It is entirely possible that we missed it.

Erev Rosh Hashanah, we were busy. There were meals to prepare, clothes to iron, tables to set, last-minute errands to run. We were thinking about the year that was ending and the year that was about to begin.

And somewhere in the midst of all that, the story of Ali al-Taher was unfolding in the news.

Perhaps we didn’t realize what we were looking at.

Ali al-Taher is not simply the story of another military operation. It is a glimpse into a world that most of us will never see—and into the extraordinary lengths our soldiers go to in order to protect us.

For months, IDF forces worked to take control of the ridge and uncover what lay beneath it. What they found was staggering: an extensive underground network that had been built over roughly two decades, with command centers, weapons storage, generators, living quarters, kitchens and even operating rooms. The tunnels stretched for kilometers. At points, soldiers encountered terrorists at distances of only a few meters. The fighting took place both above ground and deep below it.

This was not a single raid.

It was months of painstaking work—intelligence, engineering, combat and extraordinary courage. Soldiers had to map tunnels hidden beneath rock and vegetation, locate entrances and underground routes, prevent supplies from reaching terrorists trapped below, and confront an enemy fighting from a fortified underground system.

And while we were living our lives—working, shopping, celebrating birthdays, preparing for Shabbat and Yom Tov—our soldiers were there.

Some of them are young men barely out of their teens. Others are older, married men with large families. Many have already spent years serving, fighting and protecting. And still they remain on the front lines.

They miss birthdays. They miss family celebrations. They miss holidays. They........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)