Jewish Life Digital Edition September 2015 | Page 67

PHOTOGRAPHS: WIKIPEDIA.ORG

network of connecting underground
tunnels located in Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon). They were part of a much larger
network of tunnels that underlie much of
the country, and were the location of
several military campaigns during the
Vietnam War, as well as the Viet Cong’s
base of operations for the 1968 Tet
Offensive. Viet Cong soldiers used the
tunnels as hiding spots during combat;
they also served as communication and
supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon
caches and living quarters for North
Vietnamese fighters. Life in them was
terrible – little air, food or water, coupled
with infestations of ants, poisonous
centipedes, scorpions, spiders and other
vermin. Sickness was rampant, especially
malaria, which was the second largest
cause of death next to battle wounds.
The tunnels between Israel and the
Palestinian area under the Gaza border are
today one of the most deadly threats to
peace in the region. Stretching from the
Rafah Crossing between the Gaza Strip
and Egypt into the Sinai, they are used to
smuggle a wide variety of material into
Gaza: food, fuel, livestock, zoo animals,
and even cars and car parts for civilians, as
well as huge amounts of military supplies
like weapons, ammunition, mortar shells
and explosives. And now Hamas is using
them to smuggle thousands of tons of
cement into the strip, in all probability to
be used for the reconstruction of the terror
tunnels. These smuggling tunnels are
economically lucrative for the diggers, who
earn a commission both for the numerous
types of digging that they do, and for the
materials that pass through them.
During last year’s Operation Protective
Edge, more than 40 new tunnels were dug
beneath Israel’s border with Gaza, which
were to be activated over Rosh Hashanah
2014 as a mass terror attack. The attack,
according to reports, would generate as
many as ten thousand casualties, men,
women and children. In particular,
explosives were placed underneath
kindergartens, to make certain these
“institutions” would be the first ones
struck, before anything else. Could such
barbarity be real?
The information released by the IDF
showed the tunnels were created in pairs, in

order to empty out on both sides of nearby
communities. The known cost of the
infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of
$1 million – was proof positive that Hamas
was planning a co-ordinated mega-attack.
Hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters
would enter Israel in the dead of night and,
within minutes, position themselves to
infiltrate as many of the Israeli communities
surrounding the Gaza Strip as possible. They
would then hide in the schools and
kindergartens until all of the children were
present, after which they would kill the
children first and then kill and/or kidnap as
many Israelis as they could.
In addition to the military material
already in the tunnels, the IDF uncovered
tranquilisers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes
and other materials used for subduing
abductees, civilians and soldiers. This
operation, according to Israeli military
spokesman Brig Gen Mordechai Almoz,
was a long time coming, he said, “because
Hamas has planned these tunnels for
years, and planned to use them to kidnap
soldiers and kill civilians”.
Israel launched a ground offensive into
Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, its
primary objective being the total
destruction of these 40 cross-border
tunnels, and it destroyed more than 30 of
them. But now, a year late "