With his family watching the developments at home in Britain, a dual-national IDF Paratrooper was urgently deployed to Kibbutz Be’eri after Hamas launched their attack on southern Israel. He was injured in the ensuing battle.
GB News reporter Charlie Peters spoke to him as he recovers from his injuries in a Tel Aviv hospital.
“At 7:00 AM they woke us up, told us that the Israel is in a total war and we need to get ready and that we are going down to the Gaza Strip,” the British-Israeli officer, who has served in the IDF for three years, says
Charlie Peters speaking to the Israeli soldier
He only realised what was happening via the Hamas terrorist livestreams of the attack.
“We opened phones to understand what's happening because we couldn't understand what’s happening because there was too much information going to from everywhere we saw the live stream for Hamas and then understand that something really strange is happening.”
He arrived to a total massacre: “So a lot of time that we saw also bodies of Israeli innocent citizens in the houses, but also bodies of terrorists that we didn't kill - the people managed to kill some of them.”
The officer, who we are keeping anonymous for operational security reasons, fought in hand-to-hand combat across the small settlement to clear it from Hamas terrorists.
On the second day of the fighting, he told me how he was shot while clearing a house where Hamas had taken up defensive positions.
“We did the last fight, the last fight of terrorists. But a machine gun started to shoot on us from inside the house."
He ran into the house to find four terrorists hiding inside: “We tried to shoot on the terrorists and they shot us back. My soldier that operates a machine gun died right there. I got injured in my stomach and in my hand so I was out on my back because I was bleeding from the back from the bullet in the stomach.”
He applied a tourniquet to his arm to stop the bleeding after firing up to 100 rounds down the hallway.
But the worst moment for him came as one of his soldiers tried to clear the enemy position with a grenade: “One of my soldiers threw a grenade, he couldn't put it inside the hallway so it came to the living room where I was. It was so close I have no idea why.
"As a religious man I'm saying it's because of God that I didn't get injured from the grenade. So another officer from my unit managed to get inside the house from the kitchen window.
"He took me outside and our tank came and destroyed the house".
After this chaotic final battle, the area was cleared: “We could gladly say that the kibbutz Be'eri has zero terrorists inside. I have to say that I was really impressed by the brave of the citizens of Be'eri.“
But now, while he recovers in Sheba Medical Center, the IDF officer is already preparing for his next fight:
“Of course I’m ready to go again. I will go again next week after I heal.”
