On the morning of October 7, 2023, as rockets exploded across southern Israel and Hamas terrorists launched their deadly assault, an Israeli officer faced a decision that would change the course of his life.
Major Y., a career IDF officer who had served for 12 years, was scheduled to complete his military service the following day. Instead, he received an urgent call from the IDF's Gaza Division requesting his assistance.
He was preparing to leave his home in the community of Shavei Darom and head to the division's headquarters when the community's rabbi intervened.
"He told me, 'You're not going anywhere. You're staying here to protect the community, your family, and your neighbors,'" Major Y. recalled in an exclusive interview with Arutz Sheva.
The officer found himself torn between two responsibilities: answering the military's call for help and defending his family and neighbors.
"I faced a very serious dilemma. What was the right thing to do? Stay home or go? That dilemma has stayed with me to this day."
Looking back, he believes the rabbi's intervention saved his life.
"I have to give the rabbi credit for saving my life," he said. "If I had driven to the Gaza Division, I probably could have been killed eight times along the way. Terrorists were already at every intersection I had planned to pass through, including at the Gaza Division headquarters itself."
At the time, Major Y. also served as chairman of his community's emergency response team. When the first explosions and rocket interceptions began, he immediately realized that something unusual was happening, although the full scale of the Hamas invasion was not yet clear.
Having previously served in the Gaza Division's operations branch, he had left his telephone number with personnel there and asked them to contact him if they needed assistance.
The call he received that morning, he explained, had initially been made by mistake. However, once the soldiers realized whom they were speaking to, they urgently requested his help.
"They told me, 'Come quickly. There's an invasion. We need your help.'"
Following the rabbi's advice, Major Y. remained in Shavei Darom and began organizing the community's defenses.
He assembled the emergency response team, instructed residents to remain inside their homes and close their windows, and mobilized every available armed resident.
"We gathered all the armed residents, opened a WhatsApp group, and established guard posts to secure the community," he recalled.
There was no formally organized civilian security squad in Shavei Darom that morning. The residents had to establish one while the attack was already underway, relying on the limited weapons available to them.
"We established an emergency defense squad on the spot, using whatever equipment we had, armed with handguns."
The improvised force continued guarding the community until the afternoon.
At 2:00 p.m., Major Y. received orders to mobilize his reserve company. He traveled to the Tze'elim military base, where he assembled his soldiers and prepared their equipment.
By early Sunday morning, his troops were heading toward the devastated communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.
What awaited them was unlike anything they had trained for.
During their first two days, the soldiers conducted searches, secured areas, and located and neutralized terrorists who remained in the region.
They were then assigned a mission that would leave a lasting impression on them.
The company was tasked with assisting ZAKA, Israel's volunteer emergency response and body-recovery organization, in recovering the remains of victims murdered during the October 7 massacre.
"Every Humvee in my company was attached to a ZAKA team," Major Y. recalled. "We were involved in recovering the bodies and working in the communities where the most horrific atrocities had taken place."
The soldiers, who had mobilized to fight terrorists and protect Israeli civilians, found themselves confronting the aftermath of mass murder. Instead of engaging the enemy on the battlefield, they were helping recover the bodies of innocent victims.
Major Y. described those days as profoundly difficult and sorrowful. Even after the initial recovery operations, their work was far from over. His company was subsequently assigned to remove vehicles abandoned along the roads where Hamas terrorists had carried out their massacre.
For three days, soldiers used trucks and cranes to collect vehicles scattered along the roads between the Alumim area and Kerem Shalom, transporting them to a field near Moshav Tekuma.
"We moved all the vehicles to a field near Tekuma," he recalled. "I say 'a field' because today, one of the memorials that symbolizes this war is the memorial of the vehicles, which we actually helped establish."
At the time, the soldiers had no idea that the site would become one of the most recognizable memorials to the October 7 massacre. "We didn't know then that we were creating a memorial to this war."
