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The IDF Human Intelligence Unit Saved Many Israeli Lives

(Ynet News) Oded Shalom - The IDF Human Intelligence Unit's operations are carried out along two axes - the recruitment and handling of agents in the West Bank and enemy states bordering Israel, and the interrogation of prisoners both on a routine basis and during times of war. "In times of war, the unit focuses its efforts primarily on field interrogations, the unit's commanding officer, Colonel A., explains. "The information the interrogators retrieve from the people the fighters capture in the battle zones can save lives and alter offensive or defensive plans." Do you use force against the detainees? "Never, there's none of that," says Lt. Col. H. "The use of force in field interrogations doesn't yield information, so interrogation is an acquired skill....Imagine you're sitting with a Hamas member in Khan Yunis and you're interrogating him while the fighting rages; and because of the pressure and force you subject him to, he gives you the information he thinks you want to hear but it is not necessarily the truth. Every detail you exact from him must stem from a willingness to cooperate." On July 21, Ohad Shemesh, 27, a field interrogator with the IDF's Human Intelligence Unit, was killed in an exchange of fire in Khan Yunis. R., a reservist who oversaw the field interrogators, says the information Shemesh gathered during the fighting was very significant. "On one of the days," he recounts, "the force he was with spotted a cell making preparations to launch a rocket towards Israel....Ohad convinced the company commander not to kill them, and really insisted on it, even though this required that the soldiers outflank them and capture them alive. Ohad got information from them about 15 launch sites, information that was immediately passed on to the air force, which, within minutes, then closed the circle and bombed those sites." After Shemesh was killed, Hamas maps were found on his person; he had found them in homes he had entered with the troops during the fighting. A. says they were maps with tactical markings that showed the location of Hamas command posts and places where ambushes had been set up against IDF forces. The information from these maps also soon became targets for the air force.
2014-10-03 00:00:00
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