The early afternoon of Yom Kippur, 1973, passed quietly for the Nahal Brigade soldiers and Israeli Navy personnel stationed on the pier at the southernmost end of the Suez Canal. In the main bunker, the guys were listening to Itzhak Tubel, 21, pray and no one thought that it would be the haredi soldier's last prayer.
"He was an outstanding soldier, the only soldier I saw with a black kippah," says Shlomo Ardinest, the company commander who had served with Tubel.
"He was a haredi soldier who came to the IDF from yeshiva and that was special. In the months before the fighting broke out, he stood out as very strong physically, someone who would take on any challenge, pleasant, admired and disciplined. In the outposts, food was mostly combat rations and Tubel would bring different spices from home, add them and make the military rations into delicacies, and of course share with us all."
The prayer ended. Silence settled on the 450 soldiers who were manning the front line, with the aid of about 80 tanks.
"In those days, we would see the Egyptian forces practicing crossing the canal in front of us. It worried me," says Ardinest.
Ari Ginossar, who was also serving on the pier, adds, "At the time, they would send Nahal soldiers at the end of their service to Sharm e-Sheikh for two months and then for another two months on the canal outposts. That was how it was. End of the road, complacency. None of the guys had ever been in battle or under fire in his life. I was responsible for sending them home. In hindsight, it turns out that I was actually sealing people's fate, who stayed and who went. Our cook, for example, wanted to go home and I didn't let him. I said, 'The guys are fasting, who will let them eat well and kosher after the fast?' By doing so, without knowing it, I doomed him to be captured and imprisoned."
Despite the nonchalance, the soldiers were still under order to sleep with their boots on. At 1:50 p.m. on Yom Kippur, the alert turned into a war.
"We heard a siren and the radio notified us that it was not a drill," Ardinest recalls. "I went up top with a few spotters. At first, there was quiet and you didn't think anything would happen but then, all of a sudden, we were being bombarded by fighter jets and we were under heavy artillery fire."
Ginossar remembers: "The Egyptians fooled the IDF. A year earlier, they had carried out a huge drill of crossing the canal and the whole country was worried but later nothing happened, so they thought it was a trick this time, too. But unlike the previous time, the Egyptian soldiers who were part of the canal drill didn't go back to their bases in trucks – they hid on the other side. A very large contingent gathered there and no one on our side even noticed."
The heavy Egyptian assault lasted about 45 minutes, after which some 8,000 well-trained Egyptian commandos crossed the canal, armed with missiles, and dug in around the Israeli positions, setting down stocks of missiles to be used against the tanks that were en route to help.
"The moment the shooting stopped, all the soldiers in our outposts fanned out. But the southern end of the post was open. On the other sides, there were obstacles or canal water and it wasn't easy to attack. The southern end was vulnerable and Tubel was there, with commander David Turgeman, Ginossar and other soldiers. Hundreds of Egyptian commandos were shooting and firing missiles from every direction. The guys at the southern end were fighting like crazy. At the end of the war, there were over 150 bodies of Egyptian commandos counted there, as well as a lot of wounded. Senior commanders in the Egyptian army confirmed after the war that they didn't understand how we held on," Ardinest says.
Ginossar, who was fighting alongside Tubel, adds, "There was a siren, there was a bombardment and you didn't know if it was war or what would happen next. Then the Egyptian attacks started and Tubel and Turgeman were shooting like crazy. I ran with a machine gun to help push back the offensive. No one had prepared us for an eventuality like this, we didn't understand what was going on, we were all scared but we fought to the end. It's hard to explain now what we went through. We went from total complacency to a terrible war.
Moshe-Itzhak Tubel came to the Nahal company from Bnei Brak, where he was raised in a haredi Talmud Torah school. He then went on to a yeshiva in Haifa. In 1971, he enlisted in the army and served in what was the first iteration of today's haredi Nahal – a special track established in the 1960s by the Young Agudath Israel Movement. Tubel was a cantor and talented with the shofar but also enjoyed the Beatles and Arik Einstein.
