Guni Harnik

Guni Harnik (Hebrew: גוני הרניק; July 25, 1956 – June 6, 1982) was the commander of the Golani Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit and a recipient of the Commander in Division Citation. Harnik was killed during the Battle of the Beaufort in Operation Peace for Galilee.

Guni Harnik
Guni Harnik
Native name	גוני הרניק
Born	(1956-07-25)25 July 1956 Jerusalem, Israel
Died	6 June 1982(1982-06-06) (aged 25) Beaufort Castle, Lebanon
Allegiance	Israel
Service/branch	Israeli Ground Forces
Years of service	1974–1982
Rank	Rav Seren (Major)
Commands	Sayeret Golani (1980–1982)
Battles/wars	Operation Litani, Operation Peace for Galilee, Battle of the Beaufort †
Awards	Commander in Division Citation
Relations	Raaya Harnik (mother), Meir Harnik (father)

Biography

Guni (Giora) Harnik, the son of Raaya and Meir Harnik, was born into a family of four children and grew up in the Rasco neighbourhood in Jerusalem. In 1967, his family went on a mission to Sweden. Upon returning to Israel, Harnik attended the Hebrew University Secondary School, graduating in 1974. In 1972, his father died in a car accident. During the Yom Kippur War, Harnik volunteered as a stretcher-bearer at Hadassah Medical Center. As a result of the war, he decided to leave the Nahal Brigade group he was a member of and serve in an elite unit of the IDF.

Military Service

In 1974, Harnik enlisted in the IDF and chose to serve in the Golani Brigade. He passed the selection process for the brigade's reconnaissance units and was accepted into the Golani Brigade Reconnaissance Company. In the Golani Brigade, he completed training as an infantry combat soldier, the infantry commander's course, and the IDF Infantry Officers Course. After completing the IDF Officers Course, Harnik served as a team commander in the reconnaissance unit. In 1978, during Operation Litani, while leading a battalion raid on PLO targets north of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon, one soldier was killed, and the force commander, Gabi Ashkenazi, was wounded by close-range fire from PLO militants. Ashkenazi assigned Harnik, who was serving as a company commander in the battalion, to take command of the force and complete the mission of clearing the target. In his next role, Harnik served as commander of the Golani Brigade's reconnaissance unit, a position he held until a week before the outbreak of the Lebanon War. Among other missions, Harnik commanded the reconnaissance unit during Operation Sigal and Operation Aravit. His deputy in the reconnaissance unit, and close friend, was Nadav Palti, with whom he had planned to travel abroad after their discharge. Both were supposed to be discharged on the same day, but to avoid a gap in the unit, they decided Palti would leave first for his discharge vacation (he was about to get married), and Harnik would follow later.

The Lebanon War

Harnik was due to be discharged from the IDF on the day the war began. Despite this, he joined the force led by the deputy commander of the Golani Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Gabi Ashkenazi, which included the Golani reconnaissance unit. This force was tasked with capturing the Beaufort Fortress and the Nabatieh area and then clearing it of the many militants present. Due to the slow progress, the force deviated from the schedule, and the planned daytime assault turned into a nighttime attack. The force advanced in several APCs toward the fortress, encountering fire from the direction of the village of Arnoun, a village at the foot of the Beaufort that served as an additional PLO base. The APC of the reconnaissance unit commander, Moshe Kaplinsky, was hit by the fire, and Kaplinsky was severely wounded. Upon learning of this, Ashkenazi ordered Harnik to join the reconnaissance unit, take command, and complete the mission. On his way to the force, the APC Harnik was in overturned, and Harnik, lightly injured, continued on foot until he reached the force. He reorganized the unit and planned the attack anew, dividing the engineering company into small groups that were supposed to set up blockades in the fortress and capture positions in its southern part, while the reconnaissance unit was to capture the northern part. Before the mission, Harnik briefed the forces:

Hello everyone, we are going to take the Beaufort. We’ve waited for this moment for many years, and we are going to execute it in the best way possible. Erez on the right, Avikam on the left, Yuval in front, Zvika in the rear.

