Transcript: Inside Israel's Army

BRANCACCIO: Last week our team was in the West Bank as Palestinians struggle with economic development amid uncertain moves toward peace. This week another view of the conflict, as seen through the eyes of Israelis. In particular, those who serve in the military, which in Israel's case is just about every able-bodied man or woman. How does that military service affect perceptions of the conflict in the region. Correspondent Michele Mitchell and producer Michal Zilberman have our report.

MITCHELL: Talk to Israelis and they'll argue that their country has a public relations problem. Case in point: last winter, when the Israeli army attacked Gaza with overwhelming force.

RONEN: And I know that around the world, people don't understand why Israel attacked Gaza, why it was so hard, why it had to be in such a rough way. But after eight years of having bombs, missiles, uh kids killed and the people just walking to school, walking to their uh, to buy something in a grocery store and getting killed on the way (pause), from my point of view , is a state of war.

MITCHELL: 36 year old Ronen Hershkovitz knows a lot about living in a state of war. When he's not directing high school drama students, he's a full-time actor, a part time aid volunteer, and like most every other able-bodied citizen of Israel, he's also a reservist in the Israel defense forces—the IDF. Israelis tell me that they've grown up with war. Almost every man and many women have been called to fight to protect the country. We wanted to find out how living with war as a constant backdrop affects Israelis and how they see the world.

Some critics say that... the IDF are bullies. You put on the uniform, what do you think?

RONEN: When you have a, point of view about Israel, people think that Israel is very strong, bully country, bully soldiers. I can tell you from my perspective, my friends, um, in my unit, are acting as human beings and we protect life on both sides.

MITCHELL: We first met Ronen several years ago, when we went to Israel to make a film about the country's citizen soldiers as they came to grips with what became known as the second Lebanon war. Among the IDF reservists called up for duty back then were Ronen and a 34 year old newspaper editor serving as a sergeant of artillery, Idan Motola. Neither man was surprised by the call up- it's part of the price of living in a country that sees itself under the constant threat of war.

IDAN: It is built into the Israeli DNA, mostly because we are driven by fear and scepticism. On the other hand, this also has some advantages because it maintains Israeli solidarity as long as we live under an external threat.

MITCHELL: We're on our way to Dizengof Center, which many Tel Aviv residents consider to be the heart of the city. Tel Aviv is considered to be a dream of what Israel can be. It's a place where Jews and Arabs, seculars, orthodox, all living together in peace. Outside of Tel Aviv is a little different. You have settlers and closed groups of orthodox Jews. But one thing they can all agree on is that they're living in a country in a constant state of conflict, and they see it every moment, every day. And for the soldiers who fight Israel's wars, it was the conflict in Lebanon that many here say changed their lives. Another reservist called up during Lebanon was Ohad Knoller, a well known actor in Israel. a self-described right winger, he often makes his living playing soldiers.

OHAD: There are in Israel, there are a lot of roles that are army roles. So I'm doing a lot of you know, my military service is actually helping me to be a good soldier on screen.

MITCHELL: Do you think that Israel is in a state of war right now with its neighbors?

OHAD: Of course, of course. This is a war it is not only armies to armies war, it's also you know it's really psychological, a public opinion war, and it's war about rights because even countries that are, even states with that are by terms at peace with Israel didn't recognize that Israel has its right to be a Jewish state

MITCHELL: As the Second Lebanon War began, few Israelis questioned whether it was necessary: Israel was being attacked and needed to strike back. In fact, more reservists showed up than were called. Idan left his wife Noa and their young family...

IDAN: I remember there was a lot of fear. From the moment that I got the mobilization order on the phone, it's this automated message... Noa was very anxious and worried. We had just had our first baby and the farewell was very intense and hard.

MITCHELL: Ronen left his job with a humanitarian organization...

RONEN: I could have easily said: ok, I have a critical job to do here, I need to stay. I could have played that card. But, I knew that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something happened, and I wasn't there. That's it. It's like... I didn't have any doubts about it. There was no question about it.

MITCHELL: And Ohad left the set of one of his films.

OHAD: And actually the producer knew that maybe the war would get tougher and wider....

MITCHELL: The war had begun suddenly on July 12, 2006 when Hezbollah rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel. That same day, eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two kidnapped.

TELEVISION VO: "IDF air and ground forces attack Lebanon", "Northern residents spent most of their day in bomb shelters"

MITCHELL: The IDF granted us permission to go on maneuvers and film with some of the 60,000 reservists who were mobilized—as the war began, they realized almost immediately that living in a constant state of war isn't the same thing as being ready for one. Politically, the war would prove to be a disaster. Militarily, it was a mess.

