Last Sunday, around 20:00, a terrorist from Hebron accelerated his vehicle towards pedestrians at the Gush Etzion junction. He critically injured two girls and was neutralized on the spot by Sergeant L., a combat soldier in the Nachshon Battalion (90) of the Kfir Brigade.
At those moments, Sergeant L. was manning a guard post overlooking the junction, the shopping center, and the nearby bus station. “At 20:09, I identified a gray Palestinian vehicle that ran a red light and drove directly into the station,” he recounts. “The terrorist noticed two girls standing before the concrete barriers placed to protect passengers, and hit them.”
This is where months of training, operational procedures, and drills, practiced repeatedly even during combat in Gaza and other sectors, come into play: “I opened targeted fire at the terrorist and neutralized him on the spot. I remained with my weapon aimed at him for a few more moments to ensure there were no further threats in the vicinity.”
The danger was removed, but the effort to provide immediate care to the two injured girls had just begun: “When I saw my platoon commander arriving, I shouted to him, ‘The terrorist is neutralized!’ From there, we were able to approach and provide medical assistance. I handed him a tourniquet, and it turned out it was applied in time and helped save the life of the critically injured girl. We truly hope she and everyone who was injured recover quickly.”
Additional forces were dispatched to the scene shortly after and evacuated the two girls to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. But behind the immediate response stand the Nachshon Brigade, which has been in the sector since December, conducting nightly arrests and operations in villages like Beit Ummar and Al-Aroub.
The significance of Sergeant L.’s action did not immediately hit him. After the attack, the commander of Judea and Samaria Division, the commander of the Etzion Brigade, and other senior officials arrived at the scene. They shook his hand and praised his conduct as expected of any soldier on guard duty. Only when he returned to the base did the realization truly sink in.
“I started to process the magnitude of the event mainly when I met my friends in the company,” he recalls. “At home, they quickly connected the dots and understood that ‘Sergeant L.’ appearing in the reports was me, and I received dozens of calls from my parents. But in the end, this is our job. When we are guarding at junctions and everywhere else – and I am sure that any soldier who was in this situation would have automatically reacted the same way.”