Read the first, second, and third parts of Yoni Heilman’s near-daily accounts from the front.
November 9, 3:47 P.M.
Okay. Let’s talk about tactics.
I avoid the news for the most part. I read Ynet enough to put names and faces to the tragedies I hear on the radio in real time, and I skim the New York Times to get a sense of how the world views this conflict. Neither of these is a pleasant experience.
But I’ve seen enough reported publicly to be able to share things I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand.
Like Hamas turning its weapons on its own people in order to block humanitarian corridors of escape arranged by the Israeli military.
Like terrorists carrying large packages of improved explosive devices right up to the border fence, assured of their safety because they’ve brought a child along with them.
One night our forces took on heavy fire in the form of rocket-propelled grenades. Before we had a chance to return fire, a crowd of more than 100 Palestinian women, children, and babies were forced out of an unseen tunnel, to deter our forces — or gain political points from their deaths. Our soldiers, of course, chose the former.
These were buried in the news. I can attest to their truth.
These tactics come from a combination of two elements: the first, a complete disregard for human life, even the lives of their own innocent children, on the part of Hamas. I cannot say more without losing composure.
The second: a clear understanding of how we perceive human life. Our capacity to love even those who hate us. And as certain as I am that Hamas sees this as a weakness to exploit, I am far more certain that they are wrong. It is our greatest strength.
I am there to see the pain and disgust in our commanders’ expressions when they see children being used this way. In those moments, they are soldiers second, and fathers first. I remember the pride in one officer’s eyes as he explained that we have certain missiles whose trajectory can be adjusted, after they are fired, until the moment of impact. “In case the terrorist jumps to one side?” I asked. “Not really possible,” was the response. “It’s in case a child comes into view.”
During my first professional job, working for the Israeli consulate in New York, I stood in the back of the room as then–Foreign Minister Shimon Peres faced a room full of cameras from every media outlet in New York. It was the Second Lebanon War, and Peres was asked about an incident from that morning: The IDF had just inadvertently fired upon a school in southern Lebanon. I winced — there could be no adequate response, could there?
Shimon Peres offered the official response: It was an unfortunate, unintended tragedy. Then he paused and looked down. After a moment, he lifted his eyes, looked directly at the reporter who had asked the question, and added, “Is there anyone in this room who really, truly, believes that Israel would ever deliberately kill a child? That we could ever condone such a thing? For us, children do not have nationalities. They have an international passport. We bring them to Israel — often from enemy countries — for free, life-saving heart surgery! We are a nation who loves all children.”
Emotions are running high these days. But let’s pause a moment to recognize what those emotions are, on our side of this war, and where they come from.
Some of us are in anguish over the innocent Palestinians caught between the guns of Hamas and the advancing IDF, and there are those who, in raw pain, have no capacity for that sentiment. But we are not celebrating advances. We are not singing about victories. We are not joyous over lives lost. Even in those moments when our unit has eliminated a terrorist, there is no tally, no high-five. We nod and move on.
What are we doing? For my part — and from what I can tell, for many around me — there is a lot of love, and a lot of tears.
Gabrielle and I send each other clips or stories we’ve seen that move us. I usually watch them while I am eating, the result of which is that I’m often crying and eating at the same time. Sometimes tears of sorrow, sometimes tears of pride and of joy. Either way, my food turns out saltier than is probably healthy.
Yesterday, before my shift, I heard something that sounded like live music and went to investigate. It turned out to be Akiva, one of Gabrielle’s favorite singers, doing an impromptu concert from the back of a truck. Akiva was in uniform; he explained that his unit is based up north, but he was using his short leave to come and lift the spirits of soldiers in the south.
At 1 A.M., when I came off duty, I followed rumors to the gate of our base, where I found a family of Yemenite Jews packing up food they had brought. When they turned and saw me approaching tentatively, they asked whether I was hungry. “Of course!” I said. They joyously erupted into whoops and reversed course. Within three minutes I was holding a steaming bowl of soup with parsley, potatoes, and a chicken thigh; a large Yemenite laffa; and a bowl of hilbeh (fenugreek cake). They directed me to a nearby picnic table with a tablecloth, sliced lemons, and Coca-Cola.
