Miraculous Rescues From The Hamas Inferno

 

Battalion commander Ben-Yehuda fought the terorrists in Yated until they surrended to her force

There are so many horrendous, heartrending stories to tell – of entire families slaughtered in cold blood, of old and young carted off to the hell holes of Gaza, of young lives shattered as they danced for peace, of heroic soldiers who were injured in previous battles but came back to fight and die on the Gaza border, of the woman twice widowed to IDF husbands who died in battle. These stories must be told, it is imperative not to forget the individuals even during a cataclysm of such colossal proportions.

Yet now is the time to inspire, to try and console, to strengthen broken hearts and to find the light in such palpable darkness. Despite the impression of wholesale tragedies, there were also many miraculous events during the barbarous Hamas assault.

Here are some of the rays of light in the last few days:

• Three of those people captured in Gaza succeeded in escaping back to Israel. The three are Avital, a 38-year-old woman from Hulit, who was apparently captured and taken at night to the border. Slipping away from the group of captives, Avital spied two small children, Negev (4) and Eshel (6 months old) who had been left there after somehow being separated from their mother, Adi Vital-Kaploun. Avital picked them up and ran back across the border, meeting up later with IDF forces who accompanied her to safety.

The children’s father was at a party near Nirim and managed to escape.

• A 25-year-old woman, Inbal Liberman, succeeded with unusual resourcefulness in saving the kibbutz of Nir-Am from the fate of other nearby communities. Realizing quickly that the kibbutz was coming under a terrorist attack, Liberman organized the local platoon, ran from house to house organizing the defenders and placed various people in ambushes on the fence of the kibbutz. Her foresight led to all of the 25 terrorists who attacked the kibbutz being eliminated on its perimeters. None of them succeeded in infiltrating the kibbutz.
• Shlomo Boimster, a pensioner in his 70’s, serves as a Home Command officer on reserve duty during emergencies. On his way to his base, Shlomo was confronted by terrorists and with his own personal weapon succeeded in eliminating them. Wounded by fragments, he continued to serve at his base.
• Lieutenant-Colonel Ohr Ben-Yehuda led her unit to defend the village of Yated in the southwestern Negev. After a protracted battle with the terrorists, 15 of them surrendered to her unit and were taken into custody. Ben-Yehuda, the first female company commander in the IDF, was decorated in the Protective Edge campaign in 2014.
• Lieutenant-Colonel Yarden, commander of the Shachar unit, succeeded with her subordinates in eliminating four terrorists at the Urim base.
• Second Lieutenant E, an intelligence officer with no combat training succeeded in fending off terrorists at the Reim base near the kibbutz. E eliminated some of them and fended off attacks by others.