Parshas Matos-Maasei 5785
- Torah Tavlin
- Jul 24
- 3 min read
ועבר לכם כל חלוץ את הירדן לפני ה' עד הורישו את איביו מפניו ... (לב-כא)
Ask Yossi Ben Chanan whether he believes miracles are possible, and he may well go back, in his mind’s eye to the long night he spent on Tel Shams in October 1973. Having been wounded already in the head, he nonetheless rejoined his men and his commander, Yanosh Ben Gal, for the drive towards Damascus. A week after the disastrous surprise Syrian attack on the Golan, Israeli troops had repulsed the invaders and were fighting the retreating Syrian Armored Corps along the highway to Damascus, when they encountered opposition in the form of the well entrenched and fortified hilltop at Tel Shams. Tel Shams is another of the volcanic mounds, or hills on the Syrian plateau. Every inch of that hill was fortified by the Syrians, and all of the bunkers and gun positions faced west, towards Israel. All of the entrances to the bunkers faced north-east, towards Damascus. Imagine a cross section of an anthill, with its various connecting tunnels and storage areas and you kind of get the idea. The Israelis, determined to send a message to Syria that would make them think twice before ever crossing the border again were set on reaching the outskirts of Damascus, which could not be accomplished as long as the Syrians controlled the road from their vantage high atop Tel Shams.
After a failed frontal assault, a closer look at the aerial recon photos revealed a weak spot in the Syrian defenses; there was a shepherd’s path that might be approachable from the rear, so Yossi Ben Chanan, later a Major General who served as Commander of the IDF Armored Corps, volunteered to take his seven tanks up on what amounted to an almost impossible approach in order to surprise the Syrians from the valley behind them. Although his plan succeeded, his tank was hit in the battle and he was thrown nearly twenty feet in the air from his burning tank, breaking his leg in three places. What was left of his unit pulled back, having succeeded in their mission to disable the tanks and guns on top of Tel Shams.
Ben Chanan’s tank driver, Tzvika, also on foot having escaped after the tank was destroyed, risked his life to jump back into the burning tank and remove the radio, enabling them to get word to Ben Gal’s unit that they were alone and wounded, behind enemy lines. In the middle of what he would later describe as the longest and loneliest night of his life, Yossi Ben Chanan recalled being able to hear Arab voices walking along the hilltop and being sure his life would end that night. It probably would have - with no troops to send, and no armor to back them up, not to mention all the other places what few forces remained were needed - there was no hope that Yossi Ben Chanan would make it through the night, let alone survive the Syrians who would obviously find him once dawn broke.
Commander Yanosh Ben Gal was sure he was saying goodbye to his closest friend, because after all, there are no such things as miracles. At least he thought there weren’t, until Yoni Netanyahu (he who would later be of Entebbe fame) arrived at their position, and walked into the radio room. A Captain in the Matkal recon unit, the most elite unit in the Israeli army, he immediately volunteered to bring Yossi and his soldier out. Anyone watching this would have seen all the arched eyebrows and realized this was not just an impossible mission, it was a suicidal one. But someone forgot to tell that to Yoni, who had been at Yossi side only a few months earlier.
With no real backup, and no vehicles capable of getting them up to Tel Shams, they came up the same rear approach to the hilltop ... on foot! When they finally found Yossi Ben Chanan with dawn about to break, they realized they would never be able to get him down off the hill; his legs were too badly broken, and first light was approaching. Again, they were all doomed, but, for whatever the reason, Hashem seemed to have different plans for them.
Inexplicably, Ben Gal found, in the middle of the battlefield ... a helicopter! Commandeering it himself, they flew in, picked Yossi and his soldier out from the heart of the enemy position, and brought them back to base. (Yoni and his men, for whom there was no room in the small helicopter, simply turned and walked back down the mountain!)