Five Israeli soldiers who endured unspeakable horrors in fierce battles with Hamas came to the Big Apple to share their harrowing tales from the front — including how one saved a wounded medic by pushing his brains back into his skull, and another who lost two fingers but kept fighting after getting ambushed.
The visiting group was part of a delegation from Belev Echad, an New York City-based charity that runs a state-of-the-art rehab facility in Israel that has treated over 1,000 wounded fighters in the six months since Hamas’ barbaric Oct 7 attacks.
Here, for the first time, they tell their stories exclusively to The Post.
Or Kakiashvili, 20
A member of the IDF’s “special warrior unit,” the Kfir Brigade, which specializes in urban and guerrilla warfare, Kakiashvili entered Gaza on Nov. 1.
His unit took the “utmost precautions” to protect civilians and secured passageways for Gaza residents to evacuate military zones ahead of planned IDF operations.
Planes would drop leaflets warning residents to leave, and the soldiers were under strict orders not to fire on any unarmed person.
“Israel has taken more steps to avoid harming civilians than any other military in history,” John Spencer, chair of the Urban Warfare Studies Modern War Institute at West Point told Fox News.
On Dec. 14, the fourth night of Hannukkah, Kakiashvili’s team took control of a civilian health clinic in Shuja’iyya that Hamas was using as a terrorist base.
When the group discovered a tunnel shaft beneath the clinic, Kakiashvili and a comrade were tasked to stand guard.
Moments later, terrorists hiding deep below detonated a remote-operated bomb.
The so-called health clinic had been rigged with explosives.
“Just like every place in Gaza,” Ben David chimed in.
“The room was on fire,” Kakiashvili said. “The explosion was so powerful it’s impossible to actually convey, it was chaos.”
Shrapnel tore through his eyes, mouth, legs and forehead.
“The smell of fire still hasn’t left my nostrils,” he said.
Kakiashvili and the other guard were airlifted by helicopter to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.
He spent 70 days there, unable to see due the shrapnel lodged in his eyes.
Despite the horrors, Kakiashvili still has a soldier’s sense of humor.
When he offered to share a photograph of himself being airlifted to the hospital immediately after the explosion — breathing through an oxygen mask and draped in the Israeli flag — he boasted, “It’s a sexy pic.”
‘Abraham’
A 31-year-old Ethiopian Jewish soldier, a member of the Givati brigade since 2012, was injured in Gaza after he was ambushed in an apartment in Khan Yunis.
The reservist was called up on Oct. 7 and assigned to search for tunnels and root out terrorists in Gaza.
On Dec. 15, Abraham entered a house in Khan Yunis that was a suspected terrorist hideout.
Inside, he noticed a cupboard strangely positioned in the center of the dining room.
Suspecting that terrorists could be hiding inside, Abraham was granted permission to fire.
He was right. Abraham killed three Hamas terrorists as they emerged from the cupboard — but a fourth popped out, shooting him multiple times in the stomach and once in his right shoulder.
As Abraham attempted to fire back, he realized he couldn’t pull the trigger — because two of his fingers had been blown off.
With a fraction of a second to spare, Abraham unholstered his handgun with his right hand and killed the remaining terrorist.
Abraham has since had surgeries to calm nerve damage and phantom pain from his lost extremities.
Aviad Mor Yosef, 22
A member of the IDF’s elite Golani Brigade, Yosef recalled saving a wounded medic’s life on Oct.7, after finding him with his “brains spread out across the floor.”
Yosef, who now lives at home and cares for his ailing parents, was in the “first line of fire” when Hamas infiltrated his base that morning in a shock attack that killed nearly 1,200 Israeli civilians.
His commanding officer died directly in front of him in the bloody firefight, and Yosef was hit by shrapnel after a terrorist lobbed a grenade.
“I felt a burning in my hip and I was limping. I had no idea why,” Yosef said. “I continued fighting but it was very difficult.”
Yosef later found medic Zev Rublin with a catastrophic head injury — with pieces of his brain on the ground beside him.
Yosef pushed the medic’s brain fragments back into his skull, washed and bandaged the wound, and kept him awake for hours as their base teemed with Hamas invaders.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything,” Yosef said. “I was concentrating intensely on saving his life.”
It took nine hours to clear the base of Hamas.
When the fighting was over, Yosef had to wait 24 hours to receive medical help for his own injury.
A few days later, Yosef received a WhatsApp message that Rublin had miraculously survived, though he is now paralyzed and can barely speak.
He has visited Rublin two or three times in the months since.
“I am so happy about that,” he said.
But the physical and emotional trauma left him in a really dark place.
“For a month and a half there was nothing for me to do except go to my friends’ funerals,” Yosef said.
Hillel Ben David, 20
A beach lover and the oldest of seven children, Ben David thought he “probably wouldn’t make it” through Oct. 7.
A member of the Golani Brigade stationed at Zikim, a mere 8 miles from Gaza, Ben David was trapped with nine other soldiers inside an armored vehicle that was struck by five missiles and crashed as it raced to the border.
“We heard an explosion at the border, we saw a hundred terrorists start to run inside like crazy with guns and RPGs, everything they had,” he recalled.
Surrounded, the soldiers locked themselves inside the disabled vehicle.
“We knew we had to stay inside, you go out you are dead,” Ben David said.
Terrorists shot out its external cameras, effectively blinding them, then pounded the vehicle with 14 RPGs.
Three pieces of shrapnel hit Ben David in the leg, while the soldier sitting next to him took so much shrapnel to his legs and body that he “almost died.”
“He was white as chalk. The floor was soaking blood,” Ben David said. “Everything smelled of blood and sweat and fire.”
The siege dragged on for eight hours as the sealed vehicle gradually leaked air.
“We were choking inside … but we didn’t give up,” Ben David recalled. “They did everything they could to kill us all.”
The young soldier felt “really close to death,” he said. But, he added, “I have big faith in God. If I’m supposed to die, so it be.”
Suddenly, when all seemed lost, an IDF tank arrived, “like a miracle.”
The 10 soldiers entered the cramped tank and shut the hatch just as Hamas resumed firing on them.
“We did it in perfect time,” Ben David said.
It took Ben David a month to walk again.
His wounded comrade survived and is in intensive rehab.
“My faith [in God] got way stronger on October 7th, that’s for sure,” Ben David said.
Amichai Beck, 21
The son of a Rabbi and social worker, Beck was a “medical warrior” in Sayeret Nahal, the Israeli special forces.
He was stationed at the base at Kerem Shalom, five miles from the Gaza border, when the Hamas rocket bombardment began at 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7.
As Beck’s unit exchanged fire with the Hamas invaders for two hours, a fellow soldier was shot five times in his leg.
“Everything was a major clusterf–k,” he said. “Even when being trained for such a scenario, it’s nothing compared to reality.”
Israel War Update
Get the most important developments in the region, globally and locally.
Thanks for signing up!
As Beck rushed to provide emergency care to his comrade, Beck himself was shot in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
“I was in complete shock,” he recalled.
Beck tended to his friend’s injuries without receiving any treatment himself. “I just tried to be as calm as possible so my blood pressure wouldn’t rise, [and] my injury wouldn’t become more severe,” Beck said, “I was just acting like a complete robot.”
Beck waited five hours to be taken to a hospital as he bled.
“I felt hopeless,” he recalled.
The 21-year-old remembered how his parents cried when they first visited him after the attack. “It was very emotional.”
Since his injury, Beck has focused on spending time with friends and listening to music.
He hopes to one day have a career in security.