TRIGGER ALERT.

It is important to note that throughout the story very difficult events are described in great detail.

 

At 6:30 on Saturday morning, 07.10.2023, Rotem, Benji’s fiancé, and Benji are asleep in their Tel-Aviv apartment.

Rotem wakes up from endless phone calls and messages realizing that something is happening in the Gaza Strip based on the number of red alerts being sounded around Israel. Worried, Rotem wakes Benji and informs him about the many sirens. Benji responds “It's not in Tel Aviv, you can go back to sleep”.

Five minutes later, Benji receives a phone call, gets up and answers. Benji asks Rotem to please bring him a pen and paper and Rotem complies. Benji starts writing down notes during the conversation.

At 07:15, Benji gets on a call with the senior commanders of his unit, the 7th Armored Brigade. Benji turns to Rotem and asks her to make him coffee. Meanwhile, Benji continues writing down notes on his piece of paper. Rotem returns to Benji but he sends her on a new task "Go prepare me a bag".

Rotem tries to take a look at what Benji is writing on the page but fails. In the conversation, Benji and the senior commanders understand that the situation in the Gaza Strip is a complex one as he receives live updates from the border via social networks.

By the end of the conversation, a decision is made on the initiative of the entire brigade and the reserve soldiers. Benji ends the conversation and Rotem looks down at the page that Benji had been writing, in the last section of the page Rotem notices that Benji wrote "A war has begun!".

Benji calls the deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Karam Nabwani. During the conversation Benji and Karam are on complete agreement that this is not a small and once-off event, but a war.

They agree that it is imperative that everyone who is abroad, whether for study purposes or vacation, return to the army base as soon as possible. They decide that everyone will meet at the 7th Armored Brigade’s main base, “Katzabia", as soon as possible and end the conversation. Benji and Rotem finish preparing Benji's equipment, leave the house around 09:00, get in the car and drive together towards Rotem’s friends house, Shir.

Once they arrive at Shir's address, Benji and Rotem get out of the car to say their goodbyes.

They hug and kiss in the middle of the street, on the bike path. Suddenly in the middle of the kiss they hear a cheering whistle from one of the balconies. Benji gets into the car and drives to the main base.

 

At around 10:00, Benji and Karam get on another phone call while Benji is still at Katsabia base and Karam is in the emergency storage units. During the conversation they realize that they cannot wait for further back up and have to go south. Brigade Commander, Colonel Elad Tzuri, phoned to inform Karam that he was already in the Gaza Envelope and after two encounters with terrorists.

At the end of the conversation, they concluded that they will set out down south and meet along the way. Benji takes the Brigade Commander’s jeep together with his driver Roy Oren and they set off. Karam meets and joins with his Jeep in the Golani junction area.

Behind them is another private vehicle with other officers of the brigade. They drive on Route 6 highway at a speed of 180 km/h, and reach the Beit Kama intersection. There, they take the next half an hour to prepare themselves. They put on their gear and divide roles, so that their force will be strong as they enter the area. Benji appoints the operations officer, Lieutenant Shaked Handler, as his partner and together shape the force in such a way that they will be their strongest when they enter the Gaza Envelope area.

They make a decision to leave with 2 vehicles, the brigade commander’s jeep and the deputy brigade commander’s jeep. They opened an internal communication system between them and set off. On the way, they decided to stop at a gas station in Netivot. Benji was eager to get to the Gaza Envelope, he wanted to start fighting already. At the end of refueling, they continue the drive towards the Gaza Envelope, abandoned and burnt vehicles slowly began to appear on the side of the road. Inside the vehicles, Benji for the first time encounters the horrors of Hamas terrorists-babies, children, women, men, entire families left lifeless, murdered in a sadistic manner.

Benji witnesses dead bodies of pregnant women whose stomachs had been cut open and the fetuses left headless on the road, people with amputated arms and legs. Nearby, Benji and his force notice an abandoned white van, they approach the van and see an excessive amount of weapons, ammunition, and firearms belonging to the elite unit of Hamas. At that moment, Benji realizes at that moment the magnitude of the situation and the level of cruelty of the enemy they are about to face and, together with his troops, continues his journey.

