Ziv enters the charred ruins of the house with a sense of anxiety. On the dusty table, beside the bullet-riddled wall, are placed memorial candles and a framed picture of a cheerful young man. Ziv picks up the frame and gazes at the man pictured in it for a long moment, his face contorted in pain. He puts it back in its place, lights a candle and kisses it.
The young man in the picture is Sergeant Ariel Ohana, from Kibbutz Revadim. He was a soldier in the Paratrooper Brigade's 890th Battalion. On October 8, after more than a day of continuous fighting in Kibbutz Be'eri, he broke into the house with his Negev machine gun to facilitate the rescue of the team commander, who lay injured on the floor. Taking shelter behind the shaky refrigerator door, he returned fire at the terrorists until he fell.
"Ariel was with me from the first day of basic training, and we were close for most of the combat," says Ziv, a Paratrooper Brigade fighter. "From this story, you can understand what kind of person he was. The house was full of terrorists, and he went in on his own initiative, without anyone telling him and drew their fire to save the injured officer."
"After Ariel fell, a long extraction battle began here," recalls Nehemiah, the company commander. "Thanks to his courage, we managed to rescue the squad commander alive."
The day before, in the very same house, the home of Yuval and Maayan Bar who were murdered by the terrorists, Lieutenant Nave Elazar Lax, an officer in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, was killed. Stickers with his picture and the phrase "Where I am needed, there I will be" adorn the wall.
Lax was where he was needed. So was Ohana, and their platoon mate, Staff Sergeant Valentin Elie Ghnassia, a lone soldier from France, who was killed a few dozen yards away. But they didn't manage to save the hundred residents of Be'eri who were murdered or the 32 civilians who were kidnapped to Gaza.
And when you hear these stories of heroism, and see Ziv, barely 20, who was wounded later in Gaza and returned to battle after a month and a half of recovery, you understand the gap between the neglect of the government and the army toward the residents of the Gaza border region, and the selflessness of the fighters and officers in the field.
The defense battle
On October 7, the 890th Battalion operated in three main focal points: Kibbutz Be'eri, Kibbutz Alumim and Nahal Oz Base. In early March, after months of fighting in Gaza and in Khan Younis, in particular, they returned to the Gaza border region, and last week, two platoon commanders joined them.
The battalion holds the Nahal Oz sector, except for the platoon led by Captain Nehemiah, stationed in Zikim under a reserve battalion. "This is not just a military operation," emphasizes Major Neria, the deputy commander, from Kibbutz Sa'ad. "It's a defensive battle. We operate extensively within enemy territory, beyond the fence."
The last time I spoke with him was about three months ago when we fought in Khan Younis. He promised then that the battalion would continue until the hostages were released and until the children of Be'eri and Kfar Aza returned home. More than half a year after the start of the war, and it still hasn't happened.
"There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to bring back the hostages," admits Nehemiah. "We're just waiting to get in again. It's eating away at us."
I ask Neria if he too shares these feelings. "These things take time," Neria replies. "If in the War of Independence, people thought, 'Okay, the Al-Qastal fortress has fallen, that's it, where are the results we talked about?' we wouldn't have a country today."
On the morning of October 7, 890th Battalion fighters were stationed in Neve Musa in the northern Judean Desert. That evening, they were supposed to begin a battalion drill.
At 10:30 in the morning, they boarded helicopters heading south. Captain Yonatan and Captain Nehemiah left earlier by car and arrived in Kfar Gaza. The helicopters landed near the Sa'ad Junction, east of Highway 232. Just seconds after the fighters disembarked, one of the helicopters was hit by an RPG missile and went up in flames.
At 1:30 p.m., Platoon B entered Be'eri, still under the command of the operations officer. When they reached the killing grounds of the Olive neighborhood, they encountered heavy gunfire. It took them almost three hours to advance just two rows of houses, during which Staff Sergeant Valentin Elie Ghnassia was killed in action.
