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Jul. 13, 2006
The stories behind the faces
By TOVAH LAZAROFF, HILARY LEILA KRIEGER and JPOST.COM STAFF
Sgt.-Maj. Shani Turgeman
Haim understood immediately that his younger brother Sgt.-Maj. Shani Turgeman, 24, was in Wednesday’s attack along the Lebanese border even though the media released only sketchy details. "I heard it was in the north. I knew where he was serving, so I knew it was him," Haim told The Jerusalem Post.
"I called his cell phone a number of times and there was no answer. Then a recorded message said his phone was turned off." After that, there was nothing else to do, Haim said, but to wait for the phone call that he knew would come from the army telling him that his quiet, shy, artistic brother was one of eight soldiers killed that day.
The middle child of parents who immigrated from Morocco in the 1960s, Shani showed an interest in graphic art as a teen and worked for a local newspaper. Shani had begun studying the subject at Sivan college following his return four months ago from a post-army trip to South America.
Haim said he last saw his brother two weeks ago before he left for reserve duty. It was a normal meeting, nothing special, said Haim, who added that Shani had been scheduled to finish his tour of duty later that day.
Instead of welcoming him back, his parents Albert and Marcel, along with Haim and younger sister Einav spent the day in the family’s Beit She’an home struggling to deal with the sudden loss. The funeral is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday in the military cemetery in Beit She’an.
Sgt. Nimrod Cohen
Esti heard only Wednesday night, when she was leaving the funeral of a friend, that her oldest son, Sgt. Nimrod Cohen, 19, was among the eight soldiers killed that day.
Her husband, Arieh, was notified by his longtime friend Motzi Dahmen, who is the head of the the regional council in the northern area of the Dead Sea. Breaking into tears as he spoke to The Jerusalem Post, Dahmen said that Nimrod was was part of the rescue team sent to help the soldiers in the tank that had been attacked earlier in the day along the Lebanese border.
"He was a wonderful boy. He was very smart, you can’t believe how smart he was. He also excelled in athletics," said Dahmen who had known Nimrod since he was a baby.
Before he was drafted into the army, Nimrod spent a year doing helping local communities as National Service, said Dahmen. Esti and Arieh were among the founding members of Kibbutz Mizpe Shalem where Nimrod was born and grew up, said Dahmen, who was helping the family by watching Nimrod’s nine-year-old brother.
Sgt.-Maj. Eyal Benin
Eyal’s mother was reluctant to sign the special release form required for only children who want to serve in combat units, but eventually she gave in.
Though his only child status exempted him from front line duty, Benin was determined to stay with his tight-knit set of life-long friends, all of whom were going to be combat soldiers.
"She didn’t want to let him join, but she understood that it was his dream,‘ said one of the friends in the circle, dubbed the ’Group of 18."
That dream led to tragedy Wednesday when Benin and seven other IDF soldiers were killed in a Hizbullah raid along the Lebanese border.
Upon hearing the news, the rest of his crew dropped everything to gather at Benin’s mother’s apartment in Tel Aviv. She moved there from the small Negev town of Omer after divorcing Benin’s father, who lives on Moshav Gderot.
But Benin rented an apartment in Omer so that he could finish high school with his friends.
"The most important thing for him was his buddies,‘ the friend said. ’He would do anything for his friends."
Benin, 22, still had his Negev apartment when he was called up for reserve duty three weeks ago, though he was to have moved this summer to Jerusalem in order to study law at the Hebrew University.
Pini Badash, head of the Omer regional council, called Benin "unbelievably smart."
Badash explained that his son was Benin’s best friend and said he had seen the "outgoing, smiling" former Nahal soldier frequently over the last week when he watched the World Cup at Badash’s apartment.
Benin’s girlfriend of five years had been planning to move in with him in Jerusalem. She and Benin’s mother declined to speak to The Jerusalem Post.
Benin had recently completed what was meant to be his "post-army" trip when he got the call to report to the Northern border. He spent the past year in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, returning home only some four months ago.
Badash described Benin as an integral part of the Group of 18.
"It was a group of students that was together all the time," he said.
"Yesterday it was 18," Benin’s friend said. Today it’s 17.
Sgt. Yaniv Bar-On
The bedroom of Yaniv Bar-On, 19, from Maccabim, was always full of model airplanes. For years, he dreamed of taking pilot’s courses and becoming a pilot in the IAF, but when he was recruited, he was sent to serve in a tank unit.
His mother, Caroline, heard the reports on the radio on Wednesday morning about the hummer jeeps who were targeted.
"Yaniv is safe inside a tank,‘ she thought. ’We have no reason to worry.‘ At first she was afraid Yaniv had been captured, she told family friend Tal Schlisser, ’but when they said the kidnapped soldiers were from the hummer unit she calmed down. Later, when she heard it was a tank, she started to feel that something wasn’t right, because that was the area he was serving in."
First Sgt. Alexei Kushnirski
A 21-year-old resident of Ness-Ziona, Alexei was a captain of a tank sent into Lebanese territory in order to try to extract the two kidnapped soldiers. His fiance, Shir Abirim, managed to speak to him a moment before he went out on his last mission.
"I heard explosions in the background, and Alexi said he couldn’t talk now,‘ Shir related Wednesday night. ’I told him I loved him and we hung up. A few minutes later, he went into Lebanon, and by evening we got the bitter news."
First Sgt. Maj. Wasim Nazal
The army representatives who came to the house of First Sgt. Maj. Wasim Nazal, 27, from the Yanuh-Jat village, on Wednesday still gave his family a little hope.
"Wasim was kidnapped by Hizbullah,‘ said the IDF representatives. ’The working assumption is that he’s still alive."
Only after several long hours did the mistake become clear: Wasim was killed during the battle with Hizbullah; the nerve-wracking drama ended in tragedy.
In Memoriam
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