For Major Y., the name Tekuma, Hebrew for revival or rebirth, took on a deeper meaning against the backdrop of the destruction he had witnessed. From the scenes of devastation in southern Israel, Major Y. and his soldiers moved into the next phase of the war: the ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
He commanded the support company of the Negev Brigade, the IDF's 12th Reserve Brigade, which he described as one of the first reserve brigades to participate in a ground maneuver of this kind since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Their destination was Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.
"Our mission was to thoroughly clear Beit Hanoun," he explained. "We managed to become the force that reached the far end of Beit Hanoun and captured it for the first time."
What the soldiers discovered inside Gaza left a lasting impression on him.
According to Major Y., weapons and ammunition were found not only in buildings used for military purposes but also in civilian homes, schools, and kindergartens.
"We found enormous quantities of weapons and ammunition," he said. "In every house, in children's bedrooms, in kindergartens, and in schools."
For the officer, those discoveries illustrated the reality his soldiers faced on the ground, a reality he believes is often overlooked in international criticism of Israel's military operations.
"It's shocking to see how many people around the world try to defame IDF soldiers, when the story they tell is so false compared to the amount of hatred and terrorism we witnessed there," he said.
He was particularly disturbed by what he encountered in Gaza's educational environment.
He described seeing kindergarten photographs in which children appeared wearing military uniforms and carrying weapons, images he believes reflect the indoctrination of the next generation.
"A child who grows up in a kindergarten where his class photograph shows uniforms and weapons is a child who grows up to become a terrorist. He has no other path," Major Y. argued.
What struck him most, however, was the contrast between those images and the values he sees among Israel's reserve soldiers.
For Major Y., that contrast is not merely about military training or battlefield conduct. It reflects the education, identity, and sense of responsibility that shape an entire generation.
His battalion has already completed seven rounds of reserve duty and has received orders for another.
For the soldiers, each additional deployment means more time away from their families, jobs, and everyday lives.
Yet they continue to report for duty.
"You ask who these people are who keep coming back to reserve service?" he said. "They are the same people who grew up with a meaningful education about contributing to the Jewish people and the State of Israel."
He acknowledged that the financial compensation and benefits provided to reservists are important but insisted that money alone cannot explain their willingness to return repeatedly to military service.
"Those benefits are meaningful, good, and important," he said.
The deeper motivation, he believes, comes from the values the soldiers absorbed at home and throughout their upbringing.
Since the fighting in Gaza, Major Y. and his company have continued serving in Lebanon and Judea and Samaria.
He has also witnessed changes in the way the IDF conducts its operations, particularly in the emphasis placed on protecting soldiers' lives.
"In my view, the fighting has changed significantly, especially when it comes to the safety of our forces," he said.
He explained that at the beginning of the war, units operated with the equipment, training, and operational plans available to them. Over time, they developed improved methods that allowed them to carry out their missions more effectively and safely.
Major Y. recently shared his experiences with soldiers during a military heritage week, recounting the events of October 7, the recovery of victims, the creation of the vehicle memorial at Tekuma, and the battles in Beit Hanoun.
Beyond the military operations and painful memories, however, he wanted to convey a broader message about the people who continue to defend Israel.
For him, the story of October 7 and the years that followed is also the story of two profoundly different educational environments.
"It connected directly to the hatred and murder we witnessed among the terrorists, in their kindergartens and schools, compared with the education of our soldiers, who were raised with values and a sense of mission for the Jewish people and the State of Israel," he concluded.
Three years after the morning that changed his life, Major Y. continues to serve the country whose military he had been preparing to leave.
The officer who was supposed to complete his service on October 8 instead found himself defending his neighbors, recovering the victims of a massacre, leading soldiers into Gaza, and returning repeatedly to reserve duty.
Through it all, he continues to carry the memory of a single decision made on one of the darkest mornings in Israel's history: a rabbi's insistence that he remain home to protect his community, a decision he believes allowed him to survive and continue serving his country.