"When the fighting is over, I'll go to France to visit his family," Nehemiah assures. When they realized they couldn't advance further, they stopped to regroup. Meanwhile, Platoon A operated on the other side of the kibbutz to evacuate residents from their homes.
At four in the afternoon, Nehemiah's platoon was joined by his infantry commander. "When I arrived in Be'eri, there were a lot of forces outside the kibbutz," he explains. "You might ask, why didn't they enter? I don't know the answer. They're not my concern, and I don't know them."
We stop under a tree at the entrance to the neighborhood. "At 4:30 p.m., a force of the deputy commander of Yahalom, a force from elite navy Shayetet 13 and two tanks commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Salman Habaka of the 53rd Battalion - who was later killed in action in Gaza - joined us," Nehemiah recounts.
"Right here, Neria, the operations officer, organized a commando team for us. He set a border for each one of us. They put two tanks on the road between the two neighborhoods and started advancing, with Habaka's tank under my command." Meanwhile, the 890th Battalion commander led the rescue mission at Nahal Oz Base.
The Olive neighborhood consists of nine rows of houses. For an average person, it takes a few minutes of leisurely walking to cross this distance. For Nehemiah's platoon, it took almost 12 hours of fighting, during which they killed many terrorists and suffered numerous casualties. "We hardly met any living residents. Most of them were already dead."
He points to one of the houses. "Here, a terrorist with an explosive vest detonated himself, and the entire house went up in flames." On the way to the next row of houses, they came under heavy fire. They took cover and returned fire without knowing that four terrorists were hiding under the terrace, just a few feet away from them.
"Until one of the terrorists raises his head, and Ariel Ohana takes him out. After that, another terrorist rises, and Ariel kills him too. I threw a grenade, and the rest were killed as well."
At night, they finished capturing the neighborhood, but the battle was not over. At least 12 terrorists sneaked through the seam between the forces and retook control of houses. And so, on Sunday, the platoon found itself fighting for the home of the Bar family, where Ariel fell.
"We had to capture the neighborhood three times, back and forth, until Monday," says Nehemiah, 26. "Our October 7 began on Saturday morning and hasn't ended until now."
Prepared for attack
While Platoon B fought in Be'eri, Platoon C led by Lieutenant Yonatan battled in Alumim. Yonatan, a 26-year-old from Karmiel in northern Israel, guides us along the combat path from Highway 232 to the kibbutz fence.
The battle in this area, a small patch covered in thorns and shrubs, lasted about four hours. They faced heavy enemy fire, during which Yonatan and his comrades killed 12 terrorists — some after they had already crossed the fence — and retrieved the body of Chief Warrant Officer Ido “Crido” Rosenthal, 45, a veteran soldier from Sayeret Maglan.
He describes the battle in detail, but there's one thing he's not willing to discuss: the sight that greeted them when they reached the quarters of the foreign workers, where 14 were killed, and another eight were kidnapped.
After four months of fighting in Gaza and Khan Younis, Yonatan returned to the sector where he fought on that fateful Saturday with the outbreak of the war. "We have the border platoons holding defense, and we have the assault platoon, which is me. We cross the fence at least twice a week, and each operation lasts between one and two days. Just yesterday, we returned from operations in the Beit Hanoun area."
We finish in Kibbutz Sa'ad, at the home of the operations officer's parents. Ninety percent of the kibbutz residents have already returned to their homes. A neighbor stops the car and says, "Good to see you, thank you for your service."
Neria prefers not to talk about himself. "Write about the bravery of my fighters and officers," he requests. "It's as if the bravery of Lieutenant Colonel Roy Klein from the Second Lebanon War appeared in the thousands."
When asked if the next time we speak with them they'll be in Rafah or Lebanon, he replies, "We're waiting for orders. Wherever they tell the 890th Battalion to go, from siege in the north to Rafah in the south, we'll go."