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A somewhat typical day in Israel

By Mark Davis

JERUSALEM - Well, the "Day of Rage" turned out to be a bust.

Billed by radical Palestinians as a day of demonstrations or maybe worse, Friday was a fairly typical late summer day around here: bright sun, 95 degrees, travelers, police and soldiers everywhere.

Fridays get busy in Israel.

At sundown, the Sabbath kicks in. No driving, no commerce, no nothing for most of this country, except the quiet reflection that Judaism requires during the 24 hours of Shabbat.

But I did say Friday was "fairly" typical. I did see one breed of law enforcement I had not seen before.

Blue-clad police and green-clad soldiers are everywhere, guns out and at the ready. On Friday, I saw the men in black.

Black denim and leather, head to toe. Black boots. Black gloves. Black motorcycle helmets with black visors, atop their black motorcycles. And did I mention the black guns?

Two of them dismounted right in front of me. I just had to say hello. Neither spoke English, so through a guide I learned that they are an elite special operations force with a role somewhere between policeman and soldier.

Police respond to crime, soldiers protect national security, and these special forces officers deploy any time that terror is specifically anticipated.

Helicopters hummed over the walls of the Old City on Friday afternoon. Roadblocks scanned motorists a little more tightly. And the day passed without violence.

That certainly was not the case earlier in the week. One week ago today, Hezbollah missiles sailed into Shlomi, a small Israeli town near the Lebanese border.

In a coincidence of stunning scope, I was scheduled to meet that day with officials at Western Galilee Hospital in Nasiriyah, a coastal city with ties to the Metroplex through a program called Partnership 2000. The program links U.S. and Israeli towns for professional and artistic cooperation.

Upon arrival, our guide told us that the security check would take longer than normal. "Something has happened," she said.

That's a sentence you don't want to hear in this part of the world. And five miles away in Shlomi, they had heard a sound that you fear even more: the whistle of Hezbollah rockets slamming into a group of people, injuring four and killing a teen-age boy.

All five had arrived at the hospital less than an hour before I walked into the lobby. Dr. Moshe Daniel, the hospital's deputy director, had just learned of the boy's death, and that understandably cut deeply into our interview time.

But in the few minutes we had, I learned that the only hospital along any of Israel's borders is ready for the worst, going so far as to build an entire underground section meant to fend off weapons of mass destruction.

In another twist of fate, my next agenda item called for a visit to the kibbutz at Misgav Am, on a mountaintop overlooking the Lebanese border. Not the most secure place to be on the day of a missile attack, but how often do you get to visit a place where you can see the attacks when they are launched?

The daily witness to this drama is Mike Ginsberg, head of security for Misgav Am, which the Israeli Defense Forces know is a vital strategic location. That's why they fire off intelligence briefings to him, and that's how he could tell me some sensitive things as we stood in the whipping winds above a cliff that sloped sharply down to a road where yellow Hezbollah flags proudly flapped.

"See that mountain?" he said, pointing to a peak on the near horizon. "Behind that flag, they're watching us Š and aiming at us." >P>Oh, that's good.

But Misgav Am is not a scary place. Many in this committed community serve as a security force in jeans and T-shirts, protecting Israel's most far-flung fringe region.

Mike's cellphone rings about every two minutes. He never knows when it might be an attack in progress. After all, if you ask Hezbollah, Misgav Am is in Lebanon.

Some Israeli heroes look like warriors from an action movie, like the motorcycle-mounted special ops guys. Others, like Mike Ginsberg, wear short-sleeve shirts and a baseball cap that says, "Brooklyn."

I asked Mike if, amid the craziness, he ever feels like returning to his native New York.

"No way," he says with a smile. "Too dangerous."

-- This article first appeared in Star-Telegraph.

Posted on Sun, Aug. 17, 2003

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