Rescuing Hostages
Terrorism has evolved, and so has the IDF's counterterrorism unit - Lotar. Or Heller joined the unit for a training exercise and conducted a special interview with a senior officer in the unit
Three o'clock in the morning at the Ono Academic College in Kiryat-Ono. Throughout the daytime, students study here to become lawyers and business executives, but at night, the people here deal with something entirely different: rescuing hostages who have the barrels of AK assault rifles pressed to their heads and explosive vests strapped to their bodies. The buildings of the college become a makeshift training ground for the IDF Counterterrorism unit, Lotar.
This is the final exercise of the counterterrorism NCO course. The knowledge they had gained on the rescuing of hostages will be passed on, to the IDF takeover and intervention units, special operations forces and elite commando units.
Having received detailed and accurate intelligence regarding the building where the hostages are kept, the counterterrorism specialists begin planning the operation and divide into several forces. The "monkeys" – a nickname for the rappelling specialists who break into the objective through windows and other unexpected openings with ropes - climb up to the roof. Other teams prepare their breaching kits and ladders of various heights.
The snipers, carrying their newly issued rifles with an effective range of 1,200 meters, take up positions opposite windows through which the terrorists may become visible. And then, in a second, everything explodes. The fighters break into the two-story building through every possible opening after a specialist from the bomb disposal team of the Yahalom unit of the IDF Combat Engineering Corps has neutralized an explosive charge planted by the terrorists. Everything is over very quickly. The "kidnappers" lie flat on the ground. The "hostages" are being interrogated, to verify that there are no disguised terrorists among them, and the explosive charges strapped to their bodies are neutralized.
Commanding this entire activity is Lt. Col. Lior Keinan, commander of the IDF Counterterrorism Unit, Lotar – which serves as the IDF's central counterterrorism school. The school is located at the Adam training facility in the central region, and is charged with the task of training the IDF elite units in particular, and units of the entire defense establishment generally, for hostage rescue missions and other scenarios terrorists might create.
Israel's two primary hostage rescue units are the Israel Police's Specialist Counterterrorism Unit, Yamam, and Sayeret Matkal – the elite reconnaissance and special operations unit of the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Other units such as the IDF Naval Commandos, the IAF 669th Airborne Rescue and Evacuation Unit, the IAF special operations unit Shaldag, et al, also possess counterterrorism capabilities. All of these units practice breaking into aircraft, buses and schools, as well as a recent addition: a scenario of a passenger train hijacked by terrorists and rescued in a night takeover operation.
"Whereas Israel Railways do not have excess coaches, we conduct our training activities onboard real trains, during the night, at the railway station in the town of Lod, when no one is around. The train scenario is a highly relevant scenario," says a senior officer in the unit, but it is not the only means of transportation that could become the objective of passenger kidnapping. "We also practice hostage rescuing from a bus, an aircraft and a ship".
The officer admits, however, that although everything works fine in practice, it may not work so well in the real world: "the reference threat in the world of counterterrorism at this time is mainly that of a killing spree. Ten terrorists entering Israel, God forbid, would be a much more severe situation than any of the hostage negotiation situations we experienced in the past. For example, just a few months ago, Islamic Jihad terrorists entered an industrial plant in Algiers, taking between 300 and 400 of the local employees as hostages. In the southern part of the country (opposite the Egyptian border in the Sinai) as well as in the north (opposite the Syrian Golan Heights), there are currently Islamic Jihad members, taking advantage of the weakening of the central regime."
Counterterrorism Knowledge Center
Lt. Col. Keinan started out as a trooper with the IDF K-9 unit, Oketz, subsequently climbing through the ranks of that unit to the position of deputy unit commander. Soon, he will compete for the position of commander of the Oketz unit or the IDF Dignitary Protection Unit. He hails from Kfar-Aza and currently resides in the town of Rehovot. The IDF Counterterrorism School was established in the 1970s, against the background of the Sabena airliner hijacking of 1972 and the Maalot schoolchildren massacre of 1974. The idea was to establish an element that would concentrate and coordinate all training and instruction activities associated with counterterrorism. All of the special operations and commando units of the IDF come to the school to receive special training in four primary fields: marksmanship and sniping, personal security, breaching techniques and 'monkeys' – rappelling techniques, as well as camouflage training. The unit draws practical lessons from each and every terrorist attack taking place anywhere in the world, and these lessons are taught to the elite units of the IDF. In line with this policy, they have recently analyzed the elimination of Osama Bin Laden by the US Navy Seals – the American equivalent of the IDF Naval Commandos, 13th Navy Squadron.
