When I started looking in the dictionary for the definition of the word hero, I found several definitions but the one I liked the most is this: “hero is said to be someone who performs an extraordinary and generous act of bravery which involves a deliberate sacrifice.”
The people of Israel are full of biblical heroes but in this blog it occurred to me to choose six modern non-biblical examples of heroism and bravery that symbolize the spirit of the Jewish people and Israel. We could write multi-volume books on this topic, so choosing only six stories is arbitrarily unfair, I admit.
First story: Eli Cohen (1924-1965), Israeli born in Egypt, was recognized as one of the most successful spies, in 1961 he settled in Damascus, Syria and with his ability, charisma and talent he managed to climb and infiltrate among the highest ranks in the Syrian military leadership and is considered a hero because his espionage achievements were a decisive factor in the outcome of the Six-Day War in favor of Israel. In 1965 he was finally discovered and ended up being publicly hanged in Marje Square in Damascus. His body was left hanging for six hours. Eli Cohen, a true James Bond who paid with his life. He left a wife and three children in Israel.
Second story: Avigdor Kahalani Israeli, born in 1944. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Kahalani received the Distinguished Service Medal for heroism after being seriously wounded while fighting the enemy in his Centurion tank. However, it was in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 that Kahalani’s name was forever etched in Israeli history.
Commanding a tank battalion in the fiercely contested northern region known as the Golan Heights, Kahalani hastily assembled a group of tanks and crews from several armored units to try to repel the Syrians following their surprise assault on Yom Kippur, the most sacred of the Jewish calendar. The vastly superior Syrian forces had already overrun Israeli positions in the early days of the war, but Kahalani’s outnumbered and outgunned force managed to hold off the attackers long enough for infantry and Israeli reserve tanks will push the Syrians back to the border. The battle proved to be one of the major turning points of the war. After the war, the valley where the battle took place was littered with hundreds of burned Syrian tanks and was renamed Emek Ha-Bacha, the Valley of Tears.
Following the war’s conclusion, Kahalani received the Medal of Valor, the country’s highest military decoration.
Third story: Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu (1946-1976), American-born Israeli, the older brother of the current Prime Minister of Israel. Yoni Netanyahu was a distinguished military man, paratrooper, participated in the Six-Day War and distinguished himself in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After the war, Yoni Netanyahu received the Distinguished Service Medal, the third highest military decoration in Israel.
After being wounded, he returned to the United States to study at Harvard University where he took classes in philosophy and mathematics, excelling in both, but after a year he felt the need to return to Israel to rejoin the army. He wrote in a letter: “Right now I should be defending my country. Harvard is a luxury I cannot afford” and he abandoned academic life for The Israeli Army.
Yoni’s most remembered action for Israel occurred when he commanded the Entebbe operation in Uganda. The raid was launched in response to the 1976 hijacking of an international civilian passenger flight from Israel to France by Palestinian and German terrorists, who took control of the plane during a stopover in Greece and diverted it to Libya and then Uganda, where they received support of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Although Israel’s counterterrorism operation was a success, with 102 of the 106 hostages rescued, Netanyahu was killed in action, the only Israeli soldier killed during the operation.
Fourth story: Rami Davidian, 58 years old, married with four children. A fuel marketer to farmers who live in Moshav Patish, near Ofakim, near the area of the October 7 tragedy.
He woke up that Shabbat day, October 7, 2023, not knowing that that Saturday would turn into four long and painful days, during which he would save hundreds of young people from the hands of terrorists. Only later would he discover that his niece, 18-year-old Ophir Davidian, a soldier who served at the Urim base, had also been murdered. For a whole day, Davidian continued rescuing more and more people in blood-covered areas. He carried out more than 15 raids in areas affected by gunfire and missiles from Hamas terrorists. At the same time, he was accompanied by Adva Dadon, a News 12 journalist, and in a live broadcast they saw how the two ran through terrorist-infested areas, locating survivors and rescuing everyone they could, under fire and without a military escort. In the process, the families of the survivors were informed, by telephone and by broadcast. Davidian went into the area of the tragic events, and took the young people to a meeting place with several family members and relatives who helped them and took them to Moshav Patish, where they were waiting for them in shelters.
Fifth story: Yonadav Levinstein, a 23-year-old combat patrolman, fell in Gaza in December 2023 defending his homeland. He had been married just two months before his death. Yonadav was a physical giant (known as the “Viking” of the elite reconnaissance unit of the Givati brigade) and a singer and scholar with a soul. He fought heroically in Nahal Oz on October 7 and 8, and then in Jabalya and Shati in Gaza before being shot down by Palestinian terrorists who emerged from a tunnel.
His last task in life was to fight for the freedom and safety of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. He left a family with several siblings and a young widow.
Sixth story: 32-year-old sergeant and reservist Ari Zenilman fell in the Gaza war. After high school, he spent 6 years studying at Yeshiva (Jewish studies center) and serving in the military. He then studied at the Hebrew University and obtained his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. While earning his degree, he worked as a policy and research analyst at the Kohelet Policy Forum. After graduating, he worked for the Central Statistics Office and began working at Mobileye as an algorithm data analyst in September 2021. A week before October 7, his daughter was born, with whom he only had one Shabbat to enjoy, then he was called the army. He left behind three children, a wife and his family. Another hero who left everything to defend and serve his country.
To conclude, I think that all Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora are heroic. The people of Israel, the brave people who try to have a normal life in the midst of neighbors who are possessed by an ideology of death and hatred. There is no country and people in the world that is more threatened and attacked than Israel. This people that has so many mothers and fathers who lost children in terrorist attacks, in wars, those families that lost diverse relatives, friends and despite everything continues to create, progress, fight day by day and build in all areas, this people that knows to extend peace to his enemy as he did in the past and who also knows how to fight a war against the enemy like few others. This people that always rises from the ashes and tragedies, this people that does not renounce its unique history, its home, its continuity, its freedom and dignity, being an inspiration for so many people around the world.
And the Jews of the diaspora who have to endure so much discrimination or attacks just for the fact of being Jews.
There are heroes of different kinds but to a greater or lesser extent all Jews are real heroes, not like fictional ones, because being Jewish or identifying with Israel can mean gaining many enemies in the world and being the target of possible attacks and going against the “establishment” of a majority anesthetized by the manipulations of the press, by the Islamic fundamentalist mafia, by the radical left, by the neo-Nazist right, by the pseudo “liberal progressives”, by some (not all, thank God) sectors of the church, by countries governed by the worst dictatorships, by supremacist ideologies and the list does not end here.
To be a true hero you have to fight against extreme adversity and overcome it, otherwise you are not a hero. Is there another people that has had and has more adversity than the people of Israel and is still so alive and with so much future?
Author
Adiel Wajsman
Licensed Tourism Guide
January 7, 2024