The battle started. All my friends were being shot. My commander was shot. A shell went straight into his light-armoured vehicle and he died in front of me. Then I suddenly noticed a Jordanian soldier from behind me. He looked into my eyes and was about to shoot me. It was an amazing moment: we were staring at each other for what seemed an eternity. I saw my whole life, a film version, flash through my mind. Then suddenly I snapped out of this trance – it must have been a millisecond – and I realised that whoever pulled the trigger first was going to survive. I guess I was faster. I shot him. Shells were exploding all around. Israeli jets were diving on to the hill. My first reaction was very strange: I did what I’d seen in American war films – I removed his military ID tag.
About 20 minutes later I was hit in my right arm. Then I was hit in my left arm, which shattered my elbow – even today I can’t fully stretch it out. And then something hit me over my left eye and I passed out. I woke up in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
I’d seen my friends die. One of them died in my arms. The driver of the light-armoured command vehicle lost his leg. I had to drag him out. It’s something that you never, ever forget. Killing another human being face to face tapped into a kind of hidden spirituality in me. You want to know – you want to believe, deeply – that someday you will meet that person. And to this day, I think of that Jordanian soldier as my brother. It’s almost like he is embedded in my soul. I’ve always been religious, and I know that I will meet him some day, in the afterlife.
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