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Israel-Hamas war: How a legendary IDF commando was killed on October 7
“We knew he went out on missions, of the type that the Shaldag [Unit] carries out, to bring intelligence from all kinds of places, but he didn’t talk about it and we didn’t know a great deal more than that,” Zeevik Rosenthal tells me as we sit on the sofa at his family’s well-appointed house in Mevaseret Zion. “Only after his death, we saw all sorts of medals and awards describing how he was in countless operations, and 550 people came to the funeral, mostly from the unit, all with similar stories… and suddenly you receive the full picture of who your son was.”
Zeevik’s son, Chief Warrant Officer Ido Rosenthal, was a legendary fighter of the Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit, one of the IDF’s most senior and classified units. He was killed on October 7 in the first hours of the Hamas rampage through the Gaza border communities.
Apparently on his own initiative, Ido left his home in Moshav Ben-Shemen and made his way to the Shaldag base. From there, together with a few comrades, he headed south. In the first chaotic hours following Hamas’s destruction of the border fence, with the official defense structures hardly functioning and the civilian communities largely without defense, he and his colleagues hurled themselves at the enemy. They were heavily outnumbered. They did not hesitate. The cost was high.
So I am at Zeevik’s house to try to piece together the events of that day and to explore a single one of the accounts by which, on October 7, official structures of Israel descended into chaos and dysfunction for a period of several deadly hours, and nonetheless individuals and small groups of Israelis stepped into the resultant void. And I want also to take a closer look at one of those individuals, not necessarily in order to generalize from the particular to the communal.We were joined at the house in Mevaseret by Ido’s sister, Noa Ziv. The portrait of Ido that emerges, as we sift through the photos and documents that Zeevik places on the table in front of us, is of a singular and very far from ordinary man.
Ido Rosenthal in the IDF
A regular soldier, Ido Rosenthal spent the greater part of his adult working life as a fighter of the Shaldag Unit. So we should begin by understanding a little about this unique and most discreet of Israeli military formations.
Nothing much exists officially with regard to it. Its veterans, like Ido, don’t tend to go into detail. Nevertheless, a fair amount of general information can be gathered.
Formed in 1974 by colonel Muki Betser, the unit was initially intended to specialize in forward air control. Today it has moved far beyond that function. Now it specializes in long-range penetration deep inside hostile territory, special operations, and reconnaissance inside enemy areas, often related to intelligence-gathering tasks. From its beginnings as a reserve company of the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, it is now operated from within the Israeli Air Force.
“Shaldag’s mission as forward air controllers is only their rather outdated and official task,” a former Military Intelligence officer of my acquaintance tells me. “They are an integral part of every war and major operation.”
As to the precise nature of the actions in which Ido took part, it’s not possible to say. But among the very long list of operations that are associated with this small unit during the period of his service, according to unofficial sources, are Operation Orchard, the mission to destroy the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007; and Operation Sharp and Smooth, a successful raid on Baalbek in southern Lebanon during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. In the former operation, according to the Sunday Times, Shaldag fighters, operating on the ground in Syria, carried out their classic role of identifying targets for aircraft, and infiltrating and marking a depot adjoining the plutonium reactor under construction at al-Kibar.
Shaldag is one of the very top tier of Israel’s special forces units. It shares this distinction with the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit; Shayetet 13, the naval commandos; and Unit 669, the airborne rescue unit. This is the environment in which Ido spent his working life, with breaks to study visual communications at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, and to travel. And to raise three children with his partner, Noga, in Ben-Shemen.
Ido Rosenthal, the man
Ido loved nature, hiking, and hard traveling. “He went once from Mongolia to China on a motorcycle, all the way across China and to Thailand – 3,500 km. on a motorbike,” Zeevik tells me.
Ido was of Hungarian and Iraqi Jewish origin, and grew up in Jerusalem. As a young man in his early 20s, already four or five years into service in Shaldag, he sometimes used to come out to the city’s music bars, to have a beer and meet with friends. I was a part of that scene, too, about 20 years ago, and he and I had a number of mutual friends. I even remember him from those days, as I told Zeevik and Noa.
