Gas masks, missiles and irony: Defense Ministry releases photos of 1991 Gulf War
Military archive marks 30 years since the conflict, when Iraq fired dozens of Scud missiles at Israel, with never-before-seen video, images and internal documents
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
Marking 30 years since the Gulf War, the Defense Ministry on Wednesday published never-before-released photographs and video footage from the conflict, in which Iraq fired 43 Scud missiles at Israel.
The images show the actions of the military during the war as well as the lives of Israeli civilians who were required to keep gas masks with them at all times — including on the beach — and to seal their homes with plastic sheeting and tape out of fears that the missiles being fired from Iraq would have chemical or biological warheads.
In the end, no weapons of mass destruction were used against Israel. The general understanding is that the Scud missile attacks were meant to provoke Israel to respond, so that Saddam Hussein could use Israeli participation as a way to drive a wedge between the countries that made up the coalition opposing his conquest of Kuwait.
To prevent such a situation, the United States deployed Patriot missile defense batteries in Israel. These air defenses failed to intercept the vast majority of the Scud missiles — according to some accounts, it shot down just one — but they did raise the morale of a country feeling helpless in the face of attacks that it was not actively doing anything to prevent.
The barrages began on the night between January 17 and 18, 1991, and continued through February 25, 1991.
In addition to the photographs and video footage released by the Defense Ministry Archive on Wednesday, two top-secret Israel Defense Forces documents were declassified. One showed the military’s official tally of the attacks from a December 2002 investigation by the IDF’s Operations Directorate and another was the official logbook where the details of Scud launches and the orders that were subsequently given to IDF troops were recorded at the time.
The IDF’s 2002 tally differs slightly from the official figures used by Israel today, though it is not clear what accounts for the difference.
According to the military count, 43 Scud missiles were fired at Israel in 18 barrages over the course of 39 days, whereas the Foreign Ministry today says it was “approximately 38” in 19 fusillades. During that time, according to the IDF report, 54 American Patriot interceptor missiles were fired at the incoming Scuds.
According to the 2002 military tally, 14 people were killed during the attacks in total. The official tally today is 13. According to the Foreign Ministry, two people were killed by missile strikes, four suffered heart attacks during the barrages and seven people died as a result of incorrectly using the atomic-biological-chemical warfare kits that everyone in the country was required to carry with them at all times.
The IDF’s report says 229 people were directly injured by the missiles — compared to 208 in the Foreign Ministry’s tally — and 222 people unnecessarily injected themselves with atropine, a drug used to counteract the effects of nerve gas. The Foreign Ministry lists 225 such cases. According to the military count, there were 530 people who suffered anxiety attacks during the Scud barrages.
In total, according to the Foreign Ministry, 1,302 houses, 6,142 apartments, 23 public buildings, 200 shops and 50 cars were damaged in the attacks.
The Operations Directorate report includes a map of the approximate locations of where the Scud missiles landed. The majority — 26 out of 43 — struck the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Eight landed near the northern city of Haifa, four landed in the northern West Bank and five struck in the desert, near the Dimona nuclear reactor.
The military’s logbook includes not only the orders and assessments from the time — “There is a growing likelihood of missile impacts later today. We should increase readiness” — but also the doodles and drawings of the soldiers who kept the records. Starbursts from the corners of spreadsheet cells and random geometric figures adorn the pages.
One sheet, for whatever reason, has the first line of the Bobby Vinton song, “She wore blue velvet,” scrawled across the top, just before the report: “Four missiles struck inside the territory of the [regional] command, which caused 12 injuries.”
“War” is written repeatedly on one otherwise empty page of the logbook. Another page that lists “one not minor but serious injury” at 12:15 a.m. is decorated with a peace sign and lotus flower. Another page contains nothing but a drawing of a Patriot missile intercepting a “Skad” missile with a cartoonish explosion and the word “Boom,” with the caption, “We won’t, won’t, won’t let Saddam…”
The photographs indicate a similar tension between the severity of the moment and the Israeli tendency to carry on as normal.
Two young Israelis grab some sun on the beach, sitting back-to-back on a towel, with their gas masks just next to them.
In others, Israelis are seen celebrating on the street with American soldiers with an accordion, a plastic tambourine, spray foam and Israeli flags, while wearing their gas masks.
In one photograph, graffiti from that time can be seen, reading, “How many times didja seal the room and nothing happened,” referencing a popular song, which has the line, “How many times did you count to ten and nothing happened.”
The 1991 Gulf War left its mark on Israel, inspiring the creation of the IDF Home Front Command, which has played a critical role in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
