Today, 44 years ago, on the 16th of Sivan, fighters from the Golani Reconnaissance Unit captured Beaufort Castle in the First Lebanon War.
Beaufort Fortress, Qala’at al-Shqif, is an exceptionally important strategic position in southern Lebanon. Situated at the peak of the Beaufort ridge, it overlooks the Litani River bend.
The battle to capture Beaufort, which opened Operation Peace for Galilee, was fierce and heroic. The soldiers advanced under heavy fire. Early in the battle, the unit commander Moshe Kaplinsky was wounded and replaced by Guni Haranik, the previous commander. The force fought through the narrow trenches of the ancient fortress, broke into enemy positions, and faced intense resistance. In that brutal clash, Major Guni Haranik fell, along with his radioman Sergeant Yaron Zamir, team commander Lieutenant Avikam Sherf, Staff Sergeant Raz Guterman, Sergeant Gil Ben-Akiva, and Staff Sergeant Yosef Eliel.
The memorial sign honoring these six fallen soldiers stood at the Beaufort outpost throughout Israel’s presence in the Security Zone, until Ehud Barak’s shameful withdrawal in 2000. After the retreat, Ron Leshem wrote the prophetic lines that closed his book If There is a Paradise: “And I, truthfully, personally believe we’ll be back. There won’t be a hotel on the mountain, there will be a Hezbollah command post…”
Since that shameful withdrawal, the sign has been kept in the Grove of the Fallen at the unit’s base. Right now, it is being returned to its rightful place.
After four decades of weakness, hesitation, and retreat, decades that included Oslo, the Disengagement, and the humiliating flight from Lebanon, we are here again.
This time, we have come to win decisively, to stay, and to ensure that our soldiers defend the northern border not from the Israeli side, but from Beaufort, Maroun al-Ras, Ayta ash-Sha’b, and Ras Nakoura.
Unlike the old Security Zone, where dozens of enemy villages with hostile populations remained between Israeli communities and the outposts, this time the hostile population has been evacuated northward. The IDF is systematically dismantling Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure, village by village.
Yes, the campaign to remove the malignant Iranian proxy threat from our northern communities is long and painful. But it is far better than any solution relying on Indonesian, Spanish, or French soldiers who will never fight for us.
Sykes and Picot caused enough damage with their border drawings, and we have made more than enough mistakes on the Lebanese border. Hezbollah, which has initiated two wars against us in the past two and a half years, must now bear the full consequences of its actions.
A real, clean security zone free of enemies is not a temporary arrangement. It must be permanent.
To the supporters of the Ayatollahs and Nasrallah in Maroun al-Ras, Ayta ash-Sha’b, al-Adisa, and the other Hezbollah villages now living in tents, we have only this to say: Enjoy the porridge you have cooked for yourselves.