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Doomsday Weapon
Girt. day .
A rare glimpse into Israel's
top-secret submarine fleet.
Alex Fishman
Ynet News
T
he day the Twin Towers collapsed
in Manhattan, Sept. 11, 2001,
Israeli submarine "Leviathan"
of the advanced Dolphin model was on
a training sail somewhere at sea — the
exact location of Israel's submarines will
always remain classified, even dozens of
years after the fact.
At one point, the submarine rose to
the surface to take a break. The sub's
commander, then-Lt. Col. Oded, looked
through the periscope and saw a calm,
blue sea. However, one crewmember soon
informed him that he just saw the New
York towers collapsing on television.
Oded's first reaction was laughter:
"What kind of movie are you watch-
ing there? How could the Twin Towers
collapse?"Yet soon after, the official
announcement arrived from Israel.
The training session ended abruptly.
Orders started to pour in from Navy
headquarters. The submarine went into
high alert and sunk into the water for a
lengthy period of several weeks."In such
case,' Oded says,"nobody knows where
you are except for your crew and your
direct commanders. Even your family
doesn't know. They don't know what
you're doing or when you'll be back. They
know nothing."
What does a terror attack at the World
Trade Center have to do with an Israeli
submarine going on high alert? This
question shall remain unanswered as
well. We can only guess: When the U.S.
experiences an unprecedented terror
event whose implications are still unclear,
nobody knows how the superpower
would respond and what will happen in
the Middle East as result.
At such moments of uncertainty,
Israel's first walls of defense are its long-
range strategic arms — the most secre-
tive one is the submarine fleet.
Israel's enemies must be made to
understand that should they dare use any
weapon of mass destruction, their own
fate will be sealed. According to foreign
reports, Israel's Dolphin fleet plays a cru-
cial role in the game of deterrence with its
second-strike capability.
Virtual Passport
Just like Israel's submarine fleet is secre-
tive, so are its commanders. Oded, 44,
has recently completed his tenure as the
fleet's commander, ending a chapter of
more than 20 years where he performed
almost every command post in the fleet.
"If a layman would see submarine troops
from the inside, he would not understand
how we can withstand it',' Oded says in a
rare interview.
"It's a group of people who perform
missions at very certain locations and
feel like home there. People wake up for
their shifts, eat breakfast and follow a
routine in the least trivial locations one
can imagine."
When I ask Oded whether his troops'
passports would be filled with stamps,
had they theoretically stamped them at
border control, he smiles and says noth-
ing. Indeed, we can imagine that these
virtual passports would have been full
of stamps. The Navy's submarines, as
opposed to other vessels, never dock at
foreign ports, including friendly ones.
This is the nature of the service: The sub-
marines only dock in Israel.
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