done

The acrid smell of spent machine gun rounds was floating up through the load master’s porthole on the turret of the Merkava Tank. It burned my nostrils and made my eyes water. The sun had gone down and the little DV camera I had was not getting a good picture of the big cannon on the front of the tank in low light. So, I fished in the pocket of my flack vest and pulled out a little l.e.d. flashlight. I held the camera in my right hand, cause my left one is broken. I used the broken hand to hold the flashlight and tried to illuminate the cannon on the front of the tank.

Adam, the load master, tapped on my leg from the inside of the tank. He told me I needed to get my feet over to a rail that ran along the edge of the cabin inside the tank because the 120 mm cannon was about to fire and if the recoil hit my legs, it would be bad.

So, I had my feet pitched off to one side, both hands extended out like a crossing guard, one recording, one lighting.  I balanced by wedging my flack jacket in the porthole. My head was sticking up out of a Merkava tank, in combat. I was scared.

Did I have my legs out of the way enough? Was I going to lose my hearing? Was I going to get knocked silly and fall into this tank when it fired?

   I got my answer soon enough.

From a distance tank fire always sounds like trucks crashing head-on, without the screeching of tires. When you are balanced above the cannon, it sounds like a big pop. I was wearing one of the Israeli tank crew helmets complete with ear protection. But the headset wasn’t a good fit. There was a gap by my right ear. As I write this, my ear is still ringing.  There was a tremendous flash of light. I was knocked off balance but saved because my Kevlar-wrapped girth kept me wedged tight in the small porthole. The cannon fired a total of 3 times. That followed all of the small arms fire that was directed at a Palestinian Mortar team in the Gaza strip.

Colonel Yigal, who was the commander, told me the mortar team had been firing at infantry soldiers with Israel’s Givati brigades. There were 5 people on the mortar team, 3 of them, he said, had been killed.

That’s the part that struck me. The machinery of war kept me very distant from the human impact. We were roughly 300 yards from the mortar team, but I never saw them. I never heard one of their rounds.  From my perspective, we could have been blasting away at a shooting range.  But as I watched the number of Palestinian dead increased by 3 and with combat still raging as I write, the death toll has crossed 900 and edges ever closer to 1000.

Keep checking back for the latest EXCLUSIVE coverage from Gaza!

I want to tell you about one of the unsung heroes of FOX News: Ibrahim Hazboun.  He is one of the producers out of our Jerusalem Bureau.

It’s trite to say we couldn’t do the job without him, because we could. We just couldn’t do it as well.  Forget the fact that, together, we have been tear gassed and pummeled with stones together in the West Bank, stranded in Gaza for weeks at a time. That’s the stuff that makes Ibrahim a friend.  What serves you back in the states is that he is a solid newsman.  When I present a story to you, often times that story got its start from Ibrahim.  Most of the time, he has given the story input in one way, shape or form. Now, as he did during the Lebanon War, Ibrahim is performing a thankless, yet indispensable role.

While I’m running around the border, Ibrahim is back in the Jerusalem office keeping an eye on all of the information that comes in through the wires as well as the video and interviews that come into our grasp.  When an Israeli or Palestinian leader walks into our studio, Ibrahim and I try to decide what information that newsmaker could provide to benefit you at home, and Ibrahim will badger him/her to get it on tape.  Then he stacks up a description of the day’s best video and sound and e-mails it to my blackberry. Because of his effort, when I sit down to write, I’m confident we’re delivering the best to the viewers.  I’m well aware of how much Ibrahim would prefer to be out of that office when a big story comes our way.

Our working relationship is not all sunshine, roses and Qassams.  If you take two guys who are both passionate about the final product, they will ultimately disagree. Add the pressure of TV news in conflict zones and they will disagree with passion. One of our most memorable fights came in the Gaza strip a few years ago.  We were doing a story about the growing chaos in Gaza. Rafa, a city in the Southern end, melted down into riots.  I said “let’s go.” Ibrahim and another guy, Nael Ghaboun (I’ll write about him later) both decided it was too dangerous and refused.  As our disagreement became more heated, Ibrahim called me a Kharouf: Arabic for sheep.  He and Nael argued that in their culture the sheep walks into trouble and needs the Shepard to protect him.  Now, I was really angry and argued that in my culture the sheep is scared and stays with the safety of the flock. After the argument gave way to good-natured ribbing, we began to refer to each other as Kharouf or the plural: Khurfan. (The other nickname is Sadiki: my friend)

Now, the most common greeting or parting sentiment spoken between Ibrahim, Nael and myself is: Yaish il Kataeb il Khurfan: Long live the sheep brigades.