The Israeli Defense Forces had intelligence that Hezbollah terrorists were equipped with armor-piercing ammunition, but it was not passed down to soldiers on the frontlines of the war in Lebanon, Channel 12 reported on Wednesday.
This information was discovered during a debriefing by the IDF’s 98th Paratroopers Division following an intense battle in Southern Lebanon, in which it was conveyed to commanders of an elite unit that the Hezbollah terrorists they just fought carried “more lethal Kalashnikovs,” meaning bullets capable of penetrating ceramic vests.
The commanders were not privy to this information before entering the combat zone. “We might have done things differently” if IDF intelligence had told us before the battle, they said.
An officer from another unit told Channel 12, “I only knew about it from rumors, not from any official source or intelligence. Only after I saw the debriefing did I understand that it wasn’t just a rumor, and that it required professional attention to how we operate in combat zones.”
The revelation sparked anger among the elite fighters of the unit and in other units.
Field commanders involved in ground operations said that the phenomenon of not sharing intelligence with frontline fighters has been a problem for decades in different wars and battles.
It is a “recurring failure in every war, operation, and has been raised in countless debriefings,” an officer said.
“The debriefings exist, the lessons are known, and yet it happens again and again,” the officers said, putting IDF soldiers at risk of death and injury as they go into battles lacking essential information about enemy combatants.