Tubel's sister Tzipora gave an interview before she died in which she said, "He was the only paratrooper in our neighborhood. For us, it was a source of pride to see a soldier in Bnei Brak. I remember him coming home, putting me on his shoulders, walking around the house and singing. When I grew up, I wouldn't accept a shidduch with a boy who hadn't served in the army."
His brother, Moti, says that Tubel loved soccer. "He was an excellent player and also went to matches. He even dreamed of going to England and studying soccer professionally."
But all these dreams came to an end in one heroic moment on the pier.
"During the battle, I hear Tubel shouting, 'Grenade in the post!' An Egyptian soldier had thrown a grenade that landed among us and put everyone in danger. I saw Tubel trying to throw it back but realizing he didn't have time. Suddenly, he calmly took the grenade and laid down on top of it.
"We heard a huge explosion. I was thrown in the air and wounded by shrapnel. Tubel was critically wounded. It was clear to me at that moment that he'd given his life for us. He was still alive but we couldn't evacuate him because we were under massive fire. Only that even did we evacuate him to the medical bunker. I knew then it was too late. His body had taken most of the force of the grenade," Ginossar recalls.
Forty-six years later, Dr. Nahum Verbin – who battled to save Tubel's life and the life of another haredi soldier, Avichayil Peled, who was also seriously wounded but survived – says he is still too emotional to discuss the events and refers Israel Hayom to his blog, where he wrote this: "Tubel and Avichayail arrived wrecked. … Most of Tubel's blood had been spilled there before they brought him in. He was still conscious and said he couldn't feel his legs, with good reason – he didn't have any legs anymore, only torn pants and scraps of skin and shards of bone. … I put two tourniquets on him, set up a blood transfusion and then gave him a shot of antibiotics. I covered him with disinfectant and bandaged what had been his legs and called in an emergency evacuation."
According to Ginossar, "That night, the shooting stopped. The Egyptian commandos had been repelled and I could go down to the medical bunker. Dr. Verbin was doing wonders and miracles but when he saw me he took my face in his hands and said, 'Ari, Tubel died in my arms.' He was so pained he couldn't [save him]. The tank guys who had tried to rescue us were shattered, too. The IDF didn't know back then what Sager missiles were and the tanks that were headed for the outpost went straight into an ambush and took a serious hit. These missiles were new to them and they looked stunned."
Peled, who was serving with the IDF Rabbinate, found himself in the war almost by chance. He had arrived to organize Yom Kippur prayers.
"I was happy to find another haredi man who was handling everything necessary," he says of Tubel. "It was good I had someone to help. Then, suddenly, the Egyptians attacked and you find yourself grabbing a gun and fighting. In the middle of it, I heard Tubel jump on the grenade and be wounded but there was nothing to be done other than keep fighting," he remembers.
"The guys on the pier were fighting surrounded by dead and wounded and it was clear that there would be no rescue and they were surrounded. They demonstrated tremendous heroism," Ardinest says.
Eventually, despite their heroic stance, the IDF decided that the soldiers on the pier would surrender after two extraction attempts failed and their ammunition was running out.
"At first, we weren't willing to surrender. I wanted to fight until our last bullet. All of us, all the soldiers there, weren't willing to give up until we were beaten. Even those who had never been in battle," Ginossar said.
"It wasn't easy but in the end, we complied with the order to surrender. We left behind our dead comrades, one of whom was Tubel, in the bunker, covered up. We only took the wounded. … The Egyptians didn't return Tubel's body until 1979, after the peace treaty [between Israel and Egypt]. When I returned from Egyptian captivity 35 days later, they asked me to recommend candidates for citations. Without hesitating, I recommended Avichayail and Itzhak [Tubel], who gave his life to save his comrades, including me," he adds.
After the war, both Tubel and Peled were awarded medals by the chief of staff. Tubel's friends and family think that the fact that he knowingly gave his life to save his friends justifies the Medal of Distinguished Service.
"I was very supportive of Itzhak's sister, who worked to have him awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service. I understood that it was important to her and her children but I also told her there was no chance that anyone in the IDF would deal with the matter after so many years and it was a shame. It's important to remember a brave soldier like him, who came from the haredi sector, fought and saved us at the cost of his own life," Ginossar says.
