'I guess they made a mistake': Israelis returning to north after Hezbollah demolished
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Mount Tsifya, Israel — From an observation post overlooking the breathtakingly beautiful mountains on Israel's border with Lebanon, Lt.-Col Jordan Herzberg points to a scarred hillside where a town used to be.
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Lebanon's Kfar Kila was badly thumped during an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, and further reduced to rubble by construction contractors engaged by Israel to largely wipe it from the Earth; it is now essentially a few roads with intermittent piles of rocks and vague outlines of what used to be houses.
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Herzberg said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) found what were essentially 'fake homes' there, filled with missiles and soldiers' rations and uniforms. It was the same story in settlements all along the Lebanese border, including in Christian towns that were essentially occupied by Hezbollah.
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The destruction done to southern Lebanon by the IDF's assault on Hezbollah last fall is devastatingly clear, but Herzberg wants a group of visiting Canadian journalists to understand the Israeli message: the war was not with Lebanon but with the terror group that had effectively colonized Kfar Kila and much of southern Lebanon.
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The Montreal-born Herzberg has the unique seriousness of purpose of an Israeli soldier proud of the Jewish state army's capacity for killing its enemies. He looks like an accountant who runs marathons but speaks with the swagger of a warrior, sometimes against his country's own leadership. The army was embarrassed by October 7, and is determined not to be caught flat-footed again.
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Israel learned quickly from its inattention early on October 7, taking no chances in the north; two hours after Hamas invaded the south, the army sent troops to the north to counter any threat from the better-armed Hezbollah. Israel has since spent the last 19 months ensuring it is defanged.
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Herzberg said Hamas are bunch of pikers who got lucky — he calls them 'a junior varsity team' while Hezbollah is 'a professional sports team.' But by hesitating when Hamas acted, Hezbollah lost the opportunity to seize an advantage. They sent their first rockets into northern Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, sparking a back-and-forth and a full-scale Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon.
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