Last August, First Sergeant Naor Blanco joined a Netzah Yehuda battalion (Kfir brigade) nighttime operation to arrest a wanted man suspected of terrorist activity in the Jenin refugee camp. Blanco, a combat cameraman working for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesperson’s Unit, arrived ready for the mission, however, as is often the case on the battlefield, things got complicated. “Shortly after we went in, they started shooting at us from different directions,” he recounts. “We acted according to regulations, and our forces returned fire when they had identified the sources of the shooting. While advancing in one of the alleyways, a large brick hurtled towards me and fell a short distance from me. That whole time, I held the camera and documented the battle and the exchanges of fire. I turned towards the direction from which the brick was thrown at me, and I identified a terrorist standing on a nearby rooftop. He was about to throw another brick at me. I realized I was in a life-threatening situation.”This is great....but I wish they would release more footage! The leftists who film riots often edit out the parts where the Arabs are throwing stones or to make it appear that the IDF shot tear-gas before any rioting, and we need more of the IDF videos to show the truth.
Blanco didn’t hesitate: “I had no doubt about what I needed to do in the situation, and I acted swiftly. I put the camera in my vest, and I raised my rifle. The clip was already loaded. The terrorist was about 30 or 40 meters away from me. I aimed, pulled the trigger, and shot a single bullet, which hit him precisely, below his knee. He was injured, and neutralized, and no longer a threat to me or my fellow force members.
The operation ended with the suspect killed, and two Palestinians injured in the confrontation with IDF forces. But even after the forces left Jenin, Sergeant Blanco’s work continued. “When we finished at the refugee camp, I immediately made contact with the chief IDF Spokesperson representative in Central Command Major Ran Baroz and brigade representatives in Judea and Samaria. I understood from them that according to reports that had already been released by Palestinian sources, the IDF had purportedly perpetrated crimes in the nighttime operation, and a 14 year old youth had been injured. I took out my playback equipment, and sent the video documenting the development of the event. The material had been through preliminary editing, the images were distributed to all the communications networks, and within a short time, the tone of the reports cooled down.
“The visual material proved that it was a planned operation to capture a terrorist, and there was clear documentation of the fact that it was the terrorists who opened fire on us. The footage left no doubt that the forces that operated in the field acted with restraint, and the soldiers only fired when a life-threatening situation arose. The footage included cries of “Kill the Jews,” which could be heard constantly in the background. There is nothing better than seeing something with your own eyes, so headlines saying “The IDF invaded Jenin” were switched within minutes and updated to say “The IDF carried out an anti-terrorist operation in Jenin.”
“This is the pinnacle, from every perspective, on every level,” he admits with a glint in his eyes. “I know that the communication networks hate to retract reports they have published. And here, my footage from the field changed the entire thrust of the event’s coverage.”
...The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit is planning to continue the program and train more such documenters, so it will be possible to send fighters armed with cameras even to the complex operations of Squadron 13 other elite units. “It will happen. No one has any doubt of that,” said an IDF Spokesperson. “Today, we can only imagine how the Muhammad al-Durrah incident (during the Second Intifada) would have unfolded had we had a combat documenter at the scene.
(h/t Yerushalimey)