Rush Shaked in English

The Complete Script of Rush Shaked documentary in English based upon the transcript released by the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs and published in State-owned daily newspaper “Al-Ahram” on 9 March 2007. 

The documentary is in Hebrew and the Hebrew names here may be misspelled due to the difference between Arabic, English and Hebrew

The first 20 minutes of the documentary was about the nature of the Special Shaked unit and what its mission was, its locations on the southern borders, the borders which were not completely determined in the early 1950s.Among of the unit’s mission was to protect the Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip and Sinai from 1954 till

Among of the unit’s mission was to protect the Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip and Sinai from 1954 till  1968 in the beginning.

During the introduction of the documentary, the narrator presented a description of the topics the documentary would discuss starting with the achievements of the Shaked unit and “Unit 101” including their activities in Sinai, Gaza strip, Lebanon and the south Bank.
The first Scene:

The film starts with showing some kind of a banquet where the veterans of Shaked setting around and talking.

One of those veterans said that the work of the battalion shouldn’t be judged according to today’s standards but according to the conditions it had been through.

Another one said that each one of those fighters looked to the film from his own point of view

And those veteran fighters were:

1-Benny kedar “The founder of the reconnaissance unit in the IDF in the six days war, already that unit was known as the Egoz Unit , it was formed in 1956 then it was disbanded and re-organized in 1964, it became a battalion after the six days war after what it had done in the war then again it was disbanded after 1973 war”

Kedar said that that Unit did not wear the military uniform but instead they used to guard with civilian clothes to catch the infiltrators who could run away if they saw the military uniform.

2-Zvi Zamir “The commander of the southern command from 1962-1964, then the director of the Mossad from 1968 to 1974″

Zamir was from the trace tracking unit who used to determine the number of the Infiltrators and their destinations then the forces would come to catch them afterward.

Zamir also hinted out that after one year of founding The Shaked unit in 1955, it was assigned to secure the Egyptian-Israeli borders  and that there were three thousand infiltration incidents. He added that 200 Israelis were injured and 2000 infiltrators were killed during that period.

3- The documentary also spoke about Yair Bligh who was from the commanders of the reconnaissance unit. Blig was killed in 1959

4-Salah El-Hayb, who served in Shaked from “1958-1968” also spoke and described how Bligh was killed in an ambush when he saw two infiltrators coming in his direction. El-Hayb was the head of trace tracking unit.

5- “Reserve brigadier general” Ami Tsakhin who served in Shaked from “1961-1973”, he was commander back then but now he is a drilling contractor.

6-Amos Yarkoni, the close Bedouin friend to Moshe Dayan.  Yarkoni came to Shaked reconnaissance battalion to teach its officers the trace tracking technique .He was the first commander for Shaked in 1955, he left the position after a couple of years due to his injury , yet he was re-appointed as the commanding officer of Shaked after his recovery in 1961.

This Arab who was thought to be a Jew is considered a legend in the army due to his knowledge in tracking and fighting the Palestinian groups till now

The second scene

The documentary shows us some cars taking the same path the Shaked battalion took with their Shaked Spirit

The narrator tells us that the battalion went in 1955 to defend the country’s southern borders from the Gaza strip to the Egyptian borders to the Arabah valley and that many Palestinian refugees escaped to the Gaza strip after the 1948 war where they lived in camps where they were trained as fighters.

In that scene, a veteran spoke about Shaked and its role:

Nidev Noviman “Served in Shaked year 1955” stated that an order came to him to join 4 commandos and 3 trace trackers to track down the infiltrators coming from the Egyptian borders and that it was his mission to search the roads on a daily basis in order to see if there was any trace

The narrator then stated that on the other side of Shaked, there was Unit 101 that was found in 1954 and was led by Ariel Sharon. It included 35 fighters and was guarding the Arabah valley on the Jordanian borders. In 1953 when a mother and her child at the south bank were killed by the infiltrators, Moshe Dyan decided to establish that unit 101 especially the number of the attacks against the Israelis was increasing; for example there were Israelis who were killed in a bus on its way to Eilat

The Political commandership wanted to stop the operations against the Israelis on the Egyptian and Jordanian borders without starting a war and that why they had established the battalions 101 and Shaked.

The policy of Israel was that if anyone crossed its southern border; he would deal with those two units, not with the Israeli army.

  1. Benny Bild “Served in Shaked from 1959 to 1962 and today he is the general manager of the chorus of the Kibbutz theater ” spoke about the rules of engagement ,when and where to shot and open the fire in the two units , when there was an attack , there was an open fire order

  2. Ehuga Melmid “A Reserve brigadier general, served in Shaked from 1958 to 1972 and now he works as an economic expert” talked about the military service in the middle of the desert and how he remembered that he felt that the all Nakab desert was under his commandership and how he felt he was its king

  3. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer “The commander of Shaked from 1966 to 1970 and currently he is the minister of infrastructure in the Ehud Olmart Cabinet” mentioned that on the day he received the commandership of the unit, he realized the difference between that Unit and the rest of the units in the IDF ,the service in the IDF meant complete obedience whereas the members of Shaked were careless that they used to try their weapons in the rooms, there was no military obedience in the unit despite their hard training

The second scene ends with the veterans eating together in the hostility of Salah El-Hayb

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