It was September 15, 2024, and the Jerusalem Post was visiting IDF Northern Command Headquarters to hold interviews and off-record conversations with relatively senior brigadier general and colonel-level officers there.
What I could not report at the time was that during the visit to the base, I witnessed up close thousands of officers and soldiers in unusual meetings, clearly preparing for a major operation against Hezbollah.
And yet nothing leaked, and even the officers whom the Post spoke to thought it was still quite possible that the sides would reach a deal before the war would get much larger.
A large part of the calm and readiness to turn the war volume immediately up or down came from their commander, outgoing Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin.
The Post has learned that Gordin was ready to launch a game-changing IDF assault on Hezbollah in October 2023, May 2024, July 2024, and again in September 2024, when it finally played out.
Gordin is essentially a cool customer at all times.
Even when people raise their voice to him, which would often lead other IDF officers to yell back or crack a sarcastic comment, he simply takes the energy out of any fight, staking out his position calmly as if nothing can sway him.
It does not hurt that he is huge and built like a wall, which gives his calm and firm words a different resonance and power.
Tearing apart Hezbollah
This meant that at 3:30 p.m. on September 17, 2024, when exploding sabotaged beepers started literally tearing Hezbollah and its forces apart all over Lebanon, the Post has learned that there was no clear victory lap moment.
Part of the reason was his natural unruffled state, but part of it also was that Gordin knew this was just the opening shot.
He now had a race for time.
Gordin needed to bomb and destroy Hezbollah's rockets and ballistic missiles before they could rain hellfire down on Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Even with the beeper's initial success, there were thousands or more Israeli civilian lives in the balance.
But Gordin was also calm for another reason.
He had carried out a very serious "dress rehearsal" and knew how that script had ended.
In late July 2024, Hezbollah killed 12 Druze-Israelis and injured 42 others in a rocket attack on the northern Israeli town of Majdal Shams.
Gordin and Israel responded by assassinating Hezbollah's chief military commander, Fuad Shukr.
Sources close to Gordin have told the Post that an element of the success against Shukr was total surprise and a variety of military actions which misled Shukr and Hezbollah into a sense of false safety and complacency.
Gordin managed this despite bombastic statements by top Israeli officials about a harsh response.
The Post has learned that Gordin knew that once he removed Shukr that Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah was at a loss.
Nasrallah had always relied on Shukr for military strategy and tactics, and was much less sure of himself and slower to make decisions without him by his side.
Gordin's causing Nasrallah to think and move slowly would prove critical.
In fact, sources close to Gordin told the Post that he outfoxed Hezbollah a number of times.
The key time was August 25, 2024.
Hezbollah had hoped to fire off possibly up to 1,000 rockets and missiles on Israel in one day.
By the time Gordin was done with them, it had only managed to fire off around 210 rockets, hitting a chicken coop and not much else.
This was part of how Gordin felt confident that he could run the table against Hezbollah a few weeks later.
On September 23, led by Gordin, the air force and IDF intelligence, the military struck 1,525 Hezbollah targets all in one day.
As Gordin quietly savored that victory, he now felt that much more secure than he had when the beepers first went off six days before.
He now knew he could hit any Hezbollah target he wanted virtually whenever he wanted.
The minds behind the muscle
And Gordin had not been a passive commander.
Credit should be given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then defense minister Yoav Gallant, and then IDF chief Herzi Halevi on managing a stunningly successful operation against Hezbollah.
But the Post has learned that the plans for how and when to attack Hezbollah originated with Gordin and that he was not bashful about initiating new and audacious attack plans within the defense establishment.
Likewise, the country and the world all learned about Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon on September 30.
But on October 1, Gordin told the Post and other media that he had shepherded through over 70 covert invasion operations into Lebanon during the war prior to the actual big invasion.
The Post understands that Gordin was very aggressive in seeking and obtaining permission from his superiors to undertake so many covert invasions of Lebanon.
Incidentally, this was one of the secrets to why the IDF's big invasion faced almost no Hezbollah resistance.
Many of Hezbollah's forces in southern Lebanon had not just been bombed on a steady basis by Gordin and the air force over 11 months.
Gordin had also had his best troops going head to head with any Hezbollah forces who had not gotten the hint to flee, including destroying many of their hideouts and weapons storage depots.
There were also IDF generals who clashed with the political class over broad strategic issues or complained when the government did not seem to back them enough.
Gordin faced much of this when Netanyahu and much of the government let him take much of the brunt of the criticism from 60,000-80,000 Israeli northern residents who had to evacuate their homes when the war started.
Despite such experiences, Gordin always remained loyal and toed the line to the political echelon, and is expected to eventually get another top post in the IDF.
The debate is whether his next posting will be IDF intelligence chief or deputy IDF chief.
In between, for the next year or so, he is expected to undertake military academic studies, much the same way that current IDF chief Eyal Zamir did, while he was waiting for another public service posting.
In two recent visits to Lebanon in which the Post accompanied Gordin, the outgoing northern command chief made it clear that his goal had been to secure security for Israel's future.
He told the Post straight out that he would prefer another round of a significant war with Hezbollah if that is what it would take to get the group to disarm and to cease to be a major threat to Israel.
In his outgoing speech on Wednesday night, he concluded, "Preserve security, and not the quiet," implying clearly that quiet will eventually come through security.
Part of this highly aggressive attitude comes from his modest apology to the northern residents who were stuck out of their homes for over a year given that he and the military failed to confront Hezbollah as it built up its threat capacity on Israel's border.
The highly successful IDF invasion of southern Lebanon led by Gordin found that had Hezbollah decided to invade Israel on October 7 at the same time as Hamas, it was so stocked with weapons that it likely could have conquered large portions of the Galilee.
As Gordin passes on the baton to IDF Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, until Wednesday the head of the IDF Home Front Command, can at least feel – along with his successful elimination of most of the Assad Syrian regime's military capabilities – that he has left the northern front safer than it has been in over 20 years.