“First of all, thank you for having me. I feel it’s very important for the whole world to hear all these stories and get the real and full picture of what’s going on here in Israel.” —Yadin Gellman
It sounded like a Hollywood movie, Yadin Gellman, an Israeli actor, and Commander of the IDF’s Special Forces, was with his team on October 7, after celebrating his 30th birthday the night before, organized by his girlfriend Adva Dadon, one of Israel’s most prominent television news journalists. But this was no movie. Gellman and his unit heard the missiles attack that fateful Saturday morning and was told this isn’t just another conflict. This is war. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group who assumed administrative control of Gaza Strip in 2007, launched a surprise attack against innocent civilians across the Israeli border. Many were attending a music peace festival. When he and his team passed through the military barricades they saw civilians who were in the war zone. When they got to kibbutz Be’eri, he saw something he never imagined even as a combat soldier. He saw babies that were killed in their bed, families where their loved ones were shot and their bodies treated in the worse way possible, others burned alive inside their rooms.
They went room to room, saving as many hostages as possible. On the way to the dining room, they saved 50 hostages. Kids were tied together and tortured in front of each other by Hamas terrorists. He and his team went to save them, when his right finger was shot off by an AK 47. They managed to take out that terrorist. Then, he got shot on his left side with three bullets, one blew a hole in his chest, his shoulder and his arm which he thought he had lost. The fighting continued. His team managed to take down all the terrorists and attempted to save Yadin and his dear friend David, his number two in command. Unfortunately, David sadly passed away in the helicopter, leaving behind his beautiful wife and 6 month off child. Yadin is here today, lucky to be alive. When he was loosing blood and there was a strong possibility he would die, he had two thoughts:
Number one, “I’m going to survive, no matter what," and two: "I should have married Adva.”
Yadin played a clip of him being interviewed by CNN while he was in the hospital. One of the reporters recounted all he had said he had gone through and asked "How are you doing emotionally…What you have seen is traumatizing…I don’t get how you recover from that. Considering all Yadin had been through he had the presence of mind to respond as follows:
“That’s a question that has to be asked by every Israeli here and abroad. We all have been traumatized as a nation. Our home has been penetrated. Our security has been shaken, and we see that pure evil has been living around us and inside our homes…How I’m doing and how my mental state is, is a question that is irrelevant now…I think we need to win the war, the next day we need to start taking care of ourselves both physically and mentally.” One of the reporters said that others they had talked to responded similarly, adding that they don’t have the luxury to assess their mental state because they were in battle and in survival mode. The reporter ended the interview by stating: “Yadin, you are indeed a hero. Sorry for your the loss of your friend David…and best of luck in your recovery.
Postscript: Yadin Gellman shared with us that ten years ago he gave up his religion and his family took it badly. But, after all he has been through, and survived, he has a new outlook on life and feels it is a miracle that he is alive and has renewed his faith and practice of Judaism. He also has begun to speak on college campuses like USC and sharing his story with the FBI, Pentagon officials, news outlets and social media groups.
