‘About 100 meters outside of Tzohar, the ravshatz [community security officer] saw a convoy of 15 motorbikes heading toward them on the road leading to the yishuv,” Shlomi Damri told me.
“He said to his deputy, ‘Wow – look how quickly the police have arrived.’ And his deputy said, ‘Listen, there’s something strange. They’re not wearing helmets.’ And after a moment, they realized. They opened fire on the Hamas men, and a firefight began.”
Damri was describing the opening moments of the events of Oct. 7, 2023, as experienced by the small community of Tzohar, seven kilometers from the Gaza border.
“They managed to kill a few of them. I was close by. I heard the whole thing, but I didn’t understand exactly what was happening. Then the ravshatz called me and said, ‘Listen, there’s terrorists everywhere. Get everyone in the shelter, inside the house, and lock it.’”
We were sitting at my kitchen table in Abu Tor. It was early 2026, a Jerusalem winter’s day. But as Damri, calmly and without emotion, related the astonishing, dramatic story of his, his family’s, and his community’s experiences that day, we were back, transported to the horror and confusion of that time in early October 2023.
Shlomi Damri, 34, an electrical engineer by profession, has emerged over the past year as one of the more remarkable of the new breed of reserve soldier activists produced by the events of the last two years. An infantry squad commander in the IDF reserves, and wounded veteran of combat in Gaza, Damri today is a leading member of the miluimnikim (reservists) movement and a volunteer with organizations assisting veterans suffering from PTSD.
From the chaos of the border communities on Oct. 7 and the loss of his brother – murdered while leaving the Supernova music festival – to 400 days of combat in Gaza, then on to public activity in an effort to change the country’s priorities and bring a new serving elite to the fore, Damri’s journey is at once extraordinary, yet perhaps also representative of those emergent forces now set to come to the forefront in Israel.
Oct. 7
Damri, married with two daughters, lives in Ra’anana. He found himself on Oct. 7 in his home community of Tzohar; his mother still lives there, and a Simchat Torah family gathering took place on October 6. Damri was accompanied by his four-year-old daughter, Arbel.
Tzohar is one of a cluster of seven communities located a few kilometers from the Gaza border. It was established in 1973.
The yishuv avoided the fate of neighboring border communities – namely, to be overrun by the first wave of Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 – because of a series of coincidences. Damri was woken at 4:30 on the morning of that fateful day by his brother-in-law, the community’s security officer. There were reports of Bedouin infiltrators in the village. The two took their rifles and did a search. They found nothing.
When the sirens started at 6:29 a.m., they were still awake and thought it was something routine. Maybe the IDF had carried out a targeted killing and this was the response. Or a small-scale infiltration had taken place. Nothing yet had happened to convince them this was the major attack that residents of the border communities had been discussing for years.
As a result, when the community’s security officer received a call from neighboring Kibbutz Holit that terrorists had entered the area, he and his deputy decided to drive there and offer assistance. That was why the two were 100 meters or so down the road from the entrance to Tzohar when they sighted the convoy of terrorists coming toward them, and opened fire.
The burst of fire killed four of the Hamas men and scattered the others, giving Tzohar’s residents time to organize their own defense. The remaining terrorists made for the neighboring community of Moshav Mivtachim, which they succeeded in entering, slaughtering many of its inhabitants. Some got as far as Ofakim before they were neutralized; others succeeded in returning to Gaza.
“We started getting pictures on WhatsApp,” Damri said. “From Nir Oz. From the kibbutzim. Yarden Bibas was a good friend of mine… I saw the clip of Shiri with the two children and I understood that they’re starting to kidnap people. We began to understand that something huge was happening.”
Realising the “major attack” had come, Damri tried to call his two brothers, Tal and Dan, both of whom were in the vicinity. Tal was living in Kibbutz Kfar Aza; Dan was attending the Supernova festival.
“Tal at Kfar Aza answered me in a whisper. He said ‘There’s terrorists inside the kibbutz,’ then hung up. Dan already didn’t answer,” their brother said.
“I’d chosen to stay in the vicinity of our home. My mother’s house is in the area of the entrance to the village. If they arrive, we’re the first house they’re going to enter,” he said.