"We have not experienced a 'classic' terrorist situation for many years," says the officer, "However, global terrorism is currently interconnected through an ideological bond. We need to come up with an effective solution for this. For many years we thought we would experience a terrorist attack against a school, but today we understand that the next situation would be much more complex."
How does your relationship with the special operations units you train work?
"A takeover unit should arrive on the scene of a terrorist attack within 45 minutes. We invest a lot in the cooperation between Sayeret Matkal and the Yamam, for example. We need to train their teams. We work with these units as well as with the Israeli Prison Service's Metzada as well as with Shabak and Mossad units. It is a part of the school's vision."
Where does the famous rivalry between Sayeret Matkal and the Yamam currently stand with regard to hostage rescue operations? Has this matter been resolved within the system?
"One of the most important things they did three years ago was to sort out these things between the units. The people in those units realized that the rivalry was unnecessary. Once you come out and state that there is a primary unit assigned exclusively to this task, which is the Yamam, and incidentally – in some of the things this unit is superior to the other one, and once (the people of Sayeret) Matkal realize that their primary assignment is the field of special operations, and that at the same time they will serve as the secondary unit and assist the Yamam in hostage rescue situations when required – things have been sorted out all the way."
In other words, if we experience another situation like the kidnapping of the late soldier Nachshon Wachsman in 1994, they will call on the Yamam to execute the rescue operation this time, not on Sayeret Matkal?
"Let's take a situation that is easier in terms of decision making. If a terrorist situation were to develop tomorrow morning at Azrieli Mall in Tel Aviv, they will call on the Yamam. The commanders of both units are currently working on how to allocate their forces in the event of two objects drawing forces simultaneously, namely – a split situation. Who commands it? Who is in charge? You have to explain to these units what is expected of them. Sayeret Matkal would not have to be on alert for rescuing hijacked buses all day, once you told them that this is only their secondary competence.
"To their credit, I can say that it is such a fine and capable unit, that it can do both, while the Yamam consists of people who have been doing only that for twenty and thirty years – which is an advantage in its own right."
Is it still possible today to rescue the hostages alive when the other side also draws lessons from past hostage situations and keeps getting better?
"In my view - yes. It is possible. It compels us to come up with new tricks all the time. We ha ve the IDF's GHQ negotiations unit, which we deploy in exercises and 'round table' discussions. They operate intensively, not only in military negotiating situations, and carry a decisive weight in such situations. If we were to enter through the door, in the most banal manner, we would probably fail the operation. Today we have better techniques, from explosions of various types to various techniques for approaching the objective silently. Take the Russians, for example. They have an excellent counterterrorism unit and nevertheless they had a massacre over there. They fired at one another in a rescue attempt against Chechen terrorists. Nevertheless, it is an excellent unit with substantial strength.
"A while after the 'Marmara' flotilla incident (May 2010), a Russian general came here for a visit. We presented the case study to him and he sat up, surprised, and asked 'why didn't you simply launch a missile and sank that ship?' Their approach is entirely different. "If we have a situation and we manage to strike properly, we will have a high probability of success. Even with a single hostage. It is highly dependent on various variables. If they have the hostage surrounded by four guards, all pressing the barrels of their weapons to his head, and if they have an early intelligence alerts and booby traps – it will be very, very difficult."
Yet even in the rescue attempt of the late Nachshon Wachsman in 1994, when good intelligence was available, we realized that it is difficult to impossible to rescue a hostage alive.
"Correct, but if we were to experience a situation like the Nachshon Wachsman kidnapping today, I assume the chances of success would have been better owing to the lessons we had drawn. Here I must say something in parentheses. I will be very careful about what I am saying, but I have a feeling that we sometimes glorify the capability of the enemy. We have a serious advantage over the enemy, so if we entered such a situation with sound intelligence and conducted the negotiations properly, we would be able to achieve a good result. It is possible. It is more difficult than it was in the past. Take the Munich Olympics: this is one type of situation that we would never experience again. It would no longer be a bunch of amateurs tying the door shut with a rag.