Major General Tzuri contacts Karam and informs them that he is at the Yad Mordechai intersection, and requests that Benji and the team join him. The force arrives at the Nahal Oz square and goes north on road 232 towards the Sderot Yad Mordechai intersection.

During the drive on the highway, they are once again exposed to a cluster of 50 abandoned and burnt vehicles full of corpses and horrific sights. Around 3:30 p.m., Benji's team suddenly sees a military force fighting, Benji's team exits the vehicles and joins the exchange of fire and successfully eliminates the terrorists. The team gets back into the vehicles and Benji calls Zuri to inform him to join them because the area is full of terrorists. At this moment, Benji's team meets the Commander of Division 36, Brigadier General Dado Bar Khalifa and with him and Major General Itai Virov, join forces. The team travels back south towards Kibbutz Be’eri. On their way east to Kibbutz Mefalsim, they come into contact with another group of terrorists.

They identify the source of the shooting and Benji positions himself as the front commander. Confidently and clearly, gives orders to his soldiers and together they scan the plantations in the area for an hour and a half, confining and mopping up the area. After purifying the area, Benji and the team get back in the jeep and go to meet Tzuri in Kfar Aza village. On the way to Kfar Aza, the force receives several calls from other forces that are in the Be’eri area and they realize that they must go to Be’eri because there is heavy fighting   in the area involving a large number of terrorists who have been able to take control of the Kibbutz.

On the way to Be’eri, Benji's force experiences two more encounters with terrorists, the first encounter at the entrance to Kibbutz Alumim where a shot is fired from a mound of dirt in the direction of their jeeps. The force quickly departs the vehicles and with the help of an additional team from the elite Egoz unit, they return fire and implore Benji's force to continue with their journey since they feel confident that they have the situation under control.

At this point Benji and his teams’ jeeps are already full of bullet holes.

 

Around 18:30, darkness has set, Benji's force arrives at the entrance to Kibbutz Be’eri, and identify a gathering point for other army forces that have arrived in the area. Benji and his team received a mission at the collection point from the Colonel in charge of Be’eri's area.

The mission was to enter the youth neighborhood near the Be’eri printing house in order to search, locate and rescue survivors. Benji realizes that he has to push forward with the understanding that there are more families and people who need to be saved as soon as possible. Upon their arrival at the first house, a scan is carried out but there is no one in the house but the door of the saferoom is locked. The same in the second house, the third, fourth and fifth. At this point Benji, Karam and 603 Battalion Commander Gilad Mills, talk for a moment because to them it doesn’t make sense that all the saferoom doors are locked. During their searches, continuous shots are being fired on the troops from different directions. In one of the houses, there is suspicion that a terrorist is hiding inside and an initial force of squad commander, Benji and Shaked enter the house.

They identify a terrorist under the table, shoot him, Gilad throws a grenade into the house and the terrorist is eliminated. They come to the decision that apparently there are people in the houses they checked, inside the saferooms and that no one has answered out of fear that they are unsure if it's the IDF or Hamas. Benji and his team begin to dismantle the door of the safe room in one of the houses and Benji begins to hear a muffled voice of someone from inside. Benji clings to the door and says "Get out, we are soldiers of the IDF".

However, the girl inside still refuses to open to the door. For several minutes Benji and his team try to convince her without success. Zuri starts talking to the girl and asks her if she knows the Bona family from the kibbutz, the girl answers yes and slowly after a conversation with mutual acquaintances she agrees to open the door. When she opens the door, she says, "You are terrorists!" Benji replies “No we're soldiers". Karam takes off his helmet and introduces himself, "I'm Karam," Benji realizes that instead of the girl relaxing, it has only made her more stressed.

Benji too takes off his helmet and told her "He's fine, he just looks like a terrorist. I'm Benji and I'm from Tel Aviv".

Benji starts asking her name, and still very shaken, she says her name is Michal. Benji tries to give her water to drink, but Michal is still afraid and is convinced that they are Hamas terrorists and that the water is poisoned. Benji realizes that he has to find a way to calm her down and begins to tell her about himself. Benji tells her about his fiancée, Rotem, and shows Michal pictures of her. Benji asks Michal if maybe she recognizes him from the television seeing as he had been interviewed on a local show with Niv Raskin and Adva Dadon that had become viral .Benji shows Michal a picture of Rotem marrying a couple of her friends and tells Michal, "From now on, I'm watching over you, you go everywhere with me until we get you out of here" and repeats himself to the soldiers around him "From now on, Michal is next to me, she's with me."

