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May 11, 2004
Six soldiers killed in Gaza mine blast
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH
Six soldiers of the Givati Brigade’s engineering unit were killed instantly Tuesday morning, when terrorists detonated a large mine underneath their armored personnel carrier, setting off some 100 kilograms being carried inside.
The explosives were left over from an operation to demolish metal workshops used by terrorists to manufacture Kassam rockets and mortar shells in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City.
The names of five of the casualties were released Tuesday night: Sgt. Edron Amar, 20, of Eilat; Sgt. Eitan Newman, 21, of Ramot in Jerusalem; Sgt. Aviad Deri, 21, of Ma’aleh Adumim, Sgt. Kobi Mizrahi, 20, of Moshav Matta, St.-Sgt. Ofer Jerbi, 21, of Moshav Ben Zakai, Sgt. Zhelko Marvitza, 24.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for the attack and announced they are holding body parts of the dead soldiers, which were scattered hundreds of meters from the scene of the attack by the force of the blast. Officials from the terrorist organizations demanded to enter negotiations with Israel to exchange the body parts for Palestinian security prisoners incarcerated in Israel.
Security officials said there are no plans to negotiate with the terrorists in order to retrieve the dead soldiers’ remains, but they have requested assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A spokesman for the ICRC confirmed that the request had been filed. "We contacted our office in Gaza, who are in touch with Palestinian organizations on the ground. We are not talking about negotiations, but a request from Israel that has been passed on. Their response will be handed over exclusively and covertly to Israel," he said.
Shortly after the attack Arab television stations al-Manar, al-Jazeera, al-Arabia, and Abu Dhabi, as well as foreign networks, broadcast footage of masked, armed Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists parading the streets of Gaza displaying body parts of the dead soldiers, their weapons, and pieces of the wrecked APC. Al-Jazeera showed Islamic Jihad members holding up the head of one of the soldiers. Channel 1, rebroadcasting the footage, electronically obscured the head.
Throughout the day, under barrages of Palestinian gunfire, troops continued operating in the Gaza neighborhood searching for body parts and remnants of the APC.
"Soldiers are deployed in the area and are conducting house-to-house searches. We are climbing onto every rooftop and every balcony to find the remains of our soldiers and the APC. We will continue the mission until the remains are returned for burial in Israel," OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel told reporters at Nahal Oz.
"When the operation is completed we will leave. When, depends on an assessment of the situation in the area where soldiers are currently operating," he said.
As to the televised footage of terrorists holding the remains of the dead soldiers, Harel said: "I also viewed some of the footage and I must admit that it made me sick. It is hard to believe that humans are able to sink to such depths. I think it shows the difference between us, we who hold human life sacred and will go to any end to return our soldiers for burial, and those Palestinians who parade before the television cameras."
Immediately after the explosion, soldiers isolated the area and began searching for the remains of their comrades as additional forces, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and bulldozers were dispatched to the area and air force helicopters hovered overhead to give support. From time to time missiles were fired at groups of armed Palestinians attempting to reach the site and fire at the troops.
During the morning the IDF divided the Gaza Strip into three parts, preventing Palestinians from traveling between the southern and northern areas, and also shut down the Karni terminal.
Palestinians reported seven killed and over 70 wounded, whom Harel said were all armed terrorists. In the afternoon, one Palestinian was killed and four were wounded when an air force helicopter fired missiles into a car spotted not far from the Zeitun neighborhood, where soldiers continued to operate.
The IDF denied Palestinian reports claiming the missile attack was a targeted killing and stressed that from time to time missiles were fired at groups of Palestinians seeking to attack soldiers.
The operation that began on Monday night was to rout out and destroy metal workshops used by terrorist organizations to make Kassam rockets and mortar shells. Harel declared that the operation was planned some weeks ago and that the reason ground forces were deployed rather then air power was due to the fact that the terrorists conduct their operations deep inside heavily populated civilian areas.
"The reality of operating in Gaza is a complex issue, as terrorists operate within the civilian population and places where they manufacture the weapons are also located there, and we must hit the terrorists and pursue them and their resources and at the same time minimize harming the civilian population.
"We have operated in such a fashion for over three and a half years and will continue to do so, as we must reach the sites where the weapons and Kassam rockets are being manufactured in order to distance the threat of rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip and in Israel. Today, several rockets were fired not far from here."
Harel noted that at the beginning of the operation, six bombs were detonated near security forces and a soldier was lightly wounded. The mine attack on the APC occurred as soldiers were preparing to leave the area after having attained the goals of the mission, in which two factories containing 25 metal workshops where the rockets were made were destroyed, Harel said.
Harel noted that over the past two months there have been numerous attempts by terrorists to attack soldiers and Israeli civilians. "In Gaza, it is a daily battle against terrorists, who in the past two months have attempted hundreds of attacks, scores of rocket, mortar, anti-tank missile, and shooting attacks, and in that framework we sometimes fail in our mission, as we did last week with the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters."