What I chiefly remember about him (which I didn’t tell them) was a sort of contrast.
On the one hand, I remember that Ido had an unmistakable physical presence. That is, he was very obviously an unusually tough man, with an easy fluency about his movements suggesting supreme physical fitness.
On the other hand, there was absolutely nothing assumed or pretentious about any of this. He did not refer to his military service, had no interest in conveying any image, still less any aura of mystery, and he liked talking to people about all the things people who gathered in those places liked to talk about – music, beer, sometimes history and politics, as I remember. No arrogance or nonsense about him.
I only spoke to him a couple of times and don’t claim to have known him or to have been his friend. Ido’s cousin, however, Ziv Adika, with whom he was very close, is a good friend of mine from those days. Ziv played the bass in a Jerusalem punk band that was well known around those times. Ido used to go to their concerts when he was home on leave.
“I gave him a poster of Crass [a well-known British anarchist punk band from the 1980s] once,” Ziv tells me as we sit in his apartment in central Jerusalem. “You remember that one, with the dead guy’s hand and the message ‘Your country needs you’? Ido stuck it up at the Shaldag HQ, but they made him take it down.” We laugh. “But they loved him there, you know? And because he was so good at what he did, like 100% and a lot more, they let him get away with those things.
“He never had fear. Of Anything. As kids in Ramot and the German Colony we used to jump off roofs, over fences, and he was just without fear. There are people like that, right?”
So it would seem. The following is an account of Ido’s activities on the morning of October 7 as related to me by his father and sister, who in turn base it on many conversations with comrades from Ido’s unit.
October 7
On that morning, at just after 8 a.m., having become aware of the events in the South, Ido left his home in Ben-Shemen. He made his way to the Shaldag base, somewhere in central Israel. At the base, the unit maintains a number of helicopters fully equipped for emergency response. Other fighters had already begun to gather there. Ido was assigned to a four-man team, led by the Shaldag deputy commander. He was the No. 2 in this hastily assembled group. They boarded the helicopter after equipping themselves for action and receiving weapons. They took off around 9:30 a.m. The helicopter landed at Kfar Maimon.
Shaldag’s helicopters are loaded with small, rough-terrain vehicles which the unit uses to travel across hostile territory on its deep penetration missions. The four fighters boarded one of these and began to head in the direction of Kibbutz Be’eri. Hamas had already entered the kibbutz and were in the midst of slaughtering its inhabitants.
On the road, the Shaldag men came across a lone Hamas terrorist. They killed him in the short exchange of fire that followed.
Arriving at an IDF position, they were told by the officer commanding there that they could go no further. “Ahead of here there’s areas containing and controlled by terrorists,” he told them.
“That’s what we came for,” the commander of the Shaldag force replied, and they continued on their way.
Somewhere in the course of all this, they had picked up another two reserve fighters, so the team now numbered six.
Arriving close to Be’eri, the team identified a large group of around 30 Hamas terrorists making their way across the open ground from Be’eri in the direction of Kibbutz Alumim. The Shaldag men decided to engage. Exiting the vehicle, they left two fighters next to it as a rescue force if needed. Four, including Ido, went forward, advancing as an infantry section across the open ground.
At the appropriate distance, the four charged the group of 30, opening fire. Around 10 of the terrorists were killed in this first attack, with the remainder taking shelter behind some sand dunes in the open ground. A firefight ensued. One of the terrorists managed to get to the side of the Israeli force and opened fire. The first of the Shaldag men was wounded. A round went through his hand, penetrated his ceramic vest and then remained between the vest and his chest. The soldier, seeing the blood spreading from his hand, assumed he was dying. Ido reached him, assessed the situation, and said that he would be okay, telling him to crawl back in the direction of the vehicle.
Making his way back to the vehicle, around a minute later the wounded soldier heard a long burst of automatic fire. This, it appears, was the burst that killed Ido, a bullet entering his neck, and wounded the commander of the team, the deputy commander of Shaldag. The two remaining members of the force pulled back, with Ido’s body.
The commander noted that the 20 or so remaining terrorists remained hidden behind the dunes, evidently looking to continue the firefight. He managed to radio back and called for a helicopter gunship, which arrived after a few minutes, wiping out the remaining Hamas men.
