'I dragged him toward me and said, 'We've come to take you home''
There's probably no better way to describe the heroic rescue operation that took place in the heart of enemy territory infested with terrorists. If a Hollywood scriptwriter had placed a script like that on a producer's table, he would have been immediately asked to remove a few scenes to make the story more realistic.
"Everything is possible," explains Superintendent Y, who met us this week at the Yamam (National Counter-Terrorism Unit) base in central Israel. "Regarding our unit and our friends from the Shin Bet and from the other units that took part in the operation, even if the conditions right now don't seem right for the rescue of more hostages, it doesn't mean that we won't do everything to keep trying, whether its intelligence or operations, and we'll take every risk on ourselves to carry out the next operation. We won't rest on our laurels for a moment, and we hope that we are only getting started."
Superintendent Y met us together with three Yamam officers, who on Monday morning were at the heart of the operation. Four men you may have met this week in the supermarket or asked about the time on the street, but only a few know about the dramatic event they participated in and how good it is that they are protecting us.
Superintendent Y (35), married with one child, who serves as deputy squadron commander in Yamam, already knew about the operation a few weeks ago. Because of the secrecy, only he and the squadron commander received the initial information about the possibility of rescuing hostages from the depths of Rafah. "There was great secrecy about the identity of the hostages we were going to rescue," he says. "During the following weeks, we revealed the information to the unit captains, and only a week before the operation, at the end of the preparations, did the operational soldiers learn who the target was."
Every soldier who took part knew everything about Fernando Marman (60) and Louis Har (70), who were captured on October 7th from their home in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. Their facial features, qualities, and personalities. They also knew that the operation would be tough because it would take place in a Hamas stronghold that the IDF still hadn't targeted, full of terrorists for whom Rafah is their last bastion.
The unit trained non-stop during those weeks, with an emphasis on the fact that the difference between success and failure was measured in millimeters. "There's an extremely extensive process of intelligence gathering for the event," says Superintendent Y. "We go down to fine details and there's a long process of learning the territory, of understanding what the challenges are in planning."
Commander A (35), married with two children, is the only reservist among the four soldiers we met. A veteran, experienced soldier who quickly understood that everything he had done in his military service thus far didn't compare to what he was going to experience. "Feelings of something new, but also an event that we had been training for since the day we were recruited," he says. "There's an instructor who always says, 'If you're privileged to be part of this event, then you're privileged to be the first to enter the room where the hostages are held; say thank you and do your best," and that was the feeling from the first day of preparations, that we were privileged to be part of something big."
With all the excitement, the soldiers also understood the possibility that some of them wouldn't return from the mission. The more intelligence that came in, the more they understood the complexity of the operation. "We don't talk about risks, we do the best we can, and we're always developing and sharpening the plans and how we act to increase the chances among the decision-makers," Superintendent Y explains. "In preparations and battle procedure, we increased the success rates to quite high percentages, with an extremely significant risk to the force, and without hesitation, this was 100% acceptable to us as soldiers. In the end, I think we convinced the decision-makers to believe in the operation and our plans."
Q: What was the worst scenario?
"Even if we were surprised and ultimately injured, and if several soldiers were killed, that was a reasonable scenario - even if we didn't have a response."
Q: We know every window at the target
During the preparations, Superintendent Y returned home several times and tried to broadcast business as usual, but his wife already knew who she was dealing with. "She understood that we were in battle procedure; in any case, I've been in the unit for more than 10 years, but she also noticed that this time was more intensive and different because usually, battle procedures in Yamam are short because the implementation is quick. She began to realize when she caught me one night, while we were in bed, checking the weather in Rafah. She asked: 'When is it?' I answered: 'Soon.' The next time I only updated her after the operation." Superintendent A understood exactly what his friend was talking about: "I told my wife that I would be in the forward command room, and only afterward did I tell her that I had been inside [Gaza]."
The operation was supposed to take place several times, but it was postponed because, in the opinion of the decision-makers, the conditions in the field weren't yet ripe. At the start of the week, when the stars aligned and every force knew its mission – not only Yamam but also those supporting it – the Shin Bet, Shayetet 13, and the IAF – the go-ahead was given. This kind of operation involves hundreds of people. "The operation was planned to the level that each one of us knew exactly which window he was supposed to guard or which building threatened him during the operation," says Superintendent Y. "In breaking into the home, the soldiers knew how and when and which means they would use."
They are young men with families. I asked them if all this risk was worth the rescue of two people. Commander D doesn't think for long and answers: "We don't look at in terms of a person being worth the life of another, and if two soldiers die the operation is a failure. It's not a zero-sum game. There is something here that's far bigger in its substance. I won't say that we in the unit are worth less, but we've taken on ourselves the understanding that we're ready to be harmed for something bigger than a single person, that's who we are."
