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August 24, 2006
Emanuel Morano's legacy
By Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST
At around 4 a.m. Saturday, Lt. Col. Emanuel Morano, a senior
commander in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret
Matkal), was killed in a fierce battle with Hizbullah
fighters near Baalbek in the Bekaa valley not far from the
Lebanese-Syrian border.
From the details of the commando raid that have filtered
into the media, we learned that Morano and his men were
airdropped into the area by helicopter along with their two
Hummer vehicles, with the mission of attacking a Hizbullah
base in the nearby village of Bodei used by the
Iranian-sponsored guerrilla fighters for weapons smuggling.
Iran is now working steadily to replenish Hizbullah's
surface to surface and anti-tank missile stocks and augment
them with anti-aircraft missiles.
Israel's continued sea and air blockade of Lebanon, which
Kofi Annan is pushing the Olmert government to lift, forces
Iran to resupply Hizbullah by land through Syria and into
the Bekaa valley.
Morano and his men were discovered by Hizbullah fighters
around the heavily guarded enclave and a pitched battle
ensued. Morano was killed, another officer was seriously
wounded and a third was wounded lightly. At least three
Hizbullah fighters were killed and two were reportedly taken
prisoner.
Close air support from helicopters and fighter planes
prevented Hizbullah reinforcements from participating in the
battle or encircling the IDF commandos who were extracted -
with their casualties and prisoners - after a prolonged
firefight.
Morano, 35, was a hero. He was admired and respected by his
soldiers and officers. Those who knew him well agree that
his most outstanding features were his humility and his
Zionism. Morano lived modestly with his wife Maya and three
young children in Moshav Tlamim by Sderot. He never wore his
uniform in his community - he wasn't interested in people
knowing how senior an officer he was. He was in the IDF to
serve his country and his people, not for the glory. He was
a loyal son of Jerusalem.
Exactly a year before his death, Morano's humility and
dedication to serving his country brought him to perform a
different sort of nocturnal mission.
Every night last August - until precisely 52 weeks before
his death - he snuck into Gush Katif to bring food to his
brother David and his family who were besieged along with
the rest of the residents of Gush Katif by a force of some
50,000 IDF and police forces. These forces, who outnumbered
the forces sent into Lebanon to fight Hizbullah a year later
by 20,000, were under orders not to fight Israel's enemies,
but to expel loyal, patriotic Israeli citizens from their
homes and communities, destroy their homes and communities
and abandon their land to Hamas and Fatah control.
David Morano is a major in reserves in another elite IDF
unit. Last year in Neve Dekalim he challenged the IDF to
find one soldier who would be capable of throwing him and
his family out of their home. Taking David's point and
seeking to avoid embarrassment, the senior brass of the IDF
beat a steady path to his door, attempting to convince him
that he must leave.
Sitting in a modestly furnished, book-lined living room,
David repeatedly demanded to be told the strategic rationale
of the expulsions. Why were these senior commanders
following orders to surrender land to terrorists? Why were
they turning 8,500 Jews into refugees in the Land of Israel
in order to carry out a mission conceived by a prime
minister desperate to avoid a felony indictment on
corruption charges from the radical leftist state
prosecution? David kept repeating over and over again that
this was not the reason he and his four brothers served as
combat officers in the IDF. He warned over and over again
that expelling the Israelis from Gaza would strengthen
Israel's enemies and lead directly to another war.
None of the officers who spoke to David could provide him
with answers. The most they could do was lend a sympathetic
ear as they suggested he start packing his bags. They could
not convince him to leave.
In the end, the events had their own momentum. By Friday
afternoon, David and his family were more or less the only
family left on their street.
Everyone else had been expelled Thursday. Over the Sabbath,
the remaining Jews of Neve Dekalim darted around in the
shadows avoiding arrests by soldiers and police. When they
gathered in the synagogue, they were momentarily heartened
to see that a couple hundred were still on hand.
