Staff Sergeant Yuval Shoham, 22, from Jerusalem, a soldier in the 9th Armored Battalion, 401st Iron Tracks Brigade, fell Sunday during combat in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip,
"The boy is gone and I, where can I go," the family announced, quoting the biblical statement by Reuben when he returns to the pit to rescue his brother Joseph only to find that he has beeen sold into slavery. "Yuval Shoham, our dearly beloved son, was killed this morning in the Gaza Strip. Funeral details will be provided later."
Yuval is a graduate of Himmelfarb High School in Jerusalem, and is the ninth of its graduates to fall in the war. The school also lost Rabbi Avi Goldberg, who fell during the war and served as a teacher at the high school. Yuval's parents, Effi and Oshrat Shoham, leaders of the Hakhel synagogue community in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem, are close friends of Jon and Rachel, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was murdered in Hamas captivity in Gaza, and whose body was rescued and returned to Israel.
"Hersh was here on Simchat Torah Eve. On Simchat Torah night, he was still here in the synagogue and danced here," Oshrat said last September, after the announcement that he had been killed in captivity. "Yesterday night, we realized with all the rumors what was happening. People from the community didn't sleep all night. At 5 a.m. we heard the news. We accompany the Goldberg-Polin family all year. Here Jon prays. Here Hersh prayed. This morning we spontaneously organized to create a space for the community. It really feels like he's our son. Everyone is very involved in the struggle. The whole neighborhood is here with Hersh signs. We didn't think it would end like this. Everyone was hoping that we would meet in the joy of liberation and not in this end. We didn't imagine such an end."
On Saturday, the IDF and Shin Bet spokespersons announced that security forces completed a joint operation at Hamas' "terror headquarters" at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya and arrested more than 240 terrorists in the area. "A targeted operation against terrorist targets was carried out at the hospital, following intelligence information that the area had once again been used as a Hamas terror stronghold and a shelter for terrorists, despite repeated calls to refrain from military use of medical facilities."
The joint statement also said that the forces of the 13th Battalion operated inside the hospital, and located weapons, including grenades, pistols and ammunition. "During the operation in the area, over 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and other operatives suspected of terror activities were apprehended, some of whom attempted to pose as patients or flee using ambulances," according to the statement. "Among the suspects taken for questioning was the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, who is suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative, as well as Hamas engineering and anti-tank missile operatives, and approximately 15 terrorists who infiltrated Israel during the October 7th massacre."
IDF commandos operating in Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya
(צילום: דובר צה"ל )
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The operation in the hospital area involved soldiers from the Shayetet 13, alongside fighters from the 401st Brigade combat team, investigators from Unit 504, and Shin Bet forces, under the command of Division 162, and with intelligence guidance from Military Intelligence and Shin Bet. At the beginning of the operation, the forces of the 401st Brigade surrounded the hospital, arrested terrorists hiding in the area, and eliminated additional terrorists. The hospital was surrounded within an hour, and during the operation in the area, an anti-tank missile was fired at a force from Battalion 52. There were no casualties in the anti-tank incident.
In initial field investigations by Unit 504 field investigators and Shin Bet coordinators, many terrorists who left the hospital testified that they had taken part in terrorist activity in the area. This was an extraordinary activity by Unit 504, in which the largest concentration of terrorists was investigated in one day and in one place since the beginning of the war. More than 10 investigators from the unit were active in the field, using intelligence knowledge systems and advanced technologies, and most of the terrorists who were interrogated were operatives in the military wing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Some of the field investigations led in real time to other operatives who were in the area.