It was an irony not lost on either of us that, although we both live in Israel, I met YT (name redacted for security purposes) not in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, but in Colorado. I met him last summer at longtime IDF supporter Brett Kingstone’s ranch, tucked into the foothills outside Boulder.
My interview with YT was, without question, the most difficult I’ve ever conducted — not because YT was unwilling to share, but because he couldn’t. Time and again, his answers ended with the same quiet refrain: “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to talk about that.”
What he could say, however, was enough to offer a deeply human glimpse into the world of Israel’s elite commandos — and the moral, emotional and national weight they bear.
“I enlisted in 2007 in one of the IDF’s most elite units,” he tells me, namely Shayetet 13, the equivalent of US Navy Seals. He served on active duty until 2012 and since then has been a reservist. When Israel went to war after Oct. 7, he didn’t think twice: “I personally spent hundreds of days on reserve duty — north and south. It was chaos.”
Because of the nature of his work, YT insists he cannot describe operations in any detail: “The operations we do — you won’t hear about them. If you hear about one, it’s because something went wrong, or it was so successful they wanted it public. But you won’t know it was us.”
Even so, the picture he paints is clear: Units like his tend to go in first and do the hard, often unseen work that makes other military successes possible.
Two themes keep returning throughout the interview: the moral and logistical complexity of fighting a terrorist organization that operates from inside civilian life, and the importance — emotional and practical — of support from Jews abroad.
On the battlefield, YT testifies that Hamas behaves like the immoral terror organization it is: It embeds fighters among civilians, hides weapons in hospitals and tunnels, and uses populated areas to shield itself. “They use their civilians to protect themselves,” he says bluntly. “We don’t want to fight — none of my unit wants to fight — but they want to kill us, so we have no choice.”
That reality, he explains, forces soldiers to balance two goals that often seem to contradict each other: avoid harming innocents while neutralizing fighters who deliberately blur the lines.
Such moral perversion extends beyond the battlefield to the debate over humanitarian aid. YT, like many soldiers, is bitter about what he sees as a misuse of relief efforts. “It’s absurd that Israel spends millions to bring aid into Gaza and a lot of it ends up with Hamas terrorists,” he says. “They steal and take the supplies. We see that. Still, Israel keeps sending it. How many other armies in history fed their opponent while at war?”
The other unavoidable subject is the hostages. YT’s voice tightens when he talks about them. “One of our missions was to find the hostages,” he says. “When you see the footage, the way they treat people — your heart breaks. You want to do everything to bring them home.”
Throughout the interview, YT returns to gratitude for supporters overseas. He tells a quieter story about Brett Kingstone —a friend he first met at a pro-Israel fundraising event in Israel years ago. Kingstone has become a fixture in his life. “Brett is a mensch,” YT says. When supplies were scarce, Brett asked what was needed; YT told him the unit lacked high-quality goggles and other gear. “Brett stepped up. He sent the stuff, exactly what we needed. It made a real difference to our safety.”
Those gestures, YT says, are not just material. “The support from Jews abroad — not only financial but political and moral — matters to us. It lets us do what we do.”
That link between the front lines and the Diaspora has become personal for YT, who travels to the US to help raise funds for an organization he founded to help wounded IDF veterans. I realized his insistence on confidentiality was no joke when he refused to share even the name of the organization for which he raises funds!
YT speaks with raw affection and deep appreciation for the supporters he has met in American communities. Alongside that, he expresses a clear critique of those who protest or denounce Israel from abroad without grasping the day-to-day reality that Israelis live with.
“When I see demonstrations that simplify everything, it hurts,” he says. “You don’t see what we see. You don’t see the suffering or the people just trying to protect their families.” He pauses. So I add what I find to be the deep irony of the various “genocide” and “starvation” claims lobbed against Israel. Israel is perhaps the most vibrant democracy in the world. Even in the middle of an existential war, there were massive weekly protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — most of them criticizing the very government directing the war effort.
No one is arrested for dissenting. People scream at the government every week, and that’s fine. That’s democracy.
To me, this is one of the strongest proofs against the accusations of “genocide” or of an unjust war. The IDF is not a professional or ideological army — it’s a civilian army, made up of people from every political and social background in the country. If the army were really doing what people abroad accuse it of — if it were violating international law on the battlefield — you can be 100% certain it would come out.
YT concurs. “Soldiers on the left would leak it to journalists, to NGOs, to the courts. But that’s not happening. Because it’s not true.”
On politics, YT is candid. He and his friends are deeply critical of the current government’s policies and reject any narrative that their service is for the ruling coalition. “We don’t fight for the government,” he says. “We fight for the citizens, for our families, for the country.” He worries about social divisions at home — religious-secular tensions, debates over who should serve — and believes those rifts have been exacerbated by leadership that “thinks more about itself than the people.”
YT returns to his personal experience. “I’ve personally risked my life multiple times because of the IDF’s efforts to avoid harming civilians,” he says quietly. “I have friends who were wounded for the same reason. It would be much easier to destroy everything from the air. But we don’t. Because that’s not who we are.”
That is why, YT says, the anti-Israel protests abroad — especially when joined by Jewish participants — cut so deep. “When Jews protest this war as if it’s against Gaza or against Palestinians, they’re missing what it’s really about,” he says. “What they’re actually protesting is the right of Jewish people to live safely in their homeland.”
The interview is punctuated by another perspective — his wife’s. She describes the disruption at home: the frantic rush to relatives’ houses on Oct. 7, living out of suitcases, and the months of worry while YT was away. She speaks of the strain on children, of sleep broken by sirens, and of women organizing support groups and Zoom sessions for each other—small acts of mutual aid that became lifelines.
“We (the reservist wives) were very closed off,” she remembers. “We didn’t meet people, we didn’t go out. But we talked to each other. That saved us.”
Despite the exhaustion, YT keeps returning to a simple code: loyalty to the team, the brotherhood that keeps reservists coming back even when they are tired and have careers and kids waiting. “The military reserve is a commitment to your friends, your unit, your people,” he says. “That’s what keeps you going.”
As our conversation concludes, YT apologizes again for the many things he can’t say. I am reminded of a recently released book, The Rescue: October 7 Through the Eyes of Israel’s Para-Rescue Commandos, whose author also remains anonymous. This, too, reflects an unacknowledged psychological burden carried by IDF soldiers — especially those in elite units; namely, the inability to talk freely about their traumatic experiences. May we be worthy of their sacrifice.
© IJN 2025