RONEN: There wasn't enough equipment for everyone. We got organized-it was a mess. During training we took my car to get medical supplies from another base, we got a donation from someone else, we paid for supplies that we bought on the way... it was an unorganized, messy preparation process. We had the basic stuff, but the army said "if you have x soldiers then you need x medics" but more soldiers reported for duty than expected so they assigned more medics per unit, but there wasn't enough equipment for everyone.

IDAN: For me the buds of doubt, the questions, the criticism, arose already in the first few days. Perhaps already from the moment when I got there, and saw that nothing was really organized.

MITCHELL: New recruits might not know any better, but for these reservists—highly educated soldiers, with years of experience in the real world—it was unsettling that the famed IDF, the same force that had defeated all the surrounding Arab nations before, was unprepared for this fight. And that was just the beginning.

IDAN: My artillery unit was based near the border, in Israel, in order to give backup fire for the ground forces working in Lebanon. We were vulnerable to artillery fire from the other side. Katyusha rockets that fell around us.

MITCHELL: Idan's artillery unit wasn't the only one questioning the wisdom of orders. Ronen's unit was nearby, and ordered to attack a stronghold of 400 Hezbollah fighters. It was a dangerous mission in any circumstance, but the orders were to advance on the enemy in broad daylight.

RONEN: We go in, and we're walking in a line, keeping our space, and it's all in daylight. It's like...you feel stupid that you're walking in daylight. Stupid, that you're walking in daylight. About an hour after our entrance, we're still a long snake-like line of people, there's a small hill. Then we hear the "eeeuuu..."I lift my head, and I shout," mb!" Meaning mortar bombs. Everyone hits the ground. You see the bombs falling around you. Then I heard Eyal, my officer on the radio, "we've got injured" I say to Ron, "let's go. Run!" So we start running through the fields. I'm running and seeing everything in slow motion. Like there's a camera next to me, and I see myself running in slow motion, like this...and you're like, "don't fall, don't fall, don't fall..." I start to see the bomb site, and the remnants of the mortar bombs...And I see the first guy...I get there, and he's not-he's gone. He has CSF, that's brain fluid, and he's totally... gone. You know that there's nothing you can do. It's an awful feeling of helplessness.

MITCHELL: Idan's artillery unit, meanwhile, was bombarding the border with cannon fire.

IDAN: I remember myself running between the cannons, with this terrible noise all around, and I don't even know why, but I started screaming Aviv Geffen's song "March for Peace""...let's march for peace, no matter our race or nationality." And everyone's staring at me...the officers are like, "what's this crazy guy shouting?" At that moment, I felt like the reality was too surreal, too weird, too not for me. There was a feeling that none of it had purpose, that no matter how many cannons we fired, it wouldn't stop the Katyusha rockets, and that if there was no attempt to get a ceasefire, it would only get more complicated.

MITCHELL: Ronen's unit was supposed to finish its mission within 72 hours. But 5 days later, 17 kilometers inside Lebanon, the farthest advance of any unit in the IDF, the order came to stop. And then there was another problem: they had outrun their supplies.

RONEN: When we waited for the food, for the supplies that never arrived, and at a certain point we also finished what we had, we realized we needed to look for food. So we looked through houses and storerooms...we found some food in the basement of a house. I took a couple soldiers with me for protection, and I knocked on their door... And I asked them, in Arabic, we spoke in Arabic, I said "we've run out of food and water" and asked if we could take what they had downstairs. And they said, "take what you need, what's mine is yours." Now...you know that they won't say no. They know they won't say know. I remember the feeling I had, when you go to do something, that in your regular life, you wouldn't do. You wouldn't take water from a store without paying; you wouldn't take food, water, rice from someone's house, without paying, or something, you know...after taking the supplies, we left an "IOU" with a phone number in Israel. That...you say to yourself, you know, maybe soon there will be peace, and he'll come to me with that note, and I'll pay him back for the water I took. I would so love to pay him back for the rice that I took.

MITCHELL: After 34 days and over 1000 casualties—most of those Lebanese civilians—Israel, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accepted a U.N. brokered ceasefire.

RONEN: I know that uh the biggest lack of success in the Lebanon war was that we weren't able to bring back the 3 soldiers. One of them is still in Hamas' hands. And from my point of view, we shouldn't stop until we got him back, because this was, this was for me the main reason for going out for war.

MITCHELL: Do you think you lost?