Commander D (34), married with one child, said that the day before the operation he was mostly concerned for his family. "I took out life insurance. Seriously. I sorted it out the day before the operation," he says. "Since October 7 everything has become much more real, and one needs to be practical. We've lost friends, and I think about the worst thing that could happen and [because of that] I'm responsible for my family." Commander A said he thought the same thing. "I checked the insurance and I saw that I had left a decent sum, my wife would be sorted," he jokes.
High Risk, Low Pulse
The day of the operation arrived. Alongside the excitement and the tension, there were also fears. "The hours before you're mainly playing with your mind, speaking with specific people who you know are thinking the same things," says Commander E (31), who is married with three children. "I tried to say to myself, and I also said it to my friends on the force: 'We're going to do what we do every evening, only the field is different.' That's the idea. We will do what we do, only on a bigger field, and that makes you turn up for the operation with a low pulse because that's what we know."
The issue of the pulse, it becomes clear, also impacted Commander A: "On a personal level there was fear. During the preparations and the battle procedure, I had big butterflies in my stomach and thoughts about what might happen and how to respond during the operation. I can say that all day I walked around and said to myself "If this happens, I'll do this, and if I'm hit from there, I know how to respond.' For weeks that was the routine, walking and describing what I would do in each situation. During the operation itself, my pulse was 60. I can't explain it."
Before departure, the platoon commander, Chief Superintendent A, came to speak with the soldiers. Yamam has lost nine soldiers since 7 October and even the unit commander himself, Deputy Superintendent H, lost his son, who was with the Shin Bet and killed at the party in Re'im. Even while he was sitting shiva, he continued managing the Yamam operations.
"The commander spoke with us about the importance of the mission, that the hostages are like our parents, and we'd naturally do everything to save our parents," says Superintendent Y, commander of the rescue force. "He spoke with us about the fallen, about how we're doing the operation for them, and we are continuing their heritage and concluded with the same words as before every departure – 'We leave together and we return together,' and this time it happened."
Yamam began the operation with the knowledge of past failings in hostage rescues. Thirty years ago, in October 1994, Sayeret Matkal failed to rescue Sergeant Nachson Waksman, who was taken hostage by Hamas in northern Jerusalem, and during the operation, Sergeant Nir Poraz was also killed. During the current war, three hostages – Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, and Samar Talalka – were killed by IDF fire, even though they had succeeded in escaping from their captors.
"Processes of learning lessons and studying past mistakes are in our DNA," says Superintendent Y. "In every operation, there are clauses in the orders that are lessons from earlier operations, and they always remain with us."
Commander A says that these events personally impacted him. "Its main impact is modesty," he says. "The understanding that even if you plan down to the last detail and prepare the force, you need a lot of modesty, and this is something that is taught at the unit from the day you start here, and even more so before a big operation. The tragedy that happened only sharpened and strengthened the size of the responsibility and the modesty."
Returning fire
Before departing for the operation, perhaps as a superstition, Superintendent Y decided not to remove any personal items. "I was afraid to leave behind a bracelet, watch, or chain, that afterward my wife wouldn't be able to get them." He doesn't say the words explicitly, but he's referring to a bad ending. "Even though it wasn't comfortable I left everything on me."
It was a slow and secretive entrance into the alleyways of Rafah, about which they are forbidden to talk. "The movement was extremely secretive and professional, with the support of everything you can imagine," says Superintendent Y.
Commander E, meanwhile, doesn't remember the entry into Rafah but instead, the moments that passed until they reached the border fence. "Those we lost from our unit accompanied us because as we were traveling, we passed the points where they were killed," he says. "Sha'ar HaNegev Junction, Sderot, it was almost surreal. You travel and say, 'This is for them.'"
Each of them absorbed the tension in their way. Commander E and Commander D mostly spoke about life, while Superintendent Y and Commander A, even in the stressful situation of traveling into the unknown, hadn't left the humor back on base. "We mostly told dark jokes," laughs Superintendent Y. 'We imagined this interview via breathing tubes, in the rehabilitation unit." Commander A: "We argued over who would be hospitalized and who would be under the ground." Even now, Commander E isn't amused: "Only them, we didn't talk like that."
They parked in an agreed place, and from there went on foot toward the house in Rafah where the hostages were held. "The process was extremely slow," says Superintendent Y. "We needed to reach a two-story house that was built as a private home, a kind of cottage, but the movement was on foot by several forces and from several directions. We avoided being encountered on the way, we used many techniques to advance and to avoid detection until we arrived at the agreed points from where we began the noisy assault."
