Shayetet victims' families demand justice
Bereaved families urge decision makers to claim responsibility after report reveals 1997 ambush in south Lebanon that killed 12 IDF commandoes was well-planned attack, not an accident
Days after the Israel Defense Forces admitted that the 1997 Naval Commando disaster in south Lebanon, in which 12 commandoes were killed, was not an accidental ambush, but a well-planned operation, the victims' families are demanding that those responsible for the botched operation admit the truth.
Thirteen years after the fatal incident, Nahshon Tabi, the father of soldier Raz Tabi who was killed in the ambush, places blame on the commanding ranks. "I'm allowing myself to call generals such as Alex Tal and Gabi Ofir 'pitiful' instead of generals.
Though many years have elapsed since the event, Tabi recently spoke with then-Navy Commander Ofir, who continued to insist that the fatal incident was caused by a random ambush.
"They received transmissions from the unmanned aerial vehicle and knew that the force was coming. So could it have been random?" he lamented.
Navy Commander Eliezer Marom is scheduled to visit the Tabi family next week and present the new findings reveled by the committee that he headed.
"If personal conclusions are not made, we will turn to the Supreme Court," warned Tabi.
"We won't forgive Ofir and Tal until they admit their mistake. I expect them to come here along with Marom, so that they also hear what he has to say. But I'm convinced they won't show up – because they are scared," he added.
'Terrain was unsterile'
Nachshon Tabi is not alone in the battlefield. Moshe Rodovsky, who lost his son Gal in the incident, already turned to the Supreme Court.
Rodovsky stressed that he will not let anyone escape responsibility: "I don't want to go back to that knock on the door at a quarter to six in the morning on Friday, when they told me 'Gal was killed in operational activity.'
"We were presented with the report and the details from the drone footage," said Rodovsky, who could hardly contain his anger. "The footage we had is the same exact footage (Hezbollah chief) Nasrallah had five days before the incident."
Rodovsky claimed "Nasrallah has many other photos that were not reveled. As preparation for the activity, there must have been at least 300 UAV transmissions. I myself saw that the terrain was unsterile.
"You can see people strolling around and even a dog. You hear pilots saying over the radio: 'What are they stupid down there? Why aren't they doing anything? The area is unsterile.'"
Unlike Tabi, Rodovsky asked Marom to examine the findings without the involvement of the Supreme Court at first. "(Marom) told me that there's a proper way to ask and warned that I was starting a war that will last years," said the bereaved father.
Rodovsky, as Tabi, suspects the motives behind the IDF's sweeping refusal to publish the full details of the investigation are non kosher.
"My assumption is that they are scared that because they screwed up, someone's going to have to go home. They are protecting their seats. They are watching each other's backs – that is their professional ethics," concluded Rodovsky.
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