While I sat down to eat (dinner at 1 A.M.?), a car approached, blasting Eyal Golan’s latest song about Am Israel Chai. Its occupants intended to barbecue for soldiers but, seeing there was already food, they made a giant dance party instead.
At 1 A.M. In the desert. In close range of rocket fire. All I could see and feel was an immense amount of love.
It’s infectious.
On my way to sleep, I passed the door to our base’s HQ. It’s usually a solo post, staffed by another unit, but I popped my head in and saw a young woman with a long expression at the radio. “Did they bring you soup?” I asked. “No, what soup?” she answered. Back to the gate I went. Five minutes later, I continued my journey to sleep, leaving an ecstatic soldier drooling over her soup in my wake.
The other day, I was exchanging voice messages with a friend. At the end of my last one, the words “love you” came out of my mouth. I could have edited the message; I could have added a note laughing at my blunder. But I didn’t, because in that moment, I felt love for my friend. Love for all of my friends. And the colleagues who are carrying on my work in my absence. The friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who send me messages about the thoughts I share. The donor to my organization who messaged my wife. The community that has rallied to support my family. The friends who bring groceries and throw in a treat. My family, of course, first and foremost, but so many others. And my fellow soldiers, who have become a kind of new family.
I had time only to hear the songs by Akiva before my shift started, but his opening words to the first song meant everything: He was going to sing a love song, he said, though these days his love songs have taken on new meaning for him. Love for our country. For our soldiers. For the Jewish people.
So we can talk about tactics. But I know all I need to. I know that our enemy’s tactics will destroy them, no matter how many victories they claim. And I know that regardless of how much loss we suffer, our tactics will build us up, will fill us with hope and joy and love until they spill over into everything and everyone around us.
אור חדש על ציון תאיר, ונזכה כולנו במהרה לאורו. Shine a new light on Zion, and may we soon merit to bask in its rays.
November 13, 7:52 P.M.
It’s been over a month, and they finally decided to do another round of leave — this time for a blissfully long 48 hours.
During the final shift before I left, I could not contain my excitement — but I also felt a bizarre reluctance to be away from what has become a pitched battle in central Gaza. Leaving the unit means getting my information delayed and filtered. If what happens in Gaza impacts the nature of my unit’s mission — as happened during my first leave — I will return and have to catch myself up. It’s quite disorienting, like opening your front door and finding the furniture has been rearranged.
My team and I briefly discuss the pros and cons of going home with one clip of bullets versus two. Consensus is two, and I snap a second one onto my weapon. If I need bullets, better to have enough to really make a difference.
I arrive home in the middle of the night. Other than Gabrielle and me, it feels like the city is asleep. Yet the first thing I notice is not the quiet but the cleanliness. The floor blinds me, and I feel awkward as I shed my bags, gear, weapon, and boots.
We can’t go right to sleep — it’s the first time Gabrielle and I have been face-to-face for three weeks. The substance of these updates — which we conveniently don’t have to catch up on — is counterbalanced by the many things that now, in person, I am able to share. Suddenly it’s 2 A.M., and it’s time to sleep. Tomorrow, I will have to choose clothes. For some reason, the prospect is daunting.
Walking through the apartment to reorient myself on my way to bed, I encounter a mixture of the strange and the familiar. Three etrog boxes from Sukkot, sitting right where I put them on a cabinet on October 6. A strange dark shape in my daughters’ room turns out to be the slightly deflated balloons she received for her 14th birthday, a reminder of the occasion that I missed. During the small party Gabrielle made for her, last Sunday, I was taking cover from rockets. Twelve years earlier, during her second birthday party, I was taking cover from rocks while she and Gabrielle spent the duration of a long reserve stint with my in-laws in Baltimore. How times change.
I am home, but it feels like visiting somewhere I once lived. It’s familiar, but also strange. I know what to do, but I don’t feel like I belong. The only thing that grounds me and finally helps me fall asleep is the hand that finds mine under the covers. Now I am home.
Two full days at home is enough time to settle into a rhythm that feels, like everything else, both strange and familiar. Here I am, making noodles and defrosting chicken soup for Friday-night dinner. Begging my six-year-old to finally finish her bath. Doing laundry (my load leaves the dryer filled with green lint). But there are new elements of a routine I don’t recognize: turning on a radio for rocket warnings over Shabbat; special prayers recited at candle lighting for children kidnapped in Gaza. My kids keep bursting into verses from songs with which I am unfamiliar.
