The commander of the Sheldag unit, Lt. Col. B refers for the first time to an investigation Be'eri that criticized the performance of the Sheldag fighters that morning: "The unit's forces acted with great determination and courage, learning lessons all the time."
A week after the IDF published the Be'eri investigation that drew angry reactions from Sheldag fighters - the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. B, refers today for the first time in a letter he sent to the members of the unit.
"On 7/10 the fighters and commanders of the unit were the first to jump into the battles, in a massive deployment and scope, the unit was one of the first to come to its senses and act, and led the fighting in several locations - from the beginning to the end of the last of the battles," Lt. Col. B wrote in his letter.
"We fought with courage and determination alongside civilians, members of standby units and IDF soldiers from various units in field conditions that the IDF had never encountered before."
According to the commander of the unit: "From then until now, the unit has been operating on an unprecedented scale, non-stop, in all the combat arenas, we have lost the best of the best in the battles, our brothers, flesh of our flesh, their absence accompanies us, painfully, alongside the great legacy they left us."
"Investigating and drawing lessons all the time"
In his response he continued, "As we learned from the first day on the course, the operational investigation is a critical layer in our ability to learn and improve. We are not afraid to look directly at what happened, learn lessons and become even better and more professional. Since the outbreak of the war, we have been investigated and we are constantly investigating the actions and decisions of our forces in the field. Along with learning lessons and a significant and important learning, our conclusions from the investigation of the combat on 7/10 are that the unit's forces acted with great determination and courage to carry out their tasks and did not stop until they were completed."
As I recall, the investigation provoked great anger among the fighters of the classified unit. Lt. Col. Roni Eliav, who served in the Joint Chiefs of Staff patrol and the Sheldag unit, wrote on his Facebook page: "False investigation. The IDF investigation that was published about the fighting in Bari is full of lies and incorrect conclusions. This is not an investigation, it is a defense letter to the standby unit and Barak Hiram."
According to him: "Contrary to what is written in the investigation, a 13-man Sheldag force arrived in Bari at 8:45 a.m. and jumped into the battle in the western neighbourhoods and was ambushed by hundreds of terrorists. A soldier was wounded and immediately after that a soldier was killed. The commander of the force who was sure that he had two life-threatening injuries decided to evacuate them to a rescue helicopter outside the kibbutz and two fighters with the standby unit evacuated the wounded, but the force refused to enter another ambush and stopped the attack itself. He says that from 09:00 to 13:30 the members of the standby unit fought alone. The members of the standby unit had no weapons and the few civilians who had weapons had no ammunition.
Eliav added that "in fact, two of the four members of the standby squad that remained stood near the ambush of the Sheldag fighters and gave advice. It should have been written that between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. the only ones who fought were 11 Sheldag fighters. The reason it was written differently is an attempt to flatter the kibbutz's standby squad. At 12:30 There was almost no ammunition left for the Sheldag soldiers. They did not shoot the ammunition in the air and only they killed terrorists at that stage.