If Gabriel had been told 10 years ago that one day he would be an officer in the IDF, a soldier in the Sheldag patrol and a paratrooper, he would probably have laughed. “All my life I was without a framework, I always felt inferior,” he says. others. I told myself that I want to reach the highest.”
At the age of 6, Gabriel and his two others were kicked out of the house, and moved to the Hadsim boarding school. “I was born to an amazing mother and father, but in terms of abilities, each of them faced their own problems. I would run away from boarding school at a young age and return to them at night. It’s a feeling that makes you look for so many things, whether it’s to experiment a little with drugs or steal. At the age of 10 I found myself hospitalized in a mental health hospital in Nes Ziona”.
Gabriel stayed for half a year in the mental health institution. He does not forget his mother’s visits. “I remember it was very difficult for her to come, she had her mental struggles. She would come with a huge bag of sweets. Every time she would go I would cry for hours.”
When Gabriel was released from hospitalization, he moved to live with his grandparents in Beit Shemesh, so he began to be exposed to the army. “I realized that I was going to enlist and I started teaching myself, reading newspapers, for nothing, I wasn’t interested in the journalists themselves, I was interested in knowing the country. I realized that I wanted to enlist in a special unit, so I started teaching myself things, filling in the gaps.”
“The commissioner stood up, and I was on the floor with a dislocated shoulder, everyone was around. In his look I saw the ‘oh and woe'”
“On Friday-Saturday, while all the friends go out drinking, 12 at night, I crawled on the beaches of Ashkelon from sukkah to sukkah. In retrospect, I say: come on, what a crazy person, but no, it’s impossible to understand. If you have this goal in front of your eyes, you want so badly to reach , nothing interested me.
On November 19, Gabriel enlists in Sheldag and goes through training. “It was one of the most exciting moments in my life,” he says. “I did an eight-month course there, a world record. All my friends and the city say wow, people from my neighborhood usually don’t go there. Every time you go out they talk to you, suddenly you’re not so poor.”
But then he was injured, while training for a grappling match. I remember that in his look I saw the ‘oh and alas’. I said to myself: you enlisted to be a fighter first and then an officer, you will not be allowed to be a fighter. There is a saying that I believe in – my brother, you are not a tree, if you don’t feel well, move.”
So Gabriel commanded the military officer course and arrived at the 1st military base, where he has been for eight months and is preparing for the next challenge that the ranks will bring. Today he says that he has learned to come to terms with his past: “Today I understand that our parents could not have raised us. When I was little I always imagined that living with mom and dad was the best thing in the world. Today I understand that even visiting occasionally is fine.”