“And that’s it, that’s the story,” Zeevik tells me in Mevaseret Zion. “So, because of their action, they saved Kibbutz Alumim. The group [of terrorists] that was supposed to go to Alumim didn’t get there. Ten killed by Ido’s group, and the remainder by the helicopter crew. And as a result, the community was saved.”
His family speaks
We talked a while longer. More anecdotes, more memories. For example, the time that Ido, most unusually, had asked his mother to iron his class A uniform. “There’s some ceremonial army event,” he had remarked when asked the reason. And only years after, they discovered by chance that he had needed the uniform to receive the Israel Security Prize, a major citation, from then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman.
And the family gathering they had on Friday, October 6, when Zeevik and his brother-in-law, both combat veterans, had reminisced and argued about the positions along the Suez Canal prior to the 1973 war, and Ido had gathered all the family’s kids for a game of soccer as he liked to do.
“I accept all of it, and I don’t have any complaints about the specific situation that Ido came to,” Zeevik tells me, by way of parting. “He was a fighter… Ido went to save civilians. That was his profession, and he loved what he did.”
And his cousin Adika said something similar. “I used to say to him, ‘Enough already. You’ve done your part.’ But he died as he would have wanted to have died, in battle, not, I dunno, aged 70, of cancer, you know?” And then, by way of conclusion: “They didn’t bury him on Mount Herzl. Noga didn’t want that. He’s buried in a place next to Ben-Shemen. In a place of trees and nature, like he loved.”
Piecing it together
I have seen some camera footage of the Shaldag men operating around Kibbutz Be’eri. One should not imagine them as a hastily assembled, improvised force. They came in from their base in helicopters, properly equipped. They look like what they were: highly trained special forces operators moving with speed and effect.
Nevertheless, it remains the case that for many hours on October 7, the security structures of the State of Israel largely disappeared, effectively ceased to function. Ido Rosenthal was one of the small group of fighters, men and women, who stepped into the breach and chose to bear the burden and the heat of the day.
Even after they arrived at Kfar Maimon, the Shaldag men could have chosen to wait at the first position they reached for orders from somewhere or other above. Even after they continued forward, they could have assessed that the 30-strong force ahead was too numerous to engage and waited for assistance. They didn’t. They chose to go forward. Five hundred and thirty people – men, women, and children at Kibbutz Alumim – were saved. But Ido Rosenthal was killed.
May his memory be a blessing.
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The United States is deferring the removal of certain Lebanese citizens from the country, President Joe Biden said on Friday, citing humanitarian conditions in southern Lebanon amid tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
The deferred designation, which lasts 18 months, allows Lebanese citizens to remain in the country with the right to work, according to a memorandum Biden sent to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Humanitarian conditions in southern Lebanon have significantly deteriorated due to tensions between Hezbollah and Israel,” Biden said in the memo.
“While I remain focused on de-escalating the situation and improving humanitarian conditions, many civilians remain in danger; therefore, I am directing the deferral of removal of certain Lebanese nationals who are present in the United States.”Increased attacks since Oct.7
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since Hezbollah announced a “support front” with Palestinians shortly after its ally Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, triggering Israel’s military assault in Gaza.
The fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 100 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to a Reuters tally, and led to levels of destruction in Lebanese border towns and villages not seen since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.
On the Israeli side, 10 Israeli civilians, a foreign agricultural worker and 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from both sides of the border.
Hezbollah is an Iran-backed terrorist group and the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon.
world news
Preparing for war: Haifa mayor describes city’s infrastructure changes tensions in North escalate
Haifa mayor Yona Yahav spoke this past Monday with Lior Rosenfeld on Radio North 104.5FM about the escalation of the war in the North and his entry into political office amidst the security situation.
Yahav began, “I cannot speak on behalf of the North as I don’t know exactly what’s happening there. No one updates me, as if we are not the largest and most important city in the North. Tomorrow, the Home Front Command is coming to see us for the first time, and we will see what they have to say. We are doing everything to ensure that the city itself and our residents are safe and know what to do in case, God forbid, missiles fall on us. They are more accurate than those in 2006.”