Michal tells Benji, that her new computer is right on the table and it is very expensive and asks him to take it for her, Benji laughs and tells her "I just bought my fiancée a computer just like this for her studies" and Michal tells him that she also bought the computer because of her studies and that's how they come to realize that Rotem and Michal are studying the same subject.

Benji's force is joined by a 19-year-old man, a resident of Be’eri, a fighter in Golani, who was on vacation at home. The man introduces himself as Doron and offers the forces assistance in locating and rescuing his friends from the kibbutz. With the help of Michal and Doron, the forces continue to slowly rescue more and more young people from the neighborhood. The forces gathered about 30 residents from the neighborhood, surrounded them to protect them and started moving towards the exit of the kibbutz, arriving at the kibbutz's entrance gate. With a smile, Benji shouts to Michal from afar “Bye Michal” and she shouts back "Bye Benji, thank you very much."

 

The citizens are safely evacuated and Benji and his force prepare to reenter the kibbutz. Benji and his force finish preparing for their second entrance to the kibbutz with the aim of searching, locating and rescuing residents. They return to the same youth neighborhood. However, this time with two jeeps, belonging to the brigade commander and his deputy, in order to quickly get civilians out. This time round, Benji and his forces successfully took out over 40 more residents, some by car and some by foot. Benji and his force go to the entrance gate of the kibbutz, prepared to receive a new mission. This is now the third time that Benji and his force enter the kibbutz with the purpose to search, locate and rescue residents.

Upon their entrance into the kibbutz, they meet Dado and he tells the force that there is a complex incident involving a tank at the southwest end of the kibbutz and they need to get there soon. Just before leaving, Benji and his force realize that it is a tank that apparently has a terrorist under it and an officer of the division is wounded on the ground near the tank and therefore the tank cannot move in fear that the officer will get hurt.

What Benji doesn't know at this point is that this is the area near the clinic, where throughout the entire day there have been very heavy battles with a high number of dead and wounded. Gilad and Karam quickly go to the scene of the tank and leave Benji, Shaked, Tzuri, Ashkenazi (Brigade Commander's Contact), Ahsan, Roi Oren and Avni. Benji and the force search for the tank inside the kibbutz, they recognize the tracks on the road and follow them.

At a certain point, they reach the area of a kindergarten and recognize the tank’s cat eyes and spot an officer who is on the floor near the tank. Benji approaches the officer, and recognizes that this is our forces, a captain from the 36th division.

Benji and Shaked pull him to a safer spot. Benji gets in contact with Dado to update him. Dado demands that they get this officer out as quickly as possible. Benji informs Dado that it is a dead body and it will be difficult to get him out on foot, therefore Benji, Shaked, and Karem put the body into the rear corridor of the tank.

Benji and the force evacuate a little back to a nearby wall close to the disabled ramp of the clinic. Two female citizens who live in Be’eri, Dvir, and Amit, appear there with their dog, who joined Karam on the way. Now, the force is left trying to figure out how to get them out.

 

Suddenly, there is an additional terrorist encounter in the street parallel to the tank, grenades are thrown in the direction of the tank. In addition, there is shooting from another street in the direction of Benji's force.

Benji and his force realize that this is a significant enemy force that is likely trying to flank them. The tank is flanked and Benji's team is holding force. Two fighters of the 603rd battalion, fall wounded and start screaming in pain, Benji and Shaked look at each other and together charge to save the wounded fighters.

Benji and Shaked fire at the bush from which gunshots are being shot.

Benji’s weapon jams. Benji tries to release the jam but he isn’t successful. Benji tries to pull one of the wounded men's weapons but the wounded man doesn't release his weapon. Shaked yells at Benji to move and pull aside the wounded.

Benji begins to pull the wounded while Shaked fires in the direction of the source of the gunfire. Little by little the amounts of enemy fire disappear, Shaked fires several rounds until he reaches his last ammunition.

Suddenly an explosive is thrown at Benji and the force, shards fly in every direction, Benji manages to pull the wounded towards the bullet trap and talk to them.

Shaked gets shot and falls to the ground.

​

How exactly Benji was killed at this point, is still unknown.