Palestinians identified four of their dead as Amar al-Jerjawe, 30, Fadi Nasar, 15, Muhammad Addass, 18, and Ahmed Salem al-Swerki, 17.
May 12, 2004
Comrades in arms
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Gilad Bedein knew he had lost his best friend, Eitan Newman, before reports that six soldiers were killed in Gaza hit the network news.
Early Tuesday, a friend mentioned that an engineering unit in the Givati Brigade had been attacked.
Knowing that Newman was in just such a unit, he reached for his phone.
"Immediately I called him. Of course, there was no answer," Bedein told The Jerusalem Post.
Bedein spent Tuesday at the Newmans’ Jerusalem home with the close friends that he and Eitan had spent much of their time with.
Just nine days earlier the group had gathered for a post-victory dinner to celebrate the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team’s Euroleague championship. "It was a big last meal," Bedein said of the final time he and his friends were able to hang out as a complete group.
Those friends were all from the Bnei Akiva youth group, of which Newman was a long-time member and then counselor.
"The younger children very much loved him and admired him," Eitan’s father, Michael, said of the kids he mentored.
He noted that his son, 21, loved to travel with them and his friends to visit the country’s waterfalls and hiking trails.
"He was a very considerate person, a very kind person. He had a lot of friends," his father said over the phone Tuesday night, his taut voice cracking.
When Newman, who works as a researcher at Hadassah-University Hospital, Ein Kerem, made aliya from England in 1980, he never contemplated that he would one day bury a son killed in the line of duty.
Eitan had always wanted to be a combat soldier, ending up in the engineering unit of Givati, deployed in Gaza, after completing mehina, a special pre-army course.
"We knew it was a dangerous thing to do, but the majority of the boys [here], our neighbors, they all go to combat units," Eitan’s father said. His two other sons, aged 26 and 23, have both completed the army, serving in the Paratroopers and Intelligence.
"We’re always worried with a son in the army," Newman said, slipping between present and past tense to talk about his deceased child.
Eitan was too fresh into his army service to have planned out his future, his father noted, explaining that Eitan’s training course had just been extended and that he was serving only an auxiliary role in the operation that cost him his life.
Eitan’s homeroom teacher of three years, Yedaya Levine, agreed that his student wasn’t one to plan out the future. More important to him were his friends and community.
Levine, who also taught Eitan Torah and philosophy at Himelfarb High School in Bayit Vagan, said that Eitan had a particularly acute sense of justice. "If something wasn’t right, he would be angry."
Forever smiling, "he was always ready to help, to volunteer with anything,‘ added Levine, who describing him as ’honest‘ and ’sensitive," particularly when it came to his friends.
One of those friends, Aviad Deri, died by Newman’s side Tuesday.
Deri celebrated his 21st birthday only a week ago. He didn’t fear serving in Gaza, but felt it was his duty. His father, Haim, had told him that if they weren’t there, no one would be there.
"The family knew that he served in the Gaza Strip, but he never told them where he was; except for a month ago when he told them that he had participated in a tunnel explosion. He was in a pre-military institute, was accepted into the pilot’s course, but in the end decided to enlist to volunteer for Givati and aspired to become an officer," his uncle, Moshe, told Y-net:
Aviad, of Ma’aleh Adumim, left behind parents, two sisters, and a younger brother.
Ofer Jerbi, 21, called home last night and told his mother that he was participating in an exercise on the Ashkelon beach. Still she was uneasy the next morning.
"When I sent my young son to school my heart shook,‘ Jerbi’s mother said. ’I made the beds in Ofer’s room — I saw a picture of him and tried to hold back the thoughts, when I decided to jump over to a friend to have coffee. I quickly returned home and told my husband that I had a bad feeling. When I heard of the incident in Gaza, I told him that something happened to Ofer, after which people from the army came."
"I cleaned the home — I thought if they come it will at least be clean. Then they came," she said.
Jerbi, was so good looking."
A sergeant in Givati, Ofer followed his older brother, Shlomi, who also served in the elite unit. He heard all the stories from him, and wanted only to serve in Givati.
A resident of Moshav Ben-Zakai near Yavne, he was the fourth of five sons of parents Itzik and Tzipi. His grandmother cried as she spoke to reporters outside the family’s home. "I’m a survivor of the Holocaust from age seven," she said, covering her face with her hand.
The mother of Kobi Mizrahi, 20, always told him she worried about him. He would calm her down saying, "Don’t worry mom, I am a man among men," she said.
His father died five years ago. The youngest of five children, Kobi lived in Moshav Mata near Beit Shemesh.
Edron Amar, 20, from Eilat, was the oldest child in his family. After receiving the news, dozens of people flocked to his family’s home in the Ganim neighborhood.
Edron’s friends, all on active army service, sat in his room staring at photos, in which Edron is seen smiling. Parents Amalia and Dani sat in the living room crying.
Long before joining the army, Edron knew that he wanted to serve in an elite unit. He successfully qualified for the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit and, after half a year of basic training, joined Givati.
Tovah Lazaroff and Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.
In Memoriam
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