Morning Wire - A Conversation with an Israeli–American IDF Reservist | 12.30.23

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

After the events of October 7th, Israelis from around the world went home to protect Israel. We speak with an IDF reservist who lives in Chicago about how he hopped on a plane immediately after the October 7th attack and about his previous work with Israel’s army. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas, Israelis around the globe rushed in to volunteer to fight for the IDF. In this episode, we speak to a Chicago-based Israeli-American reservist officer who immediately hopped on a plane to help fight following the attack on his home country. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, December 30th, and this is a special edition of Morning Wire. The following is an interview between Daily Wire reporter Cassie Dillon and, and Shraga Stern, an Israeli-American IDF reservist living in Chicago. Now, you were in Chicago, and you wake up and you see that this massacre happened. And you hop on a plane, right to Israel, and you're here the next day.

Yeah. What did you see when you got here? It was just totally shocking. I mean, one of my men met me at the airport as I landed in Ben-Gurion, and I already had all my gear for me, uniform, and everything, and I came straight to the battlefield. I was texting my mother that I'm on the plane and I'm on the way, and she wanted to come and see me, but it wasn't time for that.

It was time to be focused and concentrated on the mission. A month went by, I still didn't go visit my parents who live right out of Jerusalem. And what did we see when we got here? I mean, driving down the road here, as soon as we crossed Yad Moldechai and kind of got into this region, there were burnt cars with bodies hanging out them in every intersection. We showed up at where the Nova Festival was, and there were still tens of bodies laying around. fighting was still going on. I mean, our team

encountered terrorists since they wrote on Sunday after midnight. So this is over 24 hours after there were still fighting going on on ground. And it was just shocking what we saw. I mean, towns that were burnt

and destroyed. And it felt like the whole region was totally a war zone out of control. People were driving around everywhere. And we heard some very heroic stories. I mean, just talking to the first responders that were here and realizing what has happened was just shocking. Like, we couldn't imagine, I think Israel could, no one in Israel, including the Israeli intelligence and the Israeli military, could imagine such a horrific barbaric attack.

Is there anything you saw that day that really stuck with you or since you've been here, something that's keeping you up at night, maybe? Yeah, I think, I think many things. Yeah, I would say maybe one image that I go back to is that while we were collecting bodies, most of these bodies were Hamas terrorists. But then at some point right by the fence, we found a woman. She had a long curly hair. She was handcuffed with hands behind her back. That kind of stuck with me.

I feel that it was a very sacred mission. I don't know who she was or what her name was, but she was identified later down the line. And I just felt it was a very sacred mission to bring some clearance to her family on what happened to her that day. And I think it stands for the fact that we risk our lives to bring back those bodies. And it speaks a lot about how much we value every individual life. And what a high value we give to human life in general, which is totally different than Hamas, which I could tell by the way that they sent in all their terrorists that they did not value their people. lives. Whoever sent them, they didn't value their own lives, but of course, whoever sent them

didn't make sure that they could get back home. And for me, when I plan my missions for my soldiers, one of the things that I put most attention to is one first winning and getting our job done, whatever it is, but in the same time, thinking about our evacuation routes and what do we do if we have someone injured? We put a lot of thought into that. Where do we land our helicopters? where do we put our medical staff, what first responders have on them, we put a lot of value into life. And I think only with that we have the right to kill.

Only in the name of life do we have the right to kill others. In that sense, I feel that anyone that supports Hamas, anyone that's a Hamas terrorist, anyone that is willing to be part of that terrorist organization is worthy of dying in our hands. and we have no other choice. I'm very upset at Hamas to put their own citizens through this and to put the people of Gaza through this.

I hear a lot about free Palestine. I feel that I'm here to free Palestine. Shraga has spent several weeks in Gaza during the war so far, but it's not his first time seen combat. In 2016, my brigade was stationed in the West Bank in a town called a Flats in Gushet-Zion in the region. One night at 2 a.m., we had a... surveillance camera that noticed a suspected person climbing over the fence. Right away my whole

team showed up there. I was a company commander at the time and I had about 160 men searching the town door to door backyard to backyard all night looking for this terrorist. And before sunrise, we were dismissed and prioritized on another mission. Since we didn't find him all night, it was assumed that he wasn't there anymore. And as we're driving out of the neighborhood, I just had a gut feeling that something was wrong and that we should have stayed longer and we should stay until daylight. But since my team was prioritized and we already dismissed them, I went back myself with my team of four. So instead of 160 men, we went back only four of us. And for some reason, I don't know, a gut feeling, I just drove the car and parked right on the

bush where I thought he would be and came out of the car. opened a flashlight, looked left and right, didn't see anything, and went back to sit in the car. I was in the passenger seat and left the door open. And as I was doing that, looking at the map, all of a sudden I felt a big hit on my right, and a terrorist came right at me with a knife. I jumped out of the car at him without my gun

that was in the car, and I just wrestled him and fought him down to the ground while being stabbed multiple times. At some point I was able to grab him by the neck, lift him and throw him on the ground with my body weight over him, and one of my men was able to shoot him in the head. Once that happened, I was very severely injured. I had a knife that was plunged right into my rib cage, ripped an artery, ripped my lungs. I was coughing up blood, and basically it was a near-death experience. Shaga's injuries were so severe that he remembers vividly, not only thinking he was going to die, but hearing first responders saying the same.