“The emergency response team of Tzohar was basically the security officer and his deputy. The army had taken the rifles from the others a year earlier. People just had their pistols; everyone did what he could.”
He called his battalion commander. “I said the whole area is crawling with terrorists. He told me, ‘They haven’t called us up yet, but I’ve already contacted people and told them to get to the base.’
“So I’m trying to get forces to come to us, but I’m also trying to figure out what’s happening with my brothers.”
He knew Dan was on the way home from Supernova, so he got the car and went out to look for him. “After a few hundred meters, close to where the ravshatz had fought the terrorists, I passed the bodies of two Hamas men. Then, further down, I saw a convoy of shot-up cars. There were two people there – a cop and the ravshatz of a different community.”
They started opening up the cars to see if there were survivors.
“In the first was the body of someone I knew, who had gone to save his daughter and was murdered.” They moved on, and reached the last car – “and I already recognized it. I opened it and I saw Shir, Dan’s girlfriend, shot dead in the driver’s seat; my brother Dan in the seat next to her, also shot dead; and in the back – Dor, Dudi, and Chen, three friends of theirs, all murdered at the intersection, not far from getting home.”
At first, he tried to lift them up, to do something, to move them, he said. “The cop said to me, ‘Get out of here; there’s still terrorists about.’ So I went home and changed my clothes because my trousers were covered in blood. I took some clothes of Dan’s and his army boots. We could hear the fighting from Mivtachim, about 300 meters from us. I understood they’d be on us soon.”
EXPECTING A major assault from Hamas at any moment, Damri organized his four-year-old daughter’s evacuation from Tzohar. “I put her in the car, with my sister and her partner, gave them a pistol, and explained the way they should go. They drove through the fields, in the direction of Kibbutz Tze’elim, and then to Beersheba.
“Two rifles, a few pistols – and if the ravshatz wouldn’t have been on the road, they would have reached us.”
The people of Tzohar then spent the rest of the day in the defense of their community. Thanks to the early response, Hamas did not succeed in penetrating the area, despite repeated efforts. The Tzohar community stood guard throughout the day, and throughout the night.
“Toward the evening, I understood that rumors of Dan’s death were already beginning to spread. I was worried my mother would find out that way, through WhatsApp. So I went back to the house; my mom understood something was not OK. I sat the family on the sofa, and I said, ‘We’re a strong family. We’ll get through this. But Dan’s been murdered. And Shir. And Dudi and Dor.
“I gave them the names of about 20 of our friends, who I knew had been murdered. My mum just broke apart. A friend of mine who was at the guard post at the entrance to Moshav Ohad told me later that he knew Dan had been murdered because he heard my mom’s screams.” Brother Tal was rescued in Kfar Aza and survived.
From then until the morning, Damri was outside the house. “The terrorists didn’t succeed in getting into the village. The first forces of the Israeli military arrived at 5:30 on the morning of October 8.”
Then they went back to the houses, he said. The IDF had organized a convoy out of there of all the cars in the direction of Eilat. “In Tse’elim, we stopped the cars. My family continued in the direction of Eilat, and I turned around.
“I drove on Road 232, by way of the Gaza Division base, the Nova site, Kibbutz Be’eri,” he said. “I couldn’t just stand there, after everything that had happened: no army, nothing there, everything collapsing – and on October 8, I arrived to miluim.”
Gaza
Damri’s unit, the 5th Infantry Brigade, replaced the Givati Reconnaissance company and the Maglan commandos at Kibbutz Nahal Oz. “In the first days, we killed the last few terrorists who were still hiding. And we collected the bodies of the dead in Nahal Oz. The last terrorists we saw was about two weeks after – in an avocado field. They were all hungry, drinking from the irrigation system.”
The military command at that time was barely functioning, he said, and the army was being managed by company commanders and those below them. Then they got the order – they were joining the maneuver into Gaza.
“The company commander called me in and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to a sensitive place. I don’t think you should take part.’ I didn’t understand why. Then he told me we were going to Khirbet Khuza’a,” a Palestinian town in the Khan Yunis governorate. “On Oct. 7, we took from the terrorists’ bodies all the kit they had on them – phones, papers, and so on. And two of the terrorists whose bodies we found – the two who were closest to my brother’s body – those two were from Khirbet Khuza’a.
