‘It started as short notes on my phone, written in the early hours after long days of fighting. But as the war continued, I realized these accounts needed to be preserved, not just for me but for everyone touched by this war.’
Lt.-Col. Eli Zilberman’s Namer APC rumbled across the Gaza border on October 27, 2023. The smell of smoke and the relentless whistling of mortar fire greeted his unit as it advanced into Gaza City.
“We weren’t just fighting terrorists,” Zilberman recalled. “We were fighting an entrenched system that had infiltrated every aspect of life in Gaza.” Within hours, the realities of war would set in: comrades injured, civilians displaced, and the brutal sights of urban combat etched into their memories.
For Zilberman, a 35-year-old father of two and a successful tech entrepreneur, war was a return to a life he thought he had left behind.