Ironically, the only place that feels completely normal is the barbershop, where I bring my son for a haircut. This place is known for its seven-minute haircuts, and midday Friday, it is a chaotic mess of soldiers on leave, weapons of every kind, and mixtures of uniforms from more units than I can count. One has a short Tavor rifle with a special scope lying across his knees as he leans back and gets a shampoo. Another soldier with a grenade launcher slung across his back has a T-shirt that reads simply מלחמת חרבות ברזל — Swords of Iron War. They’re already making T-shirts?
Shabbat morning, I have the chance to see friends and acquaintances from the community. It’s exciting to see both, like in the early days of Covid. I’ve been feeling very detached from people, and extrovert that I am, it feels good to be in this crowd again. Many people come up to me, and I sense a familiar mix of inspiration and guilt. I am like a lightning rod: People want to talk about how they have been inspired to support one another, or else they try to mask their guilt that they are not doing more. Sometimes both, a sentiment with which I am familiar. I am my own contradiction: a clean white button-down shirt and an M16 across my back. The clothes feel stranger than the rifle.
On Sunday morning, I walk my youngest to the door of her first-grade classroom and am pulled into the room, where the teacher leads the class in a chorus of “thank you for protecting us” and then asks where I am based. With her ever-present smile, she tells me, “My son is in Gaza. His commander says they might get out for a breather soon.” I know that this means she isn’t able to speak directly to her son and probably hasn’t for some time. Her unspeakable fear is only just below the surface as I look into her eyes. She is looking back, still smiling warmly, but her mind is 50 miles south.
My daughter kisses me goodbye and tells me to go soon so I can finish the war and come home. I pull away and walk out quickly before the lump in my throat overtakes me.
I was due back on base very early Sunday morning, but my son developed a serious health issue over the summer, and we’ve managed to schedule his next battery of tests for mid-morning. A fellow soldier covers my shift so I can go to the hospital. We’re not seeing our usual cardiologist — he’s been drafted — but we meet with a different doctor. My son is thrilled that I am coming in uniform and armed, as he’s hoping I will intimidate the doctor he doesn’t like.
On the way to the hospital that is in a Tel Aviv suburb, we pass fields that are usually empty, though well-tended. This morning, they are full of people; various companies are volunteering their staff to help gather crops, since most of the migrant workers on which Israeli agriculture has come to depend have fled the country.
At the hospital, we meet with a nurse we’ve never seen before. She tells us she worked there until they made her retire at 75, but she’s been coming back as a volunteer every day since the war started. “Your reserve duty,” I say, grateful that her presence has meant I can be at this early-morning test.
She chuckles and looks up at me, seeming to notice my uniform for the first time. “My reserve duty? I guess so.”
She pauses. “Where are you based?” I tell her. She sighs heavily.
In the next room, two techs are doing the job of one. The regular techs must have been drafted; we encounter one who seems too old to be doing this and another who is too young. I can’t imagine how their routine has been for the past month as they troubleshoot software and hardware that are clearly new to both of them.
We drive back home. The plan is to drop my son at school and then for me to return to my base. As we approach, he asks whether I will stay in the car; in the parking lot of his school, he gives me a hug and promptly bursts into tears. Now he doesn’t want to go to school, and neither of us has it in us to force him. The three of us head home where the scene repeats itself at the door; then in a minute, I am gone, out the door and headed back to base.
November 14, 7:59 A.M.
Being back in the army feels like being back in my element. I am sad to be away from my family, but by now, this is where I feel I belong. It’s hard to explain: My first leave felt like lifting my head above water to catch my breath, a vital reconnection with my real life. This last one felt like visiting a foreign country. The feeling seems to be common; another soldier told me that she, too, felt uncomfortable at home. “Out of focus,” she called it.
Sunday night, there was a special treat: A bunch of friends from home came to my base and prepared a huge barbecue. Since the war started, they’ve been doing this almost every night, traveling to bases around the country and barbecuing for soldiers. They fundraise and grill, and it is hard work: 15 guys sweating over coals, fanning flames, juggling tremendous amounts of food. By the end, every one of them had eyes bloodshot from smoke.
I had someone cover me so I could hang around and talk to them, but they didn’t want to let me help and there was a lot to do, so I sort of hovered.
