We are at the Black Arrow memorial, a site dedicated to the battles of the Paratroopers Brigade just off the Gaza Strip. Some 60 years after the famous raid that gave this site its name -- not before eight Israeli soldiers were killed and three distinctions were awarded -- more paratroopers lose their lives in similar circumstances. IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz, who had been constantly on the phone, tells me, without losing his composure, that three had been killed overnight as a result of an improvised explosive device. "There are going to be more days like these," he said. All of a sudden the ground shook. A day earlier, Dr. Ronen Bergman and I covertly made it to the western side of the perimeter fence around Kfar Aza. We could see the joint Israeli Air Force -- Infantry Corps operation to purge the terrorist hotbed in Shujaiyya. But on Wednesday, despite being allowed to the site, Almoz said we had to go. "There is something going on," he said. We could hear the artillery barrage; soldiers started pouring in; smoke billowed. There was hurried commotion as soldiers rushed to the scene. It turns out terrorists had infiltrated. Almoz says Hamas is trying to race to the cross-border tunnels and use them before the Israel Defense Forces destroys them. But where is all this taking place? The IDF was looking everywhere; units were put on heightened alert as they took a defensive line; we found a soldier holding his assault rifle and standing close to the concrete post, aiming toward an unseen enemy, just like he has been taught in basic training. His friends say he always has a knife between his teeth. It's not clear where we should go. So we take cover behind an armored personnel carrier. A few minutes later we are told the terrorists may have tried to reach Kibbutz Kissufim. It is 1955 all over again. We make it back to Kfar Aza. We see a soldier sitting in a tank turret. It was a scene taken right out of "The Tanks of Tammuz," Shabtai Teveth's eyewitness account of the Six-Day War. A day earlier an IDF soldier had been killed when a Palestinian sniper shot him. His death could have been averted. The artillery fire continues. Bullets pierce the air. But things are drawing to a close. The focus shifts to a hospital that is being used as a safe haven for terrorists, who also occasionally fire from that facility. The Israeli Air force conducts air raids in waves during the noon hours. Reserve soldiers who had been tackling the Hamas tunnels arrive. They are in good spirits, despite being denied sleep. Wednesday ended with 160 terrorists dead. Someone tells us that Hamas' Gaza-based leaders were told to show less footage of the dead; this was hurting the Palestinian morale, they were told. Suddenly, on a field adjacent to the border fence, an Israeli farmer moves along with his tractor. Two Israeli soldiers move alongside him, making sure he is not hurt. This war's protagonists are exposed even as they remain anonymous. Alongside the reserve soldiers, whose forte is blowing up the deadly tunnels, you have a group of men and women who sit at a coffee shop in a Kfar Aza gas station. I have never seen such an intense combination of pride and sadness on human faces. "Who are you-" I ask them. "Our kids serve in Golani, they are going to arrive here soon for some refreshments; they are going to be here for 30 minutes," one woman responds. As I take a picture of two parents, I could not help but recite Nathan Alterman's immortal words: "I shall sew him a holiday gown." God, just bring them back home safely.
