____________________________________________ 8 IICC Perspectives unit and that I was authorized to receive the material, but also that it contained extremely valuable intelligence which we urgently needed. "They had never been told about the CED Unit. They didn't know it was important to document where items were taken from and what to do with them. Some loaded what they found into their vehicles, moved from kibbutz to kibbutz, and at some point, four or five days later, they were informed that a CED Unit had been formed and they needed to bring us whatever was sitting in their trunk." Slowly the shipments began arriving. First a single box, then a few bags, more boxes, then several duffels bags. The unit began to grasp the scale of the material, not only in terms of the sheer volume coming in (dozens of phones retrieved from terrorists' bodies, bodycams, maps, plans, diagrams, handwritten notes), but also the condition the items were in. D.: "In the first shipment, the material had been lying in the field for several days and arrived here filthy and reeking. Some of it came straight from combat zones and had been on the bodies of terrorists who were left to rot until they were checked for explosives and removed. The materials were stained with blood and bits of rotting tissue, and the stench was awful. "I'll never forget the smell, and I'm not the only one. It immediately triggered associations of the Holocaust. As children, we heard stories about the Holocaust, we read about it, watched films, went on school trips to the camps in Poland, concentration camps, forced labor camps, death camps, and all the time we heard about the smell. It's hard to imagine, but the smell that came with those boxes and bags brought all those associations flooding back. An indescribable, inconceivable and completely horrific stench. "And another thing: intelligence officers are used to coming into the office or war room in the morning, sitting down at a computer and getting to work. Suddenly we had to work with our hands and eyes, touch, see, and worse of all, the smell, and make logistical decisions alongside Col. D. points at a bullet-riddled map, found on a body of "Nuhba" terrorist who was eliminated on Israeli territory, in the western Negev. (source: IICC)
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