“This injury is a matter of pride for me,” clarified Captain Dr. Eitan Turgeman, who was seriously injured in Gaza. He defines himself as a bibist, was active on Twitter against the protests that swept the country, and today he believes that a different discourse is needed. He is not ready to return to the reality of The sixth of October, for debates and divisions. “I was part of the machine, and now we have to fix it,” he said.
“They shot at us from several locations, from several houses,” Eitan recalled of the fighting in Gaza, in a video that appeared on social networks. “And I go up in front of the pilots and they do everything they can to ‘knock’ the squad that is shooting at me. People I was angry with, most likely it was reservists who stood in Kaplan before me, and I may have even fought with them on Twitter like some idiot. I’m embarrassed by that.”
As soon as that video was published, there were those who attacked Eitan on the networks, claiming that he was a “kaplanist in disguise” and “getting funding to bring down Netanyahu.” “The only money we have is from the startup we opened,” he explained. “I was personally approached by people who have a lot of power on the right and accused me of being a useful idiot and that I ‘hurt the war’. Do we want to stay in this reality?”
The two friends that the revolution separated
Eitan and Ron Amsalem, a fighter pilot whose name has been changed for the sake of the article, met as boys at the military boarding school in Haifa. They became good friends and when they were released Eitan became a dentist and Ron became a high-tech entrepreneur. They remained friends until the social rift opened between them.
Eitan Turgeman and Major Ron
Ron Shamalani, a pilot, supported the pilots’ protest and the demonstrations that filled the country. Eitan Yemani, a Likud voter, who supported the reform and opposed the protest measures. “It was a mediocre conversation that started well and became difficult,” described Eitan. “He was offended by me and I was offended by him.”
“At a certain point I said ‘Enough, I can’t do it anymore’,” Ron recalled, “and he agreed with me that he couldn’t do it anymore and we just stopped talking.” That row was over a specific tweet on Twitter. “I tweeted some very imaginary conversation between a helicopter pilot and an officer requesting air support during a battle,” Eitan said. The pilot, in the same imaginary conversation, asked the officer if he supported or opposed the reform.
The air aid met Eitan during a battle in the north of the Gaza Strip. “We had some sort of difficult encounter,” he said, “and there were helicopters above us all the way, all the time. Until they managed to take down the missile on the spot. There was simply applause, and I go up in front of the pilots excitedly and tell them: ‘You are my brothers, you are my warriors On'”.
Eitan Turgeman in the hospital
“This conversation with them just caused me some kind of transcendence,” he added, “and the box to the stomach that I received on October 7 became some kind of desire to say, ‘Why? Why have I come to this situation where I speak so disrespectfully, claiming towards people that they will not be They are committed to me. They are with me, they fight with me.'”
The injury in Gaza
After two weeks of intense fighting in the Strip, Eitan was seriously injured by a missile hitting the building where he was staying. “I wanted to live,” he clarified, “there were great stories of heroism there. People did amazing things there – running into the fire for their friends, that’s what I experienced. And it brought me closer to this experience of the need for correction.”
“The sense of embarrassment I had when I got to him at the hospital was heavy,” admitted the pilot Ron, “as if, I walk into his room and I’m ashamed. This man went, entered Gaza, was injured, almost killed, for me. And I know that at some point I gave him the The feeling that I am putting my commitment to him and the army into the equation in general. And that was one step too many.”
Eitan Turgeman and Major Ron
None of them gave up their positions. Ron does not regret the demonstrations in Kaplan against the coup, Eitan calls it legal reform and still supports it. But among friendships that were torn apart by political hands and came back under fire, the idea of ”Fix 24″ arose: an organization that begins with the reservists who return after three months with insights – resetting systems and a new beginning. What they define as a “rectification Knesset”, which will speak differently and behave differently.
“We started this organization not against anything, we are not protesting against anything,” explained Eitan. “We want to change, we want to fix. People fight, people die, spill their blood next to each other. Does anyone think about politics on the battlefield?”.
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