Once at the target, the Yamam soldier operates on automatic, like a machine with precise operating instructions. He carries out actions that were practiced in the previous weeks so there wouldn't be any mistakes. "We know where we need to reach," says Commander A. "We place a munitions charge on the door and burst inside. I enter the room first and identify opposite me two terrorists, I deal with them both. I see Fernando and Louis on the floor, crawling toward the captors, who told them to come. Y captured Fernando and succeeded in taking him to the balcony, while Louis continued to crawl toward the captors. I caught him, dragged him toward me, and said 'We've come to take you home.'"
Q: You weren't afraid, when you killed the terrorists, that maybe you were mistakenly shooting at the hostages?
"The faces of Louis and Fernando have already been in my head for a long time. They were engraved in my mind, and I knew that if I wasn't sure then I wouldn't shoot."
Q: Even at the price of the terrorists shooting at you?
"I think we've all already made our peace with that."
Q: No longer an imaginary operation
Superintendent Y and Commander A took Fernando and Louis to the balcony and lay on top of them to protect them, since the munitions charge and the bursts of gunfire had woken up the street, and armed terrorists were leaving their homes. "Inside the home and the home next door there was massive fire via the walls and the windows, and there was also fire from the periphery (the peripheral arena), from where armed terrorists came," says Superintendent Y. "Inside the home there was a terrorist or two who threw grenades at us, so D, who was guarding from the outside, came with his team and killed them."
Outside Commander E was standing with his soldiers. "It was very dark, and I don't know if the terrorists saw us, but we felt the bullets flying around us from every direction," says E. "We succeeded in creating pressure that I think only exists for us in the unit. From a state of secret arrival, something very gentle in our movement, to go immediately to the violent stage, which is our domain. The moment there was the first explosion we shifted gears to effective aggression, and I think that's what created the defense. We were firing non-stop."
Superintendent Y: "Every terrorist who peeked took a bullet. Anti-tank missile snipers. The protection forces were very strong and precise." At the same time, the IAF began to support the rescue of the force that had been encountered. "We saw flashes from all kinds of distant places, and at a certain point we began to get supporting fires from the IAF – I don't think they have ever fired from so close to our forces before," says Commander E. "Just a few meters."
The force understood that they needed to complete the mission and rescue the two hostages since the area was becoming noisier by the moment. They decided to remove Fernando and Louis together with them, by abseiling from the second floor of the building. "That was planned," Superintendent Y says. "The preference was to remove both with a slide and not to spend too much time dealing with the terrorists inside the home. The moment they were in our hands, we wanted to remove them from the fighting in any way possible. Listen, in training, we were removing them on stretchers, but both were fantastic."
The Yamam put the two hostages in vehicles, on their way to meet Shayetet 13, who were supposed to lead Fernando and Louis to a helicopter that would return them to Israel. "We told them that we were taking them home. They were in shock because there was a lot of shooting going on, the sound of explosions, but they behaved excellently," says Commander A. "They seemed cool, sharp. They were incredibly disciplined; we didn't think it would be like that.
We spoke with Fernando, and he said that in captivity they showered once a week, and that some of the time they were left to their own devices. "I told him: 'Soon you'll be home, and you can invite me for coffee.'"
Yamam returned to Israeli territory crowned with glory. Some compared it to Operation Entebbe, and the fact that there were no injuries will long be taught in the military schools. "Yamam has been involved in many operations over the years," Superintendent Y clarifies. "There was the Mothers' Bus Attack in 1988, which was a complicated hostage rescue, and on 7 October the unit fought on many fronts with the rescue of hostages in Ofakim, Sderot, and Kibbutz Be'eri. The whole time, the loss of our soldiers has remained with us."
Superintendent Y says there weren't special celebrations at the base. They cleaned the weapons, organized the special equipment, and are now waiting again for the next operation. "We are waiting. This operation also began in the imagination."
Q: Not only a rescue, on the way it's also possible to kill Yahya Sinwar.
"That's easy."
Meanwhile, the wait for the next action allows them some rest at home. They've managed to see their wives and children and to tell them as much as they can about that dramatic night. "My wife said I'm a crazy psychopath. Only joking – she said that it was exciting, and we're champions and things that women usually say," Superintendent Y, the head of the force says, laughing.
Commander A, the reservist in the team, has also already managed to taste a bit of regular life, light years away from the bullets that whistled above his head last week when he killed terrorists and rescued hostages. "My wife said: 'It's really exciting, but you need to go to the supermarket'."
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