27.08.2011                      27.Aw-Elul, 5771                       Reeh

Rückschau:

Security and Defense: Caught in a pincer

With September looming and with changing winds in Cairo, Israel’s response to the current violence down South has so far been contained.

In 1973, as a young teenager, Tal Russo remembers climbing to the top of the grain silo near his home in Kibbutz Hulata during the Yom Kippur War and watching as Israel Air Force fighter jets shot down four Syrian MiGs.
A lot of his youth, he often recalls, was spent in the kibbutz’s bomb shelters – Hulata is near the Syrian border – where he mostly felt frustrated for not being able to participate in the fighting.
This changed in 1978 when Russo was drafted into Shaldag, one of the IDF’s most elite units. He was discharged from the army in 1981, traveled around South America and the United States for about two years, working as a mover and a truck driver, and then returned to the IDF in time to serve in the First Lebanon War….