— From the book If There Is a Paradise by Ron Leshem, Zmora Bitan Publishing, 2005, p. 270.

Death

The Golani Brigade reconnaissance unit, led by Harnik, made its way to the northern part of the fortress via an asphalt road. The force encountered heavy machine gun fire, continued the assault, and began clearing the trenches, using firearms and throwing hand grenades. Goldman and Harnik reached a particularly fortified military post where a PLO militant was entrenched and who killed Harnik at close range. Goldman threw an explosive charge into the fortified post, destroying it along with the militant inside. At the end of the battle, one of the soldiers climbed to the highest floor of the fortress and raised the flag of Israel.

In addition to Harnik's death, Moshe Kaplinsky was also wounded, and he replaced Harnik as commander of the Golani reconnaissance unit. Nadav Palti, who had just returned from his honeymoon, was called up and appointed to the position.

Harnik was buried at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery.

Commemoration

Guni Harnik's grave on Mount Herzl

Following his death, Harnik was awarded the Commander in Division Citation for the way he commanded and fought during the battle for the Beaufort Fortress. Over the years, Harnik's name became a symbol of the war in Lebanon, the battle for Beaufort, and the IDF's presence in Lebanon in the years that followed. His death, along with five of his comrades on the mountain, starkly contrasted with the remarks made by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon the day after the battle, stating on television that the mountain had been captured "without any losses on our side." They were unaware of the casualties, as Sharon had not checked before announcing that the battle had been won with no Israeli losses. This claim contradicted reality and, according to the fallen soldiers' families and protest movements, highlighted the prime minister's disconnection from reality.

His mother insisted that his tombstone read "Fell in the Lebanon War" rather than "Fell in Operation Peace for Galilee." She was one of the first to demand a change in the standard text used on the tombstones of IDF casualties.

The book "The Beaufort Family," written by Rubik Rosenthal in 1989 about the families of the soldiers killed in the battle, focused on Yaakov Guterman, the father of Raz, and Raaya Harnik, Guni's mother. The book was groundbreaking in breaking the ethos of the "silence of the bereaved." Through the book, the families criticized the political leadership and called for a change in the approach to the war. According to Rosenthal: "The Beaufort family broke the taboo: Not only is it permissible for the war’s heavy victims, the bereaved parents, to speak, protest, cry out, and seek change – it is their duty to do so."

Songs for Guni

In memory of Major Harnik, the song "Bemaale HaHar" (Up the Mountain), written by Rachel Shapira and composed by Nachum Heiman, was performed by the singing group of Kibbutz HaOgen.

From his birth and throughout his early childhood, his mother Raaya composed songs, which were later compiled into the book Shirim LeGuni (Songs for Guni), published in 1982. As early as the War of Attrition, when Guni was a 14-year-old boy, Raaya wrote songs expressing her fear for his fate as a soldier:

I will not sacrifice
My firstborn on the altar.
Not me.

— Raaya Harnik, excerpt from "Attrition Songs" in Shirim LeGuni

When Guni was six years old, during the family's stay in Paris, she wrote:

On that day I will stand wide-eyed before the disaster
All my life frozen by that future day
I am a magnet, I am the iron, I do not cry
Already now I feel the heat
The dryness in my throat, the stares, the wrath
And night after night my life cries out that day’s cry.

— Raaya Harnik, excerpt from "When Things Come" in Shirim LeGuni

Further reading

• Raaya Harnik, Shirim LeGuni, Tel Aviv: Kibbutz HaMeuhad Publishing, 1983.
• Ze'ev Schiff, Ehud Yaari, War of Deceit, Jerusalem: Schocken Books, 1984, pp. 159–162.
• Rubik Rosenthal, The Beaufort Family, 3rd ed., Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1989.
• Raaya Harnik, Guni, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing, 1990.
• Raaya Harnik, Account in Progress, selected poems 1960–2010, Kibbutz HaMeuhad, 2011.