Hezbollah Is “Israel’s” Main Concern

By Staff

“Israel” is constantly obsessing about Hezbollah. The constant state high alert along Lebanon’s southern frontier governs and restricts the movements of the “Israeli” troops there. 

In a lengthy article, a military analyst at ‘Walla’ News website, Amir Bohbot, revealed the extent to which the “Israelis” fear any movement on the border that Tel Aviv thinks has a connection with Hezbollah.

According to Bohbot, a classified unit called the “Galanit Anemone Unit” was established a year and a half ago. It consists of officers and intelligence soldiers from the Galilee formation, soldiers from Unit 9900 of the Mock Intelligence and Unit 8200, which is the largest and most powerful intelligence-gathering unit in the Zionist entity. The unit was formed in order to focus on the confrontation with Hezbollah and what is happening on the northern front.

Below is the text of the article:

Soldiers of the Galanit Anemone team, located unknown individuals in civilian clothing moving suspiciously along the border. Combining the various intelligence capabilities from the 8200 and the 9990 units in the Intelligence Division, the Northern Command turned on the red light due to changes in the region.

The classified team in the Galilee formation operated under the command of an intelligence officer of the 91st Infantry Division, whose military career is well intertwined with the activities of Hezbollah over the past two decades, and explains some of the challenges facing the Galanit Anemone Unit.

Lieutenant Colonel T., 37, began his service as an intelligence NCO in 2003 in the Galilee. In 2005, he was in the area during an attempted kidnapping in the town of Ghajar on the border with Lebanon, when Hezbollah fighters tried to kidnap soldiers. A year later, in the summer of 2006, when he had become the head of the research brigade in the Intelligence Division "Aman" and was in the port in Kiriya, Tel Aviv, a terrifying report arrived about the activation of the "Hannibal Procedure".

"There was an alert, and there were reinforcements on the ground. As soon as the alert level declined, Hezbollah surprised us and kidnapped Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev," the lieutenant colonel recalled.

The shortfalls in intelligence and the delivery of information to the forces on the ground are engraved in Lt. Col. T.'s head and accompany him in his daily operational activities. In 2014, he became the intelligence officer of the 769^th Brigade under the command of Brigadier General Dan Goldbus, when the first explosive device was detonated against an “Israeli” army force.

At that time, an assessment began to form that Hezbollah had tunnels deep in the ground and in the rocks below the border. Eventually, Lt. Col. T. became the operations commander for locating and destroying the tunnels in Galilee. In 2018, he closed the circle and was appointed head of the Lebanese branch of the research division and played a significant role in the psychological warfare against Hezbollah operatives on the border seeking revenge for killing Hezbollah operatives in Syria, including the attempted attack on the Gladiola outpost in the Shebaa Farms [Mount Dov] in 2020.

About a year and a half ago, under strict conditions of secrecy, a classified team called “Kalanit Hagalil” was established under his command. The team combined soldiers and intelligence officers from the Galilee formation, with soldiers from the 9900 unit for visual intelligence and the 8200 unit, which is designated as the largest and most powerful intelligence-gathering unit in “Israel”.

"They all sit together around the same table and do multidisciplinary intelligence. Their first organized work was the exposure of the tunnels on the Lebanese border," Lt. Col. T. explained, emphasizing that blending their expertise produces valuable and very significant intelligence for the Northern Command.

The idea was born in the sharp mind of Brigadier General Y., who was formerly the Galilee Squad Intelligence commander and now commander of Unit 8200. He is now nicknamed "Y. Hezbollah" due to his extensive knowledge of the organization's secrets.

He was the one who initially put forward an assessment that wasn’t based on actual intelligence about Hezbollah digging tunnels. A commander of an area parallel to his in Unit 8200 and Lt. Col. T. cooperated. In the planning stages, an objective was set for the special team to gather information on routines in real-time and war requirements in the field of warning, pursue and track operatives, take over an area [control], produce information on enemy plans, produce targets, and monitor Hezbollah's activities along the border. The idea was approved and supported by the current “Aman” chief, Major General Tamir Heiman.

"As soon as the 8200 commander arrives here, to the area, and tells his people ‘you are the most important’, this expresses everything. He conveys a message to everyone. Partnership yields successes that cannot be talked about," Lt. Col. T. explained. “We collect information about residential areas, forests, and open areas. After an attempt to target an officer and a soldier on the border with sniper fire last August, we responded by attacking targets that we had produced. This intelligence is produced by the squad. Thwarting what is happening on the border is carried out in cooperation between the Galanit Anemone, the Shin Bet, and the police."

Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues to wage nerve-wracking psychological warfare against the army and has been moving along the border for a decade. In some cases, it puts people at points near the border on the pretext that they are environmentalists, shepherds, or hikers.

But the leader of the Galanit Anemone refers to a new phenomenon: the Radwan Unit. Hezbollah's elite fighters are moving along the border.

In this context, he says, “The soldiers of the Galanit Anemone not only detect Hezbollah members on the line of contact but also track them down and try to find their whereabouts. It's months-long work. They move close to the border, observe, and gather intelligence about the ‘Israeli’ side. At first, they were unknown to us”.

According to estimates by Northern Command officers, the Radwan Unit is building operational capabilities for future warfare. Lt. Col. T. asserts that in addition to the firepower built by Hezbollah, which ranged between 130,000 and 150,000 missiles, the party gathers intelligence along the borders in order to carry out its threats and incursions and attacks inside settlements and outposts along the borderline.

“When Hezbollah sets up an anti-tank missile launcher cell in the border area, we must detect it before it launches the missile,” Lt. Col. T. added, “and after we exposed Hezbollah’s tunnels and destroyed them, it tries to find other routes to infiltrate into “Israel”.”

In the past year, the efforts to infiltrate into "Israeli" territory intensified, but Lt. Col. T. and the intelligence soldiers in the Galilee formation warn that the Radwan Unit and other Hezbollah operatives will one day be able to use these infiltration methods to carry out operations.

"Hezbollah is no longer the same terrorist organization that we knew before. It is an army in every sense of the word. It is an organization that learns, draws conclusions with capabilities that would not embarrass a regular Western army and despite its size, it operates under very high and strict secrecy," said the Galilee intelligence officer.

Soldiers and commanders of the Galanit Anemone sit in the operations room throughout the day and receive signal intelligence from Unit 8200 [phone calls and exchange of messages from the area], drone and satellite images, surveillance balloons, and other sensors, some of which belong to the 869^th Field Intelligence Battalion.

Soldiers, religious and secular, including members of the Druze community who speak fluent Hebrew worked to expose the party's movements in the region and thwart any suspicious trend during the period of tension in which Hezbollah sought revenge by killing soldiers.

"The Galanit Anemone operates in routine and emergency. In my head, I always have a picture of my childhood friend from Kiryat Shmona, Liran Saadia in the Egoz unit, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War, during a battle with a cell of saboteurs. He was hit and killed by an anti-tank missile in the town of Maroun al-Ras. We did not have information to prevent this. Our goal is to deliver intelligence information to the field."

According to the division's intelligence officer, they are monitoring broader activities and looking for a reference on the ground, such as a third-generation anti-tank missile unveiled by the Iranian security industry that may reach the region and pose a threat to the army and the settlements near the fence.