Members of the local emergency squad suddenly received a message from the security chief, Benny Meshullam: ‘Terrorists in Pri‑Gan.’
By Hezy Laing
Early morning on October 7th, 2023, sirens began wailing nonstop in the community of Shlomit, near Pri‑Gan.
Members of the local emergency squad suddenly received a message from the security chief, Benny Meshullam: “Terrorists in Pri‑Gan.”
Without hesitation, without pausing to ask questions, they jumped into their vehicles and sped straight toward the danger.
Boaz and Oz were among the first to reach the scene with the security chief’s team.
They engaged the attackers in a fierce firefight, during which both were gravely wounded.
The voice message Boaz sent to the security chief is burned into memory forever:
“I have five or six minutes to live. If no one gets me out now, I’m dying here.”
Yehuda Rabinovich, another member of the alert squad who was injured in the battle, remembers every terrifying second.
“Bursts of gunfire, grenades, RPGs. You watch your friends collapse beside you. We were lying there, wounded, convinced these were our final moments,” he recalls.
Nine members of the squad fought with impossible courage against roughly ten heavily armed Nukhba terrorists.
Aviad Cohen and Reuven Shishportish — close friends from Shlomit — rushed to Pri‑Gan the moment they understood their comrades were in danger.
They fought with everything they had, side by side, until they fell together. In life and in death, they remained inseparable.
At the same time, another squad member was racing toward the battle.
Bechor Sweid, who had been spending Shabbat with his parents, drove toward Pri‑Gan at breakneck speed. “I’m on my way to you,” he wrote in the group chat.
At the Magen Junction, he was caught in a deadly ambush and fought until his final breath.
Uriel Bibi, a Shlomit resident and an officer in the Paratroopers Brigade, also set out in his car to join the fighting near the border and rescue as many civilians as possible.
On the way, he too was ambushed. Armed only with his personal sidearm, he battled the terrorists until he fell defending the people of Israel.
In Pri‑Gan, the terrorists eventually realized they had run into an unbreakable wall of resistance and withdrew.
The community survived — but the cost was devastating: four heroes were killed, and four more were severely wounded.
“They saved us,” says Hadas Zanzuri, a resident of Pri‑Gan. “Every one of them was a hero — angels. Aviad, Uriel, Bechor, Reuven — pure bravery.”
Shlomit paid a heartbreaking price so that Pri‑Gan could live. And that sacrifice left one shared dream unfinished.
Reuven and Aviad served on the community’s secretariat.
Together with their friends, they envisioned a beautiful synagogue — a home for Torah and prayer that would bring the community together.
They weren’t just dreaming; the day before the attack, on the eve of Simchat Torah, they met with the community rabbi to discuss the building plans.
At the end of the meeting, Reuven told the rabbi: “Two years from now, we’ll be praying in the new synagogue.”
Tzofia, Dana, Na’ora, and Nechama — the widows of the fallen — refused to let grief extinguish the vision.
Together with the wounded fighters and the rest of Shlomit’s residents, they are leading the completion of the “Be’er Shalom” synagogue, dedicated to the memory of the four heroes: Bechor, Aviad, Uriel, and Reuven.
