Beit Hashita in the Harod Valley added another name to its long list of bereavement on Friday, when Lt. Col. Dor Gadalia Ben Shimhon was killed in combat. A respected armor officer, Ben Shimhon became the kibbutz’s 39th fallen Israel Defense Forces soldier.
His death brought renewed attention to Beit Hashita’s deep historical bond with the Armored Corps. For decades, the kibbutz has been known as the “kibbutz of tankers,” having produced generations of tank crewmen, commanders and senior officers. Among those associated with that legacy are Col. Nitzan Sela, who fought as a daring company commander in Armored Brigade 188, Maj. Gen. (res.) Moshe Peled, later a Knesset member and deputy minister, and the brothers Ran and Yosef (Yossele) Sharig, sons of Palmach Negev Brigade commander Nahum Sharig.
Yosef Sharig, a poet and composer of “Or Yerushalayim,” was killed in the defensive battles on the Golan Heights and received the Medal of Distinction. His brother Ran commanded Brigade 179, was wounded, and later returned to lead his troops deep into the Syrian salient. The kibbutz’s connection to armor came at a devastating cost during the Yom Kippur War.
In that war, Beit Hashita lost 11 of its sons, most of them tankers killed in battles on the Golan Heights and in Sinai. The toll made it one of the communities that paid the heaviest price relative to its population in Israel. Out of that trauma also came Yair Rosenblum’s haunting setting of “Unetaneh Tokef” and the Beit Hashita member Dorit Tzamert’s song “The Wheat Grows Again.”