RONEN: That we didn't bring him back? I don't know if "lost" is the right word, but I think that our mission was not accomplished.

OHAD: I don't see war, what we call war, even here in Israel and of course what you call a war as a separate of the huge conflict between us and the Arabs. And I think that today I can say that between us and the Arabs, there is no sure win or sure lose.

MITCHELL: Lebanon was widely viewed as a failure. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government were voted out of office in the next election. And Idan's newspaper ran a special report detailing how the soldiers conducted themselves on the battlefield—and what had changed.

IDAN: Officers were afraid to confront terrorists, for fear of losing soldiers' lives. Units that accumulated injured soldiers on the battlefield, instead of going ahead to complete their missions, stopped, in order to bring back their injured.

MITCHELL: The war in Lebanon became a watershed moment for Israel and its army.

IDAN: In that sense, many fascinating things happened in that war. Specifically, the conflict between the value of life and the value of completing the mission, that's the real story behind that war. There's a story here of a generation, mine and yours, that understands that ultimately there is nothing...but the value of life. We finally got it. That there's no more, "it's noble to die for our country." That's it. It's over.

MITCHELL: After the war, Idan went back to the newspaper, where he is now the assignment editor. Ohad returned to the movies, and Ronen was awarded a medal for bravery. But within three months, he sought treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

RONEN: I felt like, okay, I need to do that. I need to go and talk to someone professional because it's uh, I felt, I felt, the change and I knew that if I wouldn't go in the first months, it can stay like this is like this, the problem with post trauma.

MITCHELL: Less than three years later, he would find himself called up again. On December 27, 2008, the Israeli army began a massive operation in Gaza. The action came after a barrage of rockets were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. It soon became clear that the ultimate objective of the Israeli military was to deal a decisive blow against Hamas.

RONEN: Gaza war was in a way from the army point of view, as a professional army point of view, as a correction of Lebanon war.

MITCHELL: It says a lot about the Israeli mindset that while these reservists may be critical of the army and the Lebanon war, they all agree there are times when the Israeli military can and should be aggressive. In fact, Ronen, Idan and Ohad all say that Gaza was the right war for the right reason, and done the right way—even though over 1000 Palestinians died, 100s of them civilians. The hard-line sentiment seen in the Gaza operation carried Benjamin Netanyahu to victory as prime minister less than a month later. Netanyahu has taken a tough line on negotiations - for example, rebuffing American efforts to freeze the settlements.

A lot of Americans are sitting at home, they're watching TV, they're reading the newspapers and what they're seeing is these overwhelming military offenses, they're seeing settlements being built...

OHAD: From our point of view, from our interests, why not...you know, if you're occupying the territory and if the Palestinians are still against us and the Arab world is still against us, why not build the settlements and keep on doing what we are good in doing, which means developing our state?

MITCHELL: Ronen and Idan also believe in developing the Israeli state—but they're against most of what Netanyahu and the right-wingers stand for. They want to negotiate with Palestinians and they favor a two-state solution. But any peace settlement will have to convince Israelis that they can let go of a way of life that for 60 years has been framed by war.

Do you think if you have children someday that they're going to also have to serve? That the situation will be the same for them?

RONEN: I hope not. Uh, but, uh, I hope that the situation won't be the same for them. But I hope that everything will change. I hope that they will serve the country, because I think that national service is something, is very important.

MITCHELL: If peace does arrive for the next generation, it may be because of what these citizen soldiers have experienced on the battlefield.

RONEN: I think that today, the people in my immediate circle, and I, know that if we're called to serve in a war, we're going. But while I'm ready to go, I also have a lot of questions, a lot of "but's". How is it done? Why are we doing it? Who needs to do it? It's important to remember that we're adult soldiers. We're not kids. We don't walk with our heads into the wall. We ask questions. And sometimes we get bad answers. So you try to bring about change, you try to fix the system.

IDAN: The new young Israeli is not willing to automatically sacrifice his life for every prime minister's whim or impulse. And the message of our generation, that is willing to report for duty at rates reaching 100%, we say to our leaders, "we're examining you with 7 eyes, not 2 and you have to do everything and I mean everything, so that we don't have to report for duty."

BRANCACCIO: This is the second week in a row we've taken our cameras to the Middle East. If you missed last week's program on a new hope for peace that Palestinians are cultivating in the west bank, watch the show for free on our website, along with other now programs that take you across the country and around the world. You can get there from our homepage.

And that's it for NOW. From New York, I'm David Brancaccio. We'll see you next week.