Eilon, October 9, 2006
Hello friends
The summer war postscript:;
Much has been made of the indisputable fact that Hezbollah [as well as others] has always exploited the immediate civilian environment to carry out its armed offensive. For much of this war, Israeli gun batteries and rocket launchers were also located in close proximity to civilian settlements. In the earliest days of the war, assault helicopters reconnoitered above Eilon and her fields, launching missiles and firing their cannon. Of course, it is not the same thing, we'd opine, as there was a huge difference between setting up a rocket launcher within the confines of a Lebanese village or establishing an artillery pit in a field or orchard beyond the confines of a nearby Israeli town or village. Throughout the duration of this war Debby made this observation more than once. I responded nonchalantly that there was no need to worry, since Hezbollah customarily aimed at the easier and bigger civilian targets. In other words, the closer a military target was to a civilian community, the least vulnerable that community was to rocket attacks.
Nookh, who works as an assistant grounds keeper with Richie Collins in Eilon mowed the lawn in the rear of the house about a week ago. He came across a blue and silver nylon or plastic wrapper in the adjacent yard. He lifted the wrapper, which contained some unknown substance, but bore a resemblance to a halvah candy wrapper, and chucked the object onto the hydraulic wagon, mindful not to move over it with his lawn mower. On Friday he emptied the contents of the wagon, and as he handled the inscrutable wrapper it exploded, dealing him third degree burns on his face, including his eyes. Richie rushed him to the hospital.
Evidently what he picked up was a piece of unexploded ordnance, thought to be one of those decoy illuminations that the helicopters used to ward off heat seeking surface to air missiles. As such, we can expect that more of these flammable objects, "incandescent candy", may have been dispersed about Eilon.
Love-Barry