An account from an IDF soldier

Following is the firsthand account from an IDF soldier who served in one of the command centers of observation cameras at the Gaza border. Warning: this is quite graphic, but helps us understand the kind of trauma so many will be dealing with in the coming months and years.

The air raid sirens went off. We didn’t know what to do because we had never been in this situation; we ran outside into one of those cement cylinders, but it wasn’t really protected. The bangs we heard were deafening beyond imagination, and with every bang I thought I would die . . . But that was only the beginning . . . Every communication network was reporting huge numbers of terrorists invading the country. One of our team was among the first to report it, but the combat forces didn’t arrive fast enough to stop them . . .

They started shooting at our electronic equipment, at the observation cameras, to the point where we were actually blinded and could no longer observe the border. . . The sirens kept blaring and rockets were falling all around us. I ran like I had never run in my life. . . We were told to abandon our positions and hide behind the “pascal” [huge computer set-up]. We huddled behind it and hid until some forces came to defend us.

We only had one door, which we couldn’t close properly because the lock was broken, and a few soldiers guarded it. The situation was terrible–but then they cut off our electricity and the two automatic doors opened as soon as power was cut off.

At first, we were protected by a squad of Golani soldiers, but they were soon wiped out, all of them, killed off one after the other. The wounded were pulled into our command center, and I started giving them first aid as much as I could because I was terrified of coming out from behind the computer. . .

We didn’t eat a thing for 26 hours. There was no food, we had a little bit of water which we were rationing among us. We were hunkered down from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Because they cut off our power, we had no air conditioning, no air. We were dying of heat, I peed into a cup and into a tin can twice; people were sh*%*ing from fear, girls were peeing their pants.

I can’t even describe how frightened I was for my life every second of that day, I was afraid to move, I was afraid to sit down, my body was collapsing, we didn’t eat and we didn’t drink, it was just crazy. I hid inside a cabinet, I lay down inside it, afraid for my life.

There were lots of corpses and wounded. Then the fire alarm went off and I thought I would surely die because if I left the command center, I would face terrorists, but if I stayed inside I would burn to death. Luckily, we were able to put the fire out. Apparently at the Nahal Oz base, they burned the entire command center, and the girls there had no choice but to come out or burn to death, so they came out. I don’t know if they were killed or captured.

Every time that terrorists were knocking down our door, it was the most frightening thing ever, there was nowhere to hide, we were in a room that they were trying to break into . . . I have no idea how I survived.

Then they started shooting at the door. Our soldiers managed to hit them, but then they climbed on the roof of the command center. . . [finally] we started killing terrorists and blowing them up.

We saw that they had stolen our equipment and gear bags with uniforms. IDF forces tried to rescue us from the room, and we were terrified, rockets were still exploding, so we waited and finally were extracted and left the building in single file between two rows of soldiers who were protecting us and started shooting in all directions once we were out in the open.

We were exposed, we were crouching, I was sitting on pools of blood of our soldiers because there was nowhere to sit. Before we reached the buses, we saw many more corpses.

Now, every little noise makes me jump, every banging door, every sneeze makes me hysterical. I can’t go back there, I can’t. How do I get back to life? There is no way I can sleep alone, I can’t do anything that normal people can do. It isn’t fair that girls our age had to go through this, and this was only my second day in the unit.