I laid back, listened to a medic and a doctor that showed up, discussing my condition, put it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I heard them speaking about how critical my situation was and kind of thought that I was going to die. It was pretty peaceful to think that in the sense that I felt like I fulfilled my mission and I was very proud and glad that that terrorists, then make it into the houses and then wasn't able to slaughter a family, which is what he came to do. Shrida survived the attack, and when he woke up, he was grateful just to be alive. He then started a long journey toward finding more meaning in his life.

A few hours later, I woke up in the hospital, realizing that I have a second chance on life, which in the beginning for me was a very happy moment, but later on it turned into an itch of wanting to do something meaningful with my life. And down the line, I met Brothers for Life, which is an organization that helped soldiers who were wounded in combat. And it was life-changing for me. That experience was life-changing for me, the experience of getting injured, but also seen what other guys, other soldiers who were injured in combat

were willing to do for me and be there for me. I ended up joining their triathlon team as that was part of my recovery, since my lung was injured, then doing triathlons was super healing for me and getting, regaining control and strength was very important. And when I had the opportunity, I felt like I wanted to give back. And that's why I got really involved with brothers for life and helping newly injured soldiers now. I think we have something very special where we could help each other in ways that other people can't help a wounded soldier. We could identify, we understand the needs.

we know, we understand what it means to be in that hospital bed and what is it going to take to get back up on your feet. That's all part of the services that Brothers for Life will give. For instance, if someone's, you know, if someone is 20 years old and just lost his eyesight and feels like anything he imagined in his life, anything that he thought his life would be, now he has a new hand of cards that he's dealt with. And now he has to figure out what he's going to do. So we pair him up with guys who are blind and were injured. in combat, understand his experience, but they're further down the line. Five years down the line, they're already studying in college. Ten years down the line, they already have a family,

and they mentor him and show him the way when Brothers for Life backs us and helps us answer any need that will come up. But you were stabbed, right? You were hurt. You had to go through recovery. What was it like to gear up again and go back into a situation? Like, that wasn't, you didn't have any fears? Yeah, well, it would be foolish to say, you know, standing right before that there's no fear. There's fear too. And we have, we value life a lot. I value my personal life. I value the life of my comrades. I value the life of my friends. And I also value the life of the neighborhoods over here and of the Jewish communities that live around. So to tell you that there's no fear would be foolish. But the fear that is there is manageable and we train for this day and we

prepared for this day. So we could rise up for this occasion and we could rise up for this challenge. We have no other choice. I mean, even if there is some fear, we have no other choice, but totally eliminating Hamas because the endgame for us is rebuilding our towns, rebuilding our communities, and rebuilding life here. This isn't only about the region that we call the, you know, the Gaza envelope. It's not only about this region. It's about our very existence in Israel. If we don't rise up now and retaliate and fight back as strong as we can and show that we are capable. We'll have the whole Middle East jumping on us. Do you know anything about the terrorists of Sabdu?

Um, no, not too much. I know that he was young and strong and I know that he came into a flock with a wish to kill as many Jews as he can. So I know that about him and I know that what motivated him is a total annihilation of Israel, which is what he stands for. And that's That's what Hamas stood for and showed us their true face on October 7th. And on October 7th, we saw hundreds and hundreds of terrorists like that, maybe better trained, better equipped, better planned, and ready to do their same mission of totally annihilating Israel. And that's why I'm here.

I grew up in a family of Holocaust survivor. My grandparents were both Holocaust survivors. And we always grew up with the notion of Israel as the promise that Jews would never be slaughtered. again unprotected. And for me in a very personal way, I feel that the tanks here behind me, but also me and my men, we are the promise for the Jewish people that Jews won't be slaughtered unprotected. And that's why we're here. We're here to protect life, preserve life, and that's why I'm here. Although Shaga is currently serving, he says he's already thinking about what comes after the war and what he can do to help with brothers for life. So you've seen some

and things. People here are seeing things. So when they're done, they're going to have these emotional wounds and they're also going to have these physical wounds. So what's the plan for brothers for life once this is over? Yeah, well, we're not only waiting for it to be over. We're working on ground now. I'm sure that as time goes by, there'll be a lot of other needs. We have experience with these needs from the war in Lebanon in 2006, from Castlet in 2008, from Protective Edge in 2014. We build up a track record of a lot of experience of what the needs down the line for soldiers who are injured in combat. We're preparing all that. That has to do with the emotional support, the physical support, the medical support, the financial support, everything

that we've done for 1,600 soldiers in the past 20 years or 17 years, we're going to do for these guys here. And that truly gives me a lot of strength, knowing that every mission that I make a decision on and every mission that I lead, I know that if anyone here gets injured, I'm not forgetting about them once this tour is over, and I'm back in my life. We're going to keep taking care of these guys for the rest of their lives. That was Israeli-American and IDF reservist Shraga Stern with Daily Wire reporter Cassie Dillon, and this has been a special edition of Morning Wire.