always comes with the
dark. First you hear the high
in-rushing sound like the ripping of
a bale of silk and then the scream
and the roaring crash and you feel
the earth jump beneath you and
while the pieces fall and the glass
tinkles down and you listen for the
next one to begin, you realize that
you are back in the Galil and that
perhaps your parents were wrong
when they told you there was
nothing to fear in the dark.

Gesher has been under this type
of nerve-frazzling harassment since
the June 1967 War and it has not
been without its toll. Nine or ten
Israelis die every week from mines
and from the Kaytusha rockets that
the guerrillas fire from launchers
mounted on top of cars.

In retaliation, the Israeli army
answers these attacks with heavy
artillery barrages aimed at border
villages believed to serve as guerrilla
bases. From a forward observation
post at Gesher, you can look across
the valley and see the white stone
houses of a village dotting the
mushroom-colored slopes. Meanwhile
the soldiers at the post are
busy computing the range, the
angle, the wind direction and velocity.
After phoning their information
back to the battery somewhere
behind us, the shelling is about to
begin.

Through a pair of high-powered
field glasses, the village looks quiet.
Women are drawing water from the
well and carrying it home in large
earthen containers poised atop their
heads or slung over the back of
dirty white burrows. Squatting in
the doorways, the men smoke their
pipes and a few children are running
in the streets. Farther up the
slopes, goats and sheep graze on the
low brush that darkens the hillside.

Then you hear the boom of
the artillery somewhere behind you
like a heavy coughing grunt and the
whizzing rush as the shells hurl out
over your head and still looking
through the glasses you know the
concussion hasn't reached the village
yet because the people are still
milling about, unaware.

Suddenly startled, their heads
whirl around to the thud and just
before the shells strike, there is
panic and they are scattering and
scrambling frantically like ants
when out thrust a twig into an
ant-hill, and from nowhere, fiery
orange flashes erupt from the earth
spouting rocks and dust and clouds
of black smoke.

There is another, then another
and the houses are hidden by rolling
billows of black and like punch
drunk fighters, the people seem to
run right into the explosions only
to disappear into the fountains of
fire and dust and rock.

More shells rip the slopes above
the village, and drop the livestock
in smoldering heaps, sending their
limbs and torsos whirling in the air.
There is no more village. There is
only the thudding and the fires and
the thick black smoke that belches
up in a single cloud and hangs in a
slant over the hillside.

In the middle of the blackness
there is a sudden flame and something
burns yellow, with a thick
oily smoke rising. It burns, for
twenty minutes, the flame mounting
then dying to mount again
suddenly and finally there is an
explosion. Probably it is a car. You
cannot see nor be sure because
there is nothing through the glass
but the plaster-shattered smoke of
the houses where the shells are
bursting.

An Israeli officer, also looking
through glasses, gives the cease fire
order and smoking cigarettes, the
soldiers wait for the fires to die and
for the wind to carry off the smoke
so that they may see the effect of
their bombardment and phone their
report back to the battery. Two
hours pass, then three before the
smoke lifts to reveal the brown
shell-pocked slopes, the smashed
houses and the bodies strewn about
like dark spots, wearing the butchered
frantic gestures of the dead.

It is dusk and the sun, hidden
behind the western mountains, the
ridges appear black against the
orange sky. The village lies in shadows
now with only the last wisps
of smoke rising from the ruins to be
carried off by the evening wind that
blows down from the lopes of
Bashan.

Perhaps the people of Gesher
will be able to sleep tonight. There
are others who might find it harder.