At first, Yossi Tubur thought the armed men at the junction might be Israeli soldiers. Then a bullet struck his windshield, and he found himself fighting for his life against a group of Hamas terrorists.

By Hezy Laing

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Yossi Tubur was preparing to attend synagogue in Modi’in, where he was due to receive the honor of Chatan Torah during the Simchat Torah service. But as reports of the Hamas attack on southern Israel began to emerge, he put on his uniform, collected his personal weapon and headed south toward his military unit.

Tubur, then 44, was a married father of six and a longtime reserve officer who had served for five years in the Southern Brigade. He was also a businessman, running two companies, but that morning his attention was entirely on the emergency unfolding near the Gaza border.

The ambush at Meon Junction

As he drove toward his unit, Tubur received increasingly alarming messages from emergency personnel in communities near the border. He continued toward the area, passing through Ofakim and seeing evidence of the deadly attack along the roads.

At Meon Junction, he encountered two groups of armed terrorists, numbering about eight men in total. Their equipment and appearance initially made him think they might be Israeli soldiers.

That confusion lasted only a moment. A bullet struck his windshield, and the terrorists opened fire on his vehicle.

The windows shattered under the gunfire, and shrapnel entered his foot through his shoe. Tubur tried to get away, but bullets struck the vehicle’s engine, bringing the car to a stop roughly a short distance farther down the road.

He had no safe way to remain inside. Getting out, he began returning fire with his personal weapon, engaging the attackers from a distance of several dozen meters.

During the exchange, he saw three civilian vehicles whose occupants had been killed. The scene made clear that the attack was not a clash between armed forces, but a massacre of people caught on the road.

Tubur managed to hit one of the terrorists. The brief pause that followed gave him an opportunity to reload and run.

A hiding place among the branches

He fled along the side of the road as the terrorists pursued him. After running roughly 400 to 500 meters, he spotted a pile of cut branches and brush and threw himself into it.

The jump dislocated his shoulder, but he had little choice. He pressed himself low among the branches, keeping his handgun aimed toward the opening and hoping the attackers would not discover him.

They soon reached the hiding place and began searching the area. Tubur could hear them moving through the dry grass just above him.

He understood Arabic and could follow their conversation. He heard the terrorists discussing the possibility that someone was hiding in the brush and saying that anyone who emerged should be shot.

At one point, he heard them referring to the person they were looking for as a Jewish officer. The men were close enough that he could hear their movements, but he could not risk moving or making a sound.

He remained hidden, injured and largely unable to move his arm. The danger was not over, and he had no way of knowing how long he would have to stay there.

Calling for help without revealing his position

Even while hiding, Tubur worked to get information to the Israeli forces. He sent messages to a military liaison officer, sharing his location and describing the attackers and the Israeli vehicles they had taken.

Those details could help troops understand what they were facing and distinguish stolen Israeli vehicles from vehicles belonging to security forces. Tubur was not simply waiting to be rescued; he was trying to provide useful information while remaining concealed.

As the hours passed, he began to fear that he might not survive. He sent a message to his family expressing his love and urging them to look after one another, and he recorded himself in case he did not make it out.

His family observes Shabbat, so they did not immediately receive the full picture of what had happened to him. For Tubur, however, the possibility that he would never see them again was very real.

Israeli forces arrived, but he could not call out

Around 11 a.m., an Israeli force reached the area and a battle broke out above Tubur’s hiding place. He could hear the fighting and bullets passing nearby, but he remained under the branches.

He faced a frightening dilemma: if he called out, the soldiers might mistake him for one of the terrorists. He therefore stayed silent, even as Israeli troops fought nearby.

After the battle, the force left the area without finding him. Tubur was still trapped in his hiding place, unsure whether the soldiers would return and unable to know what was happening around him.

At around 1:30 p.m., a tank passed nearby. Tubur filmed it, but again did not call out because he feared the crew might identify him as an enemy fighter and shoot.

He remained hidden until shortly before 4 p.m., when another Israeli force finally reached him. The rescue was led by an officer named Shahar, the deputy commander of a battalion at the IDF Officers’ Training School, Bahad 1.

Tubur was evacuated first to Ofakim and then to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. Doctors diagnosed a torn tendon in his shoulder and a shrapnel injury to his foot.

The fight continued after the rescue

The physical injuries were only part of what Tubur carried away from that day. The hours spent hiding, listening to terrorists search for him and wondering whether he would ever see his family again left a lasting psychological impact.

In the weeks that followed, he struggled to sleep. The sounds and voices he had heard in Arabic returned to him at night, bringing the events of October 7 back into his thoughts.

Despite the injuries and the experience, Tubur returned to his reserve duties about a week and a half later. His return did not mean that the experience had simply passed; he was still dealing with its effects.

The ambush also changed the way he understood the experience of residents in the communities near Gaza. Before October 7, he had served in the area as a military officer, but hiding alone for hours gave him a new appreciation of what civilians had endured.

He described the deep sense of abandonment felt by residents who had been left waiting for help while terrorists moved through their communities. As he lay hidden, he had read messages about neighbors and friends being murdered, while the first soldiers were still hours away.

Tubur also spoke about the crisis of trust between residents and the military after the attack. He felt ashamed when meeting some of the people from the border communities, knowing how long they had been left without protection.

His own experience did not compare with the suffering of the civilians who were attacked in their homes, he recognized. But the hours he spent alone, listening to terrorists search for him and waiting for Israeli forces to find him, gave him a personal understanding of what it meant to feel abandoned in the middle of an attack.