"Such a missile hits — and shatters everything around it. Like an earthquake"
The response to the call to establish a «669 of the ground forces», complex rescue operations in Gaza and Lebanon, destruction zones around the world, preparations for an earthquake in Israel, and the Iranian missile that even surprised him. Right before he flies off to study, Lt. Col. Shlomi Ben-Yair, commander of the Rescue Corps in the Home Front Command, sums up two challenging years in the role — and two wars against Iran: "Our goal is saving lives".
On the parade ground of the Home Front Command in Ramla, final preparations were held ahead of the 2025 award ceremony for outstanding personnel. Ido, a captain serving as a company commander during the final stage of the officers’ course, was excited. At 18:00, according to the schedule, he was set to receive the rank of major from the commander of the Rescue and Training Brigade. An hour later, the brigade commander was expected to award him a certificate of excellence. His father, who lives in the United States, came especially for the event.
"And then, around 17:00, a senior officer in the Southern Command called me," says Lt. Col. Shlomi Ben-Yair, who finished his role last week as commander of the Rescue Corps. "He told me: 'Listen, we have a super complex incident in Khan Yunis. A building collapsed due to a charge and we can’t find one of the fighters. He’s probably buried under the rubble. I’m sending helicopters and I need you to arrive with reinforcements. Bring one of your battalion commanders as well, because this is the spearhead of the maneuver—there are no more forces up front. We need strong command and control'".
Ben-Yair reconstructs the moments of drama: "I launched our reconnaissance unit and the rescue course, informed the commander’s chief of staff that I wouldn’t be coming to the awards ceremony, and left the office where we are sitting now, heading toward the helicopter landing pad. On the way, I met one of the officers and told him: 'I’m flying to a rescue incident in Khan Yunis—give Ido his rank'". When he arrived at the landing pad, a lieutenant colonel named Yarden Shokeron was already waiting for him; at the time she was the commander of the Home Front Command school. "I told her: 'Attach someone to me. I arrived without a command staff,'" Ben-Yair continues. "An officer comes to me wearing a vest and a helmet and tells me: 'Hello, Ido, I’m attached to you.' I look—and I see that this is the officer I was supposed to award a rank to that same evening. I told him, 'What are you doing here? You’re getting a rank and excellence tonight. Your father came from the United States.' He told me, 'Give me a rank in Khan Yunis.' And he went up with me into the helicopter."
At the scene in Khan Yunis, Ben-Yair saw the extent of the damage: "We are in a combat zone. This isn’t a scene of a missile falling in the middle of the country. You can’t turn on spotlights so that we won’t be identified. We worked with night-vision means, used lights with a red filter, and covered the holes in walls that were still standing with blankets. This isn’t a rescue of the type 'there’s someone here, lift the metal and take him out'—it’s truly surgical work. I see our fighters and our female fighters inside enemy territory, and I’m extremely proud of them." After hours of work, the body of a Golani fighter who was killed by the explosion of the charge was found among the rubble.
A few weeks after that incident, on June 15, 2025, during Operation 'Im ke-Lavi' ('Im like a Lion'), an Iranian missile fell in Rehovot, Ben-Yair’s city of residence. "In one of the apartments that was hit, there was an 80-something Holocaust survivor who was trapped between the rubble," he says. "I was there as the commander, but the one who actually ran the rescue was the deputy commander of one of my battalions together with the company commander, two reservists from the National Rescue Unit, and a doctor. Almost two hours they worked on his rescue, and while doing so they held his hand. And they got him out alive. A little while later, I received a message from his son: 'Tell everyone that you have heroic soldiers. My father, between the rubble, told himself that he would rather die immediately from the impact than in agony. Only when he heard the sounds of your angels arriving did he understand that he wants to live. That’s what gave him hope.'"
These two helmets in these two stories—Khan Yunis and Rehovot—represent the Rescue Brigade in its two “hats”: the orange rescue helmet and the olive-colored infantry helmet. The infantry helmet is used by the fighters (mainly the female fighters, who are about 60% of the brigade) in the maneuver in Gaza and Lebanon and in operational employment in Judea and Samaria. "Only yesterday my reconnaissance unit was in Lebanon as part of an operation of the 36th Division that I can’t expand on," Ben-Yair says.
Reflecting on October 7, he notes: "As a senior officer in the IDF, I’m ashamed of the failure of that day, but as commander of the Rescue and Training Brigade, I’m proud of these heroes and heroines who fought at the Zikim base. Six of the seven who fell there were commanders. They fought until the last bullet, defending their soldiers. They are an inseparable part of the brigade’s legacy."
