146. Why was Unit 101 of Ariel Sharon so important?

After the end of the 1948 war, the Israeli soldiers did not show any special military capacities. For example, they fled from various confrontations in the Syrian front. In 1953, the Fedayeen infiltration adopted an organized character, which is why Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion went looking for the history student Ariel Sharon to command the new Unit 101. The 101 received special training (in the Sataf base) to retaliate and dissuade the Arabs. In October 1953, after infiltrators from Jordan murdered a woman and her two children in Yehud, they executed their retaliation against the Arabs in the village of Kibiya, where the attackers had come from. Sixty civilians, among them women and children, were murdered during the operation. The Security Council of the United Nations condemned Israel, a country that tried to avoid the responsibility of the action, arguing that it had been an act of angry civilians (David Ben-Gurion declared that no soldiers had abandoned their bases during the night). The explanation given by Ariel Sharon was that the force did not know that there were civilians hiding in the blown-up houses. Another action was the raid in Hebron on Dec/21/1953, where Meir Har-Zion directed a small force into an incursion on foot, forty-two kilometers through a mountainous route, up to the heart of Hebron to destroy the house of a pursued terrorist. The Kibiya operation raised a discussion about morality. To contain them, Ben-Gurion decided to dissolve them by integrating the Paratroopers Unit after only five months of activity. The contribution of the 101 was fundamental for the Israeli army. They transmitted an example of training, courage and efficiency in the execution of operations that was copied by the rest of the army.