But their spirits were broken. By the end of the next week,
they were all refugees, their homes and communities laid to
waste by IDF bulldozers. Their abandoned synagogues awaited
destruction at the hands of Palestinian mobs which came
three weeks later.
Some of the most charged moments at David's home last summer
came when he expressed his indignation over the way that IDF
Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his generals
daily insulted the religious Zionist community. Halutz
threatened to bar the youths who protested the expulsions
from serving in the military. Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, who as
then OC Southern Command commanded the expulsions, talked
about "a lost generation," and demanded an accounting by the
heads of the religious Zionist public for their children who
refused to accept the legitimacy of the expulsions. Maj.
Gen. Benny Ganz, who then served as OC Northern Command,
claimed that the youth who protested the expulsions were a
greater danger to Israel than Hizbullah.
And yet, over the past year, after in many cases having to
submit to humiliating interrogations by the Shin Bet, and
repeated rejections by draft boards due to their
"ideological fervor," thousands of the youths who protested
last summer's expulsions were drafted into the army. Like
Emmanuel and David Morano and their three older brothers,
these soldiers make up the backbone of the IDF's regular
combat and Special Forces units. Like Emmanuel Morano, a
disproportionate number of religious Zionist soldiers have
died in the past month of war.
Last week, Vice Premier Shimon Peres tried to silence the
growing calls for the government and the members of the
General Staff to resign by saying that this is no time for a
war between the Jews. His statement is an insult to the
intelligence.
Demanding accountability from incompetent political and
military leaders who led us into defeat against an enemy we
could and should have beaten is not opening a civil war. It
is the proper response from a responsible public that
understands our leaders are incapable of defending the
country.
Indeed, if Peres is concerned about the possibility of a war
between the Jews, then he should be the first one calling
for the government to resign.
The Olmert government was elected with a platform explicitly
committed to carrying out a war against the Jews through the
conduct of mass expulsions of up to 100,000 Israelis from
their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria.
In the midst of this month's Lebanon war, as it became
increasingly clear that he lacked the will to prosecute the
war to victory, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attempted to buck
up his support in Europe and among the radical Israeli Left
(of which his children and wife are proud members), by
saying that the war in Lebanon would pave the way for the
mass expulsion of Israelis from Judea and Samaria.
Saturday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a senior
diplomat Yaacov Dayan as her point man for future
negotiations with Syria. Her decision to appoint an envoy
for talks on surrendering the Golan Heights to Syrian
dictator and Iranian toady Bashar Assad came just days after
Assad announced that he hates Israel, wants nothing to do
with peace and is committed to Israel's destruction.
In light of Assad's statements, there are two logical
explanations for Livni's move. First, like her colleagues in
the Olmert government who also are pushing peace talks with
Assad, Livni may be stupid.
Second, Livni may have appointed Dayan in the hopes of
stirring up internal fissures over the issue of land for
peace. Already the radical leftists who run Israel's media
are engaging in surrealistic debates about the possibility
of making peace with Assad the warmonger. These debates
immediately place religious Zionists on the hot seat for
their stubborn insistence on settling the land which makes
giving it to Israel's sworn enemies all the more difficult
for people like Livni and her friends.
Last summer in Gush Katif, there was no war between the
Jews. Last summer, under orders from Ariel Sharon and
Olmert, the IDF and the police fought a war against the
Jews. David and Emmanuel Morano didn't fight against Israel.
They didn't fight against the IDF.
The Moranos fought against insane policies that victimized
8,500 patriots for no reason other than Leftist
anti-religious prejudice, and that caused Gaza to become a
new base for global jihad. And then, when war came from our
emboldened enemies, as they warned it would, the Moranos
loyally served beside their brothers and countrymen in
defense of Israel.
When the outraged Israeli public sends this incompetent
government and General Staff home, it will not be starting a
war between the Jews. It will be preventing another war
against the Jews.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at August 24, 2006 01:29 PM
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