The previous week, we had a similar barbecue, but this one was different in three ways: First, it was my guys. Even the ones I barely knew were my guys. Second: The American in me was salivating over the very Anglo elements they brought: hamburger buns in addition to pita, barbecue sauce in addition to hummus. I took an unnatural delight in the presence of napkins, which do not exist in my world. The third difference was that they brought a bunch of guys to play live music. Whereas last week’s barbecue consisted of a huge number of soldiers falling on the food and disappearing in about 15 minutes, Sunday’s was more like a party. Soldiers lined up, everyone stayed to eat, there were even some guest singers from among our unit. I was there for a while, and the fun lasted for three hours, I’m told.
A friend asked me whether the mood was normally as festive as it was right then, and I balked. “Festive” is not a word I would use to describe our unit at any moment. Even as we sang, even as some of us danced, we were happy in those moments and drew a tremendous amount of energy and purpose from their efforts, but we were not in a festive mood.
It was yet another moment when I felt the dissonance of our existence compared with life outside the army. The world outside seems to be living in post-trauma, veering back and forth between depression and inspiration. I get it: What is there to do except follow the news and discuss it? To digest the constant stream of stories from the front, stories from October 7, stories of the global surge in antisemitism, and political infighting?
I see two options: Sink or swim. Drown in the cascade of stories or throw yourself into something that will bring us to a better place.
Things are very different from where I sit. There was never time to reflect or mourn, and there was a great deal of work to be done. From mobilization to front-line defense, from contact with the enemy to dozens of missions big and small, we are constantly looking forward, constantly turning the page to the next task at hand. We are trained, out of necessity, to be able to do this: A single shift might include moments of intense stress or tragedy, followed immediately by mundane tasks or even levity. We focus always on what is in front of us, putting everything else aside.
When my friend asked whether we were feeling more festive these days, he was seeing us through a “normal” lens. He could not know — nor would I have shared — that immediately prior to their arrival, I learned of injuries in our unit from mortar fire. Or that after their departure, there were casualties in the neighboring sector (both since published). In those moments, I enjoyed the barbecue and danced to the music because that was my focus; that was right in front of me. Before and after were irrelevant. Morale is high, despite everything. But festive? I haven’t felt that since October 6.
Several hours later, I came off duty and collapsed into my sleeping bag. My flip flops hadn’t yet been unpacked from home, and I usually set them near my cot, pointed towards the door, in the event of a mid-sleep rocket attack. But I didn’t want to wake those sleeping next to me with the noise, so I decided that tonight’s 15-second dash would be barefoot, if need be.
Today was a new day. New stresses, new moments of humor. In the evening, we welcomed the new Hebrew month, Kislev. Last month was bitter Cheshvan, but it has come and gone, and I look only forward. Despite the longer hours of darkness and the ongoing war, my thoughts are of the month ahead, and the light of Hanukkah that it will bring.
November 15, 7:56 A.M.
It’s really hard to eat healthy during war.
First of all, mealtimes are inconsistent. Even once we got things under control and our logistics team began making sure meals were available at normal times, it doesn’t help much if you are on duty through the night and collapse into your sleeping bag in the morning. Or if lunchtime comes and you have five minutes to step away from your post. Or no time at all because you are managing the critical moment of an operation.
Second, it’s impossible to say no when civilians show up and cook us food. I mean, it would be impolite. So we eat a lot of meat. A lot of barbecue. Carbs. And also: carbs. It’s incredible, and we need the fuel, but sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about my health after this is all over.
Finally, most meals are hurried. Not just because of timing, but also because they are usually eaten on your knees, sitting on a slab of concrete, flies fighting you for the food.
This morning, I had to go on duty at 8 A.M., and I was exhausted from my shift, so I woke up late, only to find that there wasn’t much available for breakfast. I found small containers of hummus, but no bread. Apples were soft. Peppers had gone bad. So I had a piece of cake, and a banana-chocolate bar made of pure sugar. It did the trick, and on duty I went.
Lunch was standard: army-issue chicken, veggies, and couscous. No complaints; units in Gaza are eating tuna and corn.