“He said, ‘You have a personal involvement in this. I don’t want you to come.’ I said, ‘If I’m not there, no one has a reason to be there.’ He understood I was serious about the matter and agreed I’d go in.”
They were the first to arrive. “I’m the commander of the medical section. It was the first time I’d been in combat of such intensity. Dozens of dead. Artillery. Air power.
“One day I was standing on a roof with one of the guys. We saw Tzohar from there, and the house where my mom lives.”
Then you meet the war face to face, Damri said. “We got a call that a D9 [large track-type Caterpillar tractor] working with us had been hit by a shell. This was the first critically wounded man we’d seen in the war. The driver had a wound to the stomach. He came down himself from the D9. He went with his stomach open, holding it in. We treated him, got him to a helicopter. He survived.”
They fought for 16 days in Khirbet Khuzaia. “We left there on foot, back to Israel. We looked behind, and we saw the Hamas men coming out onto the roofs – all the ones we’d spent two weeks looking for. They’d just hidden in the tunnels and waited for us to leave.”
In January, they thought they had finished, “but straight away, we got called up again – to Shati, in the north of Gaza. The brigade took heavy losses in Shati. Difficult ground. A lot of rain. Mud up to your knees. We had people killed in the first days. One of the tanks was hit by an RPG. The company commander was killed, the others trapped in the tank. We got a D9 to take the turret off. There were incidents like that every day. We were killing six or seven Hamas men each day. Face to face. For three weeks. The most intense of the war, Damri said.
On the last day, they saw drones in the air. “We got a message that one of the tanks had been hit and someone was critically wounded. We ran there, three or four minutes of running, through mud and rubble. I got there first. They’d already brought the wounded man off the tank. I saw that he’d lost an arm and his stomach was open.
“I’m not a medic by profession, I’m just their commander. I took my hand and pushed it into his shoulder to try and stop the bleeding. With my other hand, I’m trying to push his organs back into his stomach. They got him breathing again. There was fighting all around. We were shouting for them to come and get us.”
Finally, they got him on a stretcher and into a Hummer. “I took my hand out of his shoulder and put the hand of one of the guys who was in the Hummer into it. They got him to a helicopter. The rest of the crew were unharmed. He was a company commander; he’d only been on the job two weeks because the previous company commander had been killed. His name was Netzer.”
That night, they were pulled out. “We walked four hours or so, back to Israel. And as soon as I got back, in those first moments back in Israel, someone came up to me and said, Netzer the company commander was dead – he hadn’t made it.”
Activism
Just 24 hours later, the same hands that had been treating the critically wounded were there with his two daughters – and that’s life, the Oct. 7 defender said. “I also saw while in Gaza that we’d all fought together – leftists, rightists, and so on. But I got back and people had gone back to October 6: all the hatred and the mutual accusations. It just broke me,” he lamented.
“So, on the one hand, I’m angry with what’s going on. On the other, I’m only now starting to really absorb what happened. I see my family and the girls. I’m trying to rebuild everything.”
During the day, he says he’s just fine. “But at night, after the girls are asleep, I can’t get to sleep and I sit outside. With the pistol in my hand. And my feeling is, another minute and the terrorists will be here. I can feel that something’s not right.
“I feel all the time that I want to go back to reserve duty – there, my behavior is normal. You know, the military atmosphere: something fun in it, and something moving, too – but also that you don’t have to deal with reality itself.”
He realized he needed to be active, so he started looking for places in civilian life to volunteer. “I got in touch with [former minister] Yoaz Hendel. I saw that he had created a movement; it wasn’t yet political then – volunteers in kibbutzim, helping miluimnikim and people with combat shock – and I started to volunteer.”
Damri was called up for a third three-month period of reserve duty in mid-2024, in the Netzarim area.
Upon his return, he increased the pace and scope of his activism.
“All the time I’m thinking – and it’s burning in me – why don’t people understand that the divisions, and the irresponsibility, are what brought us to this, beyond the specific military errors. We too are responsible. So, when I returned, I went to Yoaz again, to begin activities to really address this,” the activist said.