Yahav also discussed the city’s preparations for a war in the North.
“We are now changing the entire method of building public structures,” Yahav said. “We are preparing them for prolonged stays. The minimum will be four consecutive days in shelters and such buildings, which require preparation. For example, installing toilets, which we don’t have today, and we have given instructions to build them in places close to where new houses are being built. This has been fully understood, and developers have begun to understand that the talk about evacuation and reconstruction has undergone drastic changes in light of the security situation. For example, road width needs to be maintained for the sake of evacuating residents on these roads. These are things that were not considered until now and must now be taken into account.”
Yahav’s plans for the success of Haifa’s future
Yahav then discussed his appeal to the transportation minister to stop the Highway 23 Carmel Tunnels’ toll charge.
“We called on the transportation minister to stop the discrimination. Haifa and the North are always discriminated against compared to central Israel, and there’s no reason for this. There are huge tunnels dug in Jerusalem that do not cost residents any money to pass through. There’s no reason why the tunnels dug in Haifa should include a toll. I speak on behalf of Haifa residents, and we are preparing to petition if we do not receive an answer.”
Regarding his entry into his mayoral role about three months ago, Yahav said, “I found a completely ruined city. They destroyed the municipality, and it’s very difficult to move things around. I don’t understand how residents sat idly by and kept quiet. We are trying to go to government offices to fix relations, to get funds, to move projects to bring in fees – and we are doing all this in a short time.
“The ministers are acting openly and with the goodwill to help. I am now waiting for the money on the table. The casino building in Bat Galim will be a luxurious hotel on the Bat Galim seashore. This neighborhood will undergo a complete transformation and will be the most beautiful neighborhood in the country. It will also be the only neighborhood facing a recognized beach. We came to make a change, and we will succeed.”
In conclusion, he touched on the issue of wild boars: “You won’t be able to follow them because soon you won’t see them anymore.”
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‘Psychological operation’: Turkey condemns FM Katz social media post depicting toddler Erdogan
Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement on Sunday condemning a social media post made by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, in which Katz presented Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan as a toddler on the lap of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Katz, in a Sunday post on X, wrote “Erdogan @RTErdogan finances and arms terrorist organizations of Hamas to carry out attacks and murder against Israelis. The General Security Service captured a squad of students from Bir Zeit who were employed by the Hamas headquarters in Turkey to carry out murder attacks in Israel, through training and weapons and tens of thousands of dollars provided to them.
“Erdogan turned Turkey into a state that supports terrorism and subjects Turkey to the Iranian axis of evil in the name of extreme ideology and blatant anti-Semitism.”
Katz’s comments were made in reference to a recently thwarted terror attack planned by the student Hamas cell in Bir Zeit University, north of Ramallah. The attempted attack, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said, was directed by Hamas’s base in Turkey.ארדואן @RTErdogan מממן ומחמש ארגוני טרור של החמאס לביצוע פיגועים ורצח נגד ישראלים. שירות הביטחון הכללי לכד חוליית סטודנטים מביר זית שהופעלו ע”י מפקדת החמאס בטורקיה לביצוע פיגועי רצח בישראל, באמצעות אימונים ונשק ועשרות אלפי דולרים שסופקו להם.ארדואן הפך את טורקיה למדינה תומכת טרור… pic.twitter.com/R0SCjYdngN
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) July 21, 2024
Turkey condemns the social media post
The Turkish ministry responded “The Israeli Foreign Minister is trying to hide Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians behind a series of lies, slander and disrespect.
“Israel’s dirty propaganda targeting Türkiye and President Erdoğan, and psychological operation attempts will not bear fruit.
“The members of the Netanyahu Government, who have killed nearly forty thousand Palestinians in Gaza and are now trying to start a regional war in order to stay in power, will be tried in international courts and held accountable for their crimes.
“Türkiye will continue to speak the truth and defend the right of the Palestinian people to live in justice and peace.”
The ministry cited data provided by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Additionally, Turkey has repeatedly asserted that it does not categorize Hamas as a terrorist organization – despite its western allies acknowledging it as such and its proven attacks on Israeli civilians.
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