We are used to talking about the northern front in apocalyptic terms. The “Great Northern War” has become a swinging sword over our heads, a futuristic multi-missile monster that threatens to wreak havoc on Israel like it has never experienced before. We are threatened with thousands of rockets and precision missiles per day, with the “occupation of the Galilee” by Nasrallah’s commandos (Radwan Force), with unprecedented destruction in the rear.
Nasrallah threatens: “The end of Israel is very near, we won’t need another 40 years”
Precisely the man responsible for this complex and explosive front in the last three and a half years, General Amir Baram, is much calmer than its threats. Baram will hand over command the day after tomorrow to General Uri Gordin. Strangely, he actually thinks the situation is not bad at all. No one will conquer the Galilee, Nasrallah is a lonely man, a tragic figure, a man trapped in a cruel dilemma, in which no choice is heartwarming.
In short, there is no need to exaggerate. The Galilee is flourishing, the Golan Heights is thriving, the command managed to stop and completely prevent the Golan Heights from becoming Nasrallah’s “second front”, and everything, or at least the majority, is not bad at all. You have to work hard so that it stays that way, you must not underestimate the threat, you have to be prepared at any moment for the worst, but there is no reason to panic. Nasrallah would switch with the IDF at any given moment. He has problems at home, he has cracks in his base, the Shiites are also not what they used to be.
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In Beirut and even in southern Lebanon, difficult questions are being asked. There are already Lebanese journalists who call Hezbollah a “terrorist organization that runs like a mafia” (follow the obituary notices). Talkbackists in Beirut mock Nasrallah and say “Listen, we would die to be in the position of those you defeated.” Baram is a “freak” of media and social networks in Lebanon. He lives, understands and breathes Nasrallah and in the end states that he is “a lonely man. All his partners and close allies are gone. I don’t envy him.”
Baram still does not know where he is headed. He is offered the position of First Deputy Chief of Staff, but he is not really enthusiastic. This man has spent the last 35 years at the sharpest and most distant point of combat that the IDF has to offer. Paratrooper Planet Commander, Paratrooper Patrol Commander, Battalion 890 Commander, Magellan Commander, Shomron Brigade Commander, Paratrooper Brigade, Division 98 Commander, Division 91 Commander, Commander of the Northern Brigade and Commander of the Northern Command. There is not a stone in the Galilee or the Golan that he does not know personally.
In the midst of all this, he has not yet had the chance to do a single staff role. The army threw him, regularly, to the hottest fronts. Not that he has any complaints. He does not have. He is 53 years old, in uniform from the age of 14 (military boarding school) and would have stayed in uniform, if it had been possible, until the age of 94. One of the types who would also like to spend their sheltered housing days in a military camp. If it helps that he stays in the IDF, he will happily stay there. If not? Not bad.
Baram follows the process that Lebanon is going through with bated breath. Even the Shiites, as mentioned, are not what they used to be. The generation is waning. Nasrallah, he says, visited quite a few bereaved families. The value of human life among the Shiites, in Lebanon as well as in Iran, has increased greatly in the current era. Gone are the days when an unlimited number of warriors could be sacrificed. The concept of the “Shia suicide” has passed away. Today, most suicide bombers in the Middle East are radical Sunnis. The Iranians make sure to send “militias” to the front, Nasrallah tries to save the lives of his people. They do not sanctify death. It’s over. They want to live and yes, they want life to be comfortable.
Yes, Baram is a chronic optimist. incurable. In a detailed summary document that he prepared near the end of his position, he states that “I truly believe that the Zionist movement has won. The State of Israel has no external existential threat (I am not referring here to the emerging threat from Iran), and our most difficult problems are mainly internal ones. Israel is a First World country surrounded by countries Third world, certainly in the northern arena. These are artificial political entities, extreme in some of their components and with loose internal governance.”