One year later, converging circles of heart and hope
It’s something that you hear everywhere in the region; residents remembering their own examples of the widespread intelligence gathering that was clearly part of Hamas’s master plan.
In one of the million acts of Providence that were everywhere on that grim day, Zikim’s local defense squad received unexpected backup in the shape of a squad of IDF Maglan special forces troops. Why were they there? A local resident who’s an officer in Maglan had punished five of his subordinates for driving in an army jeep without seat belts. Their punishment: detention on the adjacent army base for the Simchas Torah weekend.
Bolstered by the extra firepower, the defenders of Zikim managed to drive off the attackers who retreated to the nearby road commanding the approach to the army base. The terrorists were taking up positions when the Maglan squad infiltrated behind some sand dunes and killed them.
That storyline was widely reported in the media as the Battle for Zikim. But standing on the patrol road between his house and where the Hamas killers tried to enter, Yaacov Ohayon points out something that others have missed.
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