Paul Fix: Student, football player, Israeli special forces vet, American.

The more men like Paul Fix the world has, the shorter this war will be.

Lancaster (PA) Sunday News: Diplomat at war

On Paul Fix’s laptop computer there’s a huge file of digital photos that tell the story of his young-adult life.

The photos start in college. He’s a senior at Franklin & Marshall. Those pictures are predictably collegiate, bawdy, full of extra-extracurricular activities.

Then there’s some football shots. He’s a tailback for the Diplomats.

Scroll down for a while, and soon you’re looking at camouflage, weapons, brutally rocky and foreign-looking terrain, and finally, Fix alongside dark, docile, blindfolded young men.“The bad guys,’’ he calls them.

No. That is what they are.

Fix, 24, expects to share time at the starting tailback spot this fall. But he spent the last three years fighting terrorism. Fighting it in an upclose and very untheoretical way.

Instant translation: The author thinks Paul is a dope.

Fix was a member of a special operations unit of the Israeli army, fighting Hezbollah, the Shia Islamic terrorist group that’s been much in the news lately for its open warfare with Israel.

This was after three years of college. One year away from graduation, Fix not only put his life on hold but risked it.

He’d do it again.

“I’ve certainly seen some horrible stuff,’’ Fix said Tuesday. “Things I’ll carry with me the rest of my life. But any of the horrible stuff is heavily overshadowed by the fact that we were saving people’s lives.’’

Amen to that, Brother.

Hard not to respect the attitude. It transcends politics.

Nice try, knucklehead, but this all about politics! Usodom Bend Boyluvden wants to be King of the World. If you think he's trying to save souls, you are an incredible fool.

“Just an amazing kid,’’ John Troxell, F&M’s first-year football coach, said Wednesday. “They don’t come any better.’’

Fix is Jewish but ("But"? Like they don't allow Jews in Africa to have kids? - F.G.) was born in South Africa and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. His family, especially his late father, nurtured in Fix a powerful affection for, and belief in, the Jewish holy land.

Fix’s father tried to join the Israeli Army during the 1967 Six-Day War, but, “by the time he got there it was over with,’’ Fix said.

“There was always a strong connection to [Israel]. We were taught that we had to help take care of it when something was wrong.’’

Heck, most Americans don't care that much about their own neighborhoods.

When Fix was a senior in high school, the Arab-Israeli conflict was relatively calm. Three years later, “buses were getting blown up on a weekly basis,’’ he said.

Fix moved to Israel, were he lived in a kibbutz — a kind of collective mini-society — for six months, established residency and completed the paperwork and logistics involved in joining the army.

Oy vey! Double oy vey, even.

He joined a special-forces unit which required 16 months of training culminating in a “Hell Week’’ of virtually no food or sleep and nonstop practice operations.

From a group of around 300 candidates, Fix’s unit was cut to around 40, and finally down to 12.

The Israeli army numbered over 125,000 as of 2004, with 700,000 reserves. Less than 300 make the grade Fix did.

It wasn’t conventional infantry work. Fix’s unit would work closely with Israeli intelligence to hunt down and capture or kill specific terrorists.

Yippee!

For example: “Our intelligence told us that a 17-year-old [terrorist] was planning to go into a town in Israel wearing an explosive belt on a certain night. When the bombs went off, there would be three guys on a hill, snipers, waiting to pick people off as they ran away.’’

Fix’s unit went in under cover of darkness, found and captured the guy with the belt, and through interrogation got him to give up his three comrades.

Must have been a, uh, forceful interrogation.

Uh?

This is the sports editor's idea of cleverness.

“I don’t know,’’ Fix said. “I didn’t interrogate him.’’

And so it went. Fix said his unit routinely exchanged gunfire with terrorists and even killed the son of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Three of Fix’s friends from the unit have been killed, one of them since he’s returned to the United States.

May God have mercy on their brave souls.

“It’s dangerous stuff,’’ he said. “It’s an unfortunate situation we’re in, where in order to save lives, some people have to risk theirs.’’

This young man has wisdom beyond his years. That last sentence sums it all up perfectly.

As for the current open warfare with Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanon border, Fix says unlike most geopolitical analysts, he saw it coming.“During the six years we’ve been fighting them, they’ve made numerous attempts to infiltrate Israel,’’ he said.

“We knew they were gathering arms caches, readying themselves.’’

Fix said before the conflict went so dramatically above-ground, he couldn’t have openly showed some of his photos, the ones with the captured terrorists, since they were classified.

It’s a long way from all that to the Centennial Conference. But Fix doesn’t quite buy in to the predictable observation that compared to what he’s been through, football is trivia.

“It’s the greatest sport in the world, to me,’’ he said. “It’s so great being with your teammates. There’s so much camaraderie, unlike any other sport. There’s no doubt I love the game as much as ever.’’

Amen to that, Brother.

Most of those teammates have only a rough idea, or none at all, of what he’s been through.

They will.

“Most of the younger kids know he’s an older guy, but that’s about it,’’ Troxell said. “It’s important to me that he’s treated like everybody else.’’

Right now that means sitting and watching, while Fix nurses a back injury. He missed F&M’s season opener Saturday with Washington & Lee.

“There’s going to be a time,’’ Troxell said, “when I have him address the team, let them know what he’s been through, and what he’s learned from it.’’

Troxell has an idea about that.

“I suspect that when he left, he didn’t realize what he really had, the football part and the school part,’’ he said. “Most people don’t realize that at the time. I know I didn’t.’’

Fix’s degree will be in business management. He intends to enter the corporate world and have a long, successful, peaceful life in America.

“Unless a war breaks out,’’ he said.