“I have a very clear compass which says the murder of my brother took place because of these reasons. Apart from the murderous Nazi ideology of Hamas, which makes them want to kill all Jews, they had the chance to carry this out because we were busy with the wrong things: with shrinking the army, internal divisions, little political matters,” Damri said.
“And that’s when I went in and really began my struggle – to make the army bigger, recruitment for all: also haredim, also Arabs.”
Hendel’s movement became a party at that time, his supporter said. But one of the things that continued to most concern him was the treatment of PTSD sufferers. “I see my own situation; I know what’s with me. I know I have serious PTSD. And I know there’s many others like me, and I’m not prepared for them to be ignored. People are taking their own lives. One of the people from my own unit committed suicide, someone who’d been with me since my regular service.
“So I’ve been the face of that struggle: for PTSD sufferers, for the wounded, and around the hok hagiyus” – the recruitment law, whose goal is to ensure conscription of ultra-Orthodox Israeli men.
But they’re working on something deeper, which is the cornerstone, Damri stressed: to end the whole business of Left and Right. “Whoever is a Zionist, whoever believes the State of Israel should be based on Zionist forces – and not on people who escape from responsibility, and from the army – people like that should be in politics. I’m working so all those forces should be united. ‘Whoever sits with me in the tank can sit with me in the government’: That’s my slogan.”
During reserve duty in the Muwassi area in mid-2025, Damri suffered damage to his hearing as a result of prolonged exposure to noise. “There was a shooting incident. And in the middle of it, I lost my hearing completely. In the days ahead, the hearing returned in one ear – but in the other one, not.” He remains deaf in that ear.
“I was in a three-month recovery process, so I wasn’t working and I focused on the activism. With the central message that if we don’t get it together, they’ll come against us again. I’m fighting for us not to return to the same mistakes as before. The recruitment law is the thing that gets headlines, but we’re fighting for other things, too: for the wounded and PTSD sufferers, and also for an aggressive security policy.”
For them, the Yellow Line is the border. “It’s out of the question that we allow Hamas to remain in the Gaza Strip, and this can be achieved only by force. There’s nothing preventing us from using force, and now is the time for military pressure. But instead, the government is going back to 2006 and trying to sell all manner of clever tricks.”
Darmi wants a total remake of the Knesset. “From my point of view, the whole 120 of them should go home. The first responsibility for what happened is that of the IDF and the Shin Bet [Israel Security Service], no doubt, but the higher responsibility is of the prime minister and the government. It’s their policy, which they stuck to for years, of strengthening Hamas, giving money to Hamas and so on. At 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, the army should have stopped Hamas. But until that point, it’s the government’s responsibility.”
We need as much new blood in politics as possible, he said. “So yeah, I think they should all go home. But I have to put my personal views aside, for the good of Israel.
“We’re losing a lot of people. Some killed, some wounded, some with trauma, some whose lives are collapsing after 400 days in the reserves. Every time they call me, I’ll go. I’ll fight to go. It’s a critical moment for the nation of Israel, no doubt.”
But things have to change. “The people who contribute the most, I want them at the front. Not only in the army but also in civilian life. We want to put the reserve soldiers to the fore – not only on the military front but also the political one.”
Shlomo Damri is heading for another round of reserve duty. Into Syria this time, in the Quneitra area. Afterward, there are elections looming, of course, but also the daily work for PTSD sufferers and the wounded. And, presumably, his own route back from everything that has taken place over the last two years.
The attacks of Oct. 7, like earlier Arab and Islamist offensives against the Jews in Israel from North and South, were predicated, the available evidence suggests, on a notion of Israel’s fragility. Just one final push, the theory went, and the whole infuriating edifice of non-Muslim rule west of the Jordan River would collapse. This appears to be a perennial illusion in the minds of a considerable population in the region. As a result, a cohort emerges every two or three decades with the intention of testing the matter.
From this point of view – regardless of the very justified criticism of various state entities’ performance in the course of the last two years – Israeli society seems to have passed the test. This is perhaps most centrally the result of the efforts of people like Shlomi Damri and the many other like-minded young men and women in his generation. The impact they will make on Israeli public life in the period ahead remains to be seen. ■
