ISRAEL: We Always Win Because We Can’t Afford To Lose!

Yonat Daskal, Tal Shahar, Noam Dan and Tamar Bar-Ilan: Four Women Saving Jewish Lives

 By:  Prof. Livia Bitton-Jackson    Published: September 12th, 2014

Last July 40,000 soldiers were called up by Israel for action in Operation Protective Edge. Among them were four women.  The four, all paramedics, were the only women to serve in the war in Gaza.

Staff Sgt. Yonat Daskal, 23, from Petach Tikvah completed her regular 3.5 years of army service with the Nahal Brigade this spring. As is customary, Staff Sgt. Daskal planned to fly to South America after her army service. Yonat Daskal landed at Ben Gurion International Airport one day after the IDF’s ground troops entered Gaza, and joined the Nahal troops in the South the next day.

Staff Sgt. Noam Dan is 22 years old, from Dimona. During the operation, she entered Gaza with soldiers in the armored corps, with whom she serves.

Staff Sgt. Tal Shahar, a 22-year-old from Tel Adashim, serves in the undercover operations unit of the Israeli Border Police. During Operation Protective Edge, she was ordered to join Maglan, an Israeli Special Forces unit with whom she entered the Gaza Strip.

Sgt. Tamar Bar-Ilan, a 21-year-old from Haifa, an armored corps paramedic, entered the Gaza Strip with members of her battalion and was with them inside a tank for 12 days. “I was the only women among the men, but it didn’t bother me,” she admitted. “We’ve been serving together for two years and know each other well. As a paramedic, I’m used to be being the female minority, but this time it was different.

On Sunday they were at the Kotel with the battalion and we said a prayer of thanks. In Gaza there were so many moments of death that I had to thank God that I’m alive. Only then did I realize how frightening it had been there.”

The fighting is over but the sights and sounds of combat are still in their reality. Tal Shahar can still smell the smoke that permeated the air of southern Gaza, Yonat Daskal is still conscious of the ever-present mud on her feet as she kept marching, Noam Dan can still hear anti-tank missiles striking her tank, and the constant warnings still echo in the ears of Tamar Bar-Ilan.

The multitude of wounded whom these young women treated are still within their souls, alongside the pain and suffering of their patients. Most of all, these four heroines mourn for those Jewish lives they couldn’t save. never been in a tank that had anti-tank missiles fired at it and on enemy’s territory.