Inbal Lieberman stood up with a start. She heard the distant explosions, but realized they were not the same as previous rocket attacks. At 26 years old and with a past in the Israeli armed forces, she is in charge of the defense of the Nir Am kibbutz where she lives in a community. She is the youngest defender in the country’s history, a task that forces her to be alert at all times. And something told him that those explosions were something different.
He received an order to remain on alert, but he went ahead and prepared a defense team made up of 12 of his neighbors. He provided them with weapons and began strategic distribution at key points in the kibbutz. He still didn’t know that Hamas was attacking them.
This movement was key to anticipating the advance of the terrorist organization, which was carrying out a massacre in the different kibbutz that it was accessing, taking hostages and massacring its inhabitants.
But when about thirty terrorists tried to enter the settlement run by Lieberman, they encountered an ambush that caught them off guard. The defense team managed to kill 25 of the attackers, five of whom fell at the hands of the defense leader.
The military maneuver lasted three hours. It was a case of “heroism”, where the rest of the nearby communities suffered numerous losses. This sparked interest in the case.
“When it’s all over, this woman will receive the Israel Prize. The story of her heroism is a story that will be passed down in Israeli tradition for generations. Inbal is the reason there is a kibbutz in the entire surrounding area that remains intact: Nir Am”, they praised her on social networks as quoted by the newspaper Maariv.
However, the defender avoided the praise and highlighted the role of everyone who participated in the defense. “I’m not a hero, I wasn’t there alone,” she commented. In that interview she recalled a phrase that was said to her on her first day as her advocate: “We hope you don’t have too much work.”
“It was incredible. My husband participated in the reserve unit that worked to prevent further casualties. They heard the shots and communicated on their own with the other members of the reserve unit. Inbal decided not to wait and get ahead operationally. In fact, the fact that we did it early prevented dozens of casualties,” Ilit Paz, cultural coordinator in Nir Am, told Israel Hayom.
It was a quick and decisive action, which prevented a massacre.