"That's where we are aiming. In all of our exercises we practice the presence of an explosive charge on the way in, or examine how to rescue the hostages without tripping another explosive charge.
"We practice very complex scenarios, based on the understanding that an unsuccessful situation could take us to a dire position as a state, on the strategic level. Such a situation, where we did not emerge as the unequivocal winners, will not be good for us."
Were any lessons drawn from the Gilad Shalit affair, despite the fact that no operational attempts were made to rescue him?
"On the practical level of the combat doctrine, no. I assume it would come eventually. This is something in which we are interested. I am not sure that what we will learn would change the unit's combat doctrines."
How did you implement the lessons of the 'Marmara' incident at the unit, in terms of what you teach the Naval Commandos and other special operations units?
"We teach the 'fast rope' method (a rappelling technique that enables fighters to slide down a rope from a helicopter, as used during the takeover of the 'Marmara' – O.H.) to the entire IDF. Only five units use the 'fast rope' technique as takeover units: the Yamam, Lotar Eilat, Sayeret Matkal, Shaldag and the Naval Commandos. The 'fast rope' element should be the second wave of the takeover operation. A part of the problem onboard the 'Marmara' was the intelligence status picture and the resistance intensity anticipated. The revision we made is that in the future, we will not use ropes where the opponent can tie down the end. A helicopter will never arrive at the objective on its own. It will arrive with an array of snipers and sharpshooters. The landing party will consist of numerous fighters and we will be able to get them down in larger groups. The ropes will no longer touch the ground.
"The terrorists can threaten with whatever they want, but it will be our choice as to how to make the initial contact. A violent contact is the easy way, and the most important thing is to arrive simultaneously. We were lucky that the Naval Commandos handled the Marmara incident. Any other unit would have sustained casualties, KIAs, in such a situation. They had hundreds of people against a handful of fighters, and as long as you do not use force – you will have a problem. We developed a few new capabilities that we cannot elaborate about.
"After the incident, we sat down with the Naval Commandos, and I salute them for the manner in which they criticized themselves. Thanks to them, unarmed combat has become a major subject at our school. In the past, we used to focus on mass. Today we focus on technique. This has substantially reduced the number of injuries during training. The Naval Commandos work very hard on their unarmed combat skills."
Operational Unit
The IDF supreme command has only recently realized that they cannot afford the luxury of keeping the Lotar unit as just a training unit, and now the unit is employed operationally when the situation escalates.
"A year ago we gave the final approval for the operative order for the unit," the senior officer says. "It was a very long process. It had begun when the previous head of the IDF Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Sammy Turjeman, visited the unit. He told us: 'you have two years to present me with an operative order.' In an emergency, we divide the unit into three elements: the realm of training, the operational realm, and the Adam training facility, which becomes an RCTC – Regional Command Training Center. During Operation Pillar of Defense, we accommodated seven IDF brigades per week at the school. I gave them all I have to give during the operation, and trained seven additional brigades in Ze'elim. Each one of my instructor teams included marksmanship and sniping instructors as well as breaching, fieldcraft and camouflage instructors.
"Their task was to travel to the assembly and staging areas and come into contact with the troopers. I always say that we were the big winners of Operation 'Pillar of Defense', despite the fact that no ground maneuver was executed. We trained whole brigades back into shape. The regular brigades are in good shape anyway, and suddenly we found ourselves with time on our hands for training reservist forces. We had them zeroed and handled their stoppages.
"Some of the lessons derived from the Second Lebanon war were to provide breaching capabilities not only to the special operations units, but to the regular battalions as well. The second lesson was to take the fighters I have at the Counterterrorism School and convert them into combat teams. During peacetime, I have a lot of training equipment here. During Operation 'Cast Lead' in 2009, we took our capabilities and went to the IDF Operations Division, and we did the same during the Second Lebanon war. Now we have a structured standing order. In the event that a brigade is employed and they need sniper teams, we have a tremendous potential to give them.
"During Operation 'Pillar of Defense', I dispatched takeover teams to Nahal- Oz and to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, opposite Sde-Avraham, as we had received alerts of possible offensive activity by Hamas. We deployed some excellent people down there, and if the terrorists were to initiate a killing spree or a hostage situation, they would have met some highly qualified and capable forces. For the first time, all of this is formulated in a structured order."
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