The IDF had declared a humanitarian pause to allow civilians who hadn’t yet left to clear the area of battle. It didn’t give me time to eat, however, as Hamas utilized the pause to move around truckloads of terrorists and to launch — from among their fellow Palestinians — a significant volley of rockets at Israel’s population centers. I crammed in my food during a three-minute lull in what was otherwise a supremely intense day.
So it was that I came to dinner, after my shift, hoping for something normal. Normal food, and time enough to eat it like a normal human being.
I saw Ofek, who masterfully manages our meals, setting up tables. A moment later, the skies opened up and it rained so hard we could barely hear one another. There was a tarp over the tables, but they sagged under the weight of the rain, and gigantic puddles collected everywhere.
Suddenly, an older man in a purple T-shirt appeared, carrying boxes. He was soaked through, but he deposited the boxes on the table and went back out into the rain. Again and again he appeared, bringing more and more into our little clearing.
Then he began opening the boxes, and many of us pitched in to help. When we finished, we stepped back and took in an incredible spread: quiches and salads, bourekas, pastas, cheese platters, couscous, even mini pizzas.
I cannot describe the joy that came from so many soldiers finding that dinner was hot, home-cooked… and dairy. Israelis are cheese lovers, and this was a cheese lover’s heaven, not to mention the salads and the vegan options.
I stepped over to the guy who had brought the food, and he smiled at me. “Lots of officers,” he said, looking around, “but no one yet who outranks me.”
And just like that, I stopped thinking about food and started thinking about the cycle of life in this family that we call Israel. Here was a guy who was probably close to 65, entering the next phase of Israeli life. He was likely in grade school during ’67 and ’73, seeing his father go off to war and learning to be afraid of the harsh realities of conflict. He came of age and was drafted when Israel went to war with Lebanon, and probably spent most of his years as a reservist in the security zone there, leaving small children at home in order to fight endless battles, and asking many questions of his country’s leadership.
Then he saw his children grow up and get drafted themselves. Was it during a quiet period or a surge in terrorism? Either way, he spent nights as a worried father, armed with the firsthand knowledge of a soldier, as his kids made their way through their mandatory service.
And now, he is the father of reservists gone off to war. Seeing the cycle repeat itself and finding his new role: While his family is at war, he cooks and bakes for soldiers. He works at a school in a Jerusalem suburb, and the food he brought was prepared by its teachers.
There are some who would see in this story signs of an endless cycle of violence. To be sure, I, too, wish there were no more wars to fight. But that has never been our reality as a people.
Maybe it’s the fact that I am writing on a full stomach, full of healthy things to eat, but when I looked at the joy on his face at seeing our unit devour the food he brought, I felt my own joy.
We support one another, our people. Some of us worry for one another, some fight for one another, some feed one another. As I write this, half of my American friends are at a rally in D.C. and the other half seem to be on their way to or from Israel.
It’s not just a cycle of war, it’s a cycle of love and support. And we have strong communities, an army, and families like the one of the guy in the purple T-shirt, who will never be tired and never stop giving of themselves for Israel.
It’s time for me to go to sleep. Tomorrow, some of us are on duty; the others are sacrificing their sleep to pick oranges on a farm too close to Gaza for civilians to tend.
November 17, 12:07 A.M.
I’ve felt unsettled for the past couple of days.
Earlier this week, I wrote about how good we are at moving from the tragic to the mundane in any given moment. Over the past couple of days, it began to bother me how good we are at it. Moving so rapidly from battle to lunchtime makes one wonder: Am I just really good at compartmentalization, and this will all hit me later? Or am I unaffected by what I’m seeing, too professional to let it bother me, becoming desensitized by the frequency of tragedy and my sliver of distance from it?
Today finally felt like a day of reckoning — and I am relieved at how horribly I feel.
It only makes sense to start at the end. This evening, those of us not on duty heard a brief talk from a historian who, in the course of his reserve duty in this war, has been traveling to units across Israel, collecting stories and synthesizing the beginnings of a more holistic narrative of what happened on October 7 and what has been happening since — in our sector, in Israel, in the Middle East, and around the world.
We listened politely — there wasn’t much to his story that we didn’t already know. But something about the retelling of the story, by a soldier in uniform, opened the floodgates. Right now, in small groups all around me, people are talking. In pairs, in threes and fours, we are talking about the beginning of the war.
