Israel Defence Forces commander Major Omri and Sergeant Major Tal recalled the events of October 7, when the Hamas terror group attacked Southern Israel, killing hundreds of civilians and taking many hostages.
Major Omri, who has served in the IDF as a combat commander for 11 years, was on a holiday vacation with his family when the attack occurred. “On October 7, I was in my house with my family on a holiday vacation. It was a holiday in Israel at the time. And we woke up at 06:00 in the morning from the huge sound of a missile that bombed right near our house. The house was shaking. I took my head out of the window and saw a big explosion near my house,” he told ANI.
Immediately after hearing the explosion, he took his uniform and gun and left to assist his IDF unit in defending the country. “I took my uniform, pistol, gun, and drove to the south to help my friends and my unit to defend our country,” he said. On his way south, he heard on the radio about terrorists slaughtering civilians near the Gaza Strip. “Meanwhile, I heard on the radio when I was driving to the south, that the terrorists getting to Israel and slaughtering a lot of civilians that lived near the border of the Gaza Strip. When I got there, I saw a lot of wounded people, civilians and soldiers too, and I decided that I would rescue as many people,” he said.
Omri also helped people escaping from the Nova party, providing first aid and transporting them to ambulances. “I gave first aid to a lot of people that were wounded on the field, civilians that were escaping from a big party that was in the fields over there, the Nova party, and took them out of the fields where they were wounded and took them to an ambulance so that they could go to the nearest hospital and save their lives,” Omri told ANI. He managed to rescue 15 people in three hours while in the field.
He then learned about a massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza and decided to go there, encountering an ambush by 200 terrorists on the way. “Then I heard that there was a big massacre around the Kibbutz Kfar Aza and I decided to go over there. On my way to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, there was a big ambush by 200 terrorists…,” he added. He saw many civilians killed on the road and engaged in combat to prevent terrorists from entering Israeli cities. “We saw a lot of civilians that were killed on the road, and we started to fight those terrorists to not allow them to get into Israel, to the cities Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv,” he added. “We stopped them and fought them while the combat continued.”
During the combat, he was shot in the leg but managed to reach the nearest hospital. “Past seven months I’ve been a lot in hospitals in Israel, rehabilitation and taking care of myself and my next goal is to return to the army, to my unit. We don’t have any option but to continue this war,” he emphasized.
Regarding war crimes, Omri mentioned civilian social detectors in Gaza not properly caring for hostages. “Because I grew up in the South and district of Israel, a lot of the hostages are my friends. I grew up with them. I know these people that live in this now, hostages in Gaza. So it’s the subject that’s very close to my heart, and this is an absurd thing, that there are civilian social detectors in Gaza, that not taking care properly, that they didn’t give him the medicine they need and the proper treatment,” he said.
Omri stressed that Hamas targeted the weakest areas in Israel, such as the Kibbutz near the Gaza border and the Nova festival, killing many unarmed civilians. “The Hamas terrorists do not just fight with army forces. First of all, they went to the weakest place in Israel, the Kibbutz, the settlements near the border of Gaza. The Nova festival, where people were not armed, killed a lot of civilians,” he said.
Sergeant Major Tal, who served in Gaza for over 100 days during the war, recounted his experience. The 24-year-old commander, who served in the Nahal Brigade for three years, said they were called to the army with their team and went to the north without their phones. “We didn’t know anything about what was happening and then a few days after October 7, actually, October 11, they told me one of my best friends, Daniel Castiel, who served in a special unit, died with two more friends,” Major Tal said. “It was tough for me,” he stressed, adding that he cried for two hours, and then he told himself that he needed to practice “right now”. “You need to be ready. You need to focus for the team. And I think this is the hardest thing for me to feel like that. I didn’t cry enough. I didn’t feel sad enough and then kept moving,” he told ANI.
Later, Tal served at the north border. “It was scary, and long, but we did it. We saved our board serving our country,” he added.