Minnesota veteran visits Israel amid war with Hamas
WAYZATA, Minn. — It's the country the world is watching: Israel.
As the war with Hamas continues to grab headlines, a Minnesota veteran wanted to see and understand what was happening with his own eyes.
Here's what he saw.
You've seen the images. Alex Plachech of Wayzata has, too.
"You hear about it reported but until you actually see it and smell it, it doesn't really hit you I don't think," he said.
And Plachech knows war. He is a retired lieutenant colonel who served in the U.S. Marines.
Now he serves as an RNC delegate. Prompted by Connecticut delegate Leora Levy, who is Jewish, he decided to pay his own way and go see Israel for himself.
"I could not have imagined the atrocities that actually occurred there. It's hard for me to wrap my head around because it is just so evil," Plachech said. "We went down to Gaza, right to the border, we visited two of the cities that were attacked. We also visited the site of the concert that was attacked. What I saw and heard was just, like I said, words can't describe it."
He added, "Probably the worst situation, the one that made me cry, and I'm a marine, it's kind of hard to make a marine cry but this one made me cry."
They were near the Gaza strip, in a community where 400 people used to live.
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"I could tell when I was walking through that it probably at one time had been idyllic, sort of like a little paradise, beautiful gardens," he said.
Beautiful land that is now a gut-wrenching scene.
"So I am standing in front of what had been a home, it was burned and it had been collapsed and standing right outside of it was a little children's soccer net, maybe 6 feet wide, 4 feet tall, just a little soccer net with a child's soccer ball still in it. So you could picture kids playing and that soccer net was no more than 10 or 12 feet from the home that had been wrecked," he said. "The video that captured the atrocity showed that six people from that family had been pulled out of the house. There was a grandmother, two parents and three little kids and they executed them one at a time."
Amidst the tears, he says there was still hope.
"When I was getting to know the IDF soldiers, for instance, you would think they would be full of rage and anger and feelings of retribution," he said. "I detected none of that. These were just solid, good people with good hearts that just had a job to do."
And as he sat and with soldiers who did the job he once did and listened, he says his job now is to share.
"Personally I would say I have fallen in love with Israel and the Israeli people," he said.
Plachech says his hope is to keep telling the story of what he saw; as he said, images that made a marine cry.