We’re not recounting our experiences, as we have done often. We are talking about what we should have done. In the safe space of a unit that was drafted before every other, that has spent the entire war on the front lines, we are talking about our mistakes. Our failures. As individuals, as a unit, and as an army.
An officer whose family lives near Gaza, but not in the closest line of towns, is certain he should have stayed at the entrance to the town with his personal weapon, defending his family rather than driving north to our wartime drafting base.
Another, who was in a special-forces unit for some years, regrets not pushing the team he was with to drive right to the headquarters of the Gaza area command center.
A third, whose daughter was in Sderot and out of contact for 36 hours, wishes he had driven straight to her instead of joining our mobilization and agonizing in silence for a day and a half.
Many agree that the right move should have been to travel to our base, grab a weapon, and ride right into the thick of the battle in platoons formed on the spot.
To be clear: This is not how the army works. Any of these would have resulted in a tremendous amount of confusion, incidents of friendly fire, and a serious delay in getting the army drafted and ready for war as a whole.
But just the same: We are all of us trained to do battle. We have the right instincts to plunge into exactly what was going on. And we were not there. Our first mission was not “go rescue those under attack,” but rather “get your unit drafted and ready for war.” It was done remarkably quickly — almost unbelievably so — but it feels now as if it was the wrong first move.
To be sure, there are many stories of units who were already in the area, who served valiantly and saved so many lives despite severe casualties. And of others who got down south as quickly as possible and drove straight into battle. But there are too many stories where no one showed up.
I watched two short videos today. The first was of a man from a nearby kibbutz who drove his pickup truck to and from the music festival more than 15 times, rescuing survivors and shuttling them to his hometown. At one point, a woman asked who he was, and refused to believe that he wasn’t part of any formal security force. “How could you not be? No one has been here yet and it’s been hours and hours!” she said.
In the second video, a young paratrooper, currently in Gaza, spoke to a reporter about his arrival in Kibbutz Be’eri on the evening of the 7th. When he rescued a bomb shelter full of civilians, one very elderly man asked him, “Where have you been?!” He had no answer.
When I first joined the IDF, I spent many hours in guard towers thinking about what I was doing and why. One of my conclusions at the time was this: There’s not always going to be a chance for a soldier at a post to eliminate his attacker. But while a soldier fallen in the line of duty is tragic, sometimes that is exactly one’s duty: to be the first to fall. The one whose death or injury is a signal that something more horrible must be stopped. The call to arms. And on October 7, even in this we failed. Soldiers fell in battle, on the lines of defense all along the border with Gaza. But then our people were slaughtered, too, and we didn’t get there quickly enough. We got our gear, we got our guns, we planned our missions. But we also lost so much precious time.
Now we are here. We are right here. More than 30 soldiers have been killed in Gaza since our ground forces crossed the border. And many, many injuries. They happen in the blink of an eye and change lives forever.
The other day, our neighboring unit executed a mission that mine had done several times, partially focused on destroying the underground tunnels that allowed Hamas to approach the fence en masse and invade our nation. Only this time, as the seemingly impenetrable military bulldozer crossed the fence, a terrorist popped out of an unknown tunnel and fired an RPG that went through the cab, severing the hand of the young soldier driving it.
Earlier today, a warning popped up that made me focus on an overhead view of a unit far away from us, on the Gaza beach. Two clusters of soldiers were working frantically on something I couldn’t make out beneath them. Then, in the space of 90 seconds, it all became clear: A helicopter landed next to them, the two groups each moved a seriously injured soldier into the transport, and then the helicopters and medical teams scattered simultaneously, leaving an empty beach covered in footprints as the only sign they had been there.
Last night, the officer who sleeps next to me was staring into space at one point. “Tired?” I asked jokingly.
“No,” he responded. “Thinking of my friend” — who had lost both of his legs the previous day.
The suddenness and severity of battle injuries are a shock to the system. And for me, over the past couple of days, it has bothered me how quickly we move on from these shocks.
But tonight, finally feeling free to talk about those feelings that each of us has been secretly harboring — that we could have done things differently, recognized what was going on more quickly, followed our instincts rather than our orders — it contextualized for me our professionalism as something else: a relentless sense of purpose.
Tragedy and guilt and death and injury will not deter us from our mission until our brothers and sisters return to their homes, until they feel safe. Until we have been forgiven for the unforgivable sin of failing to be there when we were needed most.
