Late last weekend, just three hours after arriving home in Khan Younis in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, Lt. Col. N. received an urgent call from the commander of the IDF’s 401st Brigade. “Dabash was killed. You need to come. Now,” the brigade commander told him, referring to Lt. Col. Dor Ben Shimon, the respected commander of Battalion 52, who had been killed shortly before in the tank explosion near the village of Taybe in southern Lebanon.
N., 36, then deputy commander of the brigade, said he immediately kissed his wife, Miri, and their children, grabbed his uniform from the laundry basket and rushed north. “Before first light I was walking in the Beaufort area, going into the fire to take command of a battalion going through a complex event,” he recalled. He said he saw a burning tank, a blazing scene and constant fire from mortar shells and explosive drones during the final two days before the ceasefire took effect, as Hezbollah concentrated a last effort against the unit near Taybe.
He said his three immediate tasks were to secure the sector, recover the tank and the dead, and rebuild a fighting formation that had lost its commander and three soldiers in one blow. The recovery turned into a heroic battle that lasted hours under heavy fire. In joint action with soldiers from the Givati Brigade and the Engineering Corps, and with intense fire that killed about 50 militants, the troops completed the mission and brought back the fallen, which N. described as ensuring “our brothers” received proper burial.
N. said such moments were not new to him. Earlier, he had also had to command when his brigade commander, Col. Meir Biderman, was badly wounded after the first drone strike in another battle. “Seeing your commander wounded and treating him with your own hands during an evacuation under fire is a very complex event,” he said, noting that about 10 explosive drones were launched in that incident. He said the battalion, which has lost 23 soldiers since October 7, needed an anchor after two and a half years of fighting from Gaza to intense battles in Lebanon, and he tried to give the troops strength by telling them they were part of “the most just war the Jewish people have known.”
