First, get Aron Heller to write it. Then, don’t let an editor touch it. How else to explain the full, correct reasons behind the war in Lebanon last summer?
Israel launched the full-scale assault just hours after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others in a July 12 cross-border raid. The resulting 34-day war killed more than 1,100 Lebanese guerrillas and civilians while Israeli officials said 159 Israelis were killed, including 39 civilians.
What? No, “most of them civilians” in the boilerplate about Lebanese casualties? What? You mean Hezbullah killed soldiers while kidnapping the others?
In any case, the piece is fascinating. It’s about a fake Arab village built in the Negev for IDF soldiers to hone their combat skills.
Under the cover of thick smoke, a Muslim call to prayer sounding in the background, the masked Israeli commandos stormed a concrete building and “killed” two soldiers posing as Hezbollah guerrillas.
Monday’s drill was accompanied by simulated helicopter, tank and rocket fire, but it was the setting that really made it realistic – a mock Arab city in the Negev desert complete with mosques, apartment buildings, even a faux refugee camp.
Last year’s war in Lebanon showed a great many shortcomings in IDF training and preparedness, particularly in regard to reserves. Israeli commanders will be using this fake village to redress those shortfalls.
The new commander’s main task will be restoring confidence in the military, whose preparedness and tactics have been harshly criticized. The Urban Training Center can play an important role toward that goal, recreating the conditions that bedeviled troops during the fighting in Lebanon.
“This is a very important part of the solution,” said Brig. Gen. Uzi Moskovich, the center’s commander.
[…] The training center consists of some 500 structures packed into eight square miles. It has all the elements of an Arab city of 50,000 – a main square, high-rise apartment buildings, even a mock refugee camp, Moskovich said.
Some buildings are designed to rotate and walls to become transparent, enabling the military to prepare for various scenarios of urban warfare – in Lebanon or against Palestinian militants in the West Bank or Gaza.
In the future, the training center will host friendly foreign armies for a series of war games.
Overall, the piece is nothing but positive. I wonder if the editors will spin it negative before the day is out. Probably